#red china

[treadingsoftlyincombatboots]

BREAKING: The FBI has arrested a former U.S. Air Force Major who spent 26 months in Beijing training Chinese fighter pilots. But the real story isn’t just the arrest. It’s the network behind it.

Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., call sign “Runner,” served 24 years in the Air Force, flying the F-4, F-15, F-16, and A-10. He commanded nuclear delivery units and later trained American pilots on the F-35 Lightning II simulator.

In 2023, he negotiated to train pilots for the Chinese PLAAF. His intermediary reportedly connected him to a network tied to Stephen Su Bin — the Chinese national who pleaded guilty in 2016 for conspiring to steal massive amounts of classified U.S. defense data, including information tied to the F-22 and F-35.

Think about that, the same ecosystem that targeted America’s most advanced aircraft then recruited a man who trained our pilots to fly it.

Brown arrived in China in December 2023 and stayed for over two years, briefing and training PLA officers. He returned to the U.S. in February 2026 and was arrested in Indiana. He’s not alone. In 2024, Five Eyes intelligence warned that China was aggressively recruiting Western fighter pilots through shell companies. Similar cases have surfaced before.

You can arrest a man, you can prosecute him, but you cannot un-teach what has already been taught. That knowledge is now embedded, institutionalized, and compounding.

The real question isn’t just what he did, but how many others have followed suit and given away our trade secrets. This is a disgrace to the country he served.

[jhsharman]

"Red China"

Translation shifts from fancy cups to dress.

[blueiscoool]

F-22 Fighter Jet Shoots Down Chinese Spy Balloon

A U.S. military fighter jet shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, a week after it first entered U.S. airspace and triggered a dramatic -- and public -- spying saga that worsened Sino-U.S. relations.

A F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia -- took the shot at 2:39 p.m. (1939 GMT), using a single AIM-9X supersonic, heat-seeking, air-to-air missile, a senior U.S. military official said.

The balloon was shot down about six nautical miles off the U.S. coast of the Atlantic Ocean, over relatively shallow water, potentially aiding efforts to recover elements of the Chinese surveillance equipment over the coming days, U.S. officials said.

[ofotherworlds2]

A People's Liberation Army calvalry trooper riding towards a nuclear explosion whilst aiaming a Kalashnikov during a nuclear weapons test in Lop Nur China 1964. Note that this guy is armed with a saber as well as his assault rifle. [1280 x 846]

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Since fashion is art now and Chinese is in fashion, I could make a lot of money.

- Andy Warhol on painting Mao

In 1972 a historic event took place at the height of the Cold War: a meeting between President Nixon and Mao Zedong, the supreme leader of the People’s Republic of China. Warhol followed the media coverage with interest. He was particularly drawn to the iconic figure of Mao and began to incorporate him into his artworks.

Starting in the early 1970s, the Pop artist made hundreds of images of Mao, using a portrait of the leader from the Little Red Book, a propaganda collection of Mao’s speeches and quotations from the Cultural Revolution, as his template.

Between 1972–73, Warhol produced 199 Mao paintings in five series, as well as a series of 10 screenprints. Warhol is believed to have undertaken the first series himself, even though the screens were six feet tall – an impressive accomplishment. The difficulties of the silkscreen process on such a large canvas resulted in the clogged colours and unique texture of the works. The later Mao paintings, which ranged from a colossal 14 feet tall to just four feet, were created in a range of different print, painting and mark-marking techniques. The final Mao painting was discovered in Warhol’s studio after his death, and simply consisted of a black outline printed on a plain canvas background.

Warhol’s Maos are endlessly varied - ferocious, parodic, and beautiful - gestures of paint smeared onto the reproduced outline of the Chinese leader’s head and shoulders. In one huge 1973 canvas, over 14 feet tall, Warhol rouged the Great Helmsman’s cheeks, adorned his eyes with blue pigment, and deepened the red of his lips. With these changes, the mole on Mao’s chin was transfigured into the beauty mark of a French courtesan. Warhol dolled Mao up, on the heroic scale of socialist realism.

The painting above now hangs in the Museo Picasso Malaga. Look closely at Warhol’s pictorial treatment of his subject in the painting above, his use of acrylic and oils and the silkscreen print used as a base. The brushstrokes are expressive, rather quick and rough. The paradox sought by the artist is that of transforming an iconic Communist figure into a consumer product for the capitalist economy.

The series of Mao portraits marked a key point in the commercial development of Warhol’s studio, which from the mid-1970s onwards sold thousands of these and other images of famous people.

The repetition of the Mao series has been interpreted as a commentary on the machinic function of propaganda and advertising. With its bold, artificial colours and mass-produced screenprinting technique, Warhol’s Mao prints turned the communist leader into a consumable object, like a Campbell’s soup can or a fashionable commodity – rather than a symbol of political ideology.

[m-ushroomtale]

[thepopculturearchivist]

July 27, 1970

[karlieklosssource]

🦒🏅