March 22, 2025 (EIRNS)—In a March 21 article, Newsweek quoted a spokesperson for Secretary of State Marco Rubio who reported, “as stated by Secretary Rubio, we can’t live in a world in which China has more influence and more presence than we do in our region. The expanding role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Western Hemisphere threatens U.S. interests.” The date of that statement isn’t given, although two days earlier, Rubio gave an interview to conservative TV host Hugh Hewett, in which he repeated his and President Trump’s mantra about “we gave the Panama Canal to Panama not China,” and “the Panama Canal cannot be an outpost for the Chinese.”
Newsweek reported that Rubio’s hawkish remarks were a response to its own question to the Secretary about the Ventarrones Astronomical Center being built in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, which is a joint project of the Catholic University of the North (UCN) and China’s National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). Newsweek had conducted its own investigation of the center last December and noted in its Dec. 18, 2024 article, that while the center would certainly perform astronomical research, this “could help China’s fast growing military space program” through secretive work that would exclude Chilean researchers. Not surprisingly, Newsweek’s “concerns” about the center “were communicated to the Chilean government” by outgoing U.S. ambassador to Chile Bernadette Meehan in January of this year, 20 days before she resigned her position.
