China’s military could launch an attack against Taiwan before 2027, the date Beijing has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for a takeover. That’s according to U.S. Navy Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, President Biden’s nominee to head the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command. National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz examined the warning Adm. Paparo — currently the Pacific Fleet commander — made during his recent confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.

Concern over Taiwan coincides with mounting hand-wringing over the Pentagon’s admission in a new report that there are nearly 50 Chinese companies with ties to the country’s military that have operations and business ties inside the United States.

Critics are also sounding the alarm over the transfer of sensitive U.S. technology directly to China’s Communist Party-ruled government. The Wire China, for instance, raises the question over whether U.S. biotech firms should be allowed to sell products such as advanced DNA testing kits to Chinese law enforcement agencies, considering those agencies engage in “massive DNA collection” that includes targeting of ethnic minorities and — when combined with other surveillance methods such as facial recognition — the monitoring and control of regional populations.

The administration’s goal in striking Iran-backed militants “is not ‘OK, game on, let’s just do this and go, you know, full-scale war against Iranian proxy groups in Iraq and Syria,’” according to Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the top Pentagon spokesman. At the same time, he says, the Pentagon won’t hold back from further retaliation against militants backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who attack U.S. troops deployed in the region to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State caliphate.

The comments Monday came after Iraq’s government sharply criticized the retaliatory U.S. strikes, claiming they killed civilians and members of the Iraqi military. Maj. Gen. Ryder responded that the targets were “command-and-control operation centers … [and] supply chain facilities … used by the IRGC and affiliated militias to attack U.S. forces.” The back-and-forth is at the center of soaring U.S.-Iran tensions, following U.S. airstrikes in response to the drone attack by Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite militias that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan on Jan. 28.

We’re closely tracking this, as well as charges by Biden opponents that his failed engagement diplomacy with Tehran prior to the Israel-Hamas war fueled Iran’s current aggression. Former President Donald Trump asserts his “maximum pressure” approach was more effective, claiming Iran even called to warn him ahead of time when its proxies carried out strikes against American forces in retaliation for the 2020 U.S. strike that killed Iranian commander Gen. Qassim Soleimani.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry has been hit by a Chinese cyberattack which government sources say compromised sensitive information. The Monday attack came a day after joint Japanese and U.S. military drills named Beijing as the hypothetical enemy for the first time.

Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon reports that the two developments, combined with revelations of rising China-Japan tension over the disputed Senkaku Islands, underline Tokyo’s accelerating strategic tilt away from Beijing, a tilt occurring despite the reality that China remains — according to the MIT Media Lab Observatory of Economic Complexity — the top export destination for Japanese goods.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry cyberattack came roughly a week after Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the new House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, warned that Beijing-backed hackers have spent 20 years planting malware into systems that control U.S. infrastructure.

The GOP-controlled House is slated to vote Tuesday on whether to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his performance in the face of a record surge of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The Times’ Stephen Dinan, meanwhile, reports that the Senate’s $118 billion bill to increase funding for combating illegal immigration, while paving the way for the Biden administration to provide tens of billions in fresh aid for Ukraine and Israel, is being sucked into the political vortex, with both liberals and conservatives saying they can’t stomach the policy changes called for under the legislation.

The U.S. needs to send a strong signal to Iranian-backed militias who act with impunity, according to former senior adviser to the State Department David L. Phillips, who writes that the “Popular Mobilization Forces” or PMF in Iraq are among the groups funded by Tehran. He argues the Biden administration should focus on destroying the PMF, the umbrella group for paramilitary Shiite militias in Iraq, and that the strategy should include “targeted killings” of PMF leaders.