Big Stanford WIN for Free Speech, plus guest Dave McCormick on How We Beat China
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Summary
Ted Cruz's new book, "Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America," is out now, and he's joined by his new book co-author, Dave McCormick, to talk about how to deal with China. But before we get to that, we've got a victory to celebrate about a previous podcast that exposed a previous judge that was shut down at one of the Ivy League schools.
Transcript
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It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
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And Senator, we've got a fun podcast for everybody.
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We're going to have a guest tonight, and that is going to be Dave McCormick.
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He has got a new book out, Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America.
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He's going to join us in a moment to talk about this.
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And the timeliness of this book is spot on dealing with China right now.
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But before we get to that, we've got a victory to celebrate.
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You got a letter back about a previous podcast that we did exposing a federal judge that was
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I'll let you take it from there on this victory lap.
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This, of course, concerns Stanford Law School and something we've talked about at length on
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the podcast, which is Judge Kyle Duncan went out to Stanford Law School.
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He was speaking there, was invited by the Federalist Society, and a group of left-wing
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It then became even worse, because he asked quite reasonably, is there anyone from the
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And the dean for DEI, for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, stepped forward, and he, for
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a moment, thought, oh, good, there's an adult in the room who will actually stop them from
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Well, no, it turned out the dean had a prepared screed, six minutes that she read from, where
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she sided with the protesters, she denounced the judge, she said how painful his very existence
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She kept saying her odd phrase was, is the juice worse the squeeze?
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In other words, is it worth it to let you speak because our sensitive natures will be
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One of the things I did is I sent a letter to the Texas State Bar, urging the Texas State
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Bar to inquire of every graduate of Stanford for the next three years whether they participated
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in screaming and harassing and shouting down and cursing at the federal judge, because to
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be a member of the bar, the bar has to make a determination that you have the character
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and fitness to do so, and if you don't know how to deal with a federal judge without screaming
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and cursing at him, you are not, in my view, fit to be a member of the bar.
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A second letter I sent was to Stanford Law School, and Stanford Law School has a free speech
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It says that you have a right to free speech, that speakers that come to Stanford have a
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right to be heard, that the people who want to hear the speakers have a right to hear what
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they have to say, and that students don't have a right to shout them down.
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And I asked Stanford, I said, number one, what are you going to do concerning the specific
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And number two, what are you going to do with this dean who defied Stanford's policy and
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sided with the aggressive protesters rather than the right of the speaker, the federal
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Well, we got a response back from Stanford Law School on March 22nd.
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March 22nd happens to be my dad's 84th birthday, and so I thought it was a great birthday present
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because much to my astonishment, I'm actually going to say something nice about Stanford
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It is a letter from the president of Stanford University and a letter from the dean of Stanford
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Law School, a woman named Jenny Martinez, who actually I went to law school with.
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She was a year behind me, I think, in law school.
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She's now the dean of the Stanford Law School, and their letter broke the news, number one,
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I asked specifically about the dean, and I'm going to quote from the letter.
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The response is, Associate Dean Therrin Steinbach is currently on leave.
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Generally speaking, the university does not comment publicly on pending personnel matters.
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That's a big deal for a so-called elite law school like Stanford Law School to take their
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high priestess of diversity and put her on leave for stifling free speech.
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Now, mind you, she completely defied the university policy, but in today's left-wing woke culture,
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it is remarkable, and I'm going to say Stanford is to be commended for holding its deans to the
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And then, secondly, with regard to the students, what Stanford said in response is they said
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they're not going to discipline the individual students.
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But their reasoning is they said, because we had an administrator there, a dean, who refused
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to follow our own policy, so we're not going to hold the students responsible.
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I don't entirely agree with that, but it wasn't a crazy thing they said.
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In summary, the university is taking the following steps to address these issues in the near term.
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One, staff will receive additional training on the role of any administrator's president
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events to ensure that university rules on disruption of events will be followed.
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Two, we will also adopt a more explicit policy with clear protocols for dealing with disruptions
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that will better protect the rights of speakers and also those who wish to exercise their right
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This will bring greater clarity and certainty about future enforcement of the policy, including
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Three, currently enrolled law students will attend a mandatory half-day session on the topic
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of freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession.
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And four, a committee will work during the spring quarter to hear feedback from the faculty,
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students, and members of the bar, including our alumni, and make further recommendations
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The fact that these woke, angry leftists are going to be required from the school to learn
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about free speech, to learn, look, if you're training to be a member of the bar and you
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want to appear before a federal judge, you may disagree with the federal judge, you may
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hate the federal judge, you may think the federal judge's rulings are wrong in every respect,
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but if you stand up and start yelling and screaming and cursing at the federal judge, you better
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have brought a toothbrush because you are going to jail and you're going to be held in contempt of
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What happened there was disgraceful, but their response candidly surprised me, and it gives
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some degree of hope that free speech is possible and that maybe, maybe, maybe the pendulum
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of the woke schools may be starting to swing back the other direction.
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Especially since we've seen so many different speeches be stifled or canceled at universities
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over the last couple of years, especially conservative speakers.
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This is a good moment for free speech, as you described it, and it's a moment that we should
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You have a good friend with you tonight who's got a new book that is out right now.
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You should get your hands on this book, especially with what we're dealing with with China right
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Dave McCormick's new book is out, Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America.
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All right, Senator, this is a very important moment, I think, in our country's history,
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We're seeing this unnatural alliance that is taking place right now, China, Russia getting
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Dave, welcome to Verdict, first of all, and you've got to be excited to see not only your
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book come out, but also the timing of it with what's happening right now with China.
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Thanks so much for having me, and Senator, thanks for having me on today.
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America's in decline, and we see that decline within, in terms of our economic situation,
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our national security capability, and spiritually, what's going on in the country in terms of
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progressive ideology, chipping away at American strength and some fundamentals of America.
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But at the very same time, we see this huge existential challenge from China, and it's
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In the last couple of weeks, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that cited
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a study by an Australian think tank that identified 44 technologies that are critical for economic
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The Chinese were in the lead in 37 of the 44, according to this Australian think tank.
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And more than the technological capability, China is pursuing a strategy to displace America
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And that's what this book is about, Superpower in Peril, is that our status in the world,
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our leadership at home and our status in the world is in question.
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And you only have to look at the news this week, where in the very same week, you saw
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the Chinese brokering a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and you saw China, China's
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leader Xi, in Russia, in partnership with Putin, in support of Putin's aggression in Ukraine.
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And if that doesn't give you evidence that China's on the move, then nothing will.
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And in essence, what I say in the book is China has a plan, and we don't.
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And this book, Superpower in Peril, is about our plan for retaining our place in the world
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Well, and Ben, let me jump in here for a second, because I want to tell our listeners a little
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Dave is someone who grew up in Pennsylvania, grew up actually as parents at a Christmas tree
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At West Point, he was captain of the wrestling team.
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He became incredibly successful, was a CEO of a very large company in Pittsburgh, created
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He was a senior official in the Bush administration, the Treasury Department, dealing with China,
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He became the CEO of one of the largest hedge funds in the world, was incredibly successful
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When Donald Trump was president, Donald Trump wanted Dave to come in as the deputy secretary
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He ended up not doing that, but Trump very much wanted him to do that.
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His wife, who's another dear friend, Dina Powell, was Donald Trump's deputy national security
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And she's someone Heidi and I have known for 24 years now.
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Dave, as you'll recall, just ran for Senate in the state of Pennsylvania, and he put on
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I endorsed Dave the very first week he was in the campaign.
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I campaigned all over the state of Pennsylvania with him.
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Unfortunately, in that race, Donald Trump ended up endorsing Dr. Oz.
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So I have to admit, for me, the number is 900-ish.
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For Dave, 915 is acutely carved into his consciousness.
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Yeah, as long as you had under that and the number of friends in your phone, then it's
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But if it's above that in your phone, it's totally your fault.
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I am absolutely certain, had Dave gotten 916 votes more in the primary, had he been the
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nominee, he would have won the general election.
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He would have been the new Republican senator from the state of Pennsylvania.
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And the consequence of that, instead of a 51-49 Democrat Senate, we would have a 50-50
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What that would mean is Democrats on every committee would have equal representation.
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Right now, they have a majority on every committee.
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It means they have control to accelerate their agenda through the Senate.
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I will also say, and I'm not going to press Dave to make an announcement, but I'm going
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I think he'll make a hell of a senator, and I was proud to stand with him.
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But this book he wrote is a book he'd actually been working on before he ran for Senate, and
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he suddenly found himself out on the campaign trail shaking hands and kissing babies, and
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And then when the campaign was over, he went back to the book and finished it and turned
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And I say all of that to say, when Dave writes, A, about China, he does so from first-hand
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But B, when he writes about the economy and America's economic situation, he does so
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as an incredibly successful business leader who has created jobs, who's worked at the
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And so he's thinking seriously about how America wins this battle with China.
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I believe China is the single greatest geopolitical threat facing the United States for the next
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And Dave's thinking seriously about how we win that battle.
00:15:54.340
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Dave, you had an interesting op-ed that obviously connected to your book launch that was at Fox
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News, and it says, China has a plan to lead the world.
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The scary part is that may be one of the most accurate op-ed headlines I've seen in a long
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time because I genuinely don't know what America's plan is to lead the world under the Biden team.
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You look at just how out of touch this White House is, they're having the cast of Ted Lasso
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come in on the day that China and Russia are having very serious meetings about how they're
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basically going to align with one another and, in essence, take over the world.
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Yeah, that split screen of those two things happening, those two press conferences at the
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We have very weak leadership in Joe Biden, and so I wish I could say it only related to
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I think it relates to the disaster in Afghanistan, which really showed weakness.
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The invitation to Putin into Ukraine with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the shaky ham and
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All of these are signals to the world and signals to our adversaries that this is a moment
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And to really be on offense, we need to do two things at the same time.
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Part of our problem is a deterioration in some basic fundamentals.
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We have an economy that is spending at an excessive rate, $31 trillion of debt, 40% increase in
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discretionary spending in the last two years under Joe Biden, record high inflation, a direct
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consequence of those prolonged low interest rates combined with the spending of Biden.
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And as a consequence, our economy is weak, and we've got big problems ahead, unfortunately.
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And that's why 80% of Americans think the country's headed in the wrong direction.
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But we also have weakness in our military with the wokeness that sort of hijacked our armed
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services, which is very sad for me as someone who served, went to West Point, served in the
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Army released a climate change strategy before it released a war fighting strategy under Joe
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And we have this, you know, what I can only say is this progressive ideology that's chipping
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away at some fundamentals that's made America exceptional.
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So the schools where they're teaching a history of American America that we don't recognize,
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that says America was conceived in sin, that makes our kids not recognize the exceptional
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contribution that America has done more in the history of the world than any other country
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for freedom and poverty eradication and so forth.
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And if your kids don't think that the country's exceptional, then they don't understand what
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We see it in business with ESG criteria sort of undermining basic principles of capitalism
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and the allocation of capital in pursuit of profit that's made America's economy the envy
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So there's a lot we need to do at home to build back our strength.
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At the same time, we need to confront China abroad.
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And what I laid out of that article you refer to, and in the book, Superpower in Peril, is
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a plan to confront China where we strategically decouple in things like semiconductors or pharmaceuticals.
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It was shocking to me, and I suspect many of your listeners, that our pharmaceutical supply
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chain during COVID, we saw our pharmaceutical supply chain dependent on China.
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That 90% of the chips that we need to make America run, sophisticated chips, are manufactured
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So we've got to decouple in those strategic areas.
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So Dave, repeat that, because I want to make sure everyone listening to it hears that point.
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There are a lot of important things you're saying, but the point on chips in particular
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Yeah, chips, microchips really are the, you know, sort of the underlying technology that
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Everything from the pickup truck that's in my driveway, which, by the way, you couldn't
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buy for a year because of the delays in chips, to our most sophisticated weaponry.
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And we don't have really any domestic chip, microchip manufacturing capability.
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Over the years with sleepwalking on the part of policymakers on both parties, frankly, we now
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have a situation where 90% of the chips that America requires are manufactured in Taiwan,
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So if you thought about strategically, you know, suffocating America, if you took control
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of those chip fabricators in Taiwan, you'd be able to strangle the world and put a huge
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strategic delay on the capacity to deploy new weapons and all sorts of things.
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And that's a strategic vulnerability that's almost unthinkable.
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Well, and I want you to pause for a second and reflect on what that means.
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You know, we talk a lot on verdict about foreign policy.
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We talk a lot about China and Russia and what's going on in the world.
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But one of the reasons why Taiwan is so critical, one of the reasons why when I sit down in briefings
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with our Secretary of Defense and our Joint Chiefs, the number one scenario they're talking
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about inevitably is China invading Taiwan, because the magnitude of the threat to America,
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that there is very little, if anything, that is comparable.
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Imagine for a second that China successfully invades Taiwan, takes it over.
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They have the capacity, A, just to cut off the most sophisticated chips that are being
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produced, 90% of which are being produced in Taiwan.
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So if you imagine for a second, OK, I guess America doesn't want any more cars, doesn't
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want any more trucks, doesn't want any more planes, doesn't want any more iPhones, doesn't
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want any more missiles, doesn't want any more weapons technology.
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China's ability to say, you're done, we're cutting off your supply is massive.
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Another scenario is that China takes those chips and implements within them surveillance
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technology, says, OK, fine, you can have chips.
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But much as they've done with Huawei and telecom, you can have chips.
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But the Chinese government is now going to surveil everything on your cell phone, everything
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on your car, everything on your truck, everything on your plane, everything on your missile and
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And it is something, number one, that that a significant percentage of the American people
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Number two, that Joe Biden, this administration is doing zero to prevent.
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And number three, that should be an acute focus of American foreign policy and economic
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policy to address and correct our vulnerability on this front.
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I want to ask you, Dave, about TikTok and not TikTok within its space as a company, but the
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bigger underlining issue of national security and the fact that we have this app that virtually
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And there still has not been, in my opinion, a warning about this app from the top, the head
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of the United States of America, and there's just deafening silence when what we know is this is
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I think it's the fact that we have a device or I should say an app on your device that
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can look at virtually everything you're doing, collecting data.
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It's very clear that China is doing this, abusing this power.
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And we still have a White House that has not given a warning to the American people.
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This is something that China is using to spy on us.
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Why have they not been more proactive on that, in your opinion?
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Well, I think there's not a recognition of how important data is.
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Data, there's an article a couple years ago in The Times that said data is the new oil.
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In fact, data is much more significant strategically even than oil was in the past because data
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is the key to innovation and data gives huge insight into both the strengths and vulnerabilities
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of an economy, of a military, of an intelligence service.
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And once again, China has a plan for data dominance and it really has an advantage because
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it's a techno-authoritarian power and America doesn't have a plan.
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And so why isn't there a sufficient focus on TikTok?
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I don't think there's an adequate appreciation of how vulnerable we are by letting TikTok have
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But China has access to our data in a variety of ways that have to be curtailed.
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And so what I argue for in the book is much more significant privacy restraints.
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Does it alarm you that if you buy a pair of sneakers online, that for the next three months
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you get all sorts of advertisements in your feed for sneakers?
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Well, that just shows you that your data is being sold and you lose control of your data.
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And you may click the little box at the end of the purchase.
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But in the end, who knows what that means and where your data actually goes?
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One of the things I cite here is a case where our intelligence services identified that China
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was pulling the Fitbit data of our troops in Afghanistan to be able to monitor what was
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It's a huge strategic advantage from an intelligence perspective and it has to be stopped.
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And so I think understanding the significance of it leads to some obvious requirements to
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The other thing is that data drives innovation.
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So if you look at Operation Warp Speed, one of the reasons that we had such success in
00:27:51.380
developing new vaccines was that the pharma companies were able to share data.
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The Wuhan lab is a perfect example of why we couldn't get to the bottom of what happened
00:28:04.720
So we've got to have a strategy to push back on China, control our data, block China from
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getting access to our data and leveraging our data for innovation.
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Well, and Ben, I often think art imitates life.
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As you know, I'm a movie buff and I watch all sorts of stupid series on TV because I download
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them on my iPad and every time I'm on an airplane, I watch the series.
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One series I'm a fan of is the HBO series Westworld.
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I don't know if you happen to have seen it, but it's a sci-fi series where part of the premise,
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so you have these very lifelike robots who you learn as you get into the later seasons,
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are designed to collect constant data about people and develop models to know what Ben
00:28:48.260
Ferguson would do if faced with every choice in life.
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And once they have that data, they essentially know how to control you.
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Now, I don't think HBO is necessarily Nostradamus, but it does underscore the power of data.
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And right now, our federal government is not, it's not even that we're losing this battle.
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And what are their principal tools for accomplishing it?
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Well, I think China is essentially trying to create techno-authoritarian dominance.
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In other words, they're trying to ensure that their economy is the dominant technological force
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And that obviously is able to ensure a very lethal military.
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And they're also pursuing a set of foreign policy objectives that will ensure that China
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really displaces America as the global superpower.
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Now, I think the evidence that that was the objective would have been a little less certain
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But with the rise of President Xi, it's become obvious that that's the goal.
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And one reason we know that is because he said it time and again in his speeches and his
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documents in terms of where he expects China to be as a global leader.
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But more than that, we see evidence just in the recent weeks where China has done a brilliant
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job of advancing its interest in Central America, South America, in the Middle East.
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And when there's a void in leadership, when people feel uncertain that they can count on
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America, the Middle East is a great example of Saudi Arabia.
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Saudi Arabia is one of our tightest allies, has lots of reasons to object to the rise of
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And yet, under President Biden, there's been an opening, an opening that the Chinese have
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deftly exploited and is really displacing America as the critical superpower in the Middle
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So the objective is world dominance in displacing the United States and doing so with a techno-authoritarian
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Well, and a weak American president is profoundly dangerous.
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It's profoundly dangerous because our enemies step into the void.
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It's profoundly dangerous because our allies are afraid to rely on us and they move into that
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They end up being drawn into the spheres of influence of our enemies.
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As you look at it, what are the strengths and weaknesses China has in this battle?
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And even more importantly, what are the strengths and weaknesses America has?
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How do we beat China and stop them from achieving their goal of world dominance?
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Well, the strengths that the Chinese have is also its weakness in the sense that it's
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The techno-authoritarian, what I mean by that is they've got a clear strategy, an economic
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strategy to dominate in these key technologies.
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There used to be this notion when I served in the government of dual-use technologies being
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Artificial intelligence, quantum science, robotics, satellites, they are interchangeably the
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core of national security and economic vitality.
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The Chinese recognize that, and they have a very focused strategy to be the dominant player
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And the fact that they have a state-controlled economy, they can drive the allocation of capital
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and the focus on those areas through their state-owned enterprises.
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Well, we beat them because our economy, and their economy, because of that, has created
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We can beat them because our economy is far more agile, far more entrepreneurial, but we're
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We're failing at educating our people to be able to compete in these new areas.
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You don't have a college degree to fill some of these key technical jobs, but you do have
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to have technical training, and we're deeply short in the requirements.
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And this is what I argue in the book, Superpower in Peril, we need to have the government, and
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we need to do this with care, but we need to have the government create incentives, tax
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rebates, and potentially side-by-side investing with the private sector to drive capital into
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those areas that are going to be most critical for our national security, like artificial
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And we need to do that in a way that the government doesn't play any role in picking companies or
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We can't have a China model, and we can't have industrial policy like the Biden administration
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We have to have markets-driven ways to drive private capital to these technologies that matter
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And with those kinds of things in place, we can win this game, but right now we're on our
00:34:22.200
I want to ask you a final question, and this is about what happens when technology teams
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up with a country that desperately needs that technology.
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Obviously, I'm talking about China and Russia, and we see how big of an impact technology can
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have even on killing innocent people in Ukraine, drones coming in, other type of technology that
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This alliance between these two countries are so dangerous for that reason, in my opinion.
00:34:55.860
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Dave, I want you to answer that question about the technology, and you have a country that
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You have a country that has hardly any of it and is decades behind.
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When you put those two together right now, and this is happening in real time, they both
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And the other needs to have technology, and that's something that Russia needs.
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Well, I think that alliance poses real challenges and risks to the United States.
00:36:34.820
Our defense spending needs to do two things at the same time, and we shouldn't pay too
00:36:40.400
much attention to those who are arguing one or the other.
00:36:43.080
We need to invest in existing platforms because that's core to our military capability to fight
00:36:48.720
a land war or a sea battle in the South China Sea or to support the Ukrainians in their
00:36:56.880
But we also need to invest in the next generation in a way that's going to make sure that we
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And the Chinese have developed lots of capabilities that really threaten us in the South China Sea
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and are going to threaten us in anything we do militarily around the world.
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So we've got to have – and that's not happening under Joe Biden.
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Right now, the spending is not even keeping up with inflation.
00:37:18.960
And right now, we have leadership that's not able to do those two things at the same
00:37:22.920
The second thing we need to do, and just to refer to your point on energy, the Biden
00:37:27.860
administration has taken us absolutely the wrong direction.
00:37:30.660
I mean, I live in Pennsylvania, which has the fourth largest natural gas reserves in
00:37:35.380
the world of Pennsylvania, where our country would be fourth.
00:37:37.340
And the Biden administration has essentially, in one fell swoop, made us less secure because
00:37:43.300
we've become an energy importer, has made us less rich because it's hurt us economically,
00:37:49.740
and has hurt the environment because natural gas out of Pennsylvania is much cleaner than
00:37:55.440
And that's a key building block of national security, and we've screwed it up.
00:37:59.560
And that, again, has created the opportunity for a partnership between Russia and China,
00:38:07.380
Well, and let me echo a couple of things Dave just said.
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Number one, I believe America can and will prevail against China.
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I think we have enormous assets, the most important of which is freedom.
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Free enterprise is a much stronger economic system than communism.
00:38:22.600
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union – and by the way, lots of Democrats and left-wing
00:38:27.580
academics – said, oh, the Soviet Union was unbeatable.
00:38:33.140
And the American free enterprise system was so powerful, but what we needed was American
00:38:38.900
We needed the clarity that we saw during the Reagan administration to call them out for
00:38:44.900
When Reagan described the Soviet Union as the evil empire, when he was asked, what's your
00:38:53.740
When he said Marxism-Leninism will end up on the ash heap of history, when he said, Mr.
00:38:59.300
Gorbachev, tear down this wall, that clarity and strength of leadership combined with unleashing
00:39:05.460
the American economic engine bankrupted the Soviet Union and won the Cold War without firing
00:39:12.040
I believe we need to replicate the strategy of the Cold War for dealing with China.
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I think Dave is one of the most serious thinkers in the country in doing so.
00:39:23.200
The Democrats are not going to do it, but the American people are frustrated with the
00:39:28.760
As we're wrapping up, though, Ben, I'm going to take a moment of personal privilege and
00:39:34.400
We started this podcast by victory lapping Stanford Law School in a moment of sanity and free
00:39:40.560
speech breaking out on one of our elite law schools.
00:39:43.420
I'm going to victory lap on the other end now and just point out I'm sitting here hanging
00:39:51.900
Listen, and I want to do a shout out to all of our listeners who are geeks and nerds.
00:39:59.300
Look, Ben, for all his aw shucks down to earth nature, was a varsity tennis player at Ole Miss.
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And Dave was captain of the damn wrestling team at West Point.
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And by the way, as I'm campaigning with him across Pennsylvania, he didn't tell me initially
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he was all state in football because that didn't even merit mentioning.
00:40:24.680
Both Ben and Dave in high school or college would have stuffed me in the locker.
00:40:28.460
And here we are hanging out on the podcast fighting to save America.
00:40:33.120
So I'm just going to revel for a moment and say to every one of you who wasn't captain of
00:40:38.560
the wrestling team at West Point, there's hope for you.
00:40:45.820
Grab Dave's new book, Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America.
00:40:51.220
You can grab it on Amazon or wherever you get your books.
00:40:56.500
So if people want to see where you're headed or where you're going, is that schedule out
00:41:08.560
Verdict, we've got a lot of news that may be breaking.
00:41:14.080
The center and I will be back here with you in a couple of days.
00:41:18.320
Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode.
00:41:20.980
And write us a five-star review so we can reach new listeners.