I’m shocked that the DM seems to have commotion random act of journalism by actually investigating something! Specifically they’ve delved into the statistical quirk that shows clusters of Chinese restaurants in close proximity to military bases in the UK, expressing concern that these locations could be also de facto spy hubs due to a law change by Xi and the CCCP a few years ago… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15292589/Chinese-restaurants-sensitive-military-bases.html
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Peeking Duck with Vegetable Spied Rice
I saw so many Chinese restaurants around the bases I went to either as a duty station or for training back in the mid-late 90's and early 2000's that I don't think any of us ever really thought about the 2nd or 3rd order effects of these shops. Maybe some of the DIA or branch specific spooks did, but I know the non-spooks didn't. Even those of us in NSW weren't thinking along those terms. We were just out looking for a good meal.
But now that I think about it more, it makes perfect sense to set up an Intel Op using restaurants.
A lot of GIs were bringing home foreign wives and acquiring the taste for foreign food after their tour abroad, too. It kind of makes sense that there are thousands of potential customers inside the base that want to spend money.
But yeah....reminds me of that Russian scam where people were getting cheap pizza in exchange for taking a photo with their security badge to "prove their eligibility" for the discount. Moles are always looking for holes in the system to exploit.
Makes me wonder about the foreigners running shady car lots outside the bases, too.
The Chinese spooks are eggroll-playing as restaurateurs.
General tsaos
Now I'm really craving Chinese food🐸
Military people travel the world and love Vietnamese and Chinese food. I've also seen German restaurants and even specialty food stores from around the world,in military towns.
It doesn't seam that unusual to me,after living many years in such a town. In a lot of cases the Chinese restaurants are actual owned and ran by Vietnamese.
Many base commissaries stock quite a lot of foreign food, too.
Rhat will be 75.50, which also wouldnt happen to be any launch cooooooooodes?
There are all kinds of non-mainstream types of restaurants near bases everywhere, as the military are well-traveled and more familiar with other cultures' foods. That's why a town has to be at least a certain size to have a Thai restaurant. My town finally got large enough to have one that opened last year. We've had several Chinese restaurants close down in recent years, one because of the owner's health, and the others because of bad food and worse hygiene.
I would expect bases all around the world to have more restaurants of all types, not just Chinese. Correlation doesn't equal causation.