Valuetainment - January 10, 2020


Episode 413: China’s Silent Takeover While America's Elite Slept


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 40 minutes

Words per minute

189.66014

Word count

19,102

Sentence count

1,255

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

36

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

General Robert Spaulding talks about his career in the Air Force, his experiences living in China, and why he was fired from the National Security Council for a speech he gave in front of Biden, McConnell, and other politicians.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I'm Patrick with your host of ITEM, and today we're going to talk about China, 4G, and why
00:00:27.440 this Air Force general got up in front of Biden, McConnell, all these other politicians
00:00:33.480 at the White House, told them the threat of China and 5G, and eventually he got fired.
00:00:38.600 General Robert Spaulding, thanks for coming. I appreciate you for making the time.
00:00:42.500 Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
00:00:44.280 So let's get right into it. So pre-going into China, what is your journey of you becoming
00:00:50.340 a general at the Air Force and then from there being part of National Security Council? How did
00:00:55.920 that go about? I came into the Air Force before I really knew much about the military, and my
00:01:03.900 picture of the military was about peeling potatoes and somebody yelling at you, essentially Gomer
00:01:08.560 Pyle, and they saw the movie Top Gun, and it fascinated me and really got me excited. So
00:01:13.340 I joined and just went in with no expectations, just had fun, and really just worked hard,
00:01:21.540 but also played hard. But I wanted to fly jets, and that was what got me started. And one thing led to
00:01:29.520 another. I had an opportunity two years before I was supposed to leave the service to go live in
00:01:36.160 China, and so I took it. And the rest is kind of history, because when I made that fateful decision, 0.93
00:01:42.520 and it was really about, you know, thinking about what opportunity I had to go live abroad, but also how
00:01:49.400 strategic China was in our future, it really opened doors for me that, quite frankly, I would have never
00:01:54.800 considered. I even had no clue about, so.
00:01:58.840 Literally, so there was no plans of that happening.
00:02:00.380 There was no plans. There was really no plans. In fact, I didn't want a career in the Air Force, so, you know, I didn't look to
00:02:07.520 become a general. In fact, when my wife heard that I, you know, had made it, she laughed.
00:02:14.360 Why is that? That you've made it as a general?
00:02:16.360 Like, how could you make that?
00:02:18.100 Because for me, you know, I mean, I was an E-4 in the military, in the Army. You know, when we saw generals,
00:02:22.760 we would shiver. It's like, this is a general, you know.
00:02:25.440 Right, this is a big deal. But for me, it was, you know, just having fun serving my country.
00:02:29.460 It's pretty wild how you think of it that way. That's pretty wild how you think of it. What is a percentage of
00:02:33.640 people becoming generals? It's ministry. It's very, very small to see that star on the Humvee or whatever
00:02:39.400 you're being driven around. I mean, that's pretty unique to have that. But what year was it when you
00:02:44.120 went to China? I'm curious.
00:02:45.520 So, first time it was 2002. So, I actually went to language training at Monterey, the Defense Language
00:02:52.180 Institute.
00:02:52.800 VLI.
00:02:53.080 Studied China for 52 weeks. It's a 62-week course. I left in 52 weeks in June of 2002.
00:03:00.020 Steph and I and our two boys went in the country and lived in Shanghai, in Pudong, on the east side
00:03:06.440 of the city. And that's the side that the Communist Party built up in the 90s. So, that's where the
00:03:11.220 Jin Mao building is and a lot of the financial district of Shanghai. And we just traveled the
00:03:16.380 country and lived with the people. And it was probably one of the most phenomenal two years
00:03:21.260 of my life.
00:03:21.900 It was a phenomenal experience.
00:03:23.160 It was incredible. You know, the people were great. They're hardworking, resilient people.
00:03:27.440 And, you know, having learned the language before I got there, I could communicate and
00:03:32.200 really travel all over and really got to know how they think. And, you know, in a lot of ways,
00:03:38.920 you know, not really fully understanding what was going on. I don't think you can live in
00:03:45.440 China and fully understand what it is to be Chinese. But for me, as an outsider, looking
00:03:52.220 at that country, it was exciting. And it was a place that I wanted to be. And so, when I left
00:03:57.280 in 2004, I told Stephanie that, hey, we're going to, when I retire from the Air Force, I'm going to
00:04:03.620 come back here and I'm going to start a business and get wealthy.
00:04:06.940 So, that was the plan to want to come back.
00:04:08.640 That was the plan.
00:04:09.540 Now, what's your rank at that time when you were there in 2002?
00:04:12.260 So, when I got there, I had just made major. Just made major.
00:04:15.760 So, you were already, you were already.
00:04:17.960 I've been in 10 years at the time.
00:04:19.020 You've been in 10 years. You're a major. And what was your job? What were you doing in China for U.S.?
00:04:24.040 So, the Olmstead program, which is a program that I was selected for, essentially picks three
00:04:29.760 officers from each branch of the service and sends them to language school. It's not for you to go
00:04:35.820 into a country that has English as a national language, but a foreign language. And then sends 0.99
00:04:42.240 you in the country for two years. And I went to a university in Shanghai, Tongji University,
00:04:47.400 and studied MBA courses. And really, it was about getting to know the people. It was really
00:04:51.740 becoming immersed in what it was to understand China and the Chinese culture and history and
00:04:58.140 the language.
00:04:59.340 So, does China know that you're going in as a major? Is that a something that it's a basic
00:05:05.420 open conversation? Hey, we're sending one of our majors from Air Force to spend a couple
00:05:09.800 years with you. One of the great things about the Olmstead Scholar program is that you do
00:05:14.300 everything on your own. So, you, once you're accepted into the program and you go to language
00:05:19.760 training, it's upon your responsibility to go and get accepted into university to apply
00:05:25.920 for a visa because they want you to understand what it takes to travel to a foreign country.
00:05:31.140 And so, it's almost like being on a sabbatical. You're not, you don't, you don't have a detailer
00:05:36.880 that you're talking to. You're basically cut loose on your own, on your own recognizance
00:05:42.480 to go and, and, and figure it out.
00:05:44.640 But you're getting paid. So, the military is...
00:05:45.880 Still getting paid.
00:05:46.640 Okay.
00:05:46.840 I mean, that, that's, I mean, it is, it is really an incredible opportunity because you
00:05:50.880 are, you're really learning because you, you don't have a lot of support. You know, you're
00:05:55.420 out there by yourself trying to figure it out. And, you know, there was, you know, how, so
00:06:00.680 how do I get there, become a student, get a student visa, but also how do I get my family
00:06:04.920 in there and how do I make sure that they, so we had to take them out of country every
00:06:09.600 60 or every 90 days to six months to renew the visa and come back in.
00:06:14.200 So, so China didn't know you were there and you were a major.
00:06:17.200 They didn't, I was not there in an official capacity. I wasn't there on, I wasn't there
00:06:21.840 on an official visa or on a diplomatic passport. I was there on a, on a basically a tourist passport
00:06:28.520 with a student visa going to a university. Now, when I met Chinese, I would tell them,
00:06:33.800 Hey, I'm, I'm in the air force. I'm a B2 pilot. Of course, they thought that was quite strange
00:06:38.680 that I would be there, but you know, that's exactly what I would be thinking about because
00:06:42.160 from what you read on culture, you sense a certain level of not a paranoia or suspicious,
00:06:49.240 but why are you here? What do you do? Are you a spy? You'd look like a CIA guy. I mean,
00:06:54.520 if you go there, I'd look at you saying, maybe you are working and you're trying to gather
00:06:58.620 intel to bring you back, but that was actually not the case. But this was 2002 to 2004. And
00:07:03.740 what was happening there, if you remember, we had just, China just entered WTO. So it was,
00:07:10.220 it was breakneck speed to grow the company or country and grow the economy. And all of my neighbors
00:07:15.580 were there building factories for fortune 100 companies. And so there was a lot less scrutiny
00:07:22.380 on me as a military guy. I think it was, the country at the time was focused on making money.
00:07:28.860 And, and, you know, certainly people found out who I was, but I didn't get a lot of scrutiny.
00:07:33.340 That's good to hear that they didn't do anything. Now, the second time when you went back was what
00:07:37.500 year? The second time I went back was in December of 2016. And that was to be the defense attache
00:07:43.740 in Beijing. And this time around, this is a little bit more public. It's a, they know a little bit
00:07:49.260 more that you're going or still. Oh, it's no, this is, this is definitely, I am the senior defense
00:07:53.820 official representing the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Chinese
00:08:01.420 military, the People's Liberation Army in Beijing. And so I, for example, I got there a week before
00:08:07.900 they took the UUV. I don't know if you remember, but they took one of our underwater gliders in the
00:08:13.180 South China Sea, essentially while one of our ships was trying to retrieve it. And so there was a big,
00:08:19.260 controversy, there was a big diplomatic controversy, and that was beginning to be a crisis. And I was
00:08:26.540 the one that negotiated the return with the People's Liberation Army of that glider to the, to the, to the
00:08:33.420 U.S. What, what was the biggest difference you felt culturally, uh, and, uh, spirit from 0204 to December
00:08:43.260 2016? I never saw a guy with a gun when I was there from 2000 to 2004. When I got back in 2016,
00:08:51.980 there were people with guns, uh, at the subway stops, not all of them, but they were there. And you could
00:08:59.260 definitely feel a palpable change in kind of the tone of the country. Now, some of that may be because
00:09:07.180 it's, it's not Shanghai, it's Beijing, which is the nation's capital, but clearly, um, things were a
00:09:13.020 heck of a lot more tense when I had been there in 2002 to 2000, just a completely, in my mind, different
00:09:18.380 vibe. What, from your experience and what, obviously to write a book like this specific to China, you've
00:09:23.980 had to do a lot of research to be able to write what you've written here. Uh, do you think a part of
00:09:29.100 that happened where they are now growing up, uh, to the point where not growing up, that's maybe a
00:09:35.260 bad word. They're becoming a bigger, I mean, GDP wise, they grew, uh, you know, to being at a higher
00:09:40.940 number than what they were before. They're become a little bit more competitive 2008 Olympics. It was
00:09:46.060 a statement they're opening. So, Hey, we are here to compete. Do you think a part of that is also their
00:09:50.860 level of confidence to know that we can compete with everybody? Let's be a little bit more cautious and
00:09:55.020 protective, uh, protect, uh, protective of what we're trying to build. So look out there or that
00:10:00.860 was just a different city for you? Well, no, I think there's a couple of things. One, the party,
00:10:06.780 the communist party was really concerned about corruption. If you go back to 1989, the, the
00:10:12.300 Tiananmen massacre, the three things that the Chinese communist party learned, uh, during that time was,
00:10:18.300 one, the communist party was under attack by elements within China in league with the United States.
00:10:24.860 Two, that openness was great for globalization in terms of science and technology and economic,
00:10:30.620 economics and finance. But in terms of ideology, they needed to pour a whole lot more into, uh,
00:10:36.860 what they were doing in order to prevent their population from becoming democratized. And three,
00:10:41.900 if the party ever became separated from the people that the party would fail. And you can see that
00:10:48.780 there's a definite paranoia on the part of the party in terms of not wanting to make sure
00:10:53.820 that while their people are very advanced in terms of the technology and the business models with
00:11:00.300 regard to the E economy, they're very cautious about that kind of getting out of control. And so
00:11:07.020 I think, you know, they are still in their minds, perfecting their ability to control people. But
00:11:12.620 at the same time, they're concerned about, you know, at any moment, this thing could become unraveled.
00:11:17.500 So it creates this kind of, you know, they really believe that, um, that it could in at any moment,
00:11:24.380 um, the party could essentially lose control because the population essentially, um, awakes.
00:11:31.020 And, um, and so I think it, it plays into their, that paranoia.
00:11:35.340 Yeah. So, so are they more concerned internally for it to collapse or somebody from the outside
00:11:40.460 to come and penetrate and confuse them and divide, you know, from within?
00:11:44.460 I think it's a combination. It's a combination of, um, internally in terms of, are they, uh, do they
00:11:50.620 have legitimacy in the eyes of the people? And then what are some things that might in their minds,
00:11:55.980 confuse the people in terms of, you know, um, democracy or human rights or civil liberties?
00:12:01.980 So with you now being who you are and, you know, you were with the national security council,
00:12:07.500 senior director of strategy, you've written this book. It's very obvious on who you are and what
00:12:12.700 your position is at. Is someone like you able to go back with no issues? Like, would you be
00:12:17.500 comfortable saying, I'm gonna take my family to China? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Why is that?
00:12:21.980 Well, because clearly, um, what I say in that book is that the Communist Party is not, uh,
00:12:28.540 great for the Chinese people and that's not something that they appreciate. People like me
00:12:32.700 saying, um, certainly the way that you become a China expert in the United States is that you
00:12:37.740 go to China. Uh, in order to go to China, that you say things that actually the Communist Party
00:12:42.940 doesn't get angry about. And so they may not even give me a visa, but even if they were to give me a
00:12:48.780 visa, I would be concerned that I would go there and, um, they would, they would find some reason
00:12:53.260 to not let me go back. Not let you come back here. Right. Even though, well, I mean, today would
00:12:57.980 be a good time to actually keep you if you went over there. So if you have any plans of staying
00:13:00.940 in China, you may want to go. I don't, I don't want to go for a long vacation. So let me, let me go
00:13:05.260 back to something you said, because the other thing that, that really, um, happened and you mentioned 2008,
00:13:10.540 and it's important because it's not only the paranoia that they have, but also if you go back to
00:13:14.860 Deng Xiaoping and what he said about hiding capability and biding time, this is not a change
00:13:21.980 in what the Communist Party, who they are. It's really in 2008 when, when our financial system
00:13:28.300 essentially said that we really don't know how to run, uh, global finance, uh, that they really
00:13:34.300 believe that they had arrived. And so there, there's also an element of they've been, you know,
00:13:39.980 having to play second fiddle, um, based on the century of humiliation and the fact that,
00:13:45.500 you know, they were the dominant, uh, society for 5,000 years. They had a hundred years of bad luck
00:13:51.100 and now they're back on top. They're, they're ready now to essentially, um, take a leading role in the
00:13:58.140 international system. So, you know, part of that goes with not just, you know, that vibe is not just with,
00:14:05.980 you know, how they treat their population, but also how they treat the, the West, how they treat 0.82
00:14:10.780 foreigners, because there is an element to say, we're not going to back down anymore. We're going 1.00
00:14:15.260 to be, we're going to stand up for, um, for what we believe and, and we're going to, we're going to
00:14:19.980 make a name for ourselves in the international order and we're going to, we're going to fight to have our
00:14:24.540 interests, um, uh, uh, respected. You mean them? Them. Yeah. So you say in the book,
00:14:32.300 I mean, obviously I got a lot of notes. I got seven, eight pages of notes to go through with you,
00:14:36.540 but you said in the book, uh, that you will not, you said this, I think Steve Bannon said this,
00:14:40.780 but you quoted it. The biggest threat to America is not Al Qaeda. The biggest threat to America is not,
00:14:46.140 actually, this is you saying it in the book, I believe, because Steve Bannon said something else.
00:14:49.500 The biggest threat to America is not Al Qaeda. It's not ISIS. It's not Putin. It's not any of these guys.
00:14:54.940 It's China. You really believe that? I believe it. I think it's the most consequential, 0.99
00:15:00.140 existential threat, not just to America, just to democracy the world's ever seen.
00:15:05.820 And it's because it's cloaked itself in this picture of adoption of the international norms
00:15:13.260 that were established, uh, and the rules and norms and the systems and the institutions that were
00:15:17.900 established after World War II perpetuated through the Cold War and essentially, in our thoughts,
00:15:24.220 was dominant after the end of the Cold War. It was, they wrapped themselves in that. And so there's
00:15:29.660 a belief that they, uh, that they accept those principles. And what they say is they, they want
00:15:37.180 to have the international system, um, essentially correspond to their interests. But what they don't
00:15:44.060 say what their interests are, and their interests are essentially counter to, uh, every democratic
00:15:48.780 principle that, that we stand for, human rights, civil liberties, rule of law.
00:15:52.460 Uh, it's interesting when you say that, because that's a pretty bold statement to make. You hear a lot
00:15:56.940 of people talk about climate change. You hear a lot of people talk about cyber, you know, cyber war,
00:16:00.700 all this other stuff, which you talk about in the book as well. But to say China is at the highest
00:16:05.500 level more than ISIS, Al Qaeda, Putin, those are some, that's strong statements to be making. But
00:16:12.780 let's go a little bit back to you are working, uh, as the senior director strategy of, uh, the National
00:16:18.940 Security Council. And you go in, you said you have two reasons why you wanted to be a part of them.
00:16:23.820 And one was to educate the members about who they are. And the other one was to ensure the security
00:16:28.540 of 5g for us and also other countries, right? Not just us, right? Everybody else that's involved.
00:16:34.220 And then you, you're giving this one talk and you brought some other people to also give inside.
00:16:38.620 There was a lot of dialogue and then it got a little bit heated and then you held the meeting
00:16:42.620 back kind of trying to bring everybody together. Hey, this is a good question. We're having this
00:16:45.820 discourse. This is a very good thing. Where did it go from there to the, you know, press
00:16:51.500 leaking, you know, being leaked to the press. And then from there, you're getting fired
00:16:55.500 from National Security Council. How did that process take place? So, um, the, the debate on
00:17:01.340 what was going, how we were going to treat China really was taking place during the summer of 2017.
00:17:07.820 And it was really about how are we going to structure the national security strategy? What
00:17:12.060 we're going to, what was going to be our priorities? And that was a process of discovery. What,
00:17:17.420 and quite frankly, I had, that's all I had been working on since 2014. So from 2014 to 2017, when
00:17:24.620 I get to the White House, my two years in the joint staff, my time in Beijing, and then coming to the,
00:17:29.900 to the White House in May of 2017, everything had been focused on this competition between the U.S. 0.92
00:17:35.180 and China and what the implications were on a, from, on a societal level, an economic level,
00:17:40.620 on a national security level. When I get into the National Security Council in 2017,
00:17:45.420 I, we start the discussions on framing and writing the new national security strategy. And so in that
00:17:53.100 dialogue was, you know, the first thing you do when you have a strategy is what's your problem
00:17:57.820 statement? What are you, you know, what, what are the threats that the United States faces? And of
00:18:04.140 course, you know, the same thing that you just mentioned, a lot of people talk about climate
00:18:08.220 change, they talk about terrorism. What we had to contend with is there's a lot of things happening
00:18:15.900 that people outside of national security policy may be aware of, don't talk about,
00:18:22.780 that affects, that affects everything that we do. And so we start, I started, because I had had those
00:18:28.060 discussions outside of the national security policy establishment, I started bringing that
00:18:32.780 information in. And really, for the first time, you know, by the spring of 2017, I had formed in my mind a
00:18:40.060 good picture of how to describe it, what the elements of it were, and then, you know, essentially,
00:18:45.580 how to have a logical conversation that said, these are the challenges we face, and this is what we need,
00:18:51.500 we need to do. That conversation by August of 2017 was complete. And then I said, I'm going to be here a
00:18:59.740 short amount of time. If I could do one thing for national security policy to change the course of
00:19:07.020 of the United States going forward, to preserve our republic, it would be to secure the internet.
00:19:14.860 And so I started working on talking to engineers about what is 5G, what's the state of play today,
00:19:23.340 because we'd said in the national security strategy that data is a strategic resource, like oil in the
00:19:28.620 20th century, data in the 21st century, which will drive artificial intelligence and everything that
00:19:33.900 that all the algorithms that got that essentially guide our lives to better places. If we didn't
00:19:41.020 secure that strategic resource, then we were at risk as a democracy. And so how do we take that,
00:19:47.660 you know, new, essentially, beam forming antennas with software defined radios and networks, which
00:19:54.460 something that we had used in the military for a long time, and apply and give it to the people,
00:19:59.500 but then do it in a way that actually provides security for their data, which is, in essence,
00:20:06.940 what you know, I'd come to the conclusion, the only way that you democratize in a digital sense
00:20:11.820 is by protecting is by giving control of the at the citizen level of their data, of their data,
00:20:19.500 of their data. And the analogy I make when I talk to people is, if you go back to Alexander
00:20:27.340 Hamilton and the framing of the constitution, you know, essentially what he was shooting for
00:20:32.620 after having surveyed, you know, done an extensive survey of all the governments that existed prior,
00:20:37.420 was how do we create a government where no one person, party or group can attain ultimate power,
00:20:43.020 because ultimate power is ultimately corrupting. And so that's the constitution. But then,
00:20:49.740 what if it fails? What if, you know, we don't actually provide for the people and somebody can
00:20:56.060 gain power? Then we give the American people the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms,
00:21:02.300 so that they can fight an oppressive government if that dream ever fails. And of course, in the digital
00:21:07.580 world, what you saw what you had begun to see is a world where you may not know you're being oppressed,
00:21:15.580 or you may not know who your oppressor. And in that world, you may not know you're the oppressor,
00:21:20.860 you may not know you're being oppressed, or the second war that you who your oppressor is, who your
00:21:26.860 oppressor is, right? Because we'd seen in, for instance, after the election, using big data analysis,
00:21:33.180 AI bots and social media networks, the Russians had created protests, right? They had, it was 0.98
00:21:38.780 ostensibly on behalf of Black Lives Matter, I'm talking about the one in New York City, a few days
00:21:43.580 after the election, but it was really the Russians. And so what you what you're seeing is, in going back
00:21:51.020 to data as a strategic resource, in the digitized world, the ability to aggregate data is equivalent
00:21:57.580 to aggregating power. And if you can aggregate power, then you have to wonder about who has the ability
00:22:02.860 to aggregate data in that world. And today, the two entities that can really aggregate data
00:22:09.180 are large tech companies, and totalitarian regimes. Democracies have a hard time aggregating data,
00:22:15.740 United States cannot aggregate data, because the law prevents it from doing so. So we started this,
00:22:23.420 this unit within the State Department called the Global Engagement Center, the Global Engagement
00:22:28.540 Center was supposed to fight radicalization, for instance, by ISIS and, and prevent influence
00:22:35.180 of our population. But they can't do their job because they can't aggregate data. Not even public
00:22:41.340 facing Twitter data, right? Because there's concern that we use the resources of the government to spy on
00:22:48.300 our own population. But one of the what so one of the ways that foreign states go after us is actually
00:22:54.540 take our own social media data and use it in ways that influence us. And so in order to discover
00:23:01.740 that, you actually have to be in the data. And so the only ones that can be in the data today
00:23:06.860 are the large tech companies. And so you're essentially offloading to the large tech companies.
00:23:14.460 One of the primary purposes of forming the Constitution, which is in the preamble, provide for the common
00:23:21.020 defense. And so if you think about national security, and gets really the heart of things,
00:23:25.420 right? If you think about national security, we have an Air Force, we have an Army, we have a Navy,
00:23:29.340 we have a Marine Corps, right? I don't think you're worried about, you know, Marines jumping into
00:23:35.020 your building here or getting bombed, right? You're not concerned about that. But I guarantee you the
00:23:40.460 Chinese are in your networks, and the Russians and the North Koreans and everybody else.
00:23:43.980 You guarantee it.
00:23:44.540 I guarantee it. They're in your networks. They're in everybody's networks. This is what they do. And so if
00:23:50.140 they're in your networks...
00:23:51.340 That's strong statements. You're saying you're guaranteeing China and Russia's in our network.
00:23:55.260 I guarantee it. I guarantee it. Particularly because you put out that video on China.
00:24:01.100 I guarantee they've come at this place.
00:24:04.620 But so who's responsible for protecting you from that?
00:24:09.580 Government? I would assume.
00:24:11.420 No. And who is it?
00:24:12.700 Not at all. The government protects their own networks. They don't protect your networks.
00:24:15.900 Got it. So you're saying responsibility on the entrepreneur to do that.
00:24:19.820 You're responsible to protect your own network. And then, of course, if you have...
00:24:23.980 Do you have a Twitter account? Do you have...
00:24:25.580 I do.
00:24:25.820 Okay. Twitter's responsible for protecting that.
00:24:31.020 Twitter is responsible for protecting my account on Twitter.
00:24:33.900 Right.
00:24:34.780 And I'm responsible for protecting my network.
00:24:36.780 Your data.
00:24:37.180 Your data, right?
00:24:37.580 My data, what have you.
00:24:38.380 Which we have, we've invested into that.
00:24:39.900 It's not the U.S. government.
00:24:40.860 Sure. But now let me ask you this. So I had a former undercover FBI agent right here.
00:24:45.740 He sat in that chair three weeks ago.
00:24:47.900 So I asked him, I said, so what is the, what is the real,
00:24:52.220 you know, the line you don't cross between the government protecting me, right?
00:24:57.180 Because the government getting too involved and, hey, you know, the whole Apple going to DMV,
00:25:02.300 getting IDs, not Apple, the government going to the DMV and saying,
00:25:05.340 we want to get the licenses. And then government getting to
00:25:08.060 Apple and saying, we want to be able to get access to the phone conversations in case a
00:25:11.260 terrorist does this. Well, in China, because some people will say, well, China is set up in a way
00:25:17.660 where they feel like they're a company and they control what everybody does because they work for
00:25:22.300 the company, right? Where America looks at, this is actually how I view America. America sees their
00:25:27.740 citizens as 1099. China sees their citizens as W2. So because they have more control, it's tougher to 0.90
00:25:35.580 infiltrate their system than America's because America kind of leaves everybody alone. Would you
00:25:40.540 agree with that? Where we are left a little bit more to ourselves without the top having access to
00:25:44.780 the private companies to get data to see if anybody's tapping into our systems or no?
00:25:49.020 You mean from our government perspective? Yes.
00:25:51.820 You're left totally alone. Do you think that's okay? No, I don't think it's okay.
00:25:57.260 Oh, so you're saying they should be more involved. They should be involved in protecting your data.
00:26:02.140 They should be involved in ensuring that there is not undue influence placed on you by a foreign
00:26:08.780 nation so that you are making decisions based on influence that's coming from outside our borders.
00:26:15.420 Okay, so now somebody's watching this and saying, well, Pat, that's exactly what a big government
00:26:18.860 guy would say because let them control us and they know what's best for us to keep us safe.
00:26:25.740 I'm not saying that the government has access to your data.
00:26:29.340 You're saying they should. They should not have access to your data. They should ensure that
00:26:33.420 nobody else has access to your data either. So do you remember San Bernardino and you have,
00:26:38.460 there's an argument between Apple and FBI? Absolutely.
00:26:41.820 Right? And Apple said, we're not giving you the back door.
00:26:43.900 I remember that clearly.
00:26:44.700 Okay. So think about that in the context of what we're talking about here. I don't think anybody
00:26:49.100 should have that back door to have access to your data. A foreign country, our own country.
00:26:53.340 Okay. Nobody should. What I'm saying is the only one that should have say over who has access to
00:26:59.580 your data is you. That's what it means to live in a democracy in a digital world.
00:27:05.020 But then this gives me the question. So if you're saying the only one that should have access to my
00:27:09.420 data, that's fine. We're in agreement there. But if China is hacking into my data and getting access to
00:27:16.460 what I'm doing, you're saying the government should prevent that from happening. How can they do that
00:27:22.380 if they don't have access to what I'm doing?
00:27:24.940 Well, they can have access to the network. They don't have to have access to your data, right?
00:27:29.020 Because if your data is encrypted, they can't actually see what your data is, but they can
00:27:33.180 certainly see what China is doing. I mean, that piece, I'm confident that we have an understanding
00:27:39.260 of what they're doing within our networks. Just their actual protecting that or preventing that from
00:27:45.340 happen doesn't occur. That's why, by the way, China built a great firewall because they wanted to
00:27:50.220 protect their population because they realized that if they didn't protect their population,
00:27:55.420 then globalization and the open internet would allow for democratic values to seep in. So they
00:28:00.300 wanted to protect their people from influence that came from outside the country.
00:28:05.180 You think that's a good move?
00:28:06.380 I think that's a great move because if you're connected to a totalitarian regime and you're open
00:28:13.580 and the totalitarian regime is intent on influencing your population, the way we've designed our
00:28:19.180 current internet absolutely allows for it.
00:28:21.260 But doesn't that mean that we become totalitarian if we do that as well? Like to match against them,
00:28:26.060 we kind of have to...
00:28:27.020 If we did what they did, right?
00:28:29.340 Which means what?
00:28:30.460 They didn't protect their individual data from them as a government. They just protected it from the
00:28:36.220 outside. So they built a wall around it. What I'm telling you is you, you have control over your data,
00:28:42.620 not the government, not our government, not their government, not Twitter, not Facebook,
00:28:48.460 that you own it. And so if Facebook wants to sell your data, then they have to get your permission
00:28:53.580 and may even have to pay you to do so.
00:28:55.340 If they want to sell my information.
00:28:56.860 If they want to sell your data.
00:28:57.820 Who are you more concerned about? The totalitarian regime or the large technology companies?
00:29:03.260 I would say today they have the same business model.
00:29:05.340 Really?
00:29:06.220 Of course.
00:29:07.340 Tell me why.
00:29:07.900 Look at them today. Both China and Facebook have sensors.
00:29:15.020 China sends their sensors to school. What do the sensors learn? The sensors actually learn about
00:29:21.260 Tiananmen Square. The truth. Right?
00:29:25.820 Okay.
00:29:26.380 Because they have to sensor that discussion on the network.
00:29:30.620 Facebook has sensors. The sensors go to school to learn what they need to sensor on Facebook's
00:29:39.180 network. Right? Same business model. It's about free data. It's about using that data.
00:29:44.780 Except for this one, it's about profit. For this one, it's about control. And even down to the sensors,
00:29:50.940 they have the same model. You're putting them at the same level. Wow.
00:29:56.700 I'm not saying I'm not, no, I'm not at the same level because one is about profit. One's about control.
00:30:02.780 What I'm telling you is the system that we built, the technological foundations of the system we built,
00:30:08.540 then the app services and business models that we built on top of that, allow for power to be
00:30:15.260 equated with aggregation of data. When you do that, you create business models. The business model of
00:30:21.420 a large tech company is equivalent to the business model of China. So do you think, you know how for
00:30:25.900 them, like they don't, they don't allow Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to go and they have their own
00:30:30.060 YouTube, they have their own Facebook, all of that that they have. Do you think, are you suggesting that
00:30:34.940 we should only create it for US and not have it available to other countries to have access to our
00:30:39.500 social media? But that, or that's not what you're saying? That's not what I'm saying. Okay. So you're not
00:30:43.020 saying put a firewall where the social media is just for us. No, no. You're saying firewall to
00:30:47.020 protect us from somebody else coming through the system. And really what I was saying, and what,
00:30:52.460 if you go to page 19 of the National Security Strategy, it says it right there, we're going to
00:30:55.980 build a nationwide secure 5G network. In other words, we're going to build a network unlike any
00:31:01.180 network that's ever been built before. And it's really about protecting individual data so that you
00:31:05.740 have control of your data, nobody else does, and then you can figure out how to use it. And that,
00:31:11.180 then we would take that network that we built, and then we'd share it with our democratic allies
00:31:16.380 and partners. If you build a network like this, a totalitarian regime can't control the population
00:31:23.340 because they can't prevent them. They don't know what information they have access to. They can't
00:31:29.580 see into what they're saying, right, which is what you can have in China. They can't block you out from
00:31:34.540 having other information that they might not want you to have because they can't see what you're doing.
00:31:39.900 And it really becomes a competitive advantage, both from an economic standpoint, but also from
00:31:44.940 a societal standpoint. Let me ask you this. When you came out and you had the meeting and you talked
00:31:49.180 about China the way you did, right? And you kind of said, here's what we have to worry about with
00:31:53.020 this side, and this is what they're going to be doing. They may be our biggest, they are our biggest
00:31:56.300 threat. And then here's 5G, what's really going on. Did you immediately get a sense on who was for you
00:32:04.300 and who was against your talking points? It's kind of like in this room. If I all of a sudden say,
00:32:10.060 Tom Brady's the greatest of all time. Within five seconds, I know who hates the Patriots and who
00:32:15.020 likes them, right? Did you kind of sit there and say, oh wow, that guy crosses arms. He's definitely
00:32:21.660 not happy. He's curious. Did you get that feeling? And was it crossed the board one side politically,
00:32:27.340 or was it both sides were happy and unhappy? So let's go back to 5G, right? You know what I'm
00:32:32.780 asking. Yeah, I know exactly what you're asking. Once the decision is made to confront China, 0.75
00:32:38.780 that was a process that was just going to run. I didn't need to really focus on that. I focused on
00:32:44.460 5G. I focused on the secure internet. When I started sharing, because what I had done is I spoke to,
00:32:51.660 you know, network engineers, people that built networks. When I started sharing,
00:32:55.420 the ideas that we had come up with, if I had been smarter politically at the time,
00:33:01.900 I would have known exactly how to answer that question. And I would have said anybody that's
00:33:06.140 got telecom in their portfolio was immediately against it, because the telecom industry was
00:33:10.700 immediately against it, right? That was a clear signal that if I was paying attention at the time
00:33:18.700 and really understood DC in a political way, again, I was a national security professional.
00:33:23.340 I was a military guy. I didn't really get into politics. But in much the same way that you see
00:33:29.580 industry influence on just about anything in DC, the industry, the telecom industry in particular was,
00:33:36.060 once this kind of made its way outside of government channels, because those people that are in a telecom
00:33:43.740 job in DC have some relationship with the industry, that information got out. Once it got out, the
00:33:50.780 industry said, uh-uh. And that's when I, you know, started my pathway to having my paper leaked and
00:33:59.340 me asked to leave the national security account. Did you kind of, you know how sometimes you know if
00:34:03.340 you say something, you either don't know the consequences of you saying something, or you
00:34:09.340 know and you say it anyways? Which one were you? I would say, um, that, uh, both. Oh, okay. Right.
00:34:17.660 So some of them I did not, some of them I didn't know. I didn't know the political lay of the land.
00:34:22.860 But at the end of the day, it was about preserving our republic. It was about our constitution. It was
00:34:28.540 about national security. It's not about me. It was never about me. The first time, day one, when I
00:34:34.620 take the oath of office and putting on the uniform, it's not about me anymore. It's about the constitution.
00:34:40.780 It's about preserving the republic. There's, if it ever became about me, then that's my time to leave.
00:34:47.980 Do you think most people start like a statement, statesman like you, and then when you're around too
00:34:53.020 much, then you get kind of tainted based on the environment you're around. You know what I'm, you know
00:34:57.420 what I'm saying, right? You get in, to me, most people I see originals like, well, I really want
00:35:01.660 to make an impact. I really want to do this. It's statements mentality. Right. And you're like,
00:35:05.660 hey, we have an opportunity to make 10 million here, 15 million here, 22 million here. We can
00:35:09.100 have control over here. We can have more influence here. Do you think starts that went into the changes
00:35:13.740 where if you want to move up, you kind of need to get a little bit out there and, uh, accept the
00:35:19.580 reality of what politics could do? Well, so I look at myself as an entrepreneur and when you take
00:35:27.420 somebody that's entrepreneurial and that really believes in the oath of office that they've taken
00:35:32.380 and then you put them in a bureaucracy where they're not, uh, you, I had, um, when I went to China
00:35:40.300 that I took a year at a language institute, two years living in China, that's three years.
00:35:45.660 I told the air force I'd give them back three for one. So that added 10 years to my commitment.
00:35:52.140 Right. And so as time went on that, and as I rose up in the ranks and I would move,
00:36:00.220 say every year, I would get a two year commitment. So if you move every year and you get a two year
00:36:05.980 commitment, you never really have the opportunity to get out. And so I'm an entrepreneur. I'm living
00:36:11.660 in a bureaucracy, but I can't leave. I have no, I have no choice. I have to stay. So I can either say,
00:36:19.100 you know, get angry about it, right? That I'm beating my head against the wall because, you know,
00:36:23.180 things need to be done, or I can just learn to, you know, live within it and try to drive as much
00:36:29.500 change as deep as I can for as long as I'm there. I asked this question for one reason. Like, you know,
00:36:38.140 you listen to Joe Biden. He's been in the world, in the political world for a long time, right?
00:36:43.340 Yeah. Okay. Did he start off, you know, having to play all these political games that you have
00:36:49.260 to play? Or was it a good cause? And you look at Mitch McConnell, two names that you talk about
00:36:53.180 in your book, one's a Republican, one's a Democrat. And they're both have some ties to China, right?
00:36:59.660 Right. One, Mitch McConnell, 1993, I think he married his wife, whose father's a very powerful,
00:37:06.540 I don't know if you want to say the business owner, entrepreneur, and they're connected to
00:37:11.740 the communistic regime. And then on the other side, Joe Biden, his son, Hunter, it's all over
00:37:16.620 the news. Everybody's hearing about all the issues with what happened there. I ask it again, this is
00:37:21.340 not something that's a favorable to Democrats, not liking China or wanting to support China,
00:37:28.380 or this is not just Republicans not liking China or disliking China. This is purely on both sides,
00:37:34.860 on what you're seeing. Right. And when you went and investigated more, were you kind of like,
00:37:38.940 oh my gosh, I didn't know the Biden family was like this, or the McConnell, was it one of those
00:37:43.420 things where the more and more and more research and investigation you did, the more like this is
00:37:47.260 bigger than you thought it was? Did you have one of those moments yourself?
00:37:50.780 Well, there was, so the one moment that I had was when I got the briefing in the fall of 2014.
00:37:58.620 That was from one of the major audit firms. And when I looked, when I opened that briefing,
00:38:03.420 and I realized, you know, a lot of the elements of that we would use to attack a country using an
00:38:11.580 air attack, I saw play out in front of my eyes, using economics, finance and information. And so,
00:38:19.260 you know, that was it, that was the moment, it broke my mind. Because up until that point,
00:38:24.940 I thought that America is the greatest nation on earth, we're unassailable, we're the most powerful,
00:38:30.220 you know, nothing could happen to us. And that was the point when I realized that,
00:38:34.860 no, I mean, we could have carrier battle groups, nuclear subs, F-35s, and all of this capability,
00:38:41.420 and spend $800 billion a year on defense. But if our society was basically being attacked
00:38:47.820 at their job level, at their societal level, then we had lost the ability to protect our nation in a
00:38:55.020 globalized internet powered world. And from that point on, I just started studying. And I read
00:39:01.900 everything I could, and I talked to everybody I could. So because I'd been at the Council on Foreign
00:39:06.380 Relations, I had access to a lot of executives of finance companies, of investment companies. And so
00:39:12.940 I started going around and talking to, you know, some of their research offices and talking to people
00:39:17.900 and trying to understand what was going on in our country, and how global business worked, how global
00:39:22.940 finance worked, how did investment work. And what, you know, did I ever stop finding rot? No,
00:39:31.020 I find it every single day. As you continue to pull back the layers of it, you realize it goes
00:39:37.500 through a society because it's based on this fundamental belief that openness will lead to
00:39:42.940 democracy. And that is a key to China, the Chinese Communist Party's power. Because when we believe that
00:39:49.580 openness would lead to democracy, they said, there's my opportunity, because they're going to let me
00:39:55.900 have access to their finance, their trade, their investment, their immigration, their media, their
00:40:00.540 politics, the internet, academia, I have access to everything. You know, think about Commodore Perry
00:40:05.980 sailing in with the great flight fleet into Japan. He had to use guns to get into Japan.
00:40:13.420 We just let the Chinese in. And sometimes we forced them to pay. Sometimes we just gave it to them. 1.00
00:40:19.900 It's kind of part of their philosophy, though. If you think about the whole Confucius and Art of War,
00:40:24.300 it's battling without having to battle, right? The whole philosophy that you talk about, which was
00:40:28.300 brilliant when you talked about in the book. But what did you learn from the McConnell family? And what
00:40:33.260 did you learn from Biden's connection to China? What I learned at the White House, and this is really at the
00:40:38.700 White House, because when you before you go to the White House, you always hear these stories about,
00:40:43.740 you know, it's the White House calling, you know, people like stand up or like, you know, how can I
00:40:48.140 help you? So I'm at the White House, and I'm working with think tanks and law firms trying to,
00:40:54.140 number one, expose what the Chinese were doing, but number two, come up with, you know, credible policy
00:40:58.540 options that we could implement that would get them, you know, that would prevent them from taking
00:41:02.940 advantage of our population. And time after time, they say, sorry, I can't help you. I don't want to
00:41:09.340 anger my Chinese funders or my Chinese customers. My partners don't, you know, aren't comfortable with
00:41:14.540 us, because we have a lot of business in China. And I'm like, I'm calling from the White House. And our
00:41:21.180 top think tanks, top think tanks and the top law firms in the country, were telling me, I can't help you. And so,
00:41:29.100 you know, I knew about, I knew this already, right? So, but then when you, you really get an
00:41:36.060 understanding of, okay, if they won't even help the White House, then we've got a serious, serious
00:41:43.260 problem. What did you learn about McConnell and Biden family? Well, so I put, they're the only ones
00:41:52.300 that I named in the book. And the reason I did is because it's all out in the open. You can go read the
00:41:58.300 sources, the New York Times report, Wall Street Journal reports. Biden, his son, went with him on
00:42:05.820 Air Force Two over to China, 10 days later is named a board member of Bohai Harvest Hedge Fund, which is
00:42:14.380 a billion and a half dollar hedge fund. McConnell, you already talked about, his family, his father-in-law
00:42:22.540 knows Jiang Zemin, former chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, and his sister-in-law is on the
00:42:29.580 board of the Bank of China, right? What influence would you say is there? You would, they would say,
00:42:37.900 there is no influence. That just happened in part of McConnell. It happens to be my family
00:42:43.020 relationships. On the part of Biden, he would say, that was my son. You really had nothing to
00:42:49.260 do with me, although he did go over with him on Air Force Two. But that being said, it's not about
00:42:54.940 quid pro quo. It's about adopting Xi Jinping's worldview. And his worldview, which he says at Davos
00:43:03.740 many times, is globalization's good. You know, we should, we should continue to have open markets.
00:43:10.380 We should continue to have open systems so that we can all collectively do well together as a global
00:43:16.780 community. That's, that's essentially, I'm paraphrasing what Xi Jinping says. But that's not
00:43:21.980 what he believes. Because if you read the Chinese Communist Party documents, like, for instance, the
00:43:28.940 document number nine that have been, that have come out of the country and have been translated,
00:43:34.460 then you realize they repudiate every single element of, for example, the Atlantic Charger,
00:43:40.380 which is a good one page template for the international order signed by FDR and Winston
00:43:44.220 Churchill, eight paragraphs, one page, democratic principles, free trade, rule of law and self
00:43:49.820 determination. That's it. That's that in a nutshell, that tells you about what the UN, WTO, Bretton Woods,
00:43:55.900 all that's about. The Chinese Communist Party doesn't believe in any of those. So when he,
00:44:01.420 when he goes to Davos, Xi Jinping goes to Davos, and he says, we need to stay open for business.
00:44:07.420 It's not, we need to stay open for business because democracy, human rights, civil liberty,
00:44:12.220 and rule of law are great. It's because if you stay open for business, I can ensure that we have access
00:44:19.740 to science, technology, innovation, and capital and talent.
00:44:26.460 So, um, let, let me ask this question. So for, for me, I used to be in business with a guy who
00:44:34.460 behind closed doors, this one guy, I would always look at him and I would talk to him. He was always
00:44:39.900 afraid of one guy and he couldn't stand the other guy he was working with, but he was frightened of
00:44:45.340 him. Like, why are you afraid of that guy? You know, and I would always ask him, trying to figure
00:44:49.260 out why you're afraid of this guy. Why are you afraid of this guy? Finally, a year and a half
00:44:53.900 later, I found out what it was. So he was doing some things with business behind closed doors and
00:44:59.820 it was not gray. It was a little bit past gray, close to, you know, breaking the law. And eventually
00:45:06.060 he got caught. But under the table, he was paying him $25,000 a month cash, not 1099, not WTO,
00:45:14.380 which 25 cash is 50 K a month pre-tax, right? The same as $600,000 a year income. So one day he's
00:45:23.180 upset and you know, he tells, uh, uh, one of my competitors and that comes to me and I find out
00:45:30.220 about it. Like now it makes sense why he is afraid of him. But then when he stopped paying the $25,000
00:45:37.820 cash, the other guy told everybody about his business and he lost it anyways. Right? Right.
00:45:43.340 So, so for me, here's how it, here's how I view it. And I want to get your perspective to see
00:45:49.020 how you see this. The NBA situation right now with what's going on with LeBron, right? Or not just
00:45:53.580 LeBron. There was Maury, Maury, right? The Houston GM makes a comment about it a bit, you know,
00:45:59.180 what's going on over there. And then they're upset canceling all preseason games. And then all of a
00:46:04.860 sudden the owner of Houston makes his comments. And then from there, Adam Silver says, I support freedom
00:46:10.460 of speech. Steve Kerr didn't want to say anything because he kind of didn't have a,
00:46:14.540 wasn't too educated on the situation at that time. Popovich said a few words. And then LeBron says,
00:46:19.500 maybe he misspoke, right? What he shouldn't have said. So for me, I look at that and say, okay,
00:46:24.780 why is this happening? I want to kind of get your thoughts as well. Why, why are they doing this?
00:46:28.220 Okay. Why would they be doing this? Is it political? To me, it's not political. To me, it's
00:46:32.700 one and a half billion viewers there. Same reason why U.S. is trying to make movies over 0.97
00:46:36.460 there. And you're getting rock making movies doing $600 million here with giving love to China
00:46:41.100 versus just doing it. It's another market. Actually, to me, that's pretty honest because
00:46:45.900 it's money play, right? It's not political play or anything, man. We can sell one and a half billion
00:46:50.620 people, more shoes. We can sell them more media. We can go out there and, you know, get the games to
00:46:54.780 go over there. Instead of making 40 million a year, we make 50 million, 60 million a year.
00:46:59.580 In a situation like this, before I ask you the LeBron opinion, but in a situation like this,
00:47:03.820 do you process it from the standpoint of, well, maybe Mitch has some
00:47:10.620 business that he's doing and out of respect to his wife, he's just kind of given the respect to
00:47:14.060 China. And maybe Biden's son has some respect. And it's a son. You know, you don't have 50 sons.
00:47:18.540 You got a couple sons. It's blood. He's just trying to protect his son to do what he's doing.
00:47:22.700 Do you think that is an acceptable reasoning to allow them to do what they're doing? Or should it be
00:47:28.620 America first because of the responsibilities that you have, then your kids, your wife,
00:47:33.180 your family? How do you process that? Well, let me put it this way. And this was really
00:47:37.900 something I had told my wife leading up to 2016 elections. Now, you were in the military, right?
00:47:47.420 If I had any of the relationships that I just talked about, there is no way I could have a security
00:47:53.340 clearance. Wouldn't happen. I could not get that through the system. It would not grant me a top
00:47:58.620 secret security clearance. If you were, let me clarify. If you're Mitch McConnell or Joe Biden
00:48:02.700 with those relationships, you wouldn't be able to get the security clearance that you have. Right.
00:48:06.140 Fair enough. Right. Yep. Absolutely. This is just facts. So, if I had done, if I had taken my,
00:48:15.580 you know, personal email or my work email and basically taken that all off and put it on,
00:48:22.140 you know, a server and had some classified message, what do you think would happen to me?
00:48:29.100 You're fired. You, you know, you're, you're- Court-martialed, right? Yeah. Court-martialed.
00:48:32.300 Absolutely. Kicked out. It's not even 180. Right? No, there's no doubt. Sure. And so, as you see these
00:48:38.540 things, these kinds of things that, that I know that, you know, whoever's gets elected as commander in
00:48:44.060 chief has a responsibility. They're the, they are the, the, the chief diplomat. They're the chief law
00:48:49.740 enforcement officer. They're the commander in chief. So, how can that person have the kind of
00:48:57.740 relationships that I, as a military member, can't even have a security clearance with,
00:49:02.220 or do the kind of things that I would be fired or court-martialed with? So, you know, I, it's pretty
00:49:08.140 black and white to me when you're the commander of chief and you are requiring the people that work
00:49:13.180 for you, that swear an oath that are working for you as the chief executive, particularly commander in
00:49:19.020 chief, because commander of a military force is much different than being the senior executive
00:49:24.220 at a company. It's a completely different type of authority over somebody, you know, the authority to,
00:49:29.500 to not just fire, but also in prison, right? Because that's court-martial authority. And you,
00:49:35.820 and yet you do the things that you say, or you must enforce that they cannot do, then you've,
00:49:41.900 then you've created a problem. And we, this is pervasive in our system, that our politicians can have
00:49:47.340 the kind of relationships that we can't even allow our military members to have security
00:49:52.540 clearances having. Just leave that aside. Okay. We'll just set that aside. Now you have the president
00:49:59.420 of the United States saying, here's a non-market economy that we basically let into the WTO in
00:50:04.460 2001, and they broke every rule in the book and continue to, and they're not going to stop.
00:50:08.460 So we're, you know what we're going to do? We're going to treat them just like we did prior to going
00:50:12.220 the WTO. Prior to going the WTO, they had to have a vote on most favored nation status every single
00:50:18.780 year, right? Once that stopped, then corporate money started pouring in. Foreign direct investment
00:50:24.540 started pouring into China and they grew like crazy. They took 70,000 factories and 3.4 million
00:50:29.180 manufacturing jobs. And so the president of the United States says, okay, they're clearly not,
00:50:34.700 don't have any intention on following the rules. We're going to put tariffs on because that's what we
00:50:38.060 had before. They start, we started and we let them in. We're going to do the same exact thing.
00:50:42.860 And then you have Joe Biden and you have Mitch McConnell saying, that's a bad idea.
00:50:48.620 Now, does that relation, do those relationships contribute to that? Or is it just because they
00:50:53.180 believe that? I don't know the answer to that, but I guarantee you any counterintelligence officer
00:51:00.060 that brought me into interrogation, asking me why I made that decision, they would have grounds to say,
00:51:05.580 you know, you're untrustworthy. You didn't report that, you know, your, your, your relative was
00:51:11.580 making, you know, millions of dollars from the Chinese, or you didn't report that you got millions
00:51:15.900 of dollars from the Chinese. So I'm not saying that there's quid pro quo there, but there's enough 1.00
00:51:22.060 of, hey, I don't like tariffs to, hey, I've adopted Xi Jinping's worldview to, hey, this is actually harmful
00:51:29.340 to the United States. I leave it to other people to kind of figure that out. It's not for me to figure out.
00:51:34.140 It is for me to say that if I had done it on active duty in the military, I'd either not have
00:51:41.580 a security clearance that I've been court-martialed. So, so let me ask you this, that same argument,
00:51:46.700 you got two different communities here, okay? You got those who have political power and influence,
00:51:51.820 say McConnell, Biden, and many other names who support China, and they're saying, hey, take it easy.
00:51:56.060 Right. They're an ally. I think you went to the Department of Commerce and they said,
00:52:00.140 China's not the adversary. They're our friends. We cooperate with them. These were the words you
00:52:03.820 wrote in your book, right? Okay. So on one side, you have the political people, that they shouldn't
00:52:07.740 be doing this because if they have interest with their kids, wife, whatever. Okay. Then the other
00:52:12.060 side is investors, business owners, hedge fund folks, entrepreneurs, folks who made their money in
00:52:20.300 America, yet they want to make sure China still has the ability to do business because they lose money,
00:52:26.620 right? Of course. This goes to the bottom line. Right. Do you think their motives is okay because
00:52:32.380 it's just purely money and they want to protect their investments for themselves, their clients,
00:52:36.140 their businesses, and these two are complete different ways to be held accountable?
00:52:41.260 That's a system we built, right? You know what I'm asking. I know exactly what you're asking.
00:52:45.740 That's a system we built. And so you can't criticize businessmen because our system says you owe
00:52:51.900 fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder. That's your job. And oh, by the way, you can actually
00:52:58.620 be sued or brought up in charges for not doing your job, not fulfilling your fiduciary responsibility.
00:53:04.940 So there could be an argument made that if you're not cooperating with the Chinese Communist Party,
00:53:09.740 that you're actually harming your company. Okay. There you go.
00:53:12.460 Right. So you can't criticize them for that. What you can criticize is the policies of the government
00:53:18.380 that allowed for the behavior to occur in the first place. And I'll give you an example.
00:53:23.180 Level one versus level three assets I talk about in the book. China has non-convertible currency,
00:53:29.740 strict capital controls. Since 2015, you can't get money out of the country only in special
00:53:34.460 circumstances and only depending on what the business you're doing. So we have plenty of
00:53:38.940 corporations that have billions of dollars over there that they're carrying on their financial
00:53:42.380 statements as level one assets, meaning just like cash in the bank here. But you can't get it.
00:53:48.380 And so, but if you're showing profits and it's going into cash in the bank in China,
00:53:55.020 then how are you being compensated as an executive or on a board of directors for that company? You're
00:54:01.020 probably getting compensated based on the money you're making in China. But yet the shareholders
00:54:05.500 can never see that money because you have strict capital controls in a non-convertible currency.
00:54:09.820 Okay. So we've created an incentive system, but just based on our accounting standards, FASB,
00:54:14.380 and the Securities and Exchange Commission can change this. The Treasury Department could change
00:54:18.300 this and say, no, if it's in China, non-convertible currency, strict capital controls, they can't get
00:54:23.020 the money out. That's a level three asset. And therefore all you corporations need to do a
00:54:28.220 restatement. What would that say? Now CEOs wouldn't want to invest in China because it wouldn't count 0.95
00:54:34.540 toward their compensation. Now board of directors wouldn't advise the CEOs that they should invest in
00:54:39.500 China because it wouldn't count towards the compensation. We build a system that incentivizes 0.78
00:54:44.140 behavior for the destruction of the country. That's not the fault of the business community.
00:54:49.980 That's the fault of the government. Great point. So essentially a company who runs a sales
00:54:54.540 organization runs a compensation structure that produces bad behavior. It's not the salesperson's
00:54:59.980 fault. It's the organization's fault for producing compensation structure the way it did. So what you're
00:55:05.660 saying is a complete restructure of our agreements and arrangements with China, you're talking about
00:55:12.780 having to change a lot of things for us to move forward. You're not just saying something small
00:55:16.220 here. But I'm not saying that we're doing something that's untoward. I'm just saying,
00:55:21.660 let's follow the rules. For instance, in investment, right? Let's us follow the rules or let's them.
00:55:28.140 China's also following the rules. Right, exactly. So they're not going to follow the rules though. 0.98
00:55:32.380 Right. Then for example, so let's go into investing. So now, right now we have MSCI,
00:55:38.140 all world index going from, went from zero to 5% to 20% weighting in Chinese equities, right?
00:55:44.220 Okay. Chinese companies, they come here, they register stocks and list on some of our exchanges,
00:55:50.460 but let's go. The unlisted ones, the registered ones, that's a trillion dollars they've made
00:55:55.260 off our capital markets. There's no audit or transparency requirements that resembles anything
00:56:01.500 that a US company has to follow, right? So a Chinese company can come in here and get registered
00:56:07.740 and get listed on our stock exchange and get access to our retirement funds. That's what MSCI,
00:56:13.100 MSCI all world index is followed by all the institutional investors and the endowments,
00:56:18.460 the university endowments. So our retirement funds get sent over to China to pay for investments. So we
00:56:23.660 have no idea actually what they have, because they don't have the same audit and transparency
00:56:27.820 requirements as a US company. That's a policy that we have right now. So China can register and list
00:56:35.980 their stocks on our exchanges and our retirement investment officers can send money over to China
00:56:43.580 and they don't have to correspond to the same rules that US companies have to. So make Chinese companies 1.00
00:56:49.420 correspond to the exact same rules that US companies have to. And I'll tell you why they won't.
00:56:55.260 Because sending over the audit data is a national security violation in China. In other words,
00:57:02.140 it is treason for you to send the audit information from a Chinese company to the US.
00:57:09.420 Let me ask you, do you see any possibility of an agreement coming up with all these technicalities?
00:57:14.780 This is not a small thing here. No.
00:57:16.700 Okay, so you are for, you don't- The Chinese have already decided to decouple. 0.96
00:57:21.100 It's not about us decoupling. It's about the Chinese Communist Party maintaining control over their 0.94
00:57:26.380 society. And in order to maintain control over their society, they need to maintain control over
00:57:31.340 the state-owned enterprise system that they built, which says that we are not going to abide by US
00:57:39.260 laws about sending over audit and transparency requirements. If you force us to do that,
00:57:45.740 tough, we're not going to. How China took over while the America's elite slept, okay? Is the monster 0.69
00:57:52.700 too big right now to control? No, not at all. Okay. That's what I was asking. So it's not yet.
00:57:57.500 So what will be some of the things? I know you talk about it at the end of the book,
00:58:00.860 but if you're saying the monster's not too big to control, is that your four points that you talk
00:58:05.580 about at the end of the book? It is. Let's get to the end of the interview with that. I don't
00:58:08.540 want to go into that right now because we'll get to that while we're going through it. So,
00:58:11.900 okay. So we just talked about business, what responsibilities they have, et cetera, et cetera.
00:58:16.300 And then we talked about politics. What are your views on how MBA is handling
00:58:20.540 the bullying of China saying, hey, we're going to not show any of the preseason games in China?
00:58:27.500 Do you know what an ECMO machine is? No. So an ECMO machine is a machine that is used
00:58:33.820 to keep a body alive when the heart and lungs are failing. So it takes blood out of the system.
00:58:39.820 It oxygenates it and puts blood back. Actually, I knew somebody that had been hooked up to one of
00:58:45.500 those things. It's not a fun thing when you're dying and hooked up to an ECMO machine.
00:58:51.340 China, if you say you're a dissident, you're a Falun Gong, you're a Christian, you're a Muslim,
00:59:01.020 and you get sentenced to, say, seven years in prison for being a religious follower and you won't stop.
00:59:08.700 They'll type your blood, they'll sequence your DNA, and they'll give you an ultrasound in your organs,
00:59:13.500 and you go on a match list. If that match comes up, they'll hook you up to an ECMO machine, hook your
00:59:20.300 body up to an ECMO machine. They'll give you an injection to paralyze you, and they'll have a
00:59:25.100 surgeon come and remove your organs, put them into, somebody that's come in for hundreds of
00:59:31.420 thousand dollars to buy your organs, to have it put because they need a heart or need a liver or need
00:59:36.300 two kidneys or whatever. And when they've taken all the organs out that they can use, they'll throw the
00:59:41.260 body in the incinerator. So when we do things like equate that kind of behavior with, say,
00:59:51.340 the social challenges that we have in the United States, then it shows a fundamentally misunderstanding
00:59:58.540 of the difference between a democracy and a totalitarian regime. And that's what I find so
01:00:05.020 infuriating about what the NBA is doing. Because that kind of behavior, that's the kind of behavior
01:00:15.020 that Hitler was doing. That's the kind of behavior that existed in Stalin's Soviet Union. That's the 0.74
01:00:22.620 kind of behavior that the Chinese Communist Party is doing today. You can go look it up on the UK
01:00:30.140 tribunal on the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. Summary reports there, final reports
01:00:36.220 coming. They've interviewed hundreds of people. This is happening. And yet we equate our social
01:00:45.180 challenges here in the United States with that kind of behavior in China. That is, I think, 0.98
01:00:49.420 the challenge of the NBA is not understanding who they've allied themselves with. So let's
01:00:55.740 take away the fiduciary responsibility that, you know, the NBA commissioner has to not anger the
01:01:03.260 Chinese Communist Party because the NBA makes a lot of money there. Let's take that away. Let's say he's 0.99
01:01:08.380 an American. And a lot of Americans died fighting to stop the kinds of things that are going on right now
01:01:17.580 in communist-controlled China. So business guy, understand it. American, I can't for the life of
01:01:27.100 me understand it. You know, the only reason it is is because they do such a good job of obfuscating,
01:01:33.500 of hiding what they do, which is why the title of the book is Stealth War. And we've done a very,
01:01:38.700 very poor job of opening our eyes. And the reason we've done a poor job of opening our eyes is because
01:01:45.100 we are being compensated well to look the other way.
01:01:51.260 So, fine. Let's just say I watch this and you said this and I'm an NBA person. I'm like,
01:01:56.060 okay, what are you talking about? I don't really, you know, I get that. But everybody's got dirt on
01:01:59.740 their hands. America does. Look what America did to Japan. Look what America did to... So, you know,
01:02:03.980 that's the argument, right? So everybody's done some stuff. How many people do we do this? How many
01:02:08.940 times have we killed people? So we have blood on our hands as well. Somebody from the NBA watching this.
01:02:14.220 We're just trying to do business. You know, we're just trying to make sure we keep a relationship
01:02:18.140 with them because we want those 1.5 billion eyeballs. That's all we're trying to do. We saw
01:02:22.300 what happened to Barkley when he went to the Olympics and then from there Kobe's identity Olympics after,
01:02:28.380 you know, the center from Houston, Yao Ming. And then now LeBron's getting bigger. All these guys are
01:02:34.140 getting a big exposure there. What's wrong with us wanting to keep our relationship with China solid to
01:02:38.940 not create any kind of a issue between us? Let the politicians go at it. We're just basketball 0.83
01:02:44.060 players. We're just trying to play over there and entertain that audience as well.
01:02:47.260 Yeah. And I would say not surprising because people were doing it for Hitler. 0.85
01:02:51.900 And when those army soldiers walked into Dachau
01:02:55.500 and saw what the hell was going on there, you know, I would have hated to be one of those guys
01:03:02.220 seeing that, to see that, you know, what could be done to people. And, you know, I don't know what
01:03:09.420 else to say about it. The horror of this thing that we can sit here and basically say, you know,
01:03:17.500 that's not my deal. I'm just going to get my compensation deal. Look, I get that. I get the
01:03:24.060 other thing where people were saying, well, you know, America is just as bad as everybody else.
01:03:27.900 Okay. But, you know, it's just not, I can't see it for me. It just, it doesn't make sense to me.
01:03:37.420 I don't think it will ever make sense to me. I just don't like us to be bullied. I've never
01:03:41.900 been a fan of bullies. My entire life, I've never liked bullies and I've never liked games.
01:03:49.100 And if you allow a bully to constantly bully you and you walk on eggshells with the next moves you're
01:03:55.900 making, you will forever walk on eggshells because they officially know that they scared you.
01:04:00.700 And so the next time you do something, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. It almost goes to
01:04:04.540 the story of the Roy Jones guy that worked at Marriott. Right. I think his name is Roy Jones,
01:04:08.540 because same as the boxer, right? He's working at Marriott. And if you can elaborate on what
01:04:12.940 happened with the story, with him liking the tweets. Yeah, he worked in the social media department
01:04:18.220 of Marriott Corporation. He liked to tweet about Tibet. It was from a, it was a, the tweet was from
01:04:24.300 a Tibetan dissident group. He didn't know anything about Tibet. He didn't know anything about China.
01:04:29.260 He was just saw that somebody had, you know, given a shout out to Marriott and he's like,
01:04:33.420 he liked the tweet. Shanghai Tourism Bureau found out about it. Chinese called the Marriott Corporation,
01:04:39.420 say deal with this person and apologize. And they fired him and apologize.
01:04:44.620 The NBA situation is no different where they almost fired Maury. This is, and by the way,
01:04:49.660 this is happening. It's happened to Mercedes Benz. It's happened to Tiffany's. It's happened,
01:04:54.860 you know, it's Cathay Pacific. I don't know if you remember the CEO resigned rather than giving up the
01:04:59.820 names for the people that were working for Cathay that were, were going with the people of Hong Kong
01:05:05.740 in the protest. And oh, by the way, what are the people of Hong Kong protesting? Being extradited to a
01:05:11.980 country that could basically put them on a donor list. So, I mean, it's, it is really a fundamental
01:05:18.540 difference. There's a, there's a stark difference in the type of country that you live in where,
01:05:23.260 you know, we live in today where the NBA players live and the country that is China. And the,
01:05:29.180 the problem is, and there was a good article op-ed by Li Yuan, who's, who's from China in the New York
01:05:36.380 Times, recently talking about what it's like to live in China and not understand the world you're
01:05:42.700 living in because of the indoctrination, indoctrination and control over, you know,
01:05:48.300 the way they think. So when you go there, you might think everybody's happy. Well, they are happy
01:05:53.820 because they have very little access to anything, to know anything else. Now, this, this Roy Jones guy
01:05:59.020 from Marriott, did he get caught because the government is surveilling every move we make,
01:06:05.900 social media, or is it the culture? Because I was in UK a few months ago and I was sitting out
01:06:11.180 with a couple of people saying, UK, we used to be people that we protected our nation. Now the
01:06:15.180 government has taught people to become spies and all tell on each other. Or is it the culture of China 0.96
01:06:21.180 of telling on each other and say, look what he's doing. Look what he's doing. Is it more they have,
01:06:25.580 you know, a whole massive community around the world that's still watching up for China? Or is
01:06:29.180 it actually the government looking at the social media? It's both. They have, they have huge,
01:06:32.140 they have huge numbers monitoring social media, but they also have their citizens that are taught,
01:06:38.620 you know, that this is an affront to China, you know, that the Hong Kong people aren't, 0.87
01:06:42.060 don't really want peace. They're, they're like the, the, the protester or not the, they're like the
01:06:46.700 terrorists of 9-11. What is the biggest difference in the way you do business in China versus the way you
01:06:53.420 do business in the US? And here's what I mean by it. I don't mean I go start a business in China
01:06:58.860 and since 2015, 2016, I can't take profits out. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about,
01:07:03.900 I'm a Chinese citizen. I live in China. I want to start a business and compete in a marketplace there.
01:07:10.300 What is the difference between me competing in China and what kind of ways I'm controlled
01:07:15.260 versus me competing in America? Oh, that, that's easy. There, you can do whatever you want.
01:07:20.940 In China? In China. It's, it's literally, it means that whatever you, uh, need to do to get ahead is,
01:07:27.340 is fair game as long as you don't challenge the communist party, whatever, steal, you know, trick,
01:07:34.060 anything. I mean, seriously, seriously. But not against each other though. Yes,
01:07:38.700 against each other. It is the most cutthroat, you know, you know, in a lot of ways it's the most
01:07:43.340 capitalist system there is. So I would say there's like no regulation there. There's no regulation,
01:07:47.900 which is why you have the challenges that you have with regard to fentanyl and other things. Because
01:07:52.380 you know, if you're making profits, as long as it's not, uh, causing problems for the Chinese
01:07:56.860 communist party, anything's, uh, so you want, you want to, um, have a business, your competitor has a,
01:08:03.340 um, a proprietary formula for something. You go find the guy that has a proprietary formula,
01:08:08.860 hire him and, and bring them in and hire him. And, and you can do that. Now the, the guy can sue you,
01:08:15.340 but you know, this is the kind of behavior that happens all the time there.
01:08:20.220 Is there such things as patents there? Like, can I just steal your idea and you can't sue me? You
01:08:24.380 know how there's a two year patent thing that nobody can use and you have the rights to go and
01:08:28.380 put it out there first, or I can steal it from you. You can't do nothing about it. You can't take me to
01:08:32.540 court. So they do have patents and you can sue. And, and sometimes you can even win, but you know,
01:08:40.220 in the end, what the, what the government is looking for and it's watching out for,
01:08:43.900 and particularly it's in, in industries that they care about like 5g, right? They don't, 1.00
01:08:48.300 they're not really focused on some industries, but they are focused on, for instance, made 20, 20,
01:08:53.980 made China, made in China 2025 really pulls out 10 industries. If it's one that they're focused on,
01:09:00.060 then they'll, they'll look at that competition and then they will incentivize those that are starting
01:09:04.300 to rise to the top. And so, um, but if you happen to be, you know, part of the, um, Chinese Communist
01:09:13.740 Party, um, you know, leadership family, then you'll have incentives to, uh, even more incentives than
01:09:20.540 other people. You will have more incentives. You'll have more incentives. So over there,
01:09:23.180 is it the typical old school politics of if you want to be rich, first go into politics,
01:09:27.020 have enough influence and then go start a business. Oh, you can't just go into politics.
01:09:30.140 You can't. No, how do you, you have to, you know, um, even Xi Jinping applied to go to the Chinese
01:09:36.060 Communist Party like five or six times before he was finally accepted. It's like a club,
01:09:40.300 right? And once you're in, you know, then you have to, you have to demonstrate your loyalty to
01:09:45.980 the party and continue to apply. It is not, I mean, it's very similar to the mob. You can't just go in,
01:09:50.460 it is very similar to the mob. You have to be a made man, you have to do everything,
01:09:54.780 you are loyal to them and then they bring you in. The reason they've given Xi Jinping so, so much power,
01:09:58.780 by the way, is because he is probably the most dialed into what the Chinese Communist Party
01:10:03.500 believes of anybody. Like if, if you said who is the most communist of the Chinese Communist Party,
01:10:10.300 Xi Jinping is that guy. And that's the only reason they gave him all the power he did.
01:10:13.420 How powerful is their economy right now? Like how much control do they have? What
01:10:16.460 areas are they taking? I know like 80% of AC, you know, when you look at these numbers here,
01:10:20.700 what are some of the stats, you know, about how powerful China has become?
01:10:23.420 You mean in terms of? Economy, manufacturing, production, what they're building, steel,
01:10:29.420 phones, shoes. Well, I mean, so just one of the things I say in the book from 2011 to 2013,
01:10:36.300 they poured more concrete in those two years than we did in the entire 20th century.
01:10:41.500 It's very important for you to state this one more time. They did more in two years of pouring
01:10:47.260 concrete. I remember the stat than U.S. did in 114 years. Yes. Is that a factual statement? That's
01:10:53.740 a factual statement. I'm going to, I'm going to find it and let's put the, because if that is true
01:10:58.140 in two years versus 114, what, what was that all about? When you talk about that, they're building
01:11:04.140 90 to 120 cities with the average population of five to 10 million. And one of the cities
01:11:09.020 becoming the Silicon Valley, it's like by a lake, but they won't give the name of what the city's name
01:11:12.620 is going to be. And it's got 550 square feet of office space with 95% is not occupant. And they're
01:11:19.900 willing to sell it for cheap and rent it for cheap. Like, is that really part of the strategy?
01:11:24.540 If you want to keep people employed and you have one model and you're facing a financial challenge,
01:11:31.660 then you, you go back to the model. It's just like, if it's working, don't, don't make it quit.
01:11:36.540 The problem that they run into is, can they get the raw materials and the energy and the food to
01:11:41.260 actually sustain that? And what they've needed to do that is to get us dollars. And we've
01:11:46.780 enabled them through our trading relationship with them to do that. You know, recently with the tariffs,
01:11:52.540 they'd have, they've had to dip into the capital markets and get through MSCI, get money from,
01:11:57.100 from our retirement funds. But for the most part, it keeps people employed. And that's,
01:12:02.300 that by the way, is also why the Belt and Road Initiative exists. It's not just an, an opportunity to
01:12:09.340 really gain control of the Eurasian landmass. It's also an ability to offload some of its
01:12:15.740 spare capacity in order to employ Chinese. You know, they harvest most of the world's frozen fish, 0.99
01:12:22.140 right? They export 50% of their catch, right? And there's a million people employed in the frozen
01:12:27.980 fish industry, right? So it's, it's all about keeping people employed. And so that while they dominate
01:12:34.220 these industries, it's not because, not merely because they want to dominate the industry, it's
01:12:38.700 because they want to maintain legitimacy. The way you maintain legitimacy is keep people employed.
01:12:45.340 90 to 120 cities with a population of 5 to 10 million? That's nuts to me, to build, to be able to
01:12:51.900 build something like that. Well, think about it. If you're going to build a city though,
01:12:54.940 the best way to build a city is to build it a total green, greenfield, right? If you're,
01:13:00.220 if you're building a city or if you're increasing the size of a city, say like Shanghai, it's far
01:13:04.380 more expensive than it is just to go out in the middle of the field and build a city, right?
01:13:08.140 You don't have to do all the, you don't have to tear down and rebuild and rezone and go through
01:13:12.620 all the things. You just build a city. And, and, and, and I think if you, if you think about how they
01:13:18.780 financed it with our recovery money, a lot of it, a lot of the loans came from U S banks with
01:13:25.020 recovery money and that, and that the price of those things collapse, as I talk about in the book,
01:13:31.660 now you have an ability to move the extra, um, three or 400 million of people that are out in
01:13:36.860 the country into those cities. I mean, that's very, that's a very brilliant, brilliant formula.
01:13:41.100 Absolutely. What, what's the motive behind not allowing you to foreclose on your home? Like if
01:13:47.500 you have a hundred thousand dollar loan on your home, you're late $4,000, they don't foreclose on the
01:13:52.780 home. They just add the $4,000 that you're late on the loan. Now it's $104,000. Is that actually the
01:13:57.020 banking system? It's brilliant. Is that really what they do? Yes. It's brilliant. You're serious.
01:14:00.780 So that, that is a real actual methodology for them. Right. Did you understand that part? Like,
01:14:06.940 so you got a hundred thousand dollar loan. I'm going through crisis. I miss couple payments.
01:14:13.660 I still stay in the home. They just tack it on the loan at the end. Oh, you're not even in the home.
01:14:17.500 You probably got four or five of these things. Do you think that's a good formula though?
01:14:21.260 Good formula for what? For any other person, any other banking system to use.
01:14:25.900 Well, but when you have a strict capital controls and a non-convertible currency,
01:14:30.620 you have essentially a closed financial system. These banks can't get their money out.
01:14:37.340 So you can keep doing that. You can keep doing it. That's just unbelievable.
01:14:40.140 It's brilliant. Yeah. So, so if, if, if we were doing that, dollars would be flowing out of this
01:14:46.860 country. Well, let me ask you, you know how the whole saying goes that if you got somebody that's
01:14:50.540 coming up and they're competing with you, uh, you know, uh, beat them while they're small,
01:14:56.140 don't let them get too big. Right. Right. It's too late. Well, what I mean is beating them because,
01:15:02.300 okay, let's transition into 5g. Let's talk about 5g because you know, this whole thing, 1.00
01:15:06.540 when, uh, I think Trump tweeted out something in 2014 and he said, uh, remember China is not our
01:15:15.500 friends or not our ally. And he got like 300 retweets. It wasn't something big. He tweeted
01:15:19.900 this back in 2014 or 2015. And then all of a sudden, you know, one day, everybody in the news
01:15:27.420 is talking about 5g. And prior to that day, we weren't really talking about it. And all of a sudden,
01:15:32.140 hey, we got to be the leader in 5g. I'm like 5g. So I'm going to start looking 5g. Okay. 1g,
01:15:36.460 2g, 3g. 1g is the regular phone back in the days. 2g is whatever. 3g is the iPhone,
01:15:41.260 you know, and then 4g is the latest one. And then now 5g is going to be changing the game. And
01:15:45.900 most people go to, well, 5g is just a faster phone, right? Because that's what initially if
01:15:51.580 we've always seen the G link to a phone, oh my gosh, I can download a movie in 3.6 seconds now on
01:15:57.740 Netflix, a two hour movie where before it was three minutes or six minutes, whatever. Right. When you
01:16:03.660 think about 5g, what do you think about a 5g and the capabilities and what it can really do 1.00
01:16:11.020 to whoever that has access to it? That's a good question. So if you go back to 2007,
01:16:15.900 and when the iPhone came out, the 7, 2007, the top five in market cap were AT&T, General Electric,
01:16:22.060 Microsoft, Exxon, Mobile and Shell. Right. The phone comes out in 2007. We have, I had one 3g network.
01:16:31.900 It's not a very good, not a very good experience. 4g network comes out, by the way, we're the second
01:16:37.180 country in the world to build a 4g network. Now you've got something, right? So when Steve Ballmer
01:16:43.020 laughed at Steve Jobs said, we don't need one of those. When you took the platform, which was the
01:16:48.540 iPhone and you married up to the 4g network, which was the pipe for data. And it was a fast enough
01:16:54.540 pipe. Now you can create the apps, services of business models that in 10 years led to the top
01:17:01.420 five in market cap being Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Microsoft. Right. So the Chinese see 1.00
01:17:07.340 this and they're like, ah, the platform and the pipe. So the smartphone, this thing, this iPhone,
01:17:16.380 you know, which was the first one, then Android. So Apple and Google dominate the mobile platform
01:17:23.500 that the app services and business models of that economy are built on.
01:17:26.780 Now look at the iPhone. It's a hardware, software, tightly integrated, closed walled system like
01:17:34.220 Steve Jobs liked, and the data was encrypted. Why was the data encrypted? Why did San Bernardino
01:17:40.380 happen? Because Apple's an American company, right? They know you want privacy. They encrypt their phone.
01:17:46.060 So now you've got the platform and Android also went on to encrypt their platform. So both encrypted,
01:17:52.540 right? So private devices, take the cloud away from it. Just look at the device itself. Sure.
01:17:57.820 It's meant to be a private device. Why? It's American, American product. Fast forward, you know,
01:18:05.260 to 2009, China starts to look at that, says, okay, we want to dominate the next level, right? Not that,
01:18:12.300 not just the technology, we want the app services and business models to be Chinese companies. And so
01:18:17.500 Huawei gets hundreds of billions of dollars to develop 5G and ZTE. But then you have Baidu,
01:18:22.940 Alibaba, and Tencent. So they're, they're behind the Chinese firewall. They're protected. You can't
01:18:27.900 have the fangs going in there. It's just the bats that control the e-economy within China. And then you
01:18:34.060 start, at the same time you're developing 5G, right? The platform, and I'll get to that in a second,
01:18:41.420 but you're also developing Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. So now when you walk into, and you're starting to see
01:18:46.940 the emergence of the 5G world in China. So you walk into a restaurant after you've ordered your food
01:18:52.780 and a camera picks you up and you say, David, welcome, here's your food, right? So you're
01:18:57.980 starting to get the feel of what a 5G world is. And what is a 5G world? The platform is the network.
01:19:04.460 So this is mobile computing paired with a pipe. 5G is computing and networking combined on the same
01:19:11.740 platform. So this goes away. You walk outside your door and you say Uber. You don't get on your phone
01:19:18.940 and say, I want an Uber. You just say Uber. Camera picks up your face or a microphone picks up you.
01:19:23.340 Come on. That's what 5G is. That's what 5G is. And then the Uber shows up. The Uber,
01:19:30.300 there's a camera on the car that sees you, knows who you are. Don't have to ask you your name. You get in
01:19:35.340 and you go to wherever you want. You get out and you go do whatever you want. So in this world,
01:19:42.140 in the 4G world, this is a platform. It's yours, right? You don't want to be built. You don't want
01:19:47.500 to be part of that, all of that data. Remember we just talked about how do you influence society?
01:19:51.980 You don't want all that data to be out there about what you're doing. Just don't carry one of these,
01:19:57.500 right? Just opt out. In a 5G world, you cannot opt out. Who owns the data? This, you could conceivably
01:20:06.460 say, you lease the data on here you own. If you're getting Google services, you don't own that data.
01:20:12.460 But in the 5G world, not only can you not opt out because it's built around the city, it's not
01:20:17.660 in your phone anymore. Not only can you not opt out, you don't know who owns the data.
01:20:23.820 Everything that you do can be watched. And for every person by 2022, there's going to be,
01:20:30.540 for every, there's two cameras for every, for every person, there's two,
01:20:36.060 two people for every camera in, in, in China by 2022.
01:20:38.860 They have a billion right now. A billion cameras in China right now.
01:20:42.140 With artificial intelligence for facial recognition, right? So all of this is getting
01:20:46.540 built right now in China and who's helping them do it? Microsoft, Google,
01:20:50.700 Google, right? All of these companies that are, want to deploy this world into
01:20:58.460 our country. So Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, that's where the world goes. It goes from 2007,
01:21:07.100 AT&T, GE, and Microsoft to the fangs to the bats, right? Who owns the pipes?
01:21:14.220 Me, as a B2 guy, the first thing I look at in the country is who's, where's telecommunications?
01:21:20.620 You got to take that out, number one. But if rather, instead of taking it out,
01:21:24.460 you own or control it. So Huawei builds the pipes. Then because you're behind the great
01:21:30.380 firewall, you built the app services and business models of the 5G world. And you're, like I said,
01:21:35.900 you're already starting to see that, you know, where your, your facial recognition is built into
01:21:41.020 your interaction when you go into a restaurant, or when you go into a store, or when you go into a
01:21:45.180 bank, you know, everything's about, you know, the device is connected. Then as you build the network,
01:21:51.180 then those proliferate. So 4G network, 10,000 devices per square mile, 5G network, 3 million
01:21:57.180 devices per square mile. You're not going to carry 12 smartphones. You may not even carry a smartphone.
01:22:03.420 10,000 to 3 million?
01:22:05.020 10,000 to 3 million. That's what 5G does. The connectivity explodes, right? So that allows
01:22:10.300 you to put devices literally everywhere that can make your life more convenient or can track you.
01:22:17.500 There's a bike in DC. It's called Mobike. Have you seen these things? They're silver and orange.
01:22:22.860 Look out for them next time you're in DC. They're silver and orange called Mobike. They had them when
01:22:27.020 I was in 2016, when I get to Beijing, you take your phone. And by the way, I took my, I took a phone,
01:22:33.100 right? A phone that I threw away when I got home. And I had said, I threw it away when I got home,
01:22:38.460 load all the apps on it that a Chinese person has. So I can understand what they do.
01:22:43.660 You never have to carry a wallet. You never have to carry a key. It's all done on your phone. You can
01:22:47.100 pay any anybody anywhere for anything. And they do 900 people are on WeChat and they spend 90% of their
01:22:54.700 time in app doing things or, you know, ordering airline tickets, buying food, whatever you want.
01:22:59.820 You can have anything you want. 900 people or 900 million? 900 million people.
01:23:04.620 Okay. So let me, let me explain to you how, how effective what they built is. I have one of the
01:23:11.100 guys working for me on one of these Mobikes. Now the Mobike is, it's just parked there in the street
01:23:16.860 with a lock on it. You go over, you hit a QR code on your phone. It unlocks the bike. You get on,
01:23:21.420 you ride it and you lock the bike. Okay. So where does that data go? You, they know it's you. You got on
01:23:27.500 that bike. You went to locations. Okay. So, or you went to a location. So that data is available.
01:23:33.580 So I have one of my guys, he, um, gets on a Mobike ride somewhere, has his iPad in the basket,
01:23:39.820 gets off the bike, comes back to the embassy and realizes, ah, I forgot my iPad goes into the regional
01:23:46.620 security offices office and says, I forgot my iPad and my bike calls a local public security bureau.
01:23:53.180 And those guys call the guy that's got his iPad on his phone, on his cell phone and say,
01:23:57.500 can you bring the iPad back to the embassy? That's how wired Beijing is right now.
01:24:05.020 So if, if I'm, if I'm, and by the way, I heard about self-regulating brake pads,
01:24:09.020 self-regulating, is that really the case? Like your brake pads are going to be fixing them?
01:24:13.420 Everything. There's so it's, there's, there's, um, there is a very high, uh, speed, uh, low latency
01:24:20.060 things. Like if you need a surgeon in Dallas to perform surgery on somebody that's 60 miles away,
01:24:25.500 he can do that from his office in Dallas. And you can have a robot, you know, in 60 miles away
01:24:32.380 doing the surgery. It's called the tactile internet. That's coming. That's part of the,
01:24:36.780 that's part of this fabric. In addition to this kind of low power thing that you're talking about,
01:24:41.660 that just sends a signal. Hey, I've got, um, uh, somebody passed by this location or I have a,
01:24:47.340 I need to change a brake pad. All of that is built into the 5g network. So it really becomes a network
01:24:53.820 of machines, not a network of people. But more importantly, there is terabytes and terabytes
01:25:00.460 of data that is created about you and you have no control over it. And the people that do have control
01:25:07.420 over it are the large tech companies. And you know, increasingly because 5g, not just Huawei
01:25:13.500 builds a network, but the 3gpp standards, which is the industry standard making body has been
01:25:19.100 dominated by China. And so not only the standards have been dominated by China, the underlying patents
01:25:24.700 for the technology of 5g have been dominated by China. So even if you're not building Huawei,
01:25:30.060 you're still building Chinese technology into your network. So you have Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent,
01:25:34.620 Huawei, you have the technology and you have the app services and business models.
01:25:38.620 You have everything you need, right? So you used to have Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google dominant.
01:25:46.140 As those other companies become dominant because they've created the 5g world. Now you're going to 1.00
01:25:51.020 see the ability for China to deploy control literally everywhere. So why would we want that technology?
01:25:58.860 Why would we want that technology in the US? Precisely. Which is what the fight about Huawei is.
01:26:06.300 But I took it a step further. I say, even if you're building Ericsson, Nokia, or Samsung,
01:26:11.740 because China dominates the standards and the technology, you're still building a lot of their
01:26:15.260 technology into your network. So rather than doing that, build a military grade network and deploy that
01:26:21.900 for the people. Give them access to the same type of protections that we give our military access to,
01:26:27.580 because we don't want their data to be spied on. So for me, I look at it from this standpoint,
01:26:31.900 because then I'll give the other side of the argument. I'm curious to know what you'll say
01:26:36.220 about it because, you know, the whole made in China 2025. And, you know, you read the article
01:26:42.300 and you kind of look at the stats and you see how Droid is from where? The operating system is from
01:26:47.020 South Korea, I believe, right? Samsung is from South Korea. Apple, iPhone is from US. And then you have
01:26:53.580 Huawei and ZTE. All these guys are from NTZ, I think is it called, right? Is that what it is?
01:26:59.020 ZTE? ZTE. ZTE is what it's called. And ZTE is limitless with Bradley Cooper. My brain went
01:27:03.660 to a whole different place. So you have Huawei from China that they're making this phone, right? Okay.
01:27:09.420 On the 5G side, if I'm looking at this, okay, they're saying China's going to be ready to deploy 5G
01:27:17.180 2020. And everywhere else, they're not going to be ready till 2025. China's ready 2020. We're not 0.94
01:27:25.100 ready till 2025. How much of a penetration in the marketplace can China get having access to 5G
01:27:33.420 five years before us to get it going versus us not having access? Because Qualcomm, everybody,
01:27:38.620 you talk to them, no, we're not ready till 2025. We're not ready till 2025. How much of a negative
01:27:43.580 impact is it going to have on countries outside of China? The fact that they're starting in 2020,
01:27:47.180 and most of us want till 2025? Well, I think they've signed up something like 90 countries
01:27:53.180 to deploy. I saw 57, but maybe it's 90 countries now. It's moved towards more.
01:27:58.940 Except US, by the way. Except the United States and Australia. Everybody else is, you know,
01:28:02.780 there's some hemming and hawing them. There's some, of course, saying no. But, you know,
01:28:07.580 essentially, they have the lead. This is an industrial strategy on the part of China.
01:28:13.500 It's really about seeing the future. And this is what I give them credit for. You know, when I,
01:28:18.540 in my book, I call it a beautiful strategy, because I think it is the most incredible,
01:28:22.780 incredibly well-thought strategy that I've ever seen. And it probably will go down in history as
01:28:29.100 one of the greats. And it is smart for them to figure this out. But even if we have it,
01:28:33.740 would we use it? We probably wouldn't use it if we, even if we have it anyways, right?
01:28:36.940 I think I would be terrified to have, you know, to use it. And I think, you know,
01:28:41.340 the good thing that we have is that our telcos here are so in burden with debt that they're slow
01:28:46.860 to deploy 5G anyway. But if we got it, let's just say we have access to it, okay? Would the voters
01:28:53.980 vote for it to be deployed? Because if you need two cameras per, let's just say, because you need
01:28:59.580 that technology as well. It's not like, day one, we have it. Hey, we got it. We, you know,
01:29:03.420 let's have the server. We go use 5G, turn it on. It's a switch. It's a lot of development for us to be
01:29:08.140 ready with the camera, with all that technology to be created. And they're saying there's some
01:29:12.060 threats to it as well with health. It may not be even healthy for you to have 5G.
01:29:15.100 Yeah, but I mean, our guys are over there working with the Chinese right now, building it, 1.00
01:29:18.620 right? They're designing, they're helping them design the algorithms. They're helping
01:29:21.820 to design a lot of the technology because they've moved a lot of their design facilities over there
01:29:25.420 because there's so much data. And you can go to Baidu and say, I just need tons of data so that I can
01:29:29.740 run, you know, work on my algorithm. So, you know, it's not like they're not already working with the
01:29:34.460 Chinese. You know, our companies are working with them to build this stuff.
01:29:37.340 Do you think a form of Trump's negotiation with tariffs is a way for him to expect them to give
01:29:43.260 access to 5G where I'm not negotiating with you until you put that to us and help us speed
01:29:48.380 up the process as well? Or no, you don't think that's one of Trump's...
01:29:51.020 So again, let's just go back to what 5G is. It's beamforming antennas with software-defined radios
01:29:56.780 and software-defined networks. We've been working with that stuff in the US military for years.
01:30:01.100 We have the technology. We don't have to go to China. China doesn't necessarily have all the best
01:30:05.500 technology. It's just we have all this technology we haven't commercialized. So we just need to turn
01:30:09.420 around and put it out ourselves.
01:30:11.420 Then why are they saying that we can't do it till 2025?
01:30:13.740 Because the companies that do it, the equipment manufacturers, we don't have anymore. We don't
01:30:17.740 have any commercial equipment manufacturers. We have companies that work with the defense
01:30:21.820 department. We don't have any that build for commercial telecoms. Now, you know, Ericsson, Nokia,
01:30:27.420 Samsung, they still build equipment. But again, as I said, they're so in partnered with China,
01:30:33.820 except for Samsung, which pulled out for device manufacturing three or four years ago, but not
01:30:38.540 equipment manufacturing, you know, that they're also corrupt or not corrupt, but, you know, essentially
01:30:44.380 having Chinese technology built into their systems.
01:30:47.340 I've got a couple more questions here and we should be done. Next thing is with Nixon. You know,
01:30:51.660 a lot of times you... I like the fact that you mentioned Nixon in the book with Kissinger. You know,
01:30:56.300 a lot of times people give credit to Nixon for what he did with China, even Democrats,
01:31:01.260 Republicans, Independents. Yeah. Nixon opened it up. Right. And then there's a part you talk about
01:31:06.940 at the time. I think it was Mao, who is the leader of China at the time. And he's sitting with Kissinger
01:31:13.980 and there's the interpreter that says, hey, you know, they're having a conversation. And he says to him
01:31:20.060 a certain phrase. Yeah, the ba. The ba. Yeah, the ba. And the interpreter, what was that all about?
01:31:26.460 Well, I think, again, it goes to the premise of the book. There is obfuscation built in everything
01:31:37.340 they do. And even when you do negotiations with them, by the way, say you come, you're looking at an
01:31:45.500 English document. And then there's a Chinese translation right next door, right next to it,
01:31:51.660 that you're looking at both documents. Oftentimes what they'll do is we'll negotiate a document in
01:31:57.260 English and then they'll change the word in Chinese. Right. So so in a lot of ways, China uses that
01:32:04.220 language, that language barrier as it's almost like the first layer of encryption. And so since,
01:32:10.780 you know, many Americans have really no clue about the Chinese language, it's very difficult
01:32:17.100 for them to have access to. And so it actually is good for the Chinese because it allows them to
01:32:23.100 obfuscate things. And then then what they'll do is they'll make trans they'll make translations in
01:32:28.380 negotiations where they'll use one word. And sometimes our translators will catch it. Sometimes
01:32:34.780 they won't. Really? Sometimes our translators don't catch it? Don't catch it. So in that statement,
01:32:38.780 it means what? America is the leader. What he really meant to say is America is the tyrant.
01:32:43.420 Right. Because he looked at America as similar to Hitler's regime, the same way he looked at it.
01:32:48.140 So. And they'll say, well, we didn't want to offend. Well, perhaps, or, you know,
01:32:54.940 perhaps something else was intended there. Is the interpreter trying to say the person making
01:32:59.500 a statement? Is it like, because that just means that the interpreter is making the decision.
01:33:02.940 You know what I'm saying? I've seen these before where you, the interpreter is trying to make a 0.98
01:33:07.900 judgment call on how to interpret when there's not a clear interpretation.
01:33:12.780 Yeah. Mike Wallace goes to Iran, sits with Khomeini and tells him, hey, you know, a certain
01:33:18.540 question. The interpreter says, I can't ask him that question. He says, I think it's a fair question.
01:33:22.300 Ask him. And then when he asked the question, he got up and walked out. So I've seen that before as
01:33:25.660 well. So what are we going to see moving forward? Because with China, you know, you talk about the fact 0.96
01:33:30.780 that China came in and said, hey, we're going to help help you out, Africa. We're going to put 60 to 80 0.99
01:33:35.020 billion dollars into Africa. And, you know, they're deep into U.S. educational system now out of our,
01:33:40.700 I think, one million, 20,000 students, 32 and a half percent of the students, something like the
01:33:45.580 32 and a half percent of our students in U.S., the international students that are here are from
01:33:49.340 China. Right. Right. So they're coming in. They're going into NYU. They're going to all these schools.
01:33:53.980 They're essentially bringing a bunch of business to these universities. So are they going so deep in
01:33:59.980 these different organizations where people are forced to support them due to the money and the
01:34:05.340 power they're bringing in? And then all of a sudden they're going to be the same empire they were for
01:34:09.020 5,000 years. Are you kind of seeing that? That's exactly what's happening. And it really is a smart
01:34:15.100 strategy because we spend $800 billion on defense. Yeah. And, you know, Greece basically makes a deal
01:34:22.460 with the Port of Paris. And so we say, well, you know, things aren't working. We're going to build a
01:34:26.620 couple more carrier battle groups. And Greece says, I don't really care. What I want is jobs
01:34:30.700 for my people. What I want is money. And that's what China comes in and says, okay, we'll give you
01:34:34.940 money. Very cool. That's, I mean, not very cool. It's good to know that part because I just don't
01:34:38.940 think these guys are going to slow down. I think they're, you haven't met people where they say,
01:34:43.580 oh, you know, I'm really not that competitive. You know, I'm just, just, you know, I'm just,
01:34:48.060 I just want to do good for, and I'm just a very, you know, I go to church on Sundays and I'm just,
01:34:53.660 you know, I love my family and we're just trying to be good citizens. And then deep down inside,
01:34:58.620 they're like wanting to whoop your ass, you know, like back in school. Did you study for the test?
01:35:04.060 No, not really. I mean, I don't know how it's going to be. I'm a little bit worried, but we'll see.
01:35:07.660 And then again, 98, you're like, wait a minute, you were studying freaking for two weeks for this
01:35:11.100 test, right? I'm the one that was partying and you were the one that was studying for the test.
01:35:15.020 Anyways, last thing to your speed round. I'll give you a name. You give me the first thing that comes to
01:35:19.180 your mind. And then we'll go from there. Mitch McConnell. I think he's an establishment.
01:35:24.700 Establishment. Okay. Dalai Lama. Dissident leader. Trump. Not the establishment.
01:35:32.700 Got it. Ren Zhengfei. PLA. PLA. Okay. Again, excuse my pronunciation. Xi Jinping.
01:35:42.780 Communist Party. Okay. Joe Biden. Establishment. John Bolton.
01:35:49.180 Establishment. Really? Okay. Hunter Biden.
01:35:54.460 The child of the establishment. Okay. Jack Ma.
01:35:59.260 PLA. Boris Johnson.
01:36:02.940 I think the, I don't know if he's establishment or not. I think the jury's still out.
01:36:09.180 Yeah. Okay. Jury's still out there. Roger Robinson, Jr.
01:36:12.540 I think he's a freedom fighter. Freedom fighter. Okay. And then the American constitution.
01:36:17.500 Absolutely necessary. Absolutely necessary. Absolutely necessary.
01:36:25.580 You know, it's funny you say that. American constitution is absolutely necessary. One of
01:36:30.060 the things that I was debating, another very, very established multi-billionaire, we were talking
01:36:35.180 about China. And one of the things that came up, I said, believe it or not, I believe one of the
01:36:41.980 strengths China has is they don't have freedom of speech. And what does that mean? They don't have 0.52
01:36:47.580 freedom of press. I went online and I looked at China's unemployment, 3.4%, 2.8%, 3%, 3.1% for the last 20
01:36:57.260 years. How do I know that? And then you look at real numbers, like 15, 20%. How do I know these
01:37:02.460 numbers? Right. And us, you know, some may hate CNN, some may hate Fox, some may have MSNBC,
01:37:09.340 some may hate Drudge, some may hate these guys, but at least they're going back and forth,
01:37:14.220 allowing us to kind of watch them go back and forth. And I said, let me go do my own research
01:37:17.820 to kind of figure out. So as much as free press is annoying here, it's amazing, annoying to the
01:37:24.060 opposite group. I'm sure folks at MSNBC can't stand folks at Fox, vice versa. It's amazing how much
01:37:30.700 that allows us to kind of decipher from all the, you know, you know, propaganda that's being sold
01:37:36.460 and kind of go out there and say, okay, this is what I see. So I agree with you on the American 0.73
01:37:39.660 constitution, extremely necessary. That's why I'm here from Iran and we escaped there to come here.
01:37:44.140 Final thoughts here before we leave your thoughts. I am an investor. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an
01:37:48.940 executive. I'm seeing what's going on with China. I'm watching this. I'm a little bit more educated.
01:37:55.260 I'm about to order your book. I have an order that I'm going to click on the link order and read the
01:37:58.860 whole thing because obviously you can't get the 230 pages in a two hour sit down. What should I be
01:38:04.380 thinking about and adapting or making certain audibles right now for my career to prepare myself
01:38:11.180 for the next 12, 24, 60 months in the future? I would pick up the constitution. I would pick
01:38:17.820 up the Atlanta charter. I read those two things and I'd think about it because my campaign is about
01:38:24.540 making sure that those things last. And if they last and you continue to do business in the way that
01:38:30.460 you're doing, you're going to go broke. If you continue to do business the way that you're going,
01:38:37.020 you're going to go broke. Because you can ignore me. You can get on my side or you can fight me.
01:38:45.180 But my goal is to preserve the constitution. The way we do it is to preserve the way,
01:38:50.380 the rules of the road that we created. And I'm about re-establishing those rules. And if you're doing
01:38:57.580 business and you're making money from the Chinese Communist Party, and you think that that's the
01:39:03.580 way that you're going to continue to make money going forward, if you think that this government
01:39:08.460 is going to support that, I think you're 100% wrong. And I'm going to do everything in my power
01:39:13.820 to make sure that doesn't happen. Fair enough. If you ever thought about being a motivational speaker,
01:39:19.660 maybe it's not a good courier for you, by the way, because that was a very direct statement and I love
01:39:23.580 it. It's my style of communication. I wanted to tell you, I had the Mario and Kai get a gift for
01:39:29.260 you guys. We are going to send you to China for one week for vacation to go have a great time. On
01:39:34.300 us, it's on the house. You know, it may turn into seven years, but we're going to start off with a
01:39:38.860 week and then we'll see. As long as it's like a four-star hotel. Please don't send me one of those
01:39:44.060 two-star hotels. Those are really bad. Anyways, having said that, General, thank you so much for coming
01:39:49.660 out. Also, I know you came with your family here. Thank you for making the time to come out. It was
01:39:53.260 a pleasure sitting down and talking with you, Valuetainers. There are books I read when I have
01:39:58.380 guests that come out and I read it to get as much information as I can. If you could see the amount
01:40:03.580 of marks is in this book, I couldn't put this book down. It's a must read for anybody that's planning on
01:40:09.020 competing in a marketplace. Having said that, General, thank you for coming out. Appreciate your time.
01:40:13.260 Thank you.
01:40:13.580 Yes. This was great. Thanks, everybody, for listening. By the way, if you haven't already
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01:40:37.740 today. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.