Lt. Col. Oliver North, Ret., issued a dark warning Wednesday about the vulnerability of the United States military equipment left behind in Afghanistan.
During an interview with Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Daily,” the former Reagan official dove into how enemies of the United States may take advantage of the technology now in the Taliban’s hands.
The Biden administration left behind “some of the most sophisticated weapons and equipment we’ve ever made for the military,” North said.
“It’s going to be reverse-engineered in China. It will be reverse-engineered in Russia. It will be used against us in other campaigns.”
He discussed how the Taliban could have a lucrative business selling the equipment to China, which could ultimately replicate it for its own usage.
“They’re going to be heading to the port where they will be loaded aboard a ship and taken to communist China for exploitation,” he explained. “That’s what’s happening to anywhere between five and 10 of every piece of equipment. The Taliban, by the way, are getting rich on this. They’re — quote — selling them.”
“What’s happening to a lot of [abandoned equipment] is that they’re being dragged across the border in Conex boxes and on trucks. A HET is a heavy equipment transporter,” he said.
“When we offload a tank — an M1 tank, 70 tons — off a ship, and set it down on the pier, it’s loaded onto a HET a transported to where it’s going to fight, because you don’t want to wear out the treads and don’t want to burn up more fuel than you need to need to.”
American military officials and the White House should see North’s warning as a giant red flag that they should have destroyed our equipment before the withdrawal.
Whether it’s tanks, helicopters or weapons, the Chinese and Russian governments will see this as an opportunity to sharpen their own military capabilities and assert global dominance.
#Taliban parade in Kandahar City, #Afghanistan, with U.S. weapons and equipment.
Taliban also appear to fly US Black Hawk helicopter in Kandahar.
video: @MalangKhostay pic.twitter.com/5MnnTzo2zr
— El American (@ElAmerican_) September 1, 2021
China has made it clear it would like its military to surpass the U.S. in the coming years, which would trample the global standing of the free world.
North’s point also highlights how President Joe Biden’s end to the war in Afghanistan lacked the adequate planning to account for its complexity.
The Afghan National Security Forces were not properly equipped to protect the equipment or put up a fight against the Taliban, so the U.S. should not have trusted them with tools that could likely give away important secrets.
WATCH: President Biden vowed to evacuate all Americans from Afghanistan. More than 100 remain in the war-torn country.
Via @thaleigha_ https://t.co/NW4RUnSIS9 pic.twitter.com/lDR2w0jywp
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) September 1, 2021
Biden campaigned on the fact that the rest of the world would take us seriously after the Trump administration, but has instead embarrassed the U.S. and the rest of the Western world.
The president’s atrocious foreign policy has made America a doormat for our adversaries, putting civilians all over the world at high risk for terrorism and authoritarian violence.