The Cold War was taking shape as America exited the 1940s and entered the 1950s. Winston Churchill had given his famous "Iron Curtain" speech, describing the growing clutches of the Soviet Union. The biggest event, though, was a young upstart Senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy, who exploded onto the scene, declaring communists had infiltrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government.

McCarthyism was derided as a fake "red scare," where people looked for communist or Soviet sympathizers around every corner. Ronald Reagan led a push to kick communist spies out of Hollywood during this time. But for all the attacks liberals made on it, McCarthy was right. Communists had infiltrated the government, and the United States ended up executing some of them.

I was thinking about this history as I watched yet another alleged Chinese spy get caught, this time working for New York's governor. The Department of Justice has indicted Linda Sun and Chris Hu for being spies for the Chinese Communist Party. Linda Sun, in particular, served as a high-ranking member of Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul's administration.

The DOJ alleges that the CCP directed Sun to help craft Hochul's speech for the Lunar New Year to bring it in line with CCP demands. In return, Sun and Hu stand accused of "laundering and splurging their corrupt gains on a gaudy $4 million Manhasset mansion, a $2 million second home in a Honolulu high-rise and luxury cars such as 2024 Ferrari Roma."

It's not the first time we've caught such an issue. Chinese spies targeted California politicians ruthlessly through a woman named Christine Fang. She connected herself well with San Francisco politicians, including big names like Eric Swalwell and Ro Khanna. The House Ethics Committee spent time investigating Swalwell over these connections, ultimately taking no action.

And then there's the other big country involved in influence peddling: Iran. Multiple news outlets have broken massive stories detailing Iran's infiltration of the United States government. The FBI has a probe into whether Biden aide Robert Malley committed crimes in handling classified information dealing with the Iranians.

The connections between Malley and the Iranian government are deeply reported and look like the sort of spy ring tales you'd find in a novel. Congress has even complained that Iran has demonstrated it had access to U.S. intelligence.

The question we should ask now isn't whether China and Iran have infiltrated the United States government and, in particular, the Democratic Party. We can assume that part. The real question is, how deep is the rabbit hole?

Senator McCarthy got tarred and feathered for hammering this point throughout his career. It took M. Stanton Evans, writing "Blacklisted by History," to fix the historical travesty on this point.

We know this on two levels. First, the NSA's Venona program famously exposed the Rosenbergs as spies, revealing their coded messages to the world. Second, the USSR's KGB records proved this true, too. For a brief moment in time, Soviet records were partially available. Alexander Vassiliev transcribed some of our only information from those records, which proved Alger Hiss and others were spies working in America.

Why the fuss? Many of these spies were well connected in D.C. circles and raised a stink with their political and journalist friends. Watching the Chinese and Iranian spies work today, you see a similar pattern of ingratiating themselves with certain parties and using the press as a shield against any actions being taken.

Back in January, a significant story got buried quickly. A high-end sex ring got busted in Boston and Washington D.C., with investigators calling it a 'honeypot' scheme run by the Russians, Chinese, South Koreans, and possible Israelis to ensnare U.S. officials. The reporting around this bust suggested that those involved were high-ranking government officials, which included Members of Congress, military officers, and intelligence officials.

In other words, we can't read the bust of a couple of aides in the New York governor's office as a one-off. There's a clear pattern where Chinese and Iranian spies, in particular, are running rampant at all levels of the U.S. government.

None of this factors in the usual corruption we're supposed to take as normal, such as Jeffrey Epstein and others. We're just looking at the ways foreign countries are infiltrating the United States government and using those connections to sway policy.

We need more of these arrests. We need a government that holds itself to higher standards and is willing to combat the influx of spies into the highest reaches of government. Our politicians' lazy attitude toward this is not good for national security. We could use another Joseph McCarthy to shake the system up and demand accountability.