This week in The Red Report:

• Why is the CCP obsessed with “China-Shedding”?

• Is AI accelerating economic nationalism?

• The Prelude to US-China Negotiations

• Do androids dream of electric Xi?

• How Chinese satellites support US adversaries

2430 Group Co-Founder Tom Lyons talks to the The Washington Times’ Threat Status podcast about the People's Republic of China's ongoing campaign of intellectual property theft. During the episode, Lyons explained how the PRC uses a sophisticated blend of coercion, fraud, and state-sponsored economic espionage to acquire American innovation. These activities directly undermine US economic stability and national security by eroding technological competitiveness and threatening American jobs. Lyons emphasized that small businesses, the primary engines of US innovation, are frequently targeted and remain uniquely vulnerable to these predatory practices.

This document is a categorized reference list of the major laws, regulations, and frameworks that shape the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, and Russia’s contemporary national-security and counter-espionage environment.

RedNote, a short-form video and augmented reality platform better known in Mandarin as xiaohongshu, or “little red book,” has rapidly gained traction in recent years as an alternative to the video blogging service TikTok, especially among younger users drawn to its immersive alternate reality features and tailored content feeds. Like TikTok, RedNote offers algorithmically driven entertainment; however, its underlying infrastructure and legal obligations differ in critical ways. While TikTok has faced scrutiny over its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and its opaque data practices, RedNote is even more closely aligned with the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) surveillance architecture. Promoted as a creative social app, RedNote conforms to PRC policy of surveillance-by-design, requiring extensive data extraction, non-transparent content moderation, and legally mandated state access to user information. This closer look examines how RedNote operates within—and extends—the global reach of China’s digital governance model.

The author, Christian Ryan, is an open-source national security researcher and a Research Fellow at Trefoil Strategies Ltd., a Pittsburgh-based risk consultancy.

2430 Group’s Director, Glenn Chafetz describes a 21st Cold War with China in a May 20, 2025 article in Publications—Irregular Warfare Center. Chafetz contends that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) centrally directs the entirety of its party-state-economic machinery, including its putatively private companies, against the decentralized, civilian assets of the United States’ commercial sector, critical infrastructure, and civil society. The US fails to adequately respond or deter China because the attacks are incremental and hard to detect; the private sector lacks the ability and incentives to defend itself; and neither the USG nor the private sector adequately capture the risks of inaction.

2430 Group’s director Glenn Chafetz urges U.S. and allied leaders to recognize that Xi Jinping’s deep insecurity and need for absolute control are accelerating the pressure and timeline for him to use the PLA against Taiwan—and the time to prepare is limited.

US and allied export controls are failing to stop critical microelectronics from reaching sanctioned adversaries like Russia and Iran. Weak supply chain oversight, inconsistent due diligence, and industry resistance to stricter controls have enabled a global gray market for these components, undermining national security and costing American lives.

This paper analyzes the widespread availability of US components used in Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and specifically:

• documents the methodology used to track critical components and their
  distribution channels;

• presents four detailed findings that reveal significant vulnerabilities in the semiconductor supply chain and distribution networks; and

• offers five practical recommendations for government and industry to help disrupt the flow of US technology to adversary states.