Mike Pompeo

Mike Pompeo (1963-) is a politician from the United States of America, who served as the 70th Secretary of State of the United States (2018–2021), Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (January 2017 to April 2018) under the Trump administration, and was elected to four terms in Congress representing the Fourth District of Kansas. He was also the co-founder of Thayer Aerospace, later Nex-Tech Aerospace, a specialized aircraft machinery manufacturer whose customers included Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon at the time when Pompeo sold his interest in the company in 2006. Pompeo also served as president of Sentry International, a manufacturer of oilfield equipment, from 2006 to 2010. Pompeo stated in a 2020 speech that "securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time" and that "we can’t treat this incarnation of China as a normal country."

In 2019, Pompeo stated to an audience from Texas A&M University that the CIA trains employees to lie, cheat and steal, saying: "When I was a cadet--what's the cadet motto at West Point? 'You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.' I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."

Around 900 videos on YouTube have been compiled of Xinjiang citizens' responses to Pompeo's accusations of genocide in Xinjiang, which Qiao Collective notes "angered many Chinese citizens of Xinjiang, inspiring them to submit written and video responses rebuking Pompeo. Many of these were compiled by Tianshan Net and reveal a unity of Xinjiang residents, from government officials to rural villagers, from elderly family heads to young students, and from artists to religious leaders, in rejecting the United States’ imperialist aggression."

According to Pompeo's official website as of 2023, he leads the Champion American Values PAC and Champion American Values Fund, organizations which his website says are dedicated to "pushing back" against "the 'woke' liberals who are shoving their ideology into our homes, schools, military, workplaces, and communities."

Early life

Pompeo is originally from Orange County, California and is a graduate of West Point and of Harvard Law School. He spent his active duty years in West Germany, "patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall".

Views

Much of Pompeo's political career has focused on China, referring to the "China threat" and stating that "securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time", and expressing disapproval of the USA's willingness to engage economically and politically with China, stating in a 2020 speech, "perhaps we were naive about China’s virulent strain of communism" and adding "we have to keep in mind that the CCP regime is a Marxist-Leninist regime. General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology" and that "America can no longer ignore the fundamental political and ideological differences between our countries, just as the CCP has never ignored them. [...] We must induce China to change in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity," stating that "we can’t treat this incarnation of China as a normal country."

In the same speech, Pompeo expressed that the key difference between China and the Soviet Union is that China is more deeply integrated into the global economy, describing it as a "complex new challenge that we've never faced before" rather than a matter of "containment", because "the USSR was closed off from the free world. Communist China is already within our borders. So we can’t face this challenge alone."