Brian T. Kennedy is president of the American Strategy Group, chairman of the Committee for the Present Danger: China, and a board member and senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, where he served as president from 2002 to 2015. He has written widely on national security affairs and public policy, including in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Investor’s Business Daily, and RealClearPolitics. He is the author of Communist China’s War Inside America.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on September 29, 2020, in Rapid City, South Dakota, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar.

We are at risk of losing a war today because too few of us know that we are engaged with an enemy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that means to destroy us. The forces of globalism that have dominated our government (until recently) and our media for the better part of half a century have blinded too many Americans to the threat we face. If we do not wake up to the danger soon, we will find ourselves helpless.

That is a worst-case scenario. I do not think we Americans will let that happen. But the forces arrayed against us are many. We need to understand what we are up against and what steps must be taken to ensure our victory.