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--:-- Georgia Howe: The NFL is back, and FanDuel's got everything you need to play your game. From same-game parlays to live betting. Right now, new customers bet $5 and get $300 in bonus bets if you win. 21-plus in president select states. 18-plus in Kentucky and Wyoming. Must be first online real money waging. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Amid alarming new reports of Chinese military action, concerns grow about spying in U.S. companies and universities by members of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party wants what we have, and they will do whatever they must do to take it and get it. We'll discuss some high-profile cases of CCP espionage and its potential impact on China's global agenda. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's October 23rd, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: Two Supreme Court decisions involving police officers this week upheld the hotly debated doctrine of qualified immunity. We'll take a closer look at the rulings and discuss what they may mean for future lawsuits against members of law enforcement. And popular podcaster Joe Rogan has leveled some strong allegations against the world's most influential search engine, Google. And I'm like, okay, well, this is crazy. Like, you guys are hiding information. We'll look at what prompted the allegations and the impact Rogan's comments are having on an alternative search engine.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This show is sponsored by Birch Gold Group. Inflation is destroying the dollar. Birch Gold Group can help protect your IRA or 401k with a precious metals IRA. Text WIRE to 989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver. There's zero obligation. Text the word WIRE to 989898 to protect your savings today.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: This week, a new report involving the surprising advancement of Chinese missile technology added to the growing concern surrounding the Chinese Communist Party and the issue of spying. Here to tell us more is Daily Wire's Ian Howarth. So Ian, earlier this week, you reported on China testing what appears to be a hypersonic missile system, which circled the globe and took U.S. intelligence totally by surprise.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Yeah, according to the Financial Times, one anonymous source said that they had no idea how China did this.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right, and one thing you mentioned toward the end of that segment is that American technology had, in some way, contributed toward that advancement in Chinese military. What's the background there?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Well, it's important to understand that the leaps and bounds being made by China's military and the wider tech sector is not happening in a vacuum. Instead, it's relying on several outside factors, and one of which is espionage. For example, multiple Chinese nationals have been accused or convicted of stealing military or technological secrets for the CCP.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In 2019, for example, a part-time professor at UCLA was convicted on 18 federal charges, linked to a plot to illegally obtain microchips from an American company and export them to China, where they could have been used in military systems such as missiles and fighter jets.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Right, but this thing is not just an isolated case. No, absolutely not. In September 2020, the U.S. actually canceled the visas of 1,000 Chinese students and researchers because they allegedly had ties with the Chinese military and were engaged in espionage.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And this sort of concern goes all the way up to the very top of the federal government. I sure you remember the Axios report from late last year which uncovered a suspected Chinese intelligence operative who developed deep ties with local and national politicians including former Democratic presidential candidate Eric Swalwell.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Right. Yeah, well, that alleged spy, a Chinese national called Fang Fang, targeted so-called up-and-coming politicians in the Bay Area and further afield using, quote, campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships to gain access. She even helped place an intern in Eric Swalwell's office.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, and I mean, that was a pretty stunning scandal. But how widespread is this problem?
--:-- Ian Howarth: It's very broad. Not only have multiple Chinese nationals been accused or convicted of actively spying, there is growing concern that Chinese Communist Party influence has permeated every element of American life.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Last December, an unprecedented data leak uncovered the identities of almost 2 million members of the CCP, showing that many of them were working in some of the world's biggest companies and even inside government agencies.
--:-- Ian Howarth: I do want to note that it's important to distinguish here between Chinese nationals and members of the Chinese Communist Party and also understand that if you're a member of the CCP, you are answerable directly to the Communist Party and technically President Xi himself.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And finally, there's the subject of intellectual property theft. In 2019, one in five corporations said that China had stolen their IP within the previous year.
--:-- Ian Howarth: So what we're facing here aren't just one-off instances of espionage, but a multifaceted attempt by the CCP to gain insight into our various areas of expertise at the very least. So essentially, there's a web of Chinese Communist Party members that have infiltrated American organizations and they're sending info back to China.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, exactly. That's pretty concerning. Thanks, Ian.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Yeah, no problem. That's Daily Wire's Ian Howard.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Coming up, the Supreme Court upholds qualified immunity for police. If you're with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, you're paying too much. Switching to Pure Talk saves the average family over $800 a year. Right now, get unlimited talk, text, and six gigs of data for just $30 a month. Find the plan that's right for you at puretalk.com.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: After a year of anti-police rhetoric and protests, the rights of law enforcement have been front and center in American discussion. In two Supreme Court rulings this week, the court sided with police officers and upheld qualified immunity. Here to tell us more is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond. So Charlotte, you know, two significant rulings here. Tell us about the court's decisions.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Hi, John. Right. So as you mentioned, the high court determined that police officers were entitled to qualified immunity in two cases this week. Lower courts had decided that these cases could have gone to trial, but the Supreme Court essentially disagreed.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, first, remind us what exactly qualified immunity is.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Sure. So qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine that protects government officials from lawsuits, in this case, police officers. Defenders of the doctrine say it allows members of law enforcement to do their job and not be afraid of getting sued when they face extremely challenging situations.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I spoke to Jay Schweikert, a legal expert at the Cato Institute, and this is how he defines it. So qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine that was invented by the Supreme Court, which shields public officials from civil liability and civil rights suits, even when they have violated someone's constitutional rights, unless a court determines that they violated clearly established law.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: And that phrase, clearly established law, is really the key to understanding the doctrine, because in most cases it requires that a civil rights plaintiff find a prior judicial decision where someone else's rights were violated in nearly the same way as theirs were.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, so what happened specifically with the cases this week?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: The justices made two per curiam decisions, which means that the ruling was a unanimous decision with no dissent from anybody, including the liberal justices. Both cases involved officers who were called to the scenes because of the threat of alleged domestic abuse.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In the first case, a young girl had called the police because her mom's boyfriend allegedly had a chainsaw and was endangering the girl's mom and kids. Officers came to the scene and saw that the man had a knife on him as well. He was shot with two beanbag rounds before he got on the ground and an officer put a knee on his back. The officer was then sued for using excessive force.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: A lower court determined that the officer was not entitled to qualified immunity because of the outcome of a prior case, but the Supreme Court disagreed and reversed that.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, so what about the second case?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Yeah, so in the second case, officers shot and killed a man who had allegedly refused to leave his ex-wife's garage. He was intoxicated and threateningly holding a hammer as if he were going to throw it at the officers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The man's estate sued some of the officers and lower court decided, based on prior precedent, that a jury could find that the officers' use of deadly force was unconstitutional.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: The Supreme Court didn't rule on whether the officers violated the Constitution, but said not one of the decisions relied upon by the Court of Appeals comes close to establishing that the officers' conduct was unlawful.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So the Supreme Court decided that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity. All right, so in both cases, qualified immunity was upheld. What do these rulings mean going forward for this doctrine?
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Well, they mean that police will continue to be protected by qualified immunity and changes won't be coming from the Supreme Court. Here's how Schweikart at Cato put it. It seems pretty clear that the Supreme Court is not interested in fundamentally reconsidering qualified immunity. And that means that Congress has to do it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, Charlotte, thanks for breaking these complicated and significant rulings down for us.
--:-- Charlotte Pence Bond: Anytime, John. Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence Bond.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Google has repeatedly faced accusations that its algorithm boosts some search results while suppressing others. But now one of the world's most influential voices has joined in on the criticism, shining a new light on the issue. Last Friday, top podcaster Joe Rogan revealed that he no longer uses Google and instead has switched to alternative search engines. Here to explain what prompted Rogan's comment is Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham. So, Megan, Joe Rogan definitely isn't a guy who's afraid to question conventional wisdom, but what does he have specifically against Google?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, it all started with the heat that he took over how he handled that recent bout of COVID. On the advice of his doctor, Rogan took the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, which, as we all know, the CDC does not recommend for treating coronavirus.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. So some media outlets like CNN claimed he was taking a horse dewormer. That's what they called it. And Rogan wondered how a medication that has been used in humans in addition to animals for a long time and has established antiviral properties suddenly came to be classified that way.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, he pointed to Google as one of the main culprits in shaping public perception. This was a part of his comment. It's one of the reasons why I stopped using Google to search things, too. They're doing something to curate information. Where if I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to DuckDuckGo. I wasn't finding them on Google.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yes, yes. And I'm like, okay, well, this is crazy. You guys are hiding information. And has Google responded at all? No, they haven't. And given that there a lot of credible reporting out there from pretty serious outlets like the Wall Street Journal that essentially back up Rogan's point, I kind of doubt that they will.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, as John mentioned earlier, Joe Rogan has a huge platform. I mean, he might be the biggest in podcasting. So when he makes comments like this about Google, it could have a huge impact. Is there any evidence that his comments have had an impact?
--:-- Georgia Howe: You know, I wondered about that myself. The most recent estimates have Rogan scoring something like 200 million downloads a month. And he has a fan base that's so rabid. There are independent podcasts dedicated to talking about his podcast, and those also top the charts. So that's a lot of influence. So when I dug into the story a little bit, I found out that this isn't the first time he sounded off about Google. Last year, he said on his show that he likes the relatively new browser Brave because it doesn't track your online data and it doesn't censor search results.
--:-- Megan Basham: So an interesting side note on Brave. It was founded by former Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's probably because Eich made headlines in 2014 when he was pushed out of Mozilla because LGBT activists uncovered that he gave $1,000 to California's Proposition 8.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was a state law that limited marriage to one man and one woman.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right, and he was canceled. That was before cancel culture really had a name though. Exactly, yes, it was. And now if you remember, Eich was not a politically outspoken guy, but he is a Catholic and he had privately contributed money to a cause that aligned with his faith. Now, had a judge not ordered the Prop 8 donation list to be made public, Eich probably never would have faced a cancel mob.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So to me, it's kind of interesting to think about how that experience might have shaped Eich's interest in privacy-protecting browsers.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, I reached out to Eich and I asked him if his company saw measurable impact from Rogan's unofficial endorsement last June. He didn't quantify it, but essentially he said, yes, Brave did see an uptick in users. And he said its user base has doubled in the last year to more than 40 million.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Most importantly, however, is he told me that Joe Rogan is giving a voice to various censorship and bias concerns that, you know, millions of people already have when it comes to big tech. So, you know, whether Joe Rogan is influencing his audience or just speaking for them, he's definitely not alone in looking for that Google off-ramp.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right. No, I got off the Google train about two years ago.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting. Always happy to do it. That's Daily Wire entertainment reporter, Megan Basham.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Other stories we're tracking this week. Seattle police officers and firefighters turned in their boots this week after being fired by the city for failing to comply with its COVID vaccine mandate. Viral video shows dozens of first responders placing their boots on the steps of Seattle City Hall in protest of the mandate. The city was already facing a severe staffing shortage in law enforcement.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: On Wednesday, the FDA authorized booster shots for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines for elderly and high-risk individuals. The agency is also authorizing the use of mix-and-match booster doses for currently available vaccines.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back next week with the news you need to know. If you like this podcast, get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code Morning Wire to try a Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.
