At this point in time I have low confidence that American Intelligence or the Army Corps of Engineers have this on their Intelligence Priority Stack or are even connecting the dots
With the collapse of any form or decorum of the Monroe Doctrine, the Chinese are having a field day in Central and South America. Country after country has fallen to Left Wing “Election Victories” and no where is an American to be found.
In Panama - a growing and burgeoning country, the Singapore of the Americas, the greatly expanded and modernized Panama Canal has never looked better. Chinese interests dominate ports at each end of the Canal, Chinese Belt and Road built bridges span the Canal, and the pilotage services of the ships in transit seem to have a Chinese connection. But don’t blame the Chinese, Americans have evaporated from the country built with American blood and sweat. The days of American young men and women traveling to this tropical enclave to seek their fortune in life are gone. There are plenty of opportunities in modern Panama for an American, but the American youth have become indoctrinated and zombie like in thinking that working in the cubicle farm of a non-profit, writing environmental impact statements is their pathway for the future. Hence the lack of Americans.
But the “drought” and low water levels have suddenly become a throttling factor in shipping throughput. Water management of the Canal has been put out for contract and pulled back at least a couple of times by the Panamanian authorities. They have now brought in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to be their “advisors” in re-soliciting the Request for Proposal for this engineering service and several Chinese companies are stalking this opportunity.
Perhaps though, through cyber remote access, or other means, the Chinese are already reaching into the Panama Canal Locks and the Madden Dam complex that creates the Alajuela Reservoir and are playing with the release valves. I have low confidence that the American Intelligence Community has analysts that know what to look for, that this topic is on the Intelligence Stack of Collection Requirements, or the Army Corps of Engineers is aware enough to even consider this possibility. Without the Panama Canal, 50% of the U.S. Navy is off the table for Western Pacific contingencies when China moves on Taiwan. The U.S. Government lied about the Chinese Spy Balloon, lied about the Chinese spy base in Cuba, lied about Wuhan, and has been covering up truth on the Maui Fire. Asking a reasonable question about truth and science on the real reason the Canal is losing so much water is absolutely on the table.
I have two books at home on the original Canal Construction in good detail. From those books, the Canal gets its water locally and ran the original Locks without a single modern computer anything. The construciton of the water system under the Canal is essentially gravity. There should be nothing computer or electronic interfering with the workings of the Locks. And we should remove the computers and go back to 50's era switch work which work fine regardless of conditions.
War is getting closer.
Young Americans may NOT want to go because dopey Carter gave the canal away after all the American blood and sweat to build it.