Sen. Marco Rubio published a report this week revealing the successes and failures of China’s global campaign to obtain technology and dominate critical markets called “Made in China 2025.”

“The Chinese Communist Party controls the largest industrial base in the world. Through theft, market distorting subsidies and strategic planning, Beijing now leads in many of the industries that will determine geopolitical supremacy in the 21st century,” the Florida Republican said. “We need a whole-of-society effort to rebuild our country, overcome the China challenge, and keep the torch of freedom lit for generations to come.”

The report concludes that China now dominates four of the 10 high-value, high-technology sectors that it targeted with its program: electric vehicles; energy and power generation; high-speed railways; and shipbuilding.

The Threat Status Influencers series recently featured an exclusive video interview with Glenn Tiffert, a China scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, who says China seeks to beat the United States in the “battle for global data dominance.” 

The Kremlin this week accused Washington of having already decided to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike targets deep within Russia, despite the Biden administration’s publicly stated resistance to authorizing or supporting such strikes as too provocative.

“The process has started, there is a camouflage discussion going on. It is obvious that the decision was made a long time ago,” according to Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Peskov made the comments in an interview with the Kremlin-controlled Izvestia newspaper.

It is notable that the comments came after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assertion this week that American officials have evidence that Iran is now supplying Russia with short-range ballistic missiles. Mr. Blinken vowed that Washington would punish those involved. The development prompted the U.S., France, Germany and the United Kingdom to increase joint sanctions on Iran, which has denied the charges.

Congress passed several legislative measures this week that members say are designed to counter threats posed by China.

One measure authorizes funds for the State Department to work with allies and other nations to counter what lawmakers say are malign Chinese influence programs and debt diplomacy. “The U.S. needs more effective and agile tools to better compete with the Chinese Communist Party around the world,” said Rep. John Moolenaar, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

The House also passed bills that seek to prevent China from obtaining Americans’ genetic data from Chinese state-backed companies; restrict the Chinese drone manufacturer DJI, which dominates the U.S. commercial drone market; block the Department of Homeland Security from buying batteries from six Chinese companies linked to the ruling Communist Party; and require the State Department to notify Congress 30 days in advance of any science and technology agreements with China.

The bills, part of what the House Republican majority billed as “China Week” in the chamber, face an uncertain future in the Senate with the legislative calendar winding down.

As father-daughter dances go, there may be few more awkward in modern political history than the one being choreographed in Bangkok these days.

Threat Status Special Correspondent Richard S. Ehrlich has a dispatch from the Thai capital examining the relationship between new Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, and her father Thaksin Shinawatra, 74, a coup-toppled, convicted former international fugitive and prime minister.

Many suspect Mr. Shinawatra seeks to manipulate his daughter’s populist, capitalist-friendly coalition government. The young, untested prime minister, whose aunt Yingluck Shinawatra had her own star-crossed term as prime minister a decade ago, is finding her famous name to be both a help and a hindrance as she tries to govern after the stunning collapse of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s coalition government last month.

Washington Times Editorial Board Member Jeffrey Scott Shapiro offers an update on his column from four months ago that revealed how “Cuba’s military dictatorship was abducting and forcibly conscripting an estimated thousands of young Cubans to fight in the Russian armed forces against Ukraine.”

“The oppressive regime, which has operational pacts with Moscow, has also deployed its elite Black Beret special forces units to fight alongside Russian troops in battle,” writes Mr. Shapiro. “Despite this, the European Union continues to send hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Havana.”

He adds that the “European aid, when considering other sources such as the Paris Club, totals much more than 55 million euros — money that could be used to rebuild Ukrainian hospitals, homes and orphanages bombed by Russia and house children who have lost their parents to war.”

The recent execution of Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Gaza, the attack on U.S. forces in Iraq that injured 17, and increasing action by Yemen’s Houthis against commercial shipping in the Red Sea all indicate that Iran is not standing down in the wake of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s July 30 assassination in Tehran, according to Victoria Coates.

Tehran is “using its terrorist proxies to test the Biden-Harris administration,” writes Ms. Coates, vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

“Iran,” she writes, “wants to know if the United States would actually use any of the military capacity at its disposal or if it’s just for show.”

• Sept. 16 — What Remains of the Myanmar Economy After the Coup, Stimson Center

• Sept. 16 — The United States and India: Milestones Reached and the Pathway Ahead, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 18 — Aspen Cyber Summit, The Aspen Institute

• Sept. 20 — Confronting the Axis of Upheaval, Center for a New American Security

• Oct. 2 — 2024 Veterans Advanced Energy Summit, Atlantic Council