00:13:27.020So it's really about strengthening and hardening our infrastructure, our SCADA systems that power our gas, power our electricity,
00:13:36.160it powers our water, it powers our transportation, our banking system, our roads are crumbling.
00:13:42.380You know, we've been spending almost a trillion dollars on defense for the last 25 years,
00:13:47.700and it hasn't really helped us very much in these cases.
00:13:51.460And so I would reprioritize spending on defense.
00:13:55.220I would cut the defense budget by something like 10 to 25 percent.
00:13:59.840And I would reallocate that that money into building new, strong, critical infrastructure that protected the society from these types of attacks.
00:14:10.420We see them happening every single day.
00:14:12.300I mean, think about this, you know, you were in the army, you know, what would what would you do if you were you were coming under constant attack every single day?
00:14:21.280I mean, you would beef up your defenses.
00:14:22.980You would basically go out and go on the offensive.
00:14:25.840You know, in this case, we have to actually think into the future.
00:14:29.680Let's don't go back and try to catch a criminal.
00:14:41.780So one of the things that you would do, you know, if you're you're in a forward operating base, you would go outside the wire and start going on patrols.
00:14:50.500So we'd actually be looking for these people, you know, aggressively and they can be found.
00:14:56.200It's just that, you know, right now what happens is colonial is not the government.
00:15:07.280You know, if if you believe that economic prosperity is a key component of a functioning society and you're allowing your society to be rated, then you're not defending the sovereignty and independence of our country.
00:15:22.540Today, we have a quality under the law.
00:15:50.340You were instructed to drop bombs on companies in Kosovo?
00:15:53.100We took out the assets, the factories that were owned by the henchmen that were supporting Milosevic.
00:15:59.340That was what was done during the Kosovo war to get the Serbians to stop killing the Kosovars, and that we had to stop Milosevic.
00:16:07.580So it was using military force to achieve a political objective.
00:16:11.120The way we did that is by going after the assets of the people that were supporting them.
00:16:16.220What I found in 2014 when I started getting into this is, you know, you can take out assets with the JDAM.
00:16:23.140You can also do what exactly happened to Colonial. You can begin to take out things using cyber, use social engineering.
00:16:31.740You could own the supply chain, just like I talked about with what we did to the Soviet Union.
00:16:36.240So there's a million different ways that you can attack a society, and that's what's going on.
00:16:41.340We have a society that has been, we're thinking in terms of this 20th century way of protecting our society, like, you know, somebody's going to drop bombs on us.
00:16:49.860No, they're going to attack our economic, our political, our social, our financial system relentlessly until we are broke.
00:16:58.140That's the goal. And that's what, you know, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, the most prolific are the Chinese.
00:17:05.220But I mean, they're all coming after us. And quite frankly, we are not thinking and we're not playing the right game.
00:17:12.860And that's why you're talking about cutting defense at 10 or 25 percent and taking that and putting it into a different infrastructure because wars are not being played the same way as they were played 20, 30 years ago.
00:17:22.860And it's going a different direction. By the way, just out of curiosity, since we're already talking about this, I'm going to take it on the angle with, since your background is national security and foreign policy.
00:17:32.700What what's going on right now with Palestine between Hamas and Israel? OK, obviously, we've seen it.
00:17:39.040We've seen the videos. We've seen the stories. We've seen one say if they want to come against us, we're going to go.
00:17:43.800We saw what Netanyahu responded with. And it keeps happening. There were more events that took place today.
00:17:49.460You're still ongoing. How ugly can this get?
00:17:53.320Or do you think this is going to calm down and it's going to be the traditional war that they keep having, you know, every few years?
00:17:59.340You think this can get ugly or you think it's going to calm down?
00:18:02.160No, I think I think I think the Trump administration basically looked at this and said, look, we're not going to let the Palestinians get in the way of Middle East peace anymore.
00:18:09.640In fact, they're out of the equation. We're going to go after whatever peace we can we can achieve.
00:18:14.380And I think what's happened is the Palestinians see in the Biden administration an ability to basically tie peace in the Middle East to solving the Palestinian issue.
00:18:23.560And that's an issue that, you know, from my perspective, I don't think the Palestinians want to solve.
00:18:29.320Yasser Arafat had the opportunity to solve this and basically decided not to.
00:18:34.600He thought that he could make more money by continuing to be, you know, prevent that from happening.
00:18:40.260So I think the Palestinians think they have an opportunity to basically go back and and re litigate this again.
00:18:47.360And I think, you know, the Trump administration was really achieving in the in the last part of the administration was really achieving some goals because they said, look, we can't solve the Palestinian.
00:18:58.340We can't basically solve all of Middle East peace.
00:19:01.040And by saying, hey, we have to solve the Palestinian issue first.
00:19:04.860No, let's start. Let's start going after those low hanging fruit.
00:19:07.920Anybody knows that if you're trying to solve the hardest problem first, you're and you're making everything else contingent on that, that you're going to be you're bound for failure.
00:19:17.200And I think that the Palestinians sense that. And I think that's what they're that's why they're doing this.
00:19:21.760What's the what's the right move to make today for U.S.? What is the right move in U.S. to make?
00:19:26.280Now, obviously, we're not a Trump administration. We're a Biden administration. It's a different one.
00:19:30.500What is the right move for America to make that we're watching this taking place?
00:19:33.480They're going back and forth. It doesn't seem like it's slowing down.
00:19:36.300And obviously, you know, we know historically Israel has got one of the strongest air forces.
00:19:41.940I know everybody knows how powerful their Hamas is.
00:19:45.220You know, they're what is it? Assad is their secret.
00:19:49.400You know, the intelligence they gathered, they're one of the best in the around the world.
00:19:53.440But what role should America play in this?
00:19:56.740Well, I don't know. There is a role for America to play in this.
00:19:59.480I think one role we shouldn't play is to basically say when the Israelis respond to attacks and provocations to say, hey, guys, cut it out.
00:20:10.080You know, don't stop. Stop responding to the provocations and attacks.
00:20:13.800I think, quite frankly, let the Israelis settle it and don't in any way support or give any kind of credence to or support for what the Palestinians are doing.
00:20:27.560I think that's what they're hoping to see.
00:20:29.700They want to they want to see something, any kind of sliver of sign of the Biden administration that would give them indication that they're going to come down on Israel to prevent them from responding to the provocations and attacks.
00:20:43.020I saw earlier today, Biden talked about the fact that they're going to stay out of their way and kind of try to let them hash it out, which I think you probably agree with that decision.
00:20:50.240But you're seeing a lot of people on the news that are saying things like I heard a story from Trevor Noah.
00:20:55.880He was explaining this whole thing and he says, OK, I don't know.
00:20:59.460But when I was a kid and I was growing up, you know, my would fight with my brother and sister.
00:21:05.140And one time my younger brother hit me and I hit him back.
00:21:07.860And my mom said, why would you hit somebody that you know they can't hurt you?
00:21:10.900Why hurt somebody that, you know, even though they hit you first, there is this fantasy of, hey, I know they're bombing us, but we know you can destroy them.
00:21:24.100Why is it so important for Netanyahu to not just look the other way instead to retaliate?
00:21:30.740What what is the downside of him not retaliating versus him retaliating?
00:21:35.820I think if you don't retaliate, if you don't deal with the attacks and the provocations and you invite more, it's it's it's you invite more.
00:23:10.960How superior is China's intelligence agency today?
00:23:17.340Because that name is never dropped amongst the other MI6.
00:23:22.260Is China kind of looking around saying, please don't put us on that list?
00:23:25.160Because we kind of like the fact that none of you guys know how far ahead we are of you, how much more advanced we are of you.
00:23:31.100Because all these three names you're talking about, they're innocent.
00:23:33.680We're willing to go places that they're not willing to go.
00:23:36.800How would you describe to the average person?
00:23:38.820You've been, you've lived in China, I think, twice.
00:23:41.280One time you went there as a, well, you were in the Air Force and then you came back and you went back again and you were a general in the Air Force.
00:23:47.440So you've been studying the topic of China for quite some time.
00:23:50.260Matter of fact, when you were the senior director one time at the National Security Council, you got up to kind of give a briefing to everybody about what really, why China is really the biggest enemy.
00:23:59.000And you had McConnell sitting on one side, Biden sitting on one side, one's a Republican whose wife has got family over there with the big construction company.
00:24:05.700And you got Biden, obviously, with his son having a relationship with China.
00:24:09.600And then six months later, they fire you.
00:24:11.780Maybe you triggered something when you said that.
00:24:13.700But how strong is their secret, you know, intelligence agency against all the other ones in the world?
00:24:21.240Well, I think it's a strength of their system.
00:24:25.120And it's a fact that everything and everybody is responsive to requests by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:24:31.600If you're a student, if you're if you run a company.
00:24:34.000I don't know if you remember, but, you know, if you're a billionaire in China, you can just be disappeared.
00:24:40.260You know, look at Jack Ma, look at, you know, a bunch of other billionaires that have basically found themselves out of power.
00:24:48.880So their system is one in which the party requires people to do things and and doesn't take no for an answer.
00:24:59.380And so, you know, we think of, OK, if you get hired by the CIA, that's one thing.
00:25:06.460If you're if you're running a company, you know, you're not part of the government.
00:25:09.740You're not supposed to be doing anything funny business.
00:25:12.780The Chinese Communist Party doesn't see the world that way.
00:25:15.200And in fact, they enlist everybody, the entire population in one way or another.
00:25:21.480They either use indoctrination to basically, you know, give a party line, but they also use the fact that, you know, companies, Chinese companies are global.
00:25:33.440They use the fact that the market of China is an incredible draw for other companies.
00:25:39.920So one of the things that just recently happened, I don't know if you saw Shanghai Expo, a girl gets up on top of a Tesla, starts jumping up and down and saying the brakes are bad and I got bad service from Tesla.
00:25:51.900What happens? So they do they do they smash that protest?
00:25:57.180And you remember, this is a country that killed 10,000 people in Tiananmen Square.
00:26:00.400No, no, they videotape it and it goes on national media all over China.
00:26:04.500And then it's picked up on social media. Don't buy Tesla cars. Buy Chinese electric.
00:26:09.500Tesla's the number one selling electric vehicle in the market in China.
00:26:13.540Now they're down 27 percent. It's falling like a brick.
00:26:18.300What are they doing there? What was that about?
00:26:20.580You know, so who is who is the target ultimately of that attack?
00:26:24.840The target, I would say, of that attack is Elon Musk.
00:26:28.380And the target of that attack is not so much Tesla, I believe, as it is SpaceX.
00:27:13.720And then they start to turn the screws and you don't even know what they're trying to get right now.
00:27:19.900And then I saw a report, you know, the officials at Tesla are trying to figure out what do they even want?
00:27:25.660They they may not even tell you what they want until, you know, they've let you kind of swing a little bit.
00:27:32.520So this is the problem with the Chinese Communist Party is it's not just their their they have impeccable impeccable intelligence services because they collect so much data on us and and have AI that they that they run.
00:27:46.500In fact, you know, they say they want to become the Saudi Arabia of data for their AI, their ability to collect intelligence on us from your smartphone, everything around you.
00:27:55.480So they have an incredible machine that is merged with their commercial sector in a way that, quite frankly, we don't understand.
00:28:05.640And we don't we we don't look at Jack Ma and say, hey, Jack Ma is not only working for the Chinese Communist Party, he's also working for Alibaba.
00:28:13.660So, you know, you don't you know, you didn't even know he was a communist member until he came out and said so.
00:28:19.820And then, you know, of course, they they they deposed him from his role as CEO.
00:28:23.840So this is a system. It's a far, far more dangerous system than we've ever faced because we've allowed it to come into our midst.
00:28:33.340So so the concern is if Elon Musk does what he wants to do and he provides free Internet for the folks in China, they may be able to get on Facebook, Twitter, create those kind of accounts where folks around the world can really see what's going on in China rather than being able to control and silence everyone in China.
00:29:06.340No, I you know, I think Silicon Valley made such an incredible model for dictatorship.
00:29:13.100I mean, it it's beautiful because you can you collect all the information about your entire population everywhere from everything that they do, cameras that are around the city.
00:29:22.280You know, all the transactions they make, you figure out what makes them tick.
00:29:26.500What are they responsive to? Do they have a sick kid?
00:29:29.240You know, they have a mortgage that's going bad. Does they got a business that's going back?
00:29:32.760And then when if you need if you need something, you begin to turn the screws or, you know, if you don't want this person to be a success because they're they're a nonconformist.
00:29:44.020They don't they don't they don't like the government or they don't like being told what to do.
00:29:48.140OK, well, you just basically say, hey, their kids can't get into school.
00:29:51.560They can't get a mortgage. You can't get a job.
00:29:55.840You know, when you have this global globalized economy and Internet where everything's connected, you when you have financial relationships with it, when with a regime like that and they can pull the trigger.
00:30:10.140What do they do with the NBA when Daryl Morey talked about Hong Kong?
00:30:15.220What did what did what did LeBron James say?
00:30:17.260He came out and said, well, the NBA better not say anything.
00:30:19.900So here is a a national basketball association in the United States basically being told by one of its players that the Chinese Communist Party shut up and said shut up and you better shut up.
00:30:32.220I've seen this time and time again in U.S. corporations.
00:30:35.500So, you know, we think that we live in a free society.
00:30:39.680And in reality, our society is being engineered for us right out from under us.
00:30:43.660And we don't really understand it because we don't think in terms of this this digital world that, by the way, we created Silicon Valley created this.
00:30:55.380I've asked you this before. I'm curious to know what you'll say today.
00:30:58.060What are your top three biggest threats we're facing today in America, not worldwide, specifically in America?
00:31:05.100If you were to say number one is this number two, it is number three is this.
00:31:31.680I do think that the political system is a problem.
00:31:34.800I think the parties are focused on themselves, not on what the American people want.
00:31:38.100And I think we've engineered this system through both the introduction of dark money, but also in terms of the way we've structured the voting system, the election system.
00:31:49.020What I'm talking here about is closed primaries.
00:31:51.820I'm talking about the fact that if you don't do what the party says, they'll primary you out the next time.
00:31:55.980So I think the political system is a big problem.
00:31:58.260And I think the the the unwillingness of the federal government to really focus on the things that matter to, you know, Alexander Hamilton understood industrial policy.
00:32:13.660He understood that national security, you know, United States security came out of growing the economic power and prosperity of the American people.
00:32:21.820And to do that, you had to you had to put the American people first industrial policy.
00:32:27.740You know, we don't have to have a centralized economy, but we do have to recognize that other countries, Germany, Japan, China in particular, have industrial policy that are that are set to erode the economic productivity of America.
00:32:41.620I think having the government understand this and really, you know, focus on economic prosperity of Americans is really the third and our industrial policy, the third piece of that.
00:32:54.760And so, you know, financial, I think political and I think economic is our number one, two and three problems in this country.
00:33:02.960You think we're about to have a third party after what happened with Liz Cheney and how she opposed the Republican Party has been now divided into two?
00:33:09.020Do you think it's going to turn into something else or think they'll eventually unite?
00:33:13.660You know, I really, you know, I really subscribe to what Catherine Gale and Michael Porter wrote in the book, The Politics Industry.
00:33:21.240I think what happened in Alaska in November is going to is going to happen more.
00:33:25.560I don't think it's we're going to have three parties.
00:33:27.880Well, I think what's going to happen is, you know, particularly what happened with all the mail in ballots in the November elections,
00:33:35.280where, you know, state secretaries basically came up and unilaterally decided to send out, you know, massive mail mail in ballots.
00:33:45.160I think the legislatures are standing back up and saying, hey, no, we had a constitution.
00:33:50.340We had a state constitution said in our U.S. Constitution said this legislature is supposed to determine voting rules, not not the executive branch of a state.
00:33:59.120So I think you're starting to see votes in that. I think you're going to see people stand up and say, look, I'm tired of the parties not doing what I asked.
00:34:07.040So it's not about Liz Cheney. It's about D.C. that doesn't work for the people anymore.
00:34:13.820I think many people would agree with you. General Spaulding, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you.
00:34:21.240Pretty powerful and concerning, isn't it? If you enjoyed what he had to say and you want to know more, there's two videos I want you to watch.
00:34:28.040One of them is an interview he did with a hacker, Chris Roberts, where he talks about the alarming, you know, challenges that we're facing with cybersecurity today in America.
00:34:36.820The other one is the interview I did with General Spaulding, where he got deeper into how China's silent takeover of U.S. while the American elites slept.
00:34:47.400That's his book, Stealth War, that he talks about China. It got a few million views.
00:34:50.380If you've not seen this one, click over here. If you want to know more about cybersecurity, click over there.
00:34:54.380Thanks for watching, everybody. Take care. Bye-bye.