Episode 413: China’s Silent Takeover While America's Elite Slept
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 40 minutes
Words per Minute
189.66014
Summary
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
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I'm Patrick with your host of ITEM, and today we're going to talk about China, 4G, and why
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this Air Force general got up in front of Biden, McConnell, all these other politicians
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at the White House, told them the threat of China and 5G, and eventually he got fired.
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General Robert Spaulding, thanks for coming. I appreciate you for making the time.
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So let's get right into it. So pre-going into China, what is your journey of you becoming
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a general at the Air Force and then from there being part of National Security Council? How did
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that go about? I came into the Air Force before I really knew much about the military, and my
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picture of the military was about peeling potatoes and somebody yelling at you, essentially Gomer
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Pyle, and they saw the movie Top Gun, and it fascinated me and really got me excited. So
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I joined and just went in with no expectations, just had fun, and really just worked hard,
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but also played hard. But I wanted to fly jets, and that was what got me started. And one thing led to
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another. I had an opportunity two years before I was supposed to leave the service to go live in
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China, and so I took it. And the rest is kind of history, because when I made that fateful decision,
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and it was really about, you know, thinking about what opportunity I had to go live abroad, but also how
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strategic China was in our future, it really opened doors for me that, quite frankly, I would have never
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Literally, so there was no plans of that happening.
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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
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become a general. In fact, when my wife heard that I, you know, had made it, she laughed.
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Because for me, you know, I mean, I was an E-4 in the military, in the Army. You know, when we saw generals,
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we would shiver. It's like, this is a general, you know.
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Right, this is a big deal. But for me, it was, you know, just having fun serving my country.
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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
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people becoming generals? It's ministry. It's very, very small to see that star on the Humvee or whatever
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you're being driven around. I mean, that's pretty unique to have that. But what year was it when you
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So, first time it was 2002. So, I actually went to language training at Monterey, the Defense Language
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Studied China for 52 weeks. It's a 62-week course. I left in 52 weeks in June of 2002.
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Steph and I and our two boys went in the country and lived in Shanghai, in Pudong, on the east side
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of the city. And that's the side that the Communist Party built up in the 90s. So, that's where the
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Jin Mao building is and a lot of the financial district of Shanghai. And we just traveled the
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country and lived with the people. And it was probably one of the most phenomenal two years
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It was incredible. You know, the people were great. They're hardworking, resilient people.
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And, you know, having learned the language before I got there, I could communicate and
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really travel all over and really got to know how they think. And, you know, in a lot of ways,
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you know, not really fully understanding what was going on. I don't think you can live in
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China and fully understand what it is to be Chinese. But for me, as an outsider, looking
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at that country, it was exciting. And it was a place that I wanted to be. And so, when I left
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in 2004, I told Stephanie that, hey, we're going to, when I retire from the Air Force, I'm going to
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come back here and I'm going to start a business and get wealthy.
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Now, what's your rank at that time when you were there in 2002?
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So, when I got there, I had just made major. Just made major.
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You've been in 10 years. You're a major. And what was your job? What were you doing in China for U.S.?
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So, the Olmstead program, which is a program that I was selected for, essentially picks three
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officers from each branch of the service and sends them to language school. It's not for you to go
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into a country that has English as a national language, but a foreign language. And then sends
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you in the country for two years. And I went to a university in Shanghai, Tongji University,
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and studied MBA courses. And really, it was about getting to know the people. It was really
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becoming immersed in what it was to understand China and the Chinese culture and history and
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So, does China know that you're going in as a major? Is that a something that it's a basic
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open conversation? Hey, we're sending one of our majors from Air Force to spend a couple
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years with you. One of the great things about the Olmstead Scholar program is that you do
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everything on your own. So, you, once you're accepted into the program and you go to language
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training, it's upon your responsibility to go and get accepted into university to apply
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for a visa because they want you to understand what it takes to travel to a foreign country.
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And so, it's almost like being on a sabbatical. You're not, you don't, you don't have a detailer
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that you're talking to. You're basically cut loose on your own, on your own recognizance
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But you're getting paid. So, the military is...
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I mean, that, that's, I mean, it is, it is really an incredible opportunity because you
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are, you're really learning because you, you don't have a lot of support. You know, you're
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out there by yourself trying to figure it out. And, you know, there was, you know, how, so
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how do I get there, become a student, get a student visa, but also how do I get my family
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in there and how do I make sure that they, so we had to take them out of country every
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60 or every 90 days to six months to renew the visa and come back in.
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So, so China didn't know you were there and you were a major.
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They didn't, I was not there in an official capacity. I wasn't there on, I wasn't there
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on an official visa or on a diplomatic passport. I was there on a, on a basically a tourist passport
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with a student visa going to a university. Now, when I met Chinese, I would tell them,
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Hey, I'm, I'm in the air force. I'm a B2 pilot. Of course, they thought that was quite strange
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that I would be there, but you know, that's exactly what I would be thinking about because
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from what you read on culture, you sense a certain level of not a paranoia or suspicious,
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but why are you here? What do you do? Are you a spy? You'd look like a CIA guy. I mean,
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if you go there, I'd look at you saying, maybe you are working and you're trying to gather
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intel to bring you back, but that was actually not the case. But this was 2002 to 2004. And
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what was happening there, if you remember, we had just, China just entered WTO. So it was,
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it was breakneck speed to grow the company or country and grow the economy. And all of my neighbors
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were there building factories for fortune 100 companies. And so there was a lot less scrutiny
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on me as a military guy. I think it was, the country at the time was focused on making money.
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And, and, you know, certainly people found out who I was, but I didn't get a lot of scrutiny.
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That's good to hear that they didn't do anything. Now, the second time when you went back was what
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year? The second time I went back was in December of 2016. And that was to be the defense attache
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in Beijing. And this time around, this is a little bit more public. It's a, they know a little bit
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more that you're going or still. Oh, it's no, this is, this is definitely, I am the senior defense
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official representing the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Chinese
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military, the People's Liberation Army in Beijing. And so I, for example, I got there a week before
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they took the UUV. I don't know if you remember, but they took one of our underwater gliders in the
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South China Sea, essentially while one of our ships was trying to retrieve it. And so there was a big,
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controversy, there was a big diplomatic controversy, and that was beginning to be a crisis. And I was
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the one that negotiated the return with the People's Liberation Army of that glider to the, to the, to the
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U.S. What, what was the biggest difference you felt culturally, uh, and, uh, spirit from 0204 to December
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2016? I never saw a guy with a gun when I was there from 2000 to 2004. When I got back in 2016,
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there were people with guns, uh, at the subway stops, not all of them, but they were there. And you could
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definitely feel a palpable change in kind of the tone of the country. Now, some of that may be because
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it's, it's not Shanghai, it's Beijing, which is the nation's capital, but clearly, um, things were a
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heck of a lot more tense when I had been there in 2002 to 2000, just a completely, in my mind, different
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vibe. What, from your experience and what, obviously to write a book like this specific to China, you've
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had to do a lot of research to be able to write what you've written here. Uh, do you think a part of
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that happened where they are now growing up, uh, to the point where not growing up, that's maybe a
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bad word. They're becoming a bigger, I mean, GDP wise, they grew, uh, you know, to being at a higher
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number than what they were before. They're become a little bit more competitive 2008 Olympics. It was
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a statement they're opening. So, Hey, we are here to compete. Do you think a part of that is also their
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level of confidence to know that we can compete with everybody? Let's be a little bit more cautious and
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protective, uh, protect, uh, protective of what we're trying to build. So look out there or that
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was just a different city for you? Well, no, I think there's a couple of things. One, the party,
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the communist party was really concerned about corruption. If you go back to 1989, the, the
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Tiananmen massacre, the three things that the Chinese communist party learned, uh, during that time was,
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one, the communist party was under attack by elements within China in league with the United States.
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Two, that openness was great for globalization in terms of science and technology and economic,
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economics and finance. But in terms of ideology, they needed to pour a whole lot more into, uh,
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what they were doing in order to prevent their population from becoming democratized. And three,
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if the party ever became separated from the people that the party would fail. And you can see that
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there's a definite paranoia on the part of the party in terms of not wanting to make sure
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that while their people are very advanced in terms of the technology and the business models with
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regard to the E economy, they're very cautious about that kind of getting out of control. And so
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I think, you know, they are still in their minds, perfecting their ability to control people. But
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at the same time, they're concerned about, you know, at any moment, this thing could become unraveled.
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So it creates this kind of, you know, they really believe that, um, that it could in at any moment,
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um, the party could essentially lose control because the population essentially, um, awakes.
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And, um, and so I think it, it plays into their, that paranoia.
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Yeah. So, so are they more concerned internally for it to collapse or somebody from the outside
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to come and penetrate and confuse them and divide, you know, from within?
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I think it's a combination. It's a combination of, um, internally in terms of, are they, uh, do they
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have legitimacy in the eyes of the people? And then what are some things that might in their minds,
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confuse the people in terms of, you know, um, democracy or human rights or civil liberties?
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So with you now being who you are and, you know, you were with the national security council,
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senior director of strategy, you've written this book. It's very obvious on who you are and what
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your position is at. Is someone like you able to go back with no issues? Like, would you be
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comfortable saying, I'm gonna take my family to China? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Why is that?
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Well, because clearly, um, what I say in that book is that the Communist Party is not, uh,
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great for the Chinese people and that's not something that they appreciate. People like me
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saying, um, certainly the way that you become a China expert in the United States is that you
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go to China. Uh, in order to go to China, that you say things that actually the Communist Party
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doesn't get angry about. And so they may not even give me a visa, but even if they were to give me a
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visa, I would be concerned that I would go there and, um, they would, they would find some reason
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to not let me go back. Not let you come back here. Right. Even though, well, I mean, today would
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be a good time to actually keep you if you went over there. So if you have any plans of staying
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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
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back to something you said, because the other thing that, that really, um, happened and you mentioned 2008,
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and it's important because it's not only the paranoia that they have, but also if you go back to
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Deng Xiaoping and what he said about hiding capability and biding time, this is not a change
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in what the Communist Party, who they are. It's really in 2008 when, when our financial system
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essentially said that we really don't know how to run, uh, global finance, uh, that they really
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believe that they had arrived. And so there, there's also an element of they've been, you know,
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having to play second fiddle, um, based on the century of humiliation and the fact that,
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you know, they were the dominant, uh, society for 5,000 years. They had a hundred years of bad luck
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and now they're back on top. They're, they're ready now to essentially, um, take a leading role in the
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international system. So, you know, part of that goes with not just, you know, that vibe is not just with,
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you know, how they treat their population, but also how they treat the, the West, how they treat
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foreigners, because there is an element to say, we're not going to back down anymore. We're going
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to be, we're going to stand up for, um, for what we believe and, and we're going to, we're going to
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make a name for ourselves in the international order and we're going to, we're going to fight to have our
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interests, um, uh, uh, respected. You mean them? Them. Yeah. So you say in the book,
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I mean, obviously I got a lot of notes. I got seven, eight pages of notes to go through with you,
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but you said in the book, uh, that you will not, you said this, I think Steve Bannon said this,
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but you quoted it. The biggest threat to America is not Al Qaeda. The biggest threat to America is not,
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actually, this is you saying it in the book, I believe, because Steve Bannon said something else.
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The biggest threat to America is not Al Qaeda. It's not ISIS. It's not Putin. It's not any of these guys.
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It's China. You really believe that? I believe it. I think it's the most consequential,
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existential threat, not just to America, just to democracy the world's ever seen.
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And it's because it's cloaked itself in this picture of adoption of the international norms
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that were established, uh, and the rules and norms and the systems and the institutions that were
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established after World War II perpetuated through the Cold War and essentially, in our thoughts,
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was dominant after the end of the Cold War. It was, they wrapped themselves in that. And so there's
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a belief that they, uh, that they accept those principles. And what they say is they, they want
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to have the international system, um, essentially correspond to their interests. But what they don't
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say what their interests are, and their interests are essentially counter to, uh, every democratic
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principle that, that we stand for, human rights, civil liberties, rule of law.
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Uh, it's interesting when you say that, because that's a pretty bold statement to make. You hear a lot
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of people talk about climate change. You hear a lot of people talk about cyber, you know, cyber war,
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all this other stuff, which you talk about in the book as well. But to say China is at the highest
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level more than ISIS, Al Qaeda, Putin, those are some, that's strong statements to be making. But
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let's go a little bit back to you are working, uh, as the senior director strategy of, uh, the National
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Security Council. And you go in, you said you have two reasons why you wanted to be a part of them.
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And one was to educate the members about who they are. And the other one was to ensure the security
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of 5g for us and also other countries, right? Not just us, right? Everybody else that's involved.
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And then you, you're giving this one talk and you brought some other people to also give inside.
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There was a lot of dialogue and then it got a little bit heated and then you held the meeting
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back kind of trying to bring everybody together. Hey, this is a good question. We're having this
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discourse. This is a very good thing. Where did it go from there to the, you know, press
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leaking, you know, being leaked to the press. And then from there, you're getting fired
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from National Security Council. How did that process take place? So, um, the, the debate on
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what was going, how we were going to treat China really was taking place during the summer of 2017.
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And it was really about how are we going to structure the national security strategy? What
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we're going to, what was going to be our priorities? And that was a process of discovery. What,
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and quite frankly, I had, that's all I had been working on since 2014. So from 2014 to 2017, when
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I get to the White House, my two years in the joint staff, my time in Beijing, and then coming to the,
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to the White House in May of 2017, everything had been focused on this competition between the U.S.
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and China and what the implications were on a, from, on a societal level, an economic level,
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on a national security level. When I get into the National Security Council in 2017,
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I, we start the discussions on framing and writing the new national security strategy. And so in that
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dialogue was, you know, the first thing you do when you have a strategy is what's your problem
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statement? What are you, you know, what, what are the threats that the United States faces? And of
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course, you know, the same thing that you just mentioned, a lot of people talk about climate
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change, they talk about terrorism. What we had to contend with is there's a lot of things happening
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that people outside of national security policy may be aware of, don't talk about,
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that affects, that affects everything that we do. And so we start, I started, because I had had those
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discussions outside of the national security policy establishment, I started bringing that
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information in. And really, for the first time, you know, by the spring of 2017, I had formed in my mind a
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good picture of how to describe it, what the elements of it were, and then, you know, essentially,
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how to have a logical conversation that said, these are the challenges we face, and this is what we need,
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we need to do. That conversation by August of 2017 was complete. And then I said, I'm going to be here a
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short amount of time. If I could do one thing for national security policy to change the course of
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of the United States going forward, to preserve our republic, it would be to secure the internet.
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And so I started working on talking to engineers about what is 5G, what's the state of play today,
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because we'd said in the national security strategy that data is a strategic resource, like oil in the
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20th century, data in the 21st century, which will drive artificial intelligence and everything that
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that all the algorithms that got that essentially guide our lives to better places. If we didn't
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secure that strategic resource, then we were at risk as a democracy. And so how do we take that,
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you know, new, essentially, beam forming antennas with software defined radios and networks, which
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something that we had used in the military for a long time, and apply and give it to the people,
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but then do it in a way that actually provides security for their data, which is, in essence,
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what you know, I'd come to the conclusion, the only way that you democratize in a digital sense
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is by protecting is by giving control of the at the citizen level of their data, of their data,
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of their data. And the analogy I make when I talk to people is, if you go back to Alexander
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Hamilton and the framing of the constitution, you know, essentially what he was shooting for
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after having surveyed, you know, done an extensive survey of all the governments that existed prior,
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was how do we create a government where no one person, party or group can attain ultimate power,
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because ultimate power is ultimately corrupting. And so that's the constitution. But then,
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what if it fails? What if, you know, we don't actually provide for the people and somebody can
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gain power? Then we give the American people the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms,
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so that they can fight an oppressive government if that dream ever fails. And of course, in the digital
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world, what you saw what you had begun to see is a world where you may not know you're being oppressed,
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or you may not know who your oppressor. And in that world, you may not know you're the oppressor,
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you may not know you're being oppressed, or the second war that you who your oppressor is, who your
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oppressor is, right? Because we'd seen in, for instance, after the election, using big data analysis,
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AI bots and social media networks, the Russians had created protests, right? They had, it was
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ostensibly on behalf of Black Lives Matter, I'm talking about the one in New York City, a few days
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after the election, but it was really the Russians. And so what you what you're seeing is, in going back
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to data as a strategic resource, in the digitized world, the ability to aggregate data is equivalent
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to aggregating power. And if you can aggregate power, then you have to wonder about who has the ability
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to aggregate data in that world. And today, the two entities that can really aggregate data
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are large tech companies, and totalitarian regimes. Democracies have a hard time aggregating data,
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United States cannot aggregate data, because the law prevents it from doing so. So we started this,
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this unit within the State Department called the Global Engagement Center, the Global Engagement
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Center was supposed to fight radicalization, for instance, by ISIS and, and prevent influence
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of our population. But they can't do their job because they can't aggregate data. Not even public
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facing Twitter data, right? Because there's concern that we use the resources of the government to spy on
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our own population. But one of the what so one of the ways that foreign states go after us is actually
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take our own social media data and use it in ways that influence us. And so in order to discover
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that, you actually have to be in the data. And so the only ones that can be in the data today
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are the large tech companies. And so you're essentially offloading to the large tech companies.
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One of the primary purposes of forming the Constitution, which is in the preamble, provide for the common
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defense. And so if you think about national security, and gets really the heart of things,
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right? If you think about national security, we have an Air Force, we have an Army, we have a Navy,
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we have a Marine Corps, right? I don't think you're worried about, you know, Marines jumping into
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your building here or getting bombed, right? You're not concerned about that. But I guarantee you the
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Chinese are in your networks, and the Russians and the North Koreans and everybody else.
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
00:23:51.340
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.
00:24:04.620
But so who's responsible for protecting you from that?
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...
00:24:25.820
Okay. Twitter's responsible for protecting that.
00:24:31.020
Twitter is responsible for protecting my account on Twitter.
00:24:40.860
Sure. But now let me ask you this. So I had a former undercover FBI agent right here.
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
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?
00:25:51.820
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.
00:26:44.700
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
00:27:24.940
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.
00:28:06.380
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
00:28:21.260
But doesn't that mean that we become totalitarian if we do that as well? Like to match against them,
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
00:28:57.820
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.
00:29:07.900
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
00:29:26.380
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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?
00:57:16.700
Okay, so you are for, you don't- The Chinese have already decided to decouple.
00:57:21.100
It's not about us decoupling. It's about the Chinese Communist Party maintaining control over their
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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
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,
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,
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,
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,
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
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
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.
01:22:05.020
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
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
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,
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
01:30:11.420
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
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
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
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.
01:36:02.940
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
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
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.
01:40:13.580
Yes. This was great. Thanks, everybody, for listening. By the way, if you haven't already
01:40:17.180
subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so. Give us a five-star. Write a review if you
01:40:22.860
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01:40:26.780
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01:40:33.100
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