In this episode, we talk about China's recent military parade and the potential threat they pose to the United States and the rest of the world. We discuss China's growing military capabilities and the impact they can have on the world, as well as the potential threats they pose.
00:00:33.000And I I think that's honestly that's one of those kind of goals of doing this that we've talked about earlier is to make sure that the rest of the world knows that they have these kinds of capabilities.
00:00:41.000Now, there's a difference between having a parade and actually fighting a war.
00:00:47.000But the uh the Chinese state media, the CGTN actually shared this graphic of the missile that we were just talking about and said the true art of war is the art of stopping wars.
00:01:00.000Okay, so uh you know, theoretically it's you know strategy deterrence essentially, right?
00:01:04.000Um I uh I I don't I is China does China have global ambitions as far as conquering?
00:01:12.000Like I know they want economically uh and they want to be able to control a lot of the the resources and we'll talk about that in a minute.
00:01:17.000But do they have any advan like are they trying to take over new land masses and trying to plan to do stuff other than like reunification with Taiwan or something like that?
00:01:25.000That's a different claim than just going just basically starting to head west and just take over whatever's in their power.
00:01:30.000Well, you and you'll you'll see with the development of their navy from a brown water into what's called a blue water navy.
00:01:36.000They are building vessels that can be expeditionary and operate in the open ocean.
00:01:41.000If they had no intention to spread their influence throughout the world's oceans away from their backyard, then they wouldn't be building these things.
00:01:49.000And they spread your influence is a lot different than conquering land.
00:02:35.000No, they're gonna be at you're gonna be at China's feet.
00:02:38.000No, I'm not gonna be at anybody's feet because I've seen Independence Day and it doesn't work against their shields unless you give them a virus and we can't do that.
00:02:55.000And and one of the things that I want you to understand throughout this entire conversation is the advantage that the Americans mil have had militarily and economically, that is rapidly deteriorating.
00:03:06.000And there are a lot of reasons for that.
00:03:08.000Specifically, we're focusing on the military.
00:03:11.000But economically, there are a lot of things that are happening in China that Donald Trump, as President of the United States, is doing more about than anybody else really has because he sees how these two things are connected.
00:03:21.000So let's first start out with their Navy.
00:04:05.000But a lot of the inve the bilateral trade deal, the tariff deal that we have with Korea, yeah, a lot of that investment is going to go into shared like shipbuilding for that reason.
00:04:28.000Um so according to, And I'll read the quote really quickly.
00:04:31.000According to a recent analysis analysis by Confluence, China can now deploy enormous forces to the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait.
00:04:39.000China's coastal military forces are now strong enough to potentially deter the U.S. from intervening in a crisis around Taiwan.
00:04:46.000And that for us really is kind of the um that that's the threat point right now, right?
00:04:51.000We're not really looking at China like you said, Josh.
00:04:52.000Like it's very it's very different to go and have influence in a region than to go and like actually take ground, right?
00:04:57.000Um you it's a much, much different kind of calculus.
00:05:01.000But them going to take Taiwan is the thing that we've talked about for a very long time.
00:05:05.000And it it's because they state that as a goal.
00:05:07.000And you think specifically that Xi Jinping is trying to cement his legacy by doing that, to do something what is it to is it to be greater uh than uh uh Mao?
00:05:30.000And a conversation started happening when we thought about Taiwan, because people made the comment if you let Russia go into Ukraine and there aren't severe penalties for doing that, China is gonna look at that situation and go into Taiwan.
00:05:41.000Well, listen, I don't know that that's necessarily a hundred percent true.
00:05:45.000I understand the thought behind it, and you can get into a conversation about that.
00:05:48.000But what is true is what we have done regard regarding Ukraine and regarding Israel has left us in a really precarious position with munitions.
00:05:56.000So we the the long-range precision missiles that that are crucial in Taiwan, uh it uh seems like we're gonna run out of those pretty quickly.
00:06:26.000So and it takes about two years to reproduce one of these uh making more?
00:06:32.000Yes, there's appropriations in the in the the new um defense or the new budget for these, obviously every year and they're increasing, but they're just difficult to make once you stop the inertia of making them.
00:06:51.000The the biggest time period to look to is right after the end of the Cold War.
00:06:56.000There was this thing called the Last Supper, where the d the undersecretary for the Defense Department came in and told all the contractors we do not need you to produce like you've been producing anymore.
00:07:34.000So and and look, we also still have a really big problem within this conversation on being dependent on China.
00:07:41.000Aaron Powell When you came into office, President Trump tasked you with looking into our U.S. military's dependence on China and Chinese supplies of materials that are needed for our national defense.
00:07:53.000I know China has put a stranglehold on critical minerals.
00:07:56.000Uh I think President Trump asked for significant advances from you by October.
00:08:01.000What's the update on our dependence from China?
00:08:04.000Well, we've gotten after it after it for minute minute one.
00:08:27.000Yeah, we definitely need to make sure that we are not dependent on them for the materials, the raw materials to be able to make the weapons that we're going to need to use to fight them.
00:08:34.000Like every single critical mineral that they have to do.
00:09:14.000They have a history of working together in some ways individually, right?
00:09:17.000But the China has courted the Russia-North Korea relationship, and recently, India kind of pulling them into the mix, prompting President Trump to write.
00:09:26.000Looks like we've lost India and Russia to deepest darkest China.
00:09:30.000That sounds like from Paddington, darkest Peru.
00:09:52.000I mentioned a couple of them a minute ago, but just run run down that list of people that are really the allies that are going to jump into it with us if necessary.
00:09:58.000So how we said North Korea, China, Russia, you know, India, whatever.
00:10:01.000Don't r especially those first three don't have an inherent commonality to make them allies.
00:10:06.000They do all have a specific goal of dethroning the West.
00:10:10.000And dethroning the United States from where we are.
00:10:12.000And giving around sanctions, essentially right now for Russia.
00:10:15.000They're basically willing to make friendly with anybody.
00:10:17.000If you hear the term like multipolar world, it just means we need to take the US down from where they are now, which is which is what has allowed us to become as prosperous as we have.
00:10:25.000Now our allies on the other hand, especially concerning the region like Japan, very good.
00:10:29.000I put them at the top for their increasing spending.
00:10:32.000Uh we have a bunch they're increasing the ability for their military to operate in different ways.
00:10:50.000Australia is another powerful one because they're in the region.
00:10:53.000You don't think of them as an Asian country, but they are.
00:10:55.000Well, if you look at the people that were at the parade, it's like all the people we've listed the Kazakhs, the Uzbekis, the Turkmenistan, and then for some reason this guy Daniel Andrews, who is a former premier in Victoria.
00:11:08.000So like a very powerful person now for a consultancy group in Australia.
00:11:13.000And then you have the UK, who we've talked about uh pretty incessantly recently about what what commonalities do we have with them anymore?
00:11:20.000They're a communist country, basically, and they haven't even been able to hit their military recruiting goal for the last 14 years.
00:11:26.000Well, what was the number on that we were talking about?
00:12:00.000So when you import tons of people from Muslim countries that have no interest in defending your homeland, and then no one signs up for the military.
00:12:06.000I'm not sure why Keir Starmer would be shocked at these numbers.
00:12:28.000That was our bad, but thanks for jumping in anyway.
00:12:31.000Um but uh Hegset actually did note how serious the threat was um in May at the Schenger La dialogue in Singapore.
00:12:40.000Again, to be clear, any attempt by communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world.
00:12:57.000But it certainly could be so yeah, what really we want to come down to is like when we say China bad, right?
00:13:07.000We've talked about China, we've talked about separating the people of China from the communist Chinese party, the leadership, all that, right?
00:13:13.000But when we say that, the leadership, when we say the leadership is bad, and the direction of the country is bad, what do we mean?
00:13:19.000So just to your point real quick, I do want to we do need to separate because I know we spent a lot of time shitting on India for lack of a better phrase.
00:13:27.000They they also spend a lot of time technically shitting on their own on the street.
00:13:34.000and they don't necessarily all even a majority of them want to be living under this system.
00:13:38.000If you look at places, I think like Chongqing or maybe it was Chengdu, they're starting to project like anti-communist messaging up on their buildings.
00:14:08.000And they don't need to take over the entire world to do it.
00:14:11.000There's this concept called realism in international relations.
00:14:14.000And the idea of offensive realism is that, and which I think China subscribes to is that you need to continuously keep expanding your influence to make sure that that influence that you've gained isn't taken by another party.
00:14:26.000And we know they want to control Asia.
00:14:28.000And if they control Asia, that means they control about 50 to 60% of the world's economic activity.
00:14:34.000If you do that, you don't need to storm the beaches of San Francisco or the beaches of Houston or wherever.
00:14:40.000I don't know if you want to go to the beaches of Galveston anyway, but I digress.
00:14:44.000Because you can put the screws to the United States in a million ways that are going to damage us beyond what we would even be able to recognize.
00:14:53.000So they wouldn't even have to fight a kinetic war.
00:14:55.000All of the best universities they're now in China.
00:14:57.000All of these companies, Google, Facebook, uh, Apple, they aren't replaced with the Chinese versions of those companies.
00:15:04.000Now you're working for those companies.
00:15:06.000Do you think you have you think we have a problem accessing free and open information now?
00:15:10.000Imagine when the top down is controlled from Beijing.
00:15:13.000That is a scary world that no one wants to live in.
00:15:15.000And the idea that this all comes from is something called Tian Sha and which is means under heaven.
00:15:21.000It's how China has viewed themselves throughout history.
00:15:24.000And then the name China, it's it's Jong Gua in China, that means middle country, which means from the inside out, everything revolves around China at the center and then the periphery.
00:15:32.000That is what Xi Jinping wants to accomplish.
00:15:35.000And you've seen when people do not, if we get to a point where we're trying to be antithetical to that, the Vietnamese tried that back in the 1400s.
00:15:42.000I know this seems like we're going back, but China always likes to rely on 5,000 years of history.
00:16:02.000So right now that that border is is the coastal water.
00:16:05.000So what is it, 12 miles out or 10 miles out?
00:16:09.000You can claim as your waters, and then so international waters start right after that.
00:16:13.000What you're seeing, all those dots, the vast majority of those dots are illegal Chinese fishing boats going there and basically stripping the resources that theoretically Peru has some claim to.
00:16:25.000But this is Peru, this is in the Americas in the Western hemisphere.
00:16:28.000This would be fall under the Truman Doctrine type of thing, right?
00:16:30.000Well, why is China allowed to operate freely there?
00:16:33.000Well, it's because they've paid off the Peruvian government with investments with building them new ports.
00:16:43.000So the government is facilitating this.
00:16:45.000So to think that they wouldn't put those kind of screws to the United States closer and closer, the more their power enhances, I think we are would be insane to think that.
00:16:54.000So when someone says why is China your enemy, well, the same reason that they're trying to get people to sell them secrets.
00:17:01.000Just uh yesterday, there was a Department of State employee that was charged with trying to steal state secrets to the Chinese.
00:17:07.000Now it was a sting, but nonetheless, they're trying to do that.
00:17:27.000Well, and I think, look, I think that's all reasonable.
00:17:29.000And there are a lot of people out there who would like to avoid a war.
00:17:33.000And I think we would all be counted among those people.
00:17:35.000But we are also realists in that, hey, we can't just assume that everybody else on the planet has the best of intentions for us and for our people.
00:17:43.000So it's it's helpful to understand what the threat is and what it isn't.
00:17:47.000And so one of the things I want to make sure that we do is we educate you so that you understand what the threat is not, because there are so many people out there right now that will title around breaking World War III or China set to do.
00:17:59.000And all they're really trying to do is to get you to tune in to get a click to get some kind of money to get some kind of prestige from it.
00:18:05.000And I understand that there is a titling world out there where you're trying to get people to understand what the video's about, make it interesting so that you'll want to watch it.
00:18:24.000It becomes like the car alarm in the parking lot that everybody after about two or three years just said, well, another car went by and their motor was pretty loud and it set off the car alarm.
00:18:38.000And right now, China is a situation that we need to be paying attention to.
00:18:41.000If not for Donald Trump being president of the United States, we probably wouldn't be focusing very much on China in any kind of way that we should be, at least.
00:18:49.000We'd still have some focus on them, but we wouldn't be taking concrete steps.
00:18:53.000We wouldn't be taking the threat nearly as seriously because our guys seemed to be okay with it at the time.
00:18:58.000I don't want you to be led astray by people online, especially people that are paid to post about stuff like Jackson Hinkle.
00:19:07.000And he and he was posting about China, and we're like, come on.
00:19:11.000We hadn't seen much from this guy for a while, and I thought he just, you know, found a wife.
00:19:15.000The last thing I want to say is you're right about Trump bringing all this to attention and doing something about it, but he's kind of trying to straddle the line too.
00:19:20.000He calls them deepest darkest China, but will not just ban TikTok.
00:21:01.000We want to answer questions, and most of the time we want to answer questions related to what we just talked about because we honestly want to have a dialogue with you.
00:21:08.000Like what are you what what did we just say that made you go, oh my gosh, or pfft, you guys are idiots.
00:21:14.000What whatever it may be, you may agree or disagree, we don't really care.
00:21:35.000Have we stopped selling land to China?
00:21:38.000Insane how China owns property by sensitive US locations like nuclear plants and military bases.
00:21:43.000Uh I know there was uh, you know, some reporting that we did that uh Tucker Carlson picked up on uh later on about the the weed farms and things like that and land.
00:21:52.000Um I know that there were other reports about Chinese, is it Chinese companies, Chinese nationals?
00:21:57.000Yeah, so Chinese nationals owning land around sensitive military targets potentially around the country.
00:22:02.000Has there been any movement on the other?
00:22:04.000Well, there's there's been state laws in Florida and I believe now Texas and other I think a couple other red states which have put actual legislation into place for this.
00:23:39.000When we think of the defense of Taiwan, we always frame it in the terms of, well, we're chip dependent upon them, so we need to do that because the TSMC has like 90% market share and advanced chips or whatever.
00:23:53.000It is uh symbolic in a lot of ways, uh, because it would it represents our credibility to our allies if we can defend if we'll come to the defense of them.
00:24:01.000And it also gives China sort of free operation into the open ocean by getting past that island chain.
00:25:13.000Um I'm not the best person to answer the space question other than to give like a general answer.
00:25:19.000I think what we're seeing right now in the United States is is very good as far as it relate relating to space and our ability to kind of maintain an edge because we're seeing private industry start to take some of the lead there.
00:25:32.000Um and I know that that's going to be messy, but we're doing things relative to space that we've never dreamed possible, right?
00:25:40.000And we have people that are thinking big, that are dreaming big, and we are the place to be able to accomplish something like this.
00:25:45.000Yes, you can marshal resources in an economy where you can basically just say, hey, we're gonna throw all the money, all the science behind this, we're gonna fund this thing, and we're gonna get something done.
00:25:53.000I that that's been done before, I get it.
00:25:55.000We've had a space race with the Russians.
00:25:57.000The United States to some degree did that as well, right?
00:26:00.000But that kind of played itself out because you can't sustain that forever.
00:26:03.000Now with private industry coming in and seeing some kind of future in exploring the opportunities of uh being able to take more into space, obviously, whether it be like Starlink or something like that, or space tourism, that at least starts to sow the seeds of hey, we need to be investing in this.
00:26:18.000We need to be thinking about this because space hasn't been cool for a very long time.
00:26:22.000When I was a kid growing up, like going to space camp is something that I saw like on Punky Brewster or whatever the show was, where you would always hear about this, and there were movies that had space camp stuff related to it, and space was super cool, everything was awesome.
00:26:34.000And then it just kind of died out, right?
00:26:36.000After the Challenger explosion, you you kind of started to see it fall off, and then after um the last shuttle to to explode, I can't remember what it was, uh the name of it.
00:26:45.000Um it basically it just wasn't something we talked about anymore.
00:26:49.000But now there's a renewed interest, and I think it's coming from the right side of the ledger on this, where it's partnerships with the government and private space companies that are trying to develop technology to be able to take us into space And to go further, like obviously Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars.
00:27:03.000You know, he's got he's got some goals.
00:27:04.000Yeah, when it comes to military application, we just like the Soviets did with us, we can't just afford to keep spending more and more money and get in some sort of arms race with China because it's not going to work.
00:27:13.000That's why I like that it's a partnership with private companies that have their own incentives to develop technology.
00:27:18.000And I mean, the military application of these space-based systems is important.
00:27:23.000And if you look at anybody, any thinker, they're saying, yeah, a lot of our resources that we do spend need to be marshaled towards things like AI and towards space-based technology.
00:27:32.000So I don't know how much they're doing of that.
00:27:34.000I haven't looked into the details, but to the question uh that was asked, I think a lot of the government officials have come to the same conclusion that that's where a lot of our money needs to be invested to be competitive in the future with the Chinese people.