Anthony: Before the Burnham Yard deal is inked, ask who Walmart answers to

By Tom Anthony | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

I used to play a lot of ping pong up at UAF (University of Alaska Fairbanks, for the uninitiated) and got to be quite a fan of the Chinese who our President at the time, Nixon, greenlighted into national prominence.

I have a kid in the Navy and although I thought it quaint China adopted ping pong for their obsession, I guess there’s a reason the Qing Dynasty (pronounced “ching”) lasted so long: a big wall, low impact sports, and cutting-edge finesse. This last connects to Taiwan and its computer chip industry.

Now, of course, the Walmart heirs own most of Colorado’s professional sports teams, and Walmart’s business model—yank the Oriental rug out from under the “little guy”—has found a huge local following. Walmart sells about $713 billionworth of goods a year, and 15,433 shipments to Walmart so far in 2026 out of a total of 16,440 shipments originated in China.

Is it safe to say that Walmart is a proxy for the 1.4 billion Chinese obsessed with providing 350 million Americans what they want?

Walmart leaves tracks all over the US and has a Sasquatch-sized footprint in Denver. For instance the owner of Ball Arena, the Nuggets, and the Avalanche is Ann Walton Kroenke, wife of Stan Kroenke who owns the Colorado Mammoth and Colorado Rapids. Ann inherited Walmart stock worth over $10 billion and is currently reported to be worth $14.7 billion.

The Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group also owns the Denver Broncos and the Walton Family also owns a 40% stake in the Colorado Rockies baseball club with the Monforts, formerly owners of the Greeley meatpacking facility now owned by JBS, as majority owners.

The Broncos, alias Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner and, by extension, Walmart, want a new stadium and a lot of new Denver real estate to which the state has already contributed, which is no longer needed for transportation (how convenient is that!) and planners have a wonderful small area plan to make Denver even better.

But I notice that we’re talking a lot about Walmart, the place where you can live better, cheaper. What we’re not discussing, but should be, is Taiwan.

Taiwan became a wonderful new country under Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of China before the Mao communists took things over on the mainland. Since then the international free zone has fostered a plethora of chip manufacturers, making Taiwan the biggest producer of leading-edge computer chips in the world, by far (over 90%).

I was one of those activists in the late 1980s who flew to Russia to run the Moscow Peace Marathon (in 1987 and 1988) and promote a mutual partnership to end world hunger back when the global nuclear arsenal was over 70,000 warheads (hard to keep track of quite that many, especially without Siri and Google). Sure enough, Gorbachev allowed the Berlin Wall to tumble in 1989, and the Soviet Republics (including Ukraine) to re-establish autonomy. Yes, it was me that did it when I sang “It’s About Time” to the Moscow Sports Committee, although Ronald Reagan took credit for spending them into capitulation. Consequently, defense spending fell prodigiously and the supply chain for armament capacity as well. Mr. Gorbachev now inhabits the basement of memories for the Russian people, whose access to western export markets now perilously depends on independent Ukraine.

The US recently committed to a $1.7 trillion program over 30 years to rebuild our nuclear arsenal, or about 2.5x the annual Walmart sales. Since the US is only going to spend $57 billion a year on this project and no doubt Walmart sales will keep climbing and reach $1 trillion annually before long, US consumers will be moving the Chinese chess pieces a lot faster than our own (10x faster or more?).

The Pentagon may downplay the reliance of our modernization strategy on AI but analyzing escalation pathways and thresholds, and planning for impaired communications, will no doubt use it, which will move us closer to putting the “nuclear option” into the “hands” of computers. Let’s not discuss hackers and who may eventually own all the poker (computer) chips.

Of course nobody would suggest the Chinese already boss the Colorado pro teams through their Walmart proxies, because the Chinese aren’t that interested in anything but ping pong, but they do want to sell Broncos jerseys. Is that good news or bad?

While America is re-engaged in a new arms race, which here in the homeland seems to be racking up magnitudes of cost overruns, the conclusion that we can build our own microwave ovens has not been reached. Nobody can beat Walmart’s price!

But meanwhile I have to ask myself, are Denver sports fans piling their hot dog dollars with, not pepperoncini, but Chinese economic superiority or, could it rather be, “international diplomacy?”

I’d like to see this question fleshed out before the Burnham Yard deal gets inked.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.