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Biden’s transition team seeks more internationally focused COVID-19 measures, including rejoining the WHO

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Tuesday morning, Joe Biden‘s transition team shared a link to their overall plan for combatting COVID-19, which seeks a more active role for the federal government in public health and the economy than it has during the Trump administration. Additionally, the plan aims to take a more multilateral approach in dealing with the virus than the current administration has, including rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO).

This comes after Biden announced on Monday a slate of individuals he’s nominating for economic roles in his incoming administration. His most notable picks include former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen for Treasury secretary, Neera Tanden for director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Cecilia Rouse for chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). His economic team, if successfully confirmed by the U.S. Senate, will play a vital role in leading the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic.

In sharing the link, the team tweeted that “President-elect Biden believes that the federal government must act aggressively to help protect and support our families, small businesses, first responders, and caregivers affected by COVID-19.”

Also part of Biden’s plan are measures to increase U.S. collaboration with other countries in fighting COVID-19. Notably, the document says that one goal is to “immediately restore our relationship with the World Health Organization, which—while not perfect—is essential to coordinating a global response during a pandemic.”

The WHO has come under intense scrutiny since the start of the pandemic, with critics saying that the organization mishandled the virus and has failed in condemning the Chinese government for lying to the world about the virus and censoring those in China who tried to inform the world about COVID-19. Biden has made public statements in the past where he has said that he wants the U.S. to rejoin the WHO.

Other internationally focused measures listed in the document are: expanding “the number of CDC’s deployed disease detectives so we have eyes and ears on the ground, including rebuilding the office in Beijing,” immediately restoring “the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, originally established by the Obama-Biden administration,” and relaunching and strengthening the “U.S. Agency for International Development’s pathogen-tracking program called PREDICT.”

President Donald Trump has taken a mostly unilateral approach in fighting the virus during the pandemic, with him in October announcing that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO. Furthermore, the president, who was already an aggressive critic of China before the pandemic, has been extremely vocal in his anger toward the country’s authoritarian government regarding COVID-19, having routinely referred to it as the “China virus.”

You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.

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Report: Beijing’s military hacked U.S. nuclear firm before Hunter Biden aided Chinese bid to acquire it

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A bombshell report by Just the News explains that “U.S. officials were acutely aware that Beijing was trying to obtain America’s premiere nuclear reactor technology, including through illicit hacking, months before Hunter Biden and his business partners sought to arrange a quiet sale of an iconic U.S. reactor company to a Chinese firm, according to court records and national security experts.”

Hunter Biden attempted to assist CEFC China Energy to acquire Westinghouse, one of America’s most famous electricity and appliance brands, as well as its state-the-art AP1000 nuclear reactor.

Hunter began his work with the Chinese company in early 2016 – while Joe Biden was the sitting Vice President – memos show. According to a copy of the indictment, just 20 months earlier, his father’s Justice Department charged five members of a Chinese military hacking unit for breaching the company’s computer systems in search of intellectual property and internal strategy communications.

Just the News reports:

In May 2014, the five operatives of the People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398 were charged with hacking into the systems of six U.S.-based companies across different industrial sectors, including Westinghouse Electric Co., SolarWorld, United States Steel Corp., and a union. The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, called the breach a classic case of “economic espionage.”

One operative gained access to Westinghouse’s computers in 2010 and “stole proprietary and confidential technical and design specifications related to pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing” pertaining to the company’s advanced AP1000 nuclear reactor design, according to an indictment filed by the Department of Justice.

“Among other things, such specifications would enable a competitor to build a plant similar to the AP1000 without incurring significant research and development costs associated with designing similar pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing systems,” the indictment reads.

Just the News notes that while there is no evidence at the moment that Hunter Biden was aware of or involved in the hacking efforts by the Chinese, documents previously released by Congress in the Biden impeachment inquiry show Hunter Biden wrote in one text message in 2017 that he believed one of the CEFC officials he worked with, Patrick Ho, was the “f—ing spy chief” of China.

Ho was later indicted in the U.S. and charged with corruption. Joe Biden’s brother James told the FBI he believed CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming had a relationship with China’s communist president.

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