China’s Quiet Invasion: How Farmland and Crypto Mines Could Become America’s Achilles’ Heel
When Chinese entities began buying farmland across the United States, few Americans paid attention. After all, foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land remains under 4 percent—hardly alarming on its face. But recent intelligence warnings suggest that the issue isn’t about quantity; it’s about location and capability. The revelation that Chinese companies have quietly acquired land near key U.S. military bases has ignited a new debate: Is Beijing preparing the battlefield on American soil without firing a single shot?
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, foreign investors own roughly 45 million acres of American farmland—about 3.5 percent of the nation’s total. While Canadians hold the largest share, Chinese nationals own less than one percent. Still, that 277,000 acres has become a lightning rod for security concerns. The pattern matters more than the scale: some of these parcels are alarmingly close to critical military installations, where communications hubs, airbases, and nuclear missile silos are located.
This strategic proximity has raised alarms among defense officials who warn that even seemingly benign agricultural operations could be repurposed for surveillance, sabotage, or cyber interference. Former National Security Council official David Feith, who oversaw China policy during both of Donald Trump’s administrations, told 60 Minutes that the danger lies in how easily hostile actors can exploit access to American soil.
“The ability to own large tracts of land, especially close to sensitive U.S. military and government facilities, can pose an enormous problem,” Feith said. “With today’s technology, access to just a few shipping containers, warehouses, or data centers can enable massive damage—whether in intelligence collection or in military disruption.”
Feith’s warning echoes a deeper strategic fear: that China is reimagining warfare not through open confrontation but through embedded infrastructure—using real estate, digital networks, and commercial ventures to gain pre-positioned advantages. He cited Ukraine’s drone strikes deep inside Russian territory, executed with equipment smuggled in months earlier, as a preview of how physical access can transform conflict.
“China’s ownership of farmland in the United States gives our geopolitical rival more operating room for potential strikes,” Feith cautioned. “It’s an entirely new way of war.”
That “new way” may already be taking shape. In 2023, officials in North Dakota blocked a Chinese company’s attempt to build a corn-milling facility near Grand Forks Air Force Base, home to some of America’s most advanced drone and surveillance programs. Local leaders, once enthusiastic about the promised jobs, reversed course after intelligence briefings indicated that the project could serve as a platform for espionage.
The farmland issue, serious as it is, represents only part of the threat. Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining operations have proliferated across the United States in recent years, raising similar concerns about proximity to critical infrastructure. These crypto “mines” are not quaint rural operations—they are massive industrial facilities filled with servers drawing enormous amounts of power and data.
“They’re effectively enormous and enormously powerful data centers,” Feith explained. “The first threat they pose is intelligence collection. The second is that they can sabotage the power grid because they draw so much power.”
Such fears were validated in May 2024, when President Biden ordered a Chinese-owned firm to sell and dismantle its crypto-mining site in Cheyenne, Wyoming, located near Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, home to U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. The decision was based on national-security reviews showing that the facility’s power-grid connections and network capacity could provide Beijing with surveillance or cyber-attack opportunities.
Feith described the pattern as chillingly consistent: Chinese-funded enterprises appear repeatedly near sensitive defense installations—from Montana to Texas, from North Dakota to Wyoming. Whether by coincidence or design, each case fits into Beijing’s playbook of blending economic activity with potential intelligence utility.
Under Chinese law, no corporation is truly private. The National Intelligence Law of 2017 compels all Chinese organizations and citizens to “support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.” This means that even Chinese companies operating on American soil can be ordered—secretly—to gather information or provide logistical support to the Chinese Communist Party.
That legal framework invalidates the common defense offered by Chinese investors: that they are independent entrepreneurs, not agents of Beijing. “If the Xi administration requests, Chinese companies are obligated to share data and assist in intelligence work,” Feith emphasized. “That’s the risk we can’t ignore.”
The reality is that modern espionage no longer depends solely on spies or secret documents. It depends on infrastructure access—to fiber-optic cables, power grids, airspace, and local logistics. A grain silo, a warehouse, or a server farm can all become listening posts in the right hands.
For decades, the United States treated land ownership as a purely commercial matter, trusting that economic interdependence would deter geopolitical risk. But as China’s assertiveness has deepened, bipartisan concern has reshaped that assumption. According to the National Agricultural Law Center, 29 states now restrict or ban land purchases by foreign entities, particularly those from adversarial nations like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
At the federal level, the Trump administration’s Agriculture Department rolled out a seven-point national-security plan earlier this year to increase transparency in land ownership. The measures include stricter penalties for false reporting, collaboration with state governments to block high-risk purchases, and enhanced public disclosure of foreign holdings near sensitive sites.
These steps are overdue but significant. For years, U.S. reporting mechanisms relied on self-disclosure, allowing foreign buyers to mask their identities through shell corporations and real-estate intermediaries. In an era of hybrid warfare—where cyberattacks, disinformation, and infrastructure infiltration intersect—such opacity is untenable.
Why would China invest in farmland, of all things? Analysts suggest that the motives extend far beyond agriculture. Control of farmland grants control of terrain, logistics, and supply chains. It offers the ability to monitor or disrupt food and energy production. And perhaps most importantly, it provides physical presence—a network of properties and facilities that can be leveraged for strategic purposes if tensions escalate.
Owning farmland near Air Force or missile bases gives Beijing both a cover story and a vantage point. It allows for subtle, deniable reconnaissance: tracking flight patterns, monitoring communications frequencies, or mapping local emergency-response infrastructure. Combined with digital infiltration via telecom equipment or data centers, the result is a comprehensive surveillance ecosystem operating inside America’s borders.
The logic fits China’s broader doctrine of “unrestricted warfare,” a term coined by two PLA colonels in the 1990s to describe strategies that blend military, economic, and technological tools to weaken adversaries. In that framework, farmland, energy grids, ports, and data networks are all legitimate battlefields—the invisible frontlines of twenty-first-century conflict.
The threat isn’t abstract. It touches food security, energy security, and national defense. A hostile actor doesn’t need missiles or hackers to cause chaos; it only needs access and leverage. A farm near a communications base could interfere with radar operations. A crypto mine near a power substation could overload or disrupt energy flows. A warehouse with satellite uplinks could quietly transmit sensitive imagery abroad.
Moreover, such infiltration corrodes trust between citizens and institutions. Rural communities, eager for investment, may welcome foreign projects without realizing the strategic risks. Local officials, lured by short-term economic gains, can inadvertently facilitate long-term vulnerabilities. The combination of economic desperation and political naivety is precisely what makes America’s heartland so attractive to Beijing’s planners.
The United States must strike a balance between vigilance and openness. America’s economic strength has always rested on its ability to attract global investment. But national security requires boundaries. Policymakers should expand the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review all foreign land purchases near critical infrastructure, not just corporate acquisitions. States, for their part, must coordinate with federal intelligence agencies to assess real-estate proposals before approval—not after construction begins.
Equally important is public awareness. Many Americans still view farmland and data centers as purely economic assets, unaware of their strategic implications. By educating local communities, the U.S. can build a first line of defense that begins with informed consent.
Feith’s message is ultimately one of caution, not paranoia. The U.S. is not under immediate attack, but the groundwork for potential exploitation is being laid. “In the view of U.S. intelligence officials and government leaders now for years,” he said, “China is preparing to be able to fight and defeat the United States military in a war.” That preparation may not come through aircraft carriers or missile silos—it may come through acreage and algorithms, through land purchases and crypto facilities quietly multiplying across the American landscape.
Defending against such threats requires imagination equal to the adversary’s. America cannot afford to treat land, power, and data as separate domains. They are interconnected assets in a new form of conflict—one that Beijing seems to understand all too well.
The challenge for the United States is not only to stop China from buying more of its soil but to recognize the deeper lesson: national security begins at home, often in places as unassuming as a cornfield or a data warehouse.
