Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

China Boasts It Is Getting Rich Selling Syringes to America

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats Economic Security

Comments: 0

China’s state-run Global Times bragged Sunday that Chinese companies are making a fortune selling syringes and needles to the United States during the coronavirus pandemic, a tidal wave of imports that makes a mockery of “the U.S. government’s attempt to get rid of the Chinese supply chain.”

The Global Times quoted U.S. officials admitting in congressional testimony that 80 percent of the needles and syringes used in the United States, and about 90 percent of the supplies purchased worldwide, originate from China. Chinese officials said China’s factories produce hundreds of thousands of syringes a day.

According to Chinese government and business sources, low costs of production and labor, combined with supply chains that have not been decimated by the coronavirus as thoroughly as those in most other countries, make the Chinese syringe industry unbeatable.

“Orders have been piling up for several months, and we are expanding our production to meet the rising demand. With the new production lines to be completed in early May, our monthly capacity will be quadrupled to 40 million units,” an anonymous corporate executive told the Global Times.

Other Chinese industry sources said they have orders backed up through the summer of 2021 as coronavirus vaccinations have increased global demand for needles. They said U.S. orders began flooding in about six months ago. Heavy demand is causing syringe prices to surge, but according to the Global Times, U.S.-made syringes are still over twice as expensive as Chinese products.

The Global Times claimed in late January that Chinese manufacturers were struggling to meet the demand for needles from the U.S. and UK even after building new production facilities and quadrupling the price for their products. Several Chinese companies said the same to Reuters in early February, with warnings that the Lunar New Year holiday could hinder production.

U.S. vaccination programs are keenly interested in “low-dead space” syringes, a relatively uncommon and expensive design that minimizes the amount of fluid retained between the plunger and needle after a shot is administered. Medical technicians have discovered that using low-dead space syringes allows them to extract six doses from many vials of Pfizer’s Chinese coronavirus vaccine instead of the five doses the vials are rated for. 

American multinational firm Becton Dickinson and Co., the world’s largest single supplier of needles and syringes, agreed to produce 286 million syringes for coronavirus vaccinations, but only 40 of them were planned to be low-dead space models. The company said its capacity to produce low-dead space syringes is limited because they have been less commonly used until now, and the idea of squeezing extra doses from the Pfizer vials was not introduced until after the government’s orders were placed.

Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Link: https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/03/01/china-boasts-it-is-getting-rich-selling-syringes-america/

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