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Exclusive: Bull Moose Project Publishes Report On US Strategic Vulnerability To Drone Strikes

You may remember that a few months ago, Ukraine effected a devastating strike on Russia's air bases, crippling their strategic bombing capacity. What made the strike all the more stunning was that the bases hit were deep inside Russian territory.

The reason they were able to do this, of course, was drones.

The Ukrainian secret service rented out warehouses near Russian air bases, and snuck drones there. The drones could fly under the radar (both literally and metaphorically), and, being so close, they could take their time and aim and destroy Russian strategic bombers on their runways, maximizing the damage to Russia's capabilities.

All of this raises an obvious question: is America safe against this type of threat?

No, not even close, argues The Bull Moose Project in a report released today and exclusively seen first by PolicySphere, "Preserving Strategic Air Power".

As many pointed out at the time, and as the report confirms, "companies and individuals linked to the Chinese Communist Party own thousands of acres of land near [US] airbases."

"Despite this rapid buy-up, the United States lacks the bureaucratic knowledge to adequately monitor, much less regulate, CCP land ownership. Although the Department of Agriculture is supposed to monitor foreign land ownership in the United States, the Secretary of Agriculture is not a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, meant to monitor and regulate every other aspect of foreign involvement in the U.S. economy," the report states.

"The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) program has not been audited since 1989 and employs only two people to monitor millions of acres of farmland. In one particularly embarrassing instance, the AFIDA program failed to account for CCP-tied billionaire Sun Guangxin’s purchase of thousands of acres of farmland," the report states. Furthermore, "the AFIDA program cannot do the forensic work required to make sense of the dizzying web of shell corporations used to facilitate foreign agricultural purchases. The most recent report found that entities based in the notorious tax haven of the Cayman Islands owned 636,946 acres of farmland, more than four times the amount publicly owned by Chinese investors. Without additional investigative work, there is no way of knowing what proportion of this agricultural land is owned by entities connected to China or other hostile states."

The report also notes that US base infrastructure is lacking and has insufficient drone defenses. Furthermore, there is a critical lack of spare parts for B-52 bombers, the strategic bombers that would likely be targeted in a strike similar to the Ukrainian strike.

The report's recommendations include adding the Secretary of Agriculture to the list of members of CFIUS, strengthening the ability of the Department of Agriculture to investigate land ownership, purchase enough spare parts for B-52s, and strengthen US base infrastructure and drone defenses.

A very good report on a very important, underdiscussed topic. We hope it gets more circulation and discussion.

Policy News You Need To Know

#BLS — After the bad jobs numbers Friday, which we covered at the time, President Trump blamed the BLS for being political and fired the Commissioner of BLS. This was greeted with quasi-universal outrage, not just from the left but also many quarters on the right. We agree that neutral government statisticians should not be fired if they publish numbers that are bad, and more generally that trust in institutions is a good thing. That being said, we do want to investigate every side of the issue. So, is there any plausibility to the claim that BLS is biased and politicized? The White House released a statement titled "BLS Has Lengthy History of Inaccuracies, Incompetence." It makes two allegations: a suspicious pattern of, under Biden, publishing overly-optimistic jobs numbers, only to quietly revise them down later; and a striking history of "technical errors and leaks of sensitive information." Well, ok, but that's hardly a smoking gun. EJ Antoni of Heritage, whose work we have often cited here, has long been a BLS skeptic. Back in 2024, he questioned the BLS's use of certain statistical methods and wrote, "while there’s not yet a smoking gun, some suspect government statisticians are committing lies of omission." He criticized the BLS for the very large corrections of 2024, and for using a model to estimate the labor market, the "birth-death model," which he believed most labor market observers knew was outdated. Another consistent skeptic has been Jeffrey A Tucker, President of the Brownstone Institute, another intellectual whose work we've featured here, who has been arguing since 2023 that the BLS numbers don't match up with what smart labor economists know. Who is in the right? We don't know yet. But the idea that the BLS has been incompetent and/or politicized is by no means only a view held by cranks or political hacks. Trust in institutions is very important. One way to restore trust in institutions is to fire the heads of institutions that have become politicized.

#GovernmentReform #StateCapacity — This may be the most important policy news in decades: "For The First Time In 40 Years, The Federal Government Can Judge Applicants By Merit" Thanks to legal action by Feds for Freedom, America First Legal, Boyden Gray, and American Mooment, the "Luevano Consent Decree," which prevented merit-based hiring in the Federal government, was overturned.

#MadeInUSA — Speaking of politicized: Rohit Chopra, a former Democratic FTC commissioner, makes a snide partisan point, but one which sadly seems to be factually accurate: "With the start of higher tariffs, many expect a surge in smuggling and labeling fraud. But the FTC is missing in action. The agency hasn't filed a single action in 2025 to stop companies from masquerading their products as Made in USA." The FTC and other agencies should indeed be on an even more vigilant lookout for labeling fraud given the increased tariffs.

#Immigration — We had missed this bit of news, perhaps because both parties intentionally did not call attention to it: the Administration's settlement with Columbia includes a commitment to decrease international student enrollment. There's an obvious case to be made for this, which is that American students tend to be discriminated against by these universities because foreign students tend to pay full freight. The practice has become rampant in the past few decades, and creates all sorts of perverse incentives (including rampant cheating).

#Chyna — Important report from Jon Emont, Heather Somerville and Alistair MacDonald at the Journal: "China Is Choking Supply of Critical Minerals to Western Defense Companies" Let's dust off that good ol' Defense Production Act and get those new supply chains going.

#Nukes — This is good news, and will certainly help: "US Nuclear Industry Calls For ‘High Volume’ Reactor Licensing As Part Of NRC Reform"

#MAHA #Healthcare — Very interesting report from Greg Piper at Just The News: "The agencies under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy are getting squeezed between old-guard staff who object to Trump administration priorities on one side, and prominent conservatives and business interests on the other. The dynamic is creating a minefield between Make America Healthy Again and deregulation for current leaders and new appointees."

#Healthcare — Intriguing report from Shira H. Fischer, Jordan M. Harrison and Julia Bandini at RAND on something we'd never heard about "tele-palliative care." Yes, that's what it sounds like. Palliative care delivered over the internet. The authors anticipate what you must be thinking right now, and which is what we also thought: "idea of providing palliative care via video chat seems counterintuitive or even insensitive. Palliative care focuses on improving quality of life for individuals with serious illnesses. At such a delicate time, would a computer screen between patients and their doctors really suffice?" However, on top of the obvious efficiency gains (but efficiency isn't everything), the report alleges clinical benefits as well: "Perhaps surprisingly, virtual care can be more patient-centered in some ways than traditional care. For example, eliminating the need for transportation reduces the stress and fatigue of travel, particularly for individuals with disabilities or mobility challenges. Virtual visits also accommodate patients and caregivers juggling work, childcare, or other obligations, allowing them to participate without sacrificing other responsibilities. For patients feeling unwell, the convenience of a virtual visit means they're far less likely to cancel or miss appointments." Indeed: "Perhaps most tellingly, patients themselves often prefer telehealth." Well, in that case…

#DEI — Scholar Colin Wright is filing suit against Cornell University for discriminating against him, because he is a white male. Let us hope this is the first of many, many, many such lawsuits.

#VotingRights — Bombshell report by Mia Cathell at the Washington Examiner: "More than 50,000 discrepancies have been discovered in the state of New York’s voter registration rolls, including deceased registrants, placeholder or fictitious birthdates, and duplicate entries, according to an election security watchdog’s findings." Believe what you want about the 2020 election. Voting in the US of A is a mess, and the more we do to bring attention to it and correct it, the better. Once again, the Trump administration is leading the fight to protect and defend American institutions.

#SeriousPolicy — Very serious and important policy news: Sydney Sweeney is apparently a registered Republican. We knew you couldn't do your job without this crucial piece of information.