The Brookings Institution, often stylized as Brookings, is an American think tank that conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, global economy, and economic development.
Robert Menendez is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from New Jersey from 2006 until his resignation in 2024 following his conviction on 16 counts in a political corruption case. A member of the Democratic Party and the Cuban–American lobby, he was first appointed to the Senate by Governor Jon Corzine, and chaired the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 2013 to 2015 and from 2021 to 2023.
The Ministry of State Security is the principal civilian intelligence, security and secret police agency of the People's Republic of China, responsible for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and the political security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One of the largest and most secretive intelligence organizations in the world, it is headquartered in the Haidian District of Beijing, with powerful semi-autonomous branches at the provincial, city, municipality and township levels throughout China.
Patrick Ho Chi-ping is a Hong Kong ophthalmologist turned politician.
The Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal involved Lawrence Franklin, a former United States Department of Defense employee, passing classified documents regarding United States policy towards Iran to Israel. Franklin pleaded guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly 13 years of prison, which was later reduced to ten months' house arrest. Franklin passed information to American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy director Steven Rosen and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman, who were fired by AIPAC. They were then indicted for illegally conspiring to gather and disclose classified national security information to Israel. However, prosecutors later dropped all charges against them without any plea bargain.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is a United States law that imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interests. It requires "foreign agents"—defined as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons —to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation.
Robert Hunter Biden is an American attorney and businessman. He is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company, in 2013, and later served on the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine, from 2014 until his term expired in April 2019. He has worked as a lobbyist and legal representative for lobbying firms, a hedge fund principal, and a venture capital and private equity fund investor.
Anne Korin is co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a think tank focused on energy and security, and chairs the Set America Free Coalition, an alliance of national security, environmental, labor and religious groups promoting ways to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. She is co-author of Energy Security Challenges for the 21st Century (2009) and Turning Oil into Salt (2009). She appears in the media frequently and has written articles for Foreign Affairs, MIT Innovations, The American Interest and National Review.
Ameer Makhoul is a Palestinian Christian citizen of Israel and the director of the Haifa-based Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations.
The Leviathan gas field is a large natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel, 47 kilometres (29 mi) south-west of the Tamar gas field. The gas field is roughly 130 kilometres (81 mi) west of Haifa in waters 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) deep in the Levantine basin, a rich hydrocarbon area in one of the largest offshore natural gas field finds. According to some commentators, the gas find has the potential to change Israel's foreign relations with neighboring countries, including Turkey, and Egypt. Together with the nearby Tamar gas field, the Leviathan field was seen as an opportunity for Israel to achieve energy independence in the Middle East.
Antony John Blinken is an American lawyer and diplomat currently serving as the 71st United States secretary of state. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. Blinken was previously national security advisor to then–Vice President Joe Biden from 2009 to 2013.
Robert James Woolsey Jr. is an American political appointee who has served in various senior positions. He headed the Central Intelligence Agency as Director of Central Intelligence from February 5, 1993, until January 10, 1995. He held a variety of government positions in the 1970s and 1980s, including as United States Under Secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, and was involved in treaty negotiations with the Soviet Union for five years in the 1980s. His career also included time as a professional lawyer, venture capitalist and investor in the private sector.
Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan is an American attorney serving since 2021 as the U.S. National Security Advisor. He previously served as Director of Policy to President Barack Obama, National Security Advisor to then-Vice President Biden and Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Department of State. Sullivan also served as senior advisor to the U.S. federal government at the Iran nuclear negotiations and senior policy advisor to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, as well as visiting professor at Yale Law School. On November 23, 2020, President-elect Biden announced that Sullivan would be appointed the United States National Security Advisor. He took office on January 20, 2021.
Sue Mi Terry is a Korean-American scholar of international relations who previously held the position of senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and served as a CIA intelligence analyst specializing in East Asia.
Operation Fox Hunt is a Chinese government covert global operation whose purported aim is anti-corruption under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration. As of 2017, it has led to the arrest of over 40 of its 100 most wanted globally. It has been accused of targeting Chinese dissidents living abroad to stop their activism under the guise of returning corrupt Chinese nationals to China to face criminal charges. Kidnappings and other forms of coercion have been used to repatriate individuals.
Dickson Yeo Jun Wei, also known as Dickson Yeo, is a Singaporean convicted of espionage by the United States on behalf of the People's Republic of China. On 24 July 2020, he pleaded guilty at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia of assisting China in collecting information in the United States without prior notification made to the United States Attorney General under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board. As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.
The foreign policy of the Joe Biden administration emphasizes the repair of the United States' alliances, which Biden argues were damaged during the Trump administration. The administration's goal is to restore the United States to a "position of trusted leadership" among global democracies in order to address challenges posed by Russia and China. Both Biden and his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have repeatedly emphasized that no other world power should be able to surpass the United States, either militarily or economically. Biden's foreign policy has been described as having ideological underpinnings in mid-twentieth century liberal internationalism, American exceptionalism, and pragmatism.
The United States House Oversight Committee investigation into the Biden family is an ongoing investigation since January 2023 by the United States House of Representatives into US President Joe Biden and his family. The investigation was initiated on January 11, and includes examination of the foreign business activities of Biden's son, Hunter, and brother, James, as well as Twitter's involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop controversy.
