The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz ｜ Feeding the Dragon
Episode Stats
Summary
The Anchor Podcast with Matt Gaetz and Dan Ball dives deep into the economic and cultural issues facing the Trump administration, including China. They're joined by Chris Fenton, author of the new book, "Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma: Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business," to discuss why China is making the moves they're making right now.
Transcript
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Now, it's time for the Anchorman Podcast with Matt Gaetz and Dan Ball.
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Welcome back to Anchorman. We are going to do a deep dive episode into some of the issues facing
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the Trump administration on the economic front and on the cultural front that relate to China
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and the reckoning the United States is having. I've got a tremendous expert with me who's got a
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really, really great book out on the subject, but I want to tell you why we're talking about this.
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We got into this first 100 days of the Trump administration, and the core promise that
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Trump made was that he was going to secure the border, this won him the election. And he doesn't
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get enough credit. We don't talk about that enough, but he does the thing on the border. You see a
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border that is very well orderly and maintained at this stage of the game. And then Trump turns
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his attention to the economy. And what he's got to do is he's got to get his bill passed. Now,
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you could quibble with his bill. You can have issues with the spending level. But at the end of the day,
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the bill achieved a number of Herculean successes with the majorities we have. He gets his tax cuts
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extended. He fulfills his campaign promises on no tax on tips, gives seniors a big rebate to offset
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taxes on Social Security. And he's able to do all of this while fighting a multi-dimensional trade
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war that the United States has largely surrendered prior to Donald Trump's ascent to the presidency.
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And so Trump gets that done. And now with the bill in hand, I think that the relationship between
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the United States and China is the number one thing that is going to shape our economic prospects
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probably over the next five to 10 years, but maybe even over the next five to 10 months.
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And for people looking at the midterm elections, nothing could be more important on how China is
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making their moves, why they're making the moves they're making right now. And that's why I brought
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on the program, Chris Fenton. He's got this great book, Feeding the Dragon, Inside the Trillion Dollar
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Dilemma, Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business. And what I would say is it's almost the
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modern day answer to Kissinger's book on China, because Kissinger makes this argument that it all
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is going to be rosy if we bring China close to us. They'll be just like us. There'll be a McDonald's
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on every corner. And this will lead to a democratized capitalism that will encircle Russia,
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in fact, with China on our side. But what you write about is a corporate class in our country
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that has been seduced by China. And they have been seduced by China's market, by their productive
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sectors. And it doesn't always lead to good things. So Chris Fenton, we're joined as always by my good
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friend and occasional co-worker Vish Burra. Vish, thanks as always. You're playing the part of the
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homeless guy this week. No, I'm kidding. He was great. No, we love Jackie. But Chris, tell me why you
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wrote the book and how corporate America and the United States are feeding the dragon.
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Well, thanks for having me. I love the show. And if you talk about seduction, all of us in the U.S.-China
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trade, since Kissinger and Nixon first got there in 1971, have been seduced by the idea if we help open
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that market as much as we can, no matter what it took, to our products and services that we make here
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in the U.S., we would spread the aspirational qualities of democracy in that country. And we
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would essentially create revenue streams from a market that we never had open that would build our
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GDP and grow jobs here in the U.S. And that was like a higher calling that a lot of us had. I mean,
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don't get me wrong. It was a very lucrative opportunity when it came to moving your career
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into that trade, that bilateral dynamic. But at the same token, it was really nice to know that we were
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essentially opening up this market. We were opening up minds in that market to the idea that maybe
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democracy was a better system of government than what they had. And it felt like we were actually
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doing something for the greater good of the United States of America. Except at some point, we all ended
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up getting that smack in the nose moment. And I call it the smack in the nose because Matt Pottinger
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talks about how it happened to him in the early 2000s. Unfortunately to me, it really didn't happen until
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later in 2019 when the NBA got in a lot of hot water for something that Daryl Morey tweeted.
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And we can get into that. Yeah. It's a fascinating story.
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No, I want to get into the sports angle. But before we look at the different vectors,
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let's start with a high level. You're China right now. What do you think their goals are
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as they see the world today and as they see the posture the Trump administration has taken?
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Well, it's interesting because, I mean, the beauty of what Trump did in his first term was that he
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pulled the fire alarm on the China issue, right? No one was really willing to talk about it.
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It wasn't even an issue. It wasn't an issue. All of us knew there was something awry and it wasn't
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quite going the way we expected. But we all kept our head down for that greater good, that greater
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mission, that greater purpose. And it was him, guys like Matt Pottinger, Robert Lighthizer,
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Peter Navarro. They all got behind this idea that, hey, we got to change the course here because
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it's going really wrong. And if we don't fix it, it's going to be too late. So that was the fire
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alarm that occurred. And then if you look at, I think, and this is where I'll differ from our
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mutual friend, Steve Bannon, where I don't think China's goal is to overtake the world and be the
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world leader. I think they've realized that that can end empires pretty quickly. What they really want
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to do is be the regional power. But the part that's really scary is the fact that they have
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a scarcity of resources there. Energy, food, water, minerals, you name it, they can't harvest
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enough to satisfy 1.4 billion people inside their borders. And that's where we're seeing that Belt
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Road Initiative. We're seeing fishermen off the coast of Chile or Madagascar. We're seeing all
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kinds of reach into the Arctic region. But wait, doesn't that mean that they don't want to be a
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regional power? If you want to extract resources from a Honduran jungle, if you want to fish off the
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waters of Chile, doesn't that mean you have to have an ability to make things happen globally?
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That's a good point. But I think actually all they care about is that self-serving interest of
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So it's true colonial. It's kind of less, like China doesn't care what Chile's values are in a
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way that American colonialism kind of does now. We have this values-based colonial. We want to colonize
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you with our pride month and our pronouns and whatever else. Whereas China simply wants to get back
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to just like good old-fashioned resource-based colonialization. Is that how we should think
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Yeah, I think it's a real self-interest and the idea that the more you spread yourself thin,
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the more apt you are to lose power and lose influence. So they know that they have 1.4 billion
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people they got to satisfy. They got to make them just happy enough that they don't revolt. They
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don't want another Tiananmen Square. So how do you do that? You provide just enough of what they need
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and this aspiration that they can get a little more of what they want within the system that is the best
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in the world. And that's why, and we'll talk about Hollywood and soft power influence, but the fact
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is their goal is to make sure that their people think their system is the best in the world and
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the system of democracy or the republic that we are here in the United States of America is the wrong
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system and it won't support what their needs are. So give us the power, give us the standing
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committee, which by the way, Xi Jinping has brought down to just a single digit amount from what it used
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to be. You got 92 million CCP members there now. They're all embedded in all of the different
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sectors of the economy. And that is the system that they want their people to believe in.
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What you've said, I think is so poignant. And I think a lot of people in Washington in the
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policymaking space miss it. China pitches alongside their bribes, reliability as a governance model.
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They say, we are a more reliable partner than the Americans. Think what you want about Trump or
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Biden. It changes too much. Whereas like we are, we are at least steady Eddie on the global stage.
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And I, you know, you said it far better than I did, but understanding that that's part of their pitch
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is so important. And I think not a lot of our, of our policymakers do. So you write about China's
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influence in Hollywood, the NBA and in corporate America. Where do you think it is highest among those
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three? Well, I, I think they, if you look at the art of war and the way they look at the ability to
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essentially get what they want around the world without ever firing a bullet, a lot of that has
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to do with influence. So I would say the power that they saw with Hollywood and being able to tap
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into that soft power propaganda was crucial to them because I'll use a perfect example. I mean,
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I grew up, I'm 54. I grew up in the eighties. Everything I thought about when it came to the
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Soviet union was what Hollywood and our geopolitical complex here in the United States wanted us to
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visualize the Soviet union has drab, never sunny, always raining. Avon Drago. Yes. I mean,
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Gorky park. You never saw a movie that portrayed Russia with blue skies and gleaming skyscrapers and
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happy people. It was always dreary. It was always drab. But when China started to get his, uh, it's,
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it's tentacles into Hollywood, not only because they had a market that Hollywood coveted, but they
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also were bringing money investing in Hollywood. They immediately said to Hollywood, you can't show
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crime. You can't show things that are bad about our system. Only good things. You can only show our
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gleaming infrastructure, our high rises, our technology advanced cities. Um, people like the last time
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there was like a gritty, crimey scene, like with a Chinese feature. I think it was like the opening
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scene of an Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. And they got in a lot of trouble for that too. Right. Right. I
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mean, we had, so you think that was the key? Cause, cause, cause Vish, you talk about this a lot, how
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the actually culture is upstream of politics and policymaking. Yes. And it seems like, like what,
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what Chris is saying is that China understood that in film. Yes. And, and injected it. Or how would you
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rate the success of it, of, of that project on China's port? I think that it's, it's been very
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successful. I mean, where, I thought, you know, when I watched Maverick, uh, the Top Gun movie and
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they had this nameless country with this base and they were talking about fifth gen, you know,
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fighters and all this stuff. I thought that they were, this was maybe the closest that
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Hollywood ever get to portraying China as the, as the enemy. But it turns out actually it was kind
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of more like Iran. It actually came true. The plot of the movie Maverick came true. Right. And
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that's, that's another part I want to get into, but you know, that was when I, when I, when I
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thought maybe it came closest, but you don't really see any portrayals of China in this manner where
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it's like adversarial. Whereas, uh, Chernobyl, the HBO series, when it shows Russia and the Soviet
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Union to this day, it's still gray. The gray tones on, on the, on the shot, you know, and
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everything's drab and every, you know, uh, every place looks like a 1900s hospital or something like
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that. You still see that today. So I think obviously China understood this and is excelling
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it, not because of what you see, but what you don't see. Well, what about Bond movies or born,
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born identity movies or whatever? They're never going to have China, um, infiltrating the Taiwan
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airspace with a WMD or whatever, like that's going to blow up from a hot air balloon or whatever it
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is. Right. But you're just saying China bought that. They a hundred percent bought it. You can't,
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is that for sale for everyone, by the way? Like if, if the Saudis, if the, uh, Emiratis,
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whomever wants to come in and just buy that type of Hollywood soft power, if China bought it,
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why can't anyone buy it? Well, the beauty and, and I've worked in the Middle East too. And,
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and the Middle East has a lot of money, a lot of investment dollars, but they don't have a market,
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right? It's a two, you have a two way street of money when it comes to China, both from what you
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can get from that market as far as consumers, but then what you can get from that market as far as
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investors. And that is something that the Saudis will never have. I mean, Saudis have 30 million
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people. That's it. And most of them are tribal or immigrants from somewhere else building things or
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whatever. There's not a lot of money in a, it's a very, well, no, but that's fascinating. The value
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proposition in China is that it's the market lashed to the investment and that, yeah, that you don't get
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that with the rich Gulf monarchies. So if that was the Hollywood play, let's talk about the NBA.
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I've talked about this on, on pods before the hypocrisy of the NBA on China. How do you see it?
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Well, it was, that was my smack in the nose moment because I'd just come back from, um, taking some of
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your colleagues from, uh, from Congress over there. I, I hosted congressional delegations and it was
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the end of China in 2019. Yeah. Um, I'm a board member with the U S Asian Institute. So we had
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Dina Titus, um, Fitzpatrick from Arizona and Lowenthal here from California. We went over to see the
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Hong Kong protests. We were in Beijing, Chengdu, Xi'an and, and, uh, Macau. And I just got back
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and Daryl Morey tweeted that thing out. I wasn't even on Twitter. Somebody showed it to me on, uh,
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the sideline of a kid's soccer game that I was at. And it said, fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.
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And I looked at it and I was like, I don't know who Daryl Morey is. And then I looked him up and I was
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like, oh my God, he's the GM of the Houston Rockets. And somebody was like, is that a big deal? And I go,
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yeah, it's Yao Ming. It's a Houston Rockets. They mean everything in China that is going to crush
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the NBA. And somebody was like, really a tweet. And I go, trust me. And literally within days,
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that thing blew out of like any sort of proportion we expected. And I was sitting there going, well,
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I guess I know China pretty well. Cause I predicted that. But what got me with that smack in the nose
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was the fumbling and bumbling that Adam Silver and the NBA had in terms of how to respond to it.
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Right. We're a first amendment country. Uh, Daryl, I believe tweeted that in Japan. He wasn't even in
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China. Um, it seemed pretty obvious that we were supposed to get behind Daryl Morey, but they didn't.
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And then they did. And then they didn't. And then LeBron James, who was in Shanghai, comes back
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on the tarmac at JFK and it fumbled and bumbled with that response. And I'm sitting there going,
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wait, doesn't this guy have access to every PR exec there is to try to come up with what to say when
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you land. And he didn't, he, it was crazy. So that was the moment where I go, wait a minute,
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maybe I've been complicit in two decades of this crap because I've been standing up for things that
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probably weren't all that American, just trying to get more products and services in that country.
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And that was the moment where I go, wait a minute, we've all been doing this really wrong for a long
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time. Uh, what about the, uh, the Nets owner, the Alibaba CEO? Is that, does that showcase
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another troubling Chinese invasion into kind of the athletics corporate space?
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Well, first of all, Joe Tsai is a big benefactor of the sport of lacrosse and I'm a big lacrosse
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fan. So it's a little tough to talk about it, but I will say people will defend lacrosse.
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We will defend lacrosse. We are not giving up. Look, it's one of the last places we could send
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our children with a competitive shot. No, but Joe Tsai did create a massive conflict
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of interest for the NBA, also for his team and that whole thing. And, and that was a
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real problem when it came for the NBA to really stand up for what we all wanted them to stand
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up for, but realized how much money was on the line not to do it.
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Joe Tsai has blocked me on X. Did you know this? He blocked Joe Tsai. Unblock me, man.
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You're friends with a lot of my friends. You host a lot of Republicans at your games, but
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you have blocked me because during the COVID pandemic, he, he was all up in arms at Kyrie
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for not taking the VACs. And I was, I was team Kyrie.
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I was team Kyrie too. But you know, that's, it kind of, again, it just shows you like these
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markets that they're infiltrating, right? Like the Brooklyn, he goes and gets the Brooklyn
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Nets, right? And like that. And why would you do that? Well, there's actually a massive
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Chinese population in Brooklyn too. And obviously New York placement, lots of visibility.
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That's going to play well back, back in, back in China. And so, but, but is it wrong that
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you let the owner of Ali, the guy that owns Alibaba or the CEO come and buy an NBA team?
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By the way, he's pretty much bought Yale University too.
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Well, by the way, I'm definitely more okay with that.
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By the way, who were the owners of the Nets before that? Russian oligarchs.
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That's right. So as far as I'm concerned, the oligarchization of the Brooklyn Nets had
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already occurred. Yeah, it already had occurred. So, you know, I don't want to like, yeah,
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I mean, I would rather neither, right? I'd rather an American owner, but this is how the
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system was. And again, you, like you said, most people didn't even really notice until
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about when Trump started really putting this thing out in the open, out front. And then things
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like when it got cultural, right? When it got, when it got to the NBA and the Houston
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Rockets owner tweet and LeBron, you know, essentially saying, you know, the Houston Rockets owner
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should mind his own business or something to that effect. Right. So that, and people didn't
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Well, the ballsiest move though, in all of it was like, eventually the NBA did get, uh,
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essentially Daryl Morey removed from the Houston Rockets. It took a while and there was a lot
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of pressure in China to do that. And what happened? Cause Daryl Morey's really
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good at what he does. I mean, really good. The Sixers just went and hired him and like,
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game on, let's go. And they did not care one bit about China. And that was a really
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ball city of the Liberty Bell. What you tapped into though, was the fear that, that the, the
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self-censorship really that occurred from the NBA. It wasn't like China was sending out
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messages from their ambassador about this or seeking some like full frontal confrontation
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with the United States over it. It was the, the legitimate fear on the part of the NBA
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that, Oh my gosh, if we, if we make them mad, then maybe we can't sell as much merch there.
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Canceled all the airings of everything that happened.
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They long. Oh, immediately. Oh, wow. And on top of it, any Chinese partner that they had
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on the brand merchandise, you know, marketing side was told, get lost. Do not touch the
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NBA. And then for a long time, it was like a warning plan before COVID dude. And imagine
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what you're talking about, Hollywood talk, talking about, Oh, I got, you know, possibly
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a billion viewers that I'm losing out in that market. Imagine a billion less shoe sales,
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right? Like that, that also happening. Yeah, no, definitely. I could see it.
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Well, not only that we created the CBA, which is the NBA in China, which is allowed to have
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a couple of our players over there play on all those teams. They learned the process and
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the way to run a league really well. So the second they took the NBA off, they put a lot
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of effort into building the CBA. Now the CBA is a huge competitor to the NBA over there.
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Yeah. And then that's the same, like, and you still look at, okay, our market isn't that
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big for Hollywood in China now for a particular movie. I mean, we went from like 80 cents on
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every dollar made over there was a Hollywood film. Now we're down to about five cents on
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every dollar. So it's gotten crushed, but you still have Disney over there with one of the
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largest theme parks in the world in Shanghai. It's 57% owned by the Chinese government, but
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Disney's got a lot of, a lot riding on that mark, on that market and on that theme park.
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And then Universal built a huge one up in Beijing. They only own 30% of it, 70% owned by
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Beijing, but they got to make sure that thing works.
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Disney's choosing whether to invest in Florida or China. And they're like, we're going where
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we face less draconian challenge from the executive.
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That's so good. But that, that's so that, but that, that expansion by, you know, all like,
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like you said, Universal, uh, and, and Disney like that. Well, what can we do though about
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the, do these execs have any, uh, incentive to try to, you know, kind of sever that relationship?
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If you're saying only five cents on the dollar is coming from China these days in their movies,
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like, why even bother? Well, a, there's the promise that it could open up again for our,
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our, our stuff. There's always that golden goose that could start to spread its wings again. So
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there's that hope. And then on top of it, you have massive consumer products, businesses that
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these studios have the theme parks and various other things. So there's still a lot of money
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riding on it. Um, where we need to all just start to focus. And it's really simple is just think
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about patriotism before capitalism. That's all right. If, if we're American companies and we've
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been born and raised here and we have certain values and principles that we need to hold dearly,
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or they get commandeered by a country that's not like ours, that's a problem. So we should have
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engagement with that market, but we just need to think about this reckless form of capitalism that
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we had for so many years. We need to abate and we need to start putting our principles ahead of it.
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Chris, if in New York, someone walks into their board and says, we've made a decision to, to,
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to, to not access the Chinese investment, you know, capital markets or consumer markets,
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and we've done so on the basis of patriotism, that board would have that CEO on cleaning out
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their desk before the bagels arrived for the morning coffee. That's if they don't throw them out
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to the 80th floor. The interesting part is that China is doing it for them right now. I mean,
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we're, we are getting weaned out of there slowly, but surely. So everybody's starting to notice that.
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And then there's good messaging for Western consumers. When you start to say, Hey, there's
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certain things that we did with that market that we're not happy we did. We're going to change the
00:22:45.800
course. And you can actually look like, Hey, you're taking the higher road. You're doing the right
00:22:51.700
thing. And you could probably amplify what you're doing in various markets while knowing you're
00:22:56.220
already losing the China market anyway, whether you do it or not. So I think there are ways to
00:23:01.460
straddle that, that are realistic and practical. Trust me, I've been in the private sector my whole
00:23:06.320
life. I get where those issues are, but it's, there's an opportunity now to do the right thing.
00:23:11.200
I could be wrong about this, but I would probably bet perhaps naively that it would be the market
00:23:17.540
forces there, like on China's impact on the market from their government side that would force that
00:23:23.780
more than this organic immersion of corporate patriotism. That's a hundred percent the case,
00:23:32.300
right? It's always about the dollar. But what I'm saying is that the dollar lost in China could be
00:23:37.520
made up elsewhere by looking like you're doing the right thing and using the right narrative and
00:23:41.920
messaging and your marketing and promotion in those other markets. So I do think we're seeing a
00:23:46.620
little bit of a tipping point occur here, which is going to help. Okay. Given your experience in
00:23:51.380
these areas, if you're sitting there across the table from Trump right now, as he's devising his
00:23:56.140
strategy in these trade talks and, and the talks with China are the most dispositive trade talks
00:24:00.720
without a question. What are you telling him to do? What tactics, what key levers or pressure points
00:24:08.000
would you focus on? Well, I think they're already doing this really well. And by the way,
00:24:13.520
I'd love to be a part of those just to hear what's happening and throw in my two cents, just from my
00:24:18.680
point of view of 25 years. A lot of them listen to this show. So you're talking to them. But the choke
00:24:24.600
points are crucial to know in the supply chain. And we have ones that we've known were issues since
00:24:30.740
probably 2008, 2010, which rare earths are the big ones, right? Trump seems to know that. Yeah. He a hundred
00:24:38.480
percent knows that. And he knows that their choke point is semiconductors, the chips, right? So we're,
00:24:43.640
we're trying to essentially use the game of chess against each other. And I think we do have the
00:24:49.880
pressure points that are going to allow us to maintain the supply chain areas that we need to focus on and
00:24:56.640
still get a supply from, from China while they're going to still get what we need. But we have to put
00:25:02.680
forward an industrial strategy that gets us off of that teat as quickly as possible.
00:25:09.460
That, that is so critically important. Like I, I cannot tell you the number of briefings I got on
00:25:16.700
the armed services committee where I'd be complaining about weapon system X or Y and not getting parts
00:25:23.800
enough and not having enough of them operationally capable, whatever it is. And you get, you know,
00:25:28.320
behind closed doors and you start really pulling, why is this deficiency? And so much of like the
00:25:35.740
base core material we need for the stuff for our military is part of the Chinese supply chain and,
00:25:44.600
or they have such influence on those markets that they can put one of your domestic, uh, subcontractors
00:25:53.360
in a real jam by like screwing with a cobalt mine in Africa or, you know, impacting where tungsten is
00:26:01.840
Well, their foreign ministry, Wang Yi actually spilled the beans openly, which was really surprising
00:26:06.760
about their desire to have the Russian Ukraine conflict continue as long as possible.
00:26:12.320
When you realize our F-35s hold 50 pounds of Samarium cobalt magnets inside of them,
00:26:17.840
you realize why they want that to continue, right? If, if you extrapolate that to various other
00:26:23.040
military components that we're shipping over to Ukraine and that NATO is using in Ukraine to keep
00:26:28.120
that war going, we're losing a lot of that resource to that war. And we don't have the production
00:26:35.040
capabilities to replace it. China knows that. So the weaker we get because of these wars that are
00:26:40.760
prolonged, the stronger their leverage gets. And quite frankly, the more war weary we get here in
00:26:47.380
the U S so that if they ever do quote, reunify Taiwan, I don't think the American public is
00:26:53.940
going to care enough to try to push us into that war and try to protect Taiwan.
00:26:58.500
I certainly hope nobody on this set cares enough. I, I, and it's not that I don't care about Taiwan.
00:27:04.160
I just simply think it's easier to import Taiwan to Arizona than to go fight an away game over an
00:27:09.440
island right off the coast of China against the most sophisticated anti-aircraft weapon systems that
00:27:15.360
Yeah. It's not like it's Catalina right offshore either. I mean, you're playing an away game for
00:27:19.740
something you could definitely just import otherwise. And what, how many Americans should
00:27:23.820
have to go die for the, because of what flag flies over Taiwan, which by the way, is already basically
00:27:30.760
controlled by China anyway. The Taiwanese government is in the Taiwanese military has been so infiltrated
00:27:36.380
by China. I think that is a red herring. Oftentimes they're like, we have to defend Taiwan,
00:27:42.480
make Taiwan a porcupine. All of that is just a veneer to justify higher top lines for the defense
00:27:50.880
industrial complex. Well, you know, your former colleagues, Gallagher and Christian Morthy,
00:27:55.800
they ran how many war games trying to see if there was a way to actually defend Taiwan without losing.
00:28:01.100
Right. I don't think a single war game came up in our favor. No. I mean, I know how the ones
00:28:05.300
that are classified come out, but what I could tell you is that it didn't surprise me a lick
00:28:11.240
when I saw that all the ones that they'd done publicly showcased that we could never get enough
00:28:16.680
materiel into the fight. You know why? China can hit a moving target with a hypersonic weapon and we
00:28:22.100
cannot. And that really reshapes how you think about deterrence and getting materiel across the
00:28:26.860
Pacific Ocean. So, uh, and is there any desire of the regional allies that we have over there to jump
00:28:31.720
in the middle of that too? I mean, or do they get attacked? I mean, there's a world in which
00:28:35.660
they get preemptively attacked, but your, your thesis at the beginning of this discussion was
00:28:42.260
China actually doesn't want that. They want to be able to dominate their sandbox and to continue to
00:28:48.720
make it a little bit bigger each and every day. But this notion that they are blood lusting for some
00:28:54.680
like kinetic conflict, or as our friend Steve calls it, uh, you know, uh, unrestricted warfare,
00:29:00.020
uh, you're not, you're not as bought in on that. I do want to talk to you a little bit about TikTok
00:29:04.080
because so many young people resent the fact that Gen Xers and boomers who aren't on TikTok are
00:29:13.500
lecturing them about the dangers of the platform. I'm not on TikTok. Maybe I will be one day. I don't
00:29:19.400
know. I don't think you are, but like they, I've had a lot of young, young people be like, well,
00:29:24.300
let me get this straight, Matt. Uh, I got like kicked off of Twitter for saying that vaccines
00:29:31.380
could give you side effects. I got like thrown in Facebook jail because I said, build the wall.
00:29:36.860
And then I supported the second amendment. But what you're really telling me is it's the Chinese I
00:29:41.820
have to worry about. Like the American tech oligarchs have actually done worse to me. Now I know behind
00:29:46.960
that there's a whole data collection and there's a really sinister, um, uh, operational capability
00:29:54.220
that comes out of what China is doing. But do you at least get how like Gen Z looks at this
00:30:00.040
and sees a lot of, of, uh, being patronized? I can see, look, if somebody wanted to take Twitter
00:30:08.600
away from me, I'd be upset about it too. But the fact of the matter is Twitter is not run by one of
00:30:13.600
our four foreign adversaries as defined by the U S government. Imagine if TikTok were run by North
00:30:19.040
Korea or run by Iran or run by Russia. I think we would all look at it a different way. Right. But
00:30:24.700
for some reason, they would say like, do you, but, but Saudi and you know, Saudi hacks up journalists
00:30:29.960
and they own a bunch of Twitter and you know, Qatar is like the home base of Hamas and they own part of
00:30:36.000
Twitter. So why shouldn't we be worried about that? Well, because the, at least they're not designated
00:30:40.460
as foreign adversaries, right? Number one, but number two is they're not, they don't own and
00:30:45.220
control it and are, are looking to essentially that the reality is, and I've been on TikTok because
00:30:51.820
I want to talk about it and know a lot about it. Yeah. Twitter is really interesting the way that I
00:30:57.500
actually get frustrated because my feed feeds me too much of what I, it thinks I want to read. And I
00:31:03.120
always have to go try to proactively find other voices to hear like other parts of the equation.
00:31:08.800
Cause I don't like confirmation bias. I like to get all sides of it. TikTok is that on steroids
00:31:15.040
times a thousand, right? You, it's almost impossible to find other points of view.
00:31:19.160
Okay. But, but if the critique is a critique of like the algorithm being bad, one would say,
00:31:25.400
well then fine, apply that critique domestically.
00:31:28.600
Right. Except domestically, we're not trying to. I mean, we've got a lot of fat people who shouldn't
00:31:34.000
have Uber Eats. Right. But China wants to divide us a hundred percent. The more divided we are,
00:31:43.320
the weaker we are. But I can, DoorDash wants to, wants to play, like wants to play into our gluttony.
00:31:48.560
Like I could argue that every single app that exists is there to feed one, one of our vices,
00:31:55.540
right? Yeah. You know, Tinder, Lust, Uber Eats and DoorDash gluttony. Probably TikTok is like some form
00:32:03.800
of, you know, vanity or, or, or pride. And so, you know, yeah, like all of these things do that.
00:32:10.680
They're all bad, but we, but people resent the isolated attacks on TikTok and China because they
00:32:19.400
don't feel threat. So let's go to Brendan Carr in the FCC and say, Hey, if China wants to buy ABC,
00:32:24.760
NBC, F, you know, Fox, they can go buy it and own our networks. Right. There's a reason why we don't
00:32:31.820
allow that. Well, I mean, yeah, but, but one, and I, and again, I, I, someone's going to clip these
00:32:37.060
clips up and they're going to be terrible because they're going to be me saying things as straw man
00:32:41.160
arguments here, enjoying my discussion with, uh, with Chris. But, but what if the, the people would say,
00:32:46.260
well, look, uh, ABC, NBC, you know, they're owned by like terrible Americans who censor us. What do
00:32:51.880
we care if it's terrible Chinese who censor us or terrible Americans? I think it's just how you
00:32:56.440
define, look, there's terrible Americans. Obviously we can't say all citizens are fantastic, but I will
00:33:03.560
say that there are things that we should protect as far as a sovereign nation, uh, under God. That's
00:33:10.080
a nation that we're supposed to be proud of and be okay with the fact that we're essentially
00:33:15.980
in control of our own destiny. Why are we allowing the largest source of news and information by
00:33:22.300
people under 40, a platform that is supplying that under 40 to be controlled by a foreign
00:33:28.840
adversary. That doesn't make any sense to me. That's, uh, you know, I mean, I guess if you're
00:33:34.100
a complete globalist and you said there's no borders and we don't care who's involved with anything
00:33:38.540
that's influencing us or pushing in us in directions.
00:33:41.820
Well, if you were, if you were a fatalist to globalism, maybe if you weren't a globalist
00:33:46.540
in your heart, but if you surveyed the landscape and said, you know what, everything has been
00:33:50.940
globalized. Our labor markets have been globalized. Our information flow has been globalized. Hell,
00:33:56.260
our elections have been globalized. I'm sure you've got thoughts on how, you know, how China's
00:34:00.360
influencing our elections well beyond even, even just the, the core pillars of the book.
00:34:05.640
And, uh, you know, that is the way of the world. And so you can be naive about it and you could try
00:34:11.680
to build little walls around turf, but at the end of the day, they get deconstructed because
00:34:16.840
China develops another app that you don't know that they control. Like remember when people were
00:34:21.180
worried about TikTok going down, all those other crazy Chinese apps got millions of followers
00:34:25.960
because people were voting with their feet. And so like, I actually think the most compelling
00:34:30.800
argument against TikTok is no one else. And you touched on it. No one else uses the data this
00:34:38.020
way, right? You could say what you want about Twitter and Facebook and all the problems they've
00:34:42.860
had, but none of them are like centralizing the data and then using similar faces and then sending
00:34:49.820
fake IDs into the country so that 30,000 people can vote. They're like, weren't supposed to be voting
00:34:56.020
in our elections. And, and the use of the data is, is really what, what makes TikTok worthy of that
00:35:02.200
type of, of, of attack. Well, there are, there's, there's two, I mean, national security interests and
00:35:07.960
experts that, that look at the TikTok issue do seem to be divided a little bit of, is that the data
00:35:13.580
that's the big national security issue or is it the propaganda from a foreign adversary? Yeah. I come
00:35:19.160
from a storytelling narrative background. So I think the storytelling, I mean, even look at here in
00:35:27.580
the U S I mean, the fact that we have issues like, um, I don't know if it's the Epstein thing, suddenly
00:35:33.360
if you're, you're like, wow, that's weird. And they call you a conspiracy theorist, like right off the
00:35:38.600
bat, even though we've been following this for whatever, a decade, or if you, um, are dealing with
00:35:44.720
this border debate, suddenly immigrant is supposed to cover both illegal and legal, right? How did it
00:35:52.060
become? No, it was a migrant. Yeah. We, we merged it into migrant. Yeah. Remember that? No one talked
00:35:56.580
about migrants. But you look at the power of words, you look at the power of narrative and how it tears
00:36:01.100
people apart and takes different perspectives that aren't that different and make them completely
00:36:06.120
polarizing. Right. And then you put it in the hands of a foreign adversary and you realize, wow, it's
00:36:11.400
pretty easy to win a war without ever firing a bullet. That, that has my mind go to like what
00:36:17.900
other foreign adversaries have the money that want to buy narrative power. And the assumption is
00:36:23.820
probably all of them. Yeah. And I mean, Chris has done a great job explaining how China is uniquely
00:36:27.700
positioned to do that, but you don't have to choose. You can be against TikTok for both of these
00:36:32.160
reasons, but it is different. It is interesting that we find different things most troubling because
00:36:36.920
I'm almost a fatalist on the narrative thing. I'm like, oh heck, you know, who, whose hands do you
00:36:42.280
control the narrative in? Nobody's not, not any of these American oligarchs, not any of the foreign
00:36:47.780
oligarchs either. Uh, and so all you can do is really democratize information. And then the, the
00:36:53.960
greatest threat that that faces is the elimination of platforms. And so if you're eliminating platforms,
00:36:59.540
it always gets, gets the hair on, on the back of my neck stood up a little bit, but you're a person
00:37:04.460
who spends a lot of time thinking about the power of the narrative formation. Yeah. Is Chris right
00:37:10.420
that that is actually scarier than the data? Because I'm more scared about the data. Well,
00:37:15.740
yes, I think Chris, I think I'm, I'm very much someone who believes like, uh, language control
00:37:21.500
is mind control. So that's why I believe in the power of narrative and all that. And I think that
00:37:26.020
that's important. But for me, what I, what I think is, is more, uh, of an aspect to focus on is
00:37:31.700
how is it that China that, you know, for really has like this reputation of not being able to invent
00:37:38.640
anything that, you know, they didn't steal from somebody else, essentially, how are they the ones
00:37:43.580
to come up with the best app? And that turns out to be the number one source of news for young people
00:37:50.280
in America. I'm, I'm a guy that believes that America leads diplomatically on the globe from a
00:37:55.980
cultural aspect, but you're telling me Silicon Valley can't come up with one app for entertainment
00:38:02.420
that could beat out Tik TOK. What are all these geniuses in Silicon Valley? It's an amazing point
00:38:06.780
because you've seen Zuckerberg try to do with threads and that didn't work. Even reels is sort
00:38:11.860
of an attempt at it, but that didn't work. Right. Why didn't those work, Chris? Well, I'm not a tech
00:38:17.600
expert, but it just doesn't seem as crazily addictive. Yeah. But I have no idea why, like, if someone
00:38:22.980
asked me why Tik TOK worked and reels didn't, I honestly couldn't tell you. Well, it's, I think
00:38:29.080
that there's part of it is still like the woke stuff. I think Tik TOK, like, yeah, there's still
00:38:33.720
censorship on all these platforms, but Tik TOK seems the least censorious of all the platforms.
00:38:39.900
And so whatever allows the, the, the creator to make their content and be monetized in a proper
00:38:48.620
way for it. Uh, that's the, the, um, platform that's going to win again. One of the big parts
00:38:53.920
about why Tik TOK won in this marketplace is because of the monetization is because they were
00:38:59.200
paying creators who were coming onto their platform and a competitive way. They're still
00:39:04.060
paying them the best. There's no, if you're a creator, you know, in this kind of like short
00:39:08.080
video format, there's still no, no platform that pays you better. That's right. But the platform
00:39:13.460
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ends July 13th. Go to allfamilypharmacy.com forward slash Matt. That's allfamilypharmacy.com
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forward slash Matt stock up and protect your family today. Welcome back. I am not Matt Gates.
00:40:12.620
I'm Vishborough, the cohost on the anchorman here, and I am with Chris Fenton, uh, the
00:40:18.000
author of feeding the dragon. Great book. I recommend everybody get it, but you know,
00:40:23.860
less about China. I'm really focused, you know, that I'm really interested in like you're
00:40:28.940
working Hollywood. Like what movies have you worked on that? Like we all know, well, I've
00:40:34.340
worked on a lot of bad movies and I've worked on some good ones. I mean, the largest movie that
00:40:38.360
I did, which happened to also include China in the mix was Iron Man three. Um, that movie
00:40:43.860
did about $1.3 billion. Um, I've worked on, I made the mistake of, of making a movie that
00:40:51.420
now seems to be a cult classic, which is the remake of Point Break. Um, a lot of, uh, younger
00:40:57.580
generation people are starting to find it and think it's pretty cool. Um, I did a movie that
00:41:02.260
was really proud of called Looper with Ryan Johnson. Yes, I've seen Looper. Fantastic movie
00:41:07.380
that was done for a price and did a lot of business. That's Joseph Gordon-Levitt and
00:41:11.800
Bruce Willis. Yeah. Who played the same character one, one 30 years older. Yeah. Um, I did little
00:41:18.260
movies like Waiting, which was, uh, you did Waiting? I did Waiting. No kidding. I love
00:41:23.220
Waiting. I used to be a waiter. So every time I was a waiter too. And so was the writer
00:41:27.640
director of that movie. And that was, uh, Dane Cook sort of first foray in the movies.
00:41:32.780
Yeah. Had Ryan Reynolds and Justin Long and Anna Faris and Luis Guzman. It was an incredible
00:41:38.600
cast. And then we made the sequel of that called Still Waiting. Um, which was, uh, which
00:41:43.780
was also a funny movie. We did, uh, Blockers, which was a big one. That was John Cena. Um,
00:41:49.780
he didn't do his Mandarin speaking in that, uh, but, um, that movie was, uh, you know, it's
00:41:55.220
like these, these films that maybe some of the people haven't seen that are listening to
00:41:59.180
this, that, um, are big, they're, they're big sort of revenue generators based on the
00:42:05.100
fact that their budgets weren't big, right? So Blockers was a comedy we made for about
00:42:09.040
20 million. It did almost a hundred million in box office. So it's like one of those movies
00:42:13.780
that I'm really proud of. Um, I was talking to Matt earlier about a movie called Chappaquiddick.
00:42:19.800
Yes, I've seen Chappaquiddick. Um, Chappaquiddick was an unbelievable process to get that, um,
00:42:25.760
into movie theaters. We had a lot of interesting sort of threatening calls about ever making that
00:42:31.680
movie. Tell us about that. Um, cause it's about a Democrat. It's one of the most famous,
00:42:36.380
right? Ted Kennedy. It was about Ted Kennedy, but it was about a very tragic situation in his life
00:42:42.140
that also was, um, spurred a lot of controversy, right? Because he, um, he is somebody that worked
00:42:49.720
in his staff. He accidentally killed and he was drinking and driving. He ran from the scene.
00:42:55.080
They found her way later. Um, maybe he could have saved her, maybe not. Um, and it also happened
00:43:01.600
at the same time that we landed on the moon. So it was an interesting news cycle back then. Um,
00:43:07.240
and we talked, uh, the idea around the movie was a, we adapted it. Um, the writers who were
00:43:13.320
fantastic as they write it, they wrote it, um, as an adaptation of the police records. So, um, and we
00:43:19.620
did a lot of fact checking around everything we possibly could. That was the primary source.
00:43:23.860
That was the primary source. And, um, what was interesting is that most of us that made
00:43:29.720
that movie, we're not like Republicans are hard, right? It was, we wanted to tell the story
00:43:34.560
of the fog of war of being the son of a very difficult father, being part of this legacy
00:43:41.020
family and this pressure for him to essentially run for president someday and how that clouded
00:43:48.440
so many bad judgment calls that he made over the course of that period and, and how there
00:43:54.220
was a victim, um, that ended up passing away during that time too. And we did it with such
00:44:00.500
a sensitivity that actually, even though we were, you know, there were people affiliated
00:44:05.860
with the Kennedy family that were threatening theaters that were carrying it. Um, we got many
00:44:11.140
calls as we were progressing into production to not make the movie. We had various actors
00:44:17.120
that wanted to do it, that were told not to do it, that ended up not doing it. And, um,
00:44:23.040
eventually when the movie, we got through all that, we made the film and people saw it,
00:44:27.240
both Democrats and Republicans loved it. It was a really thoughtful piece that actually,
00:44:32.980
I think, created a sympathy around Kennedy. It probably showcased maybe the guilt that he
00:44:38.280
had throughout his life and career to do some of the good things that he did for this country.
00:44:43.680
So I, I'm proud of that film, but boy, was it a process to get it on the screen.
00:44:48.420
I could imagine, man. I, I loved that movie. Particularly what I loved was like kind of
00:44:52.760
towards the end where like they get all of Kennedy's power brokers and everybody, and they're like
00:44:58.020
sort of spinning. And this was before I really got into like the nitty gritty of politics. And,
00:45:03.420
and, you know, I was just thinking like, Oh, is that how it goes? Like, you know,
00:45:06.680
that's, you know, all these people get in the back room, all these power brokers,
00:45:09.480
and they're just kind of spinning what, what they're going to make reality. Right. And then,
00:45:13.500
you know, kind of eventually I find myself in rooms like that eventually too. So that was really cool.
00:45:19.400
Part two is we didn't have permission from like the Kennedy's to like shoot shots of the Kennedy
00:45:24.640
compound and all that stuff. And there wasn't great stock footage. So, um, actually, uh, fellow
00:45:30.280
producers on a Campbell McGinnis and Mark Chiarity, they were there the day where we were getting drone
00:45:34.960
shots of, of the Kennedy compound without permission. And there were all kinds of secret
00:45:39.880
service, like, you know, coming after us and all that kind of stuff, shutting down the production
00:45:44.780
and everything. But it was, it, you know, we're really proud of that finished product and the
00:45:49.860
way it got through, but it just goes to show that people, you know, free speech is important,
00:45:55.640
right? You're talking about TikTok earlier. Um, you know, the ability to tell that story,
00:46:00.940
the ability to tell it the way we wanted to ended up being great for the movie and great
00:46:05.240
for the audiences that digested it. So I think that the fear of what that was going to be for
00:46:10.420
a lot of people is what tried to prevent our ability to have creative freedoms, which I'm
00:46:15.720
glad we worked through and got past. You know, we talk about creative freedom and you mentioned
00:46:19.700
that you did Iron Man three, right? And that was the Mandarin was the big villain in that.
00:46:23.540
Right. And I, I've noticed that a lot of these big budget films, right? They, they, they, they
00:46:30.400
kind of, I feel like they've gotten blander and, um, and my, tell me if I'm wrong, my theory
00:46:36.160
of the case, especially like movies, like the new Kong movies, right. And, and these big monster
00:46:42.520
movies or, or even Legos and stuff, stuff like that. I feel like the material has gotten, uh,
00:46:49.860
less America specific and kind of, it almost seems like it's meant for like a global audience,
00:46:55.280
right? Like the primary kind of viewer that these production companies or studios are thinking
00:47:01.920
about is like the global citizen, as opposed to like, we're making American movies for Americans
00:47:06.700
that we sell overseas. Right. And so do you think that that's kind of taking place in why we,
00:47:11.320
we see our biggest, most highly budget movies have like very simple subject matters, uh, that,
00:47:18.400
that they're kind of based on and not, you know, you like, I wouldn't expect, I, maybe you don't
00:47:23.100
need $200 million to make Chappaquiddick, but would Chappaquiddick ever get $200 million,
00:47:28.060
right. To, as a, as a global movie that we're going to distribute to everybody? No. Right. But
00:47:33.720
the King Kong movie might. Right. And so is that, is that like the paradigm now where everyone's
00:47:38.920
kind of looking for the lowest common denominator sort of subject material that they can then
00:47:44.880
distribute to the world? Well, I, I, I, sometimes I liken it to food, right? Like if you're a big
00:47:49.740
Italian fan, maybe you like Mario Batali, like restaurants or, or something that's like a four
00:47:55.880
or five star restaurant that's super good, but, but niche because it's, you know, it's high end,
00:48:01.760
maybe it's cost a little more than what the average person wants to pay for it. But you're just like,
00:48:06.420
I got to have great Italian food. That's where I'm going to go. Hollywood a lot of times says,
00:48:10.720
well, you know, we're trying to, this movie costs so much. We can't make the Mario Batali restaurant
00:48:16.520
because not everybody loves super spicy marinara sauce or whatever it is, or truffles on their
00:48:22.680
thing. So they go try to make the Olive Garden because we know the Olive Garden is loved all over
00:48:29.540
the country, you know, and it brings in the masses, right? It's a big, big business. So the goal sometimes
00:48:36.320
gets lost on trying to find the easiest way to create the Olive Garden. When the fact is,
00:48:42.960
if I look at Iron Man three and the reason why Iron Man three, you know, was projected to make
00:48:47.800
like 650, 700 million worldwide, and it did double that. And why did it make double that? Well,
00:48:54.260
it's because it had, yes, all the special effects like Godzilla versus Kong and all that stuff that
00:48:59.840
gets people excited to go to an IMAX theater and yell and scream and be excited. But it had also
00:49:05.800
a human emotional core to it, which was really about Tony Stark and this guy who literally
00:49:12.780
believed the only reason people adored him and needed him and loved him was because he was able
00:49:19.200
to be Iron Man. And in the middle of that story, he loses the power to be Iron Man. He almost dies
00:49:25.300
himself, right? And he has to come to grips with the fact that he might not ever be Iron Man again.
00:49:30.400
He has to be just Tony Stark. And it's that growing that you see of that character go through it that
00:49:37.020
a lot of people can relate to. Yeah, not a billionaire arms manufacturer, but like that ability
00:49:43.100
of like, oh, I lost my job. Like, will anybody like me because I lost that position? And you go,
00:49:50.100
well, who am I as a person? Why do people like me? Is it because I sat in a really important chair?
00:49:55.600
Or is it because of who I am and the way I am and and how I believe in myself and believe in others?
00:50:01.380
Right. And that's that that was that emotional attachment that got people excited to go see that
00:50:06.700
movie, not just once, but multiple times. And that's how you get to those billion dollar box office
00:50:12.080
levels. It's got to really be gripping. Well, let's hope that, you know, the human condition is
00:50:16.900
still a central focus in some of our best and most favorite movies. Right. Yeah. Well, and and for me,
00:50:22.840
like having done so much international stuff, like we just finished production on this movie,
00:50:27.300
Bad Counselors, and we shot it all in the United States of America and North Carolina and Nashville.
00:50:32.720
We used a pretty much an all American cast and all American crew. And it's an American story that
00:50:38.880
sort of combines like a lot of the fun stuff that happens in college and in summer camp. And it was
00:50:44.600
a blast. And I hope that the movie actually translates outside of this country and people go, wow,
00:50:50.660
I like love it. It's hilarious. The cast we have is so fun. But it really felt good to be able to
00:50:58.200
provide jobs for people in the United States, manufacturing what we're the best in the world
00:51:03.500
in, which is movies, but then also make something that's culturally really relevant to everybody in
00:51:08.920
red states and blue states and everywhere in between. So I'm hoping that movie works. And
00:51:14.300
I'm really proud of the movies that we do that do the same thing, right? Like cater to everyone,
00:51:19.500
because all we want to do with Hollywood is be entertained for the most part, be touched and
00:51:24.440
felt like we don't, we're not looking to be politically agendized, right? So I'm hoping to
00:51:31.000
be a part of that crusade to get Hollywood back to just making great entertainment. And I think we're,
00:51:36.200
we're getting there in a lot of ways. Well, Chris Fenton, I hope you and your effort to make
00:51:41.960
Hollywood great again works. And I hope Bad Counselors is as amazing as you're hoping it to be. And
00:51:49.100
we're all hoping it to be because we want the American movie industry to be burgeoning again
00:51:54.040
and to be the gem, the crown jewel of the world and of our country in terms of cultural production.
00:52:00.800
Because my belief is that America leads through cultural production and ruling the global culture.
00:52:08.180
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Vish. Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate
00:52:14.840
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