Underneath the flashy drama of international diplomacy, federal operatives perform thousands of challenging assignments that will never make the news unless something goes horribly wrong. Not every bureaucratic job is created equal, but a healthy slice of them do contribute to the federal government’s primary mission: keeping Americans safe from foreign bad guys. As a string of recent incidents shows, such foreign threats are real, and the Trump administration is responding effectively.

Take the threat of foreign espionage. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced charges against Tianrui Liang, a 21-year-old Chinese national, for allegedly taking pictures of a reconnaissance plane (RC-135) and a doomsday plane (E-4B, a militarized Boeing 747) at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Neb. The encounter fits a pattern of the Chinese Communist Party enlisting college students to snoop around U.S. military bases.

Of course, Liang maintains his innocence. Liang claimed it was “legal to take pictures of the sky, but he knew it was illegal to take pictures of the planes on the ground,” the FBI summarized, adding that Liang also claimed the pictures were for his personal collection.

However, Liang’s itinerary is curious enough to raise suspicions. Liang does not attend an American university, but he does attend a school in Glasgow, Scotland. He flew to Vancouver, Canada and met a friend before he crossed the U.S.-Canada border with a legal tourist visa on March 28, 2026. (The date suggests Liang is likely enrolled at the University of Glasgow, which wrapped up classes on March 27 and offered students an extended spring break until April 20.)

From there, Liang parted company with his friend, who lived in New York City, and began what the Associated Press described as “a multistate road trip,” allegedly routing past both Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota and Offutt AFB in Nebraska. Liang was arrested on April 7 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, as he attempted to fly back to Scotland.

It’s easy to imagine well-traveled foreign students visiting the many urban attractions of America’s coastal enclaves. It’s much harder to imagine one choosing to spend his spring break driving across the entire continental U.S. — and particularly across the sparsely populated Northern Plains States.

Again, it’s possible to imagine that a student greatly interested in photography might plan a more “scenic” drive across the country, but it’s much harder to imagine that military installations that house America’s strategic bombers rank very highly on a list of “scenic” photography shoots. Even if Liang merely wanted to snap photos of airplanes, there are many ways to do so that do not involve driving 27 hours from Vancouver to Nebraska.

It’s even possible to imagine a cross-country college roadster with a spontaneous streak that compelled him to take advantage of unlooked-for opportunities along his route — stopping at random roadside attractions to take in a genuine slice of Americana. But Liang also drove at least 3,000 miles (approximately 46 hours) in 10 days, which suggests he couldn’t venture too far off his primary route.

On that timeline, it’s very hard to believe that Liang simply stumbled upon Offutt AFB as he drove down the interstate. That would mean that Liang pulled off Exit 42 on I-29 South in Iowa, where the only roofed structures poking through the fields are a silo and a saddle store, that he drove down County Road H10 for five miles across farms, and even across the Missouri River into Nebraska, that he then drove all the way through the city of Bellevue, before stumbling upon one of America’s most strategic military bases.

It’s easier to believe that a Florinese fisherman had taken his family out for a pleasure cruise at night, through eel-infested waters. It’s much easier to believe that Liang was caught snooping around Offutt AFB because he traveled there on purpose, and his long, cross-country excursion was simply an elaborate cover story. A spy would know not to cover the same ground twice.

That three-letter word “spy” is the key. It is the burden of what the FBI now has to prove. It is the only explanation for Liang’s movements. It is the decisive factor in why I, as an American, would call someone who, for all I know, may be a very nice young man, a “bad guy.” Even if the Chinese Communist Party forced him to carry water for the regime, if his actions are serving the CCP’s nefarious purposes, they put Americans at risk.

Unfortunately, Liang’s alleged photography extends a years-long trend of Chinese nationals — mostly students — photographing U.S. military bases. In fact, just on Wednesday, Chinese national Qilin Wu pled guilty to illegally photographing military installations at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on December 2, 2025.

In 2023, five Chinese students at the University of Michigan were charged in relation to their presence near a military drill in Michigan, but they graduated and left the country before appearing in court. In 2020, two Chinese students at the University of Michigan were sentenced for taking photos at a naval base in Key West, Fla.

It seems that China’s spy chiefs are eager to exploit the openness of American society by sending pawns to photograph military bases — no matter how many get caught — as a low-level, low-risk way to gather intelligence.

But there are much more sinister Chinese criminals preying on Americans, too. This week, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced charges against two Chinese nationals who ran a “slave labor scam factory in Burma, where they trafficked and tortured people if they didn’t deliver on fake crypto investments to steal Americans’ life savings.” Huang Xingshan and Jiang Wen Jie were arrested in Thailand on immigration charges, where they fled after a separatist group in Myanmar captured their compound. The U.S. is currently negotiating their extradition.

The two men lured workers into a compound with the promise of high-paying jobs, then kept them there against their will, forcing them to pose as banks, police departments, and other trusted institutions. Xingshan was the enforcer who beat the enslaved individuals when they failed to scam their marks. Wen Jie appears to be the boss, and he allegedly participated in one scam that defrauded an American of $3 million.

These are real bad guys — of the criminal variety, not of the spy variety. They too are targeting Americans, and they too are being stopped. Federal agents are constantly on guard against both criminal and national security threats, but it’s good to see the second Trump administration making these vital duties a top priority — certainly more important than DEI trainings or snooping on parents. This is what the unseen iceberg of federal power is supposed to do — keep Americans safe through unsung, ordinary actions. And that is something to celebrate.