Does the United States government already possess secret technology that makes science fiction a reality? Could fairly recent “UFO” videos, considered convincing by experts, be a glimpse into that technology? And despite this, could China be poised to overtake us in the space race and, ultimately, dominate the heavens and the Earth?
Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast alluded to at least two of these possibilities at a lecture last month, saying, among other things, that “fantastic technology exists that could transport a human anywhere on earth within an hour,” reports the Drive.
Giving a lecture entitled “The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force” at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C., Kwast strongly suggested that outer space will be the next great battlefield. His talk “included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field,” the Drive relates.
“‘The power of space will change world power forever,’ Kwast told the audience assembled at the Allan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on November 20th,” Hillsdale College reports. “‘As a historian, [I know that] … throughout the history of mankind … technology has always changed world power,’ he said” (video of full speech below).
Hillsdale continued:
In his talk Kwast laid out an ambitious vision for innovation in space. He described space as a new frontier for energy, manufacturing, information technology, and transportation. Kwast pointed to World War I as an instance where ignoring a new technology led to catastrophe. “But the story of rejecting new and holding and clinging to the paradigms of the past is why no civilization has ever lasted forever, and values are trumped by other values when another civilization figures out a way of finding a competitive advantage,” Kwast explained.
“The nature of power, you either have it and your values rule or you do not have it and you must submit. We see that play out again and again in history and it’s playing out now,” Kwast said referring to China’s current plan to dominate space innovation by 2049.
China is certainly a case in point. After falling behind technologically during the Ming and Qing dynasties, she was dominated by Western powers; this no doubt precipitated the Qing Dynasty’s demise, in 1912. This end of 1,000 years of imperial rule was followed by tumultuous decades and, ultimately, descent into Marxist darkness.
Witnessing her neighbor’s domination and, to an extent, her own, Japan began modernizing in the 19th century; she then briefly dominated China as well during the WWII era.
Returning to Kwast, he boasts some impressive credentials, as his official USAF biography attests. He “most recently served as Commander of the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) at Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA),” the Drive informs. “According to some reports, Kwast was prematurely relieved of his duties at JBSA and blacklisted for promotion after speaking out on space-related issues despite a service-wide gag order. Kwast declined to comment on the reports and retired on September 1, 2019.”
Despite this, the Drive points out that many of Kwast’s supporters believe he should have headed the Pentagon’s budding Space Force (video below of Kwast doing an AirmanMagazineOnline spot). For he has long been an authority on the space race, as reflected in relevant op-eds he has penned, such as a 2018 Politico piece entitled, “There won’t be many prizes for second place.”
Thus does our greatest geopolitical rival, China, have no intention of being in second place. And thus, singing a common contemporary tune, does Kwast cite “rapidly growing Chinese military and technological advances as the reason why the United States must invest heavily in new space-based technologies,” the Drive also tells us.
“We can say today we are dominant in space but the trend lines are what you have to look at and they will pass us in the next few years if we do not do something,” says Kwast. “‘They will win this race and then they will put roadblocks up to space,’ Kwast argues, ‘because once you get the high ground, that strategic high ground, it’s curtains for anybody trying to get to that high ground behind them.’”
Kwast “points at 5G as an example of China stealing American ideas and technology, duplicating them and then dominating the market,” Hillsdale adds. “He does not want the same thing to happen with the new opportunities in the space industry. This, he argues, is why we need a Space Force and soon.”
This said, are we — or is someone — closer to that than we think? Is there evidence of this? During the past year, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has done some interesting segments on UFO phenomena. A self-professed former UFO skeptic, the commentator focused in March on U.S. Navy footage (video below) in which experienced pilots encountered a craft that traveled at speeds, and exhibited flight characteristics, beyond our known earthly capabilities.
While many here will reflexively visualize the X-Files and little green men, note that the Drive claimed in June that patent “documents indicate that the U.S. and China are actively developing radical new craft that seem eerily similar to UFOs reported by Navy pilots.”
So could this be the secret technology, that could transport us anywhere on Earth within an hour, to which Kwast alluded? It’s all conjecture at this point.
For sure, however, is that he who owns tomorrow’s technology can rule the world. Also for sure is that there’s a major power today that isn’t balkanizing itself via destructive (im)migration policies in the name of building statist power; that isn’t trying to regress itself to an infantile stage of not knowing the difference between boys and girls as it obsesses over personal pronouns; and that doesn’t view its military’s purpose as “social justice” experimentation. This power is bent on global dominance and plays for keeps — and this power ain’t us.
Kwast emphasizes that the nation mastering the new technologies will enjoy the kind of competitive and strategic advantage nuclear weapons gave the 20th-century superpowers. That’s a thought. Note here, as the only nation with atomic weapons in WWII’s wake, the United States could have said, “Submit to us or we’ll atomize Moscow and Beijing and then move down the list of Soviet and Chinese cities.” It would have been barbaric and immoral, sure, but effective. We could have ruled the world.
We didn’t do it because, despite America’s bad press and her tendency toward self-flagellation, we were a merciful, charitable, benevolent civilization (as civilizations go) and still quite Christian. Would you bet your life that, enjoying an equivalent power advantage, godless China would be so magnanimous?
Because your life is precisely what you may be betting.
Image: gremlin via iStock / Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.