World on the Brink: Is China Winning Cold War II with Cyber & AI? ft. Dmitri Alperovitch

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:11
Unknown
Welcome back to Elevated Thoughts. Today, it's our honor to welcome one of the co-founders of the multibillion dollar cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, who also happens to be the executive chairman and co-founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank and who recently wrote the book world on the Brink How America Can Beat China in the race for the 21st century.

00:00:24:13 - 00:00:46:11
Unknown
Mr. Dimitri Alperovitch, Demis Ramey, thanks so much for your time. How are you doing? Great. How are you guys? Fantastic. Very well. Thank you. And we're very excited to speak with you. We both flew through your book. I posted about it on it's actually a new reposted it if you recall. Yeah, we shared that we we ate it up and actually, we're very interested to kind of deepen our learning.

00:00:46:14 - 00:01:05:21
Unknown
The pile of books behind it, you'll see, of some of your colleagues as well as, doctor Red Genco, who wrote to Run the World, as well as Mr. Stephen Cook. We interviewed last week. So we're really grateful to add you here, especially with all the news that's going on in the world surrounding China and our new administration here with Donald Trump.

00:01:05:23 - 00:01:36:09
Unknown
But first, I just like to have our listeners learn a little bit more about you. I know that you started in the cybersecurity world. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you sold your roots in that, and then, oh, my God, you grew to be one of the largest in the world. I don't know about that, but, yeah, I started my career almost 30 years ago now in cybersecurity and, started actually in high school, creating, cryptography, encryption company, with my father.

00:01:36:09 - 00:02:22:06
Unknown
And then, got obsessed with it. And studying in college was actually the first graduate of the Georgia Tech, information security master's program and went to work for a bunch of startups, big companies. And then, in 2011, co-founded CrowdStrike, which, grew to be a very large company. But that, work in cybersecurity is actually what also got me so deeply connected to the broader geopolitics because I had the, fortune or misfortune to, have investigated some of the earliest cases of Chinese cyber espionage activity, going back to 2010 with the groundbreaking operational Aurora, as I called it, the hack of Google and a number of other companies

00:02:22:06 - 00:02:52:12
Unknown
by China. And then shady. Right. And I dragon many investigations over the years, then into North Korea. Korean attack sites and hacks into Iranian attacks, Russian attacks as well. But, I coined this phrase early on that we don't have a cyber problem. We have a Russia, China, Iran and North Korea problem. Because I realize that much of this activity was emanating from these four countries, that these four countries were responsible, of course, to much menace in the physical world as well.

00:02:52:12 - 00:03:33:03
Unknown
And the cyber was just a manifestation of their power, or an attempt to hit us asymmetrically through this new domain and, that the solutions to it ultimately did not lie just in the realm of technology, just in the realm of cyber. But you had to focus on the broader issues, within the relationship, with these countries and, for last, five years since the CrowdStrike, I've been focused on the broader geopolitics and primarily China, which I believe presents the the number one threat to, the power of the United States around the world to our economic well-being, to our national security.

00:03:33:05 - 00:04:02:18
Unknown
Well, no question that your book makes a compelling case to paint China as, let's call it the leading competitor to United States or American supremacy here. But what one of the things you make clear is how this cyber warfare or this new domain has kind of entered the playing field and made it so these smaller state actors that traditionally maybe don't have as much umph on the battlefield can come in and affect our population really in a negative way.

00:04:02:20 - 00:04:24:19
Unknown
Can you talk to us a little bit more about some of these instances where you found this, and what are the roles here? What is China after? What do they want to do to the American people with these cyber threats? Yeah. By the way, I really hate the term competitor or great power competition as this popular term to use in DC, because it kind of assumes that this is sort of market Queensbury boxing match.

00:04:24:21 - 00:04:44:23
Unknown
And by the way, if it's if we lose, it's not great. But it's okay. Right? You know, you lose sports sporting matches. This is not a sporting match. The stakes are actually, very, very high. I don't want to say existential because very few things are truly existential. But, you know, it comes close in terms of Americans role, America's role in the world.

00:04:44:23 - 00:05:12:07
Unknown
So competition I don't think, characterizes this relationship accurately. I do believe there are an adversary, and, I certainly believe that they, they think that they're an adversary and that we are an adversary to them in terms of cyber, their goals and their, the nature of their operations have evolved dramatically. So when it began, now almost 25 years ago, it was mostly espionage.

00:05:12:09 - 00:05:42:14
Unknown
It was breaking into computer networks at the time, not even private sector networks, but government defense industrial base to try to steal our secrets. Right. To conduct what every nation does, activity in cyberspace that, sort of piggybacks on the things that they've been doing for many, many decades, of course, centuries, even, in terms of espionage in the traditional physical world and has just moved into the digital domain because the information has moved to that domain as well.

00:05:42:14 - 00:06:13:14
Unknown
And it's so much easier to just break into a network and steal it than try to recruit an asset and, and risk, discovery and, and potentially even getting arrested if you don't have diplomatic cover and so forth. Over time, and we're talking in kind of mid 2000, they realize that not only can we steal government secrets, national secrets, we can also steal private sector secrets, economic espionage, IP theft.

00:06:13:16 - 00:06:36:13
Unknown
And they started doing that on a truly industrial scale, where I coined the phrase back in 2011 that war witnessing is the greatest transfer wealth in history. And I truly believe that even back then, and I think, I've been validated, in the ensuing, decade and a half since then, that what is going on is just staggering.

00:06:36:15 - 00:07:15:21
Unknown
Truly hundreds of billions of dollars of valuable intellectual property that has been taken from Western companies, given to companies in China who have now become behemoths in their own right, across so many sectors, across telecommunications, with was one of the primary telecommunications provider in the semiconductor industry where, they've built, an indigenous industry almost from the ground up, very, very rapidly in the energy sector, where they're the leaders in battery technology and electric vehicles and wind and solar and nuclear, you name it.

00:07:15:21 - 00:07:45:03
Unknown
So it's been really astounding to watch that the foundation of their economic power has been built on this massive amounts of IP that has been stolen and they're continuing to to that to this day. But what we started to see around five years ago is something even more concerning, which is intrusions into our critical infrastructure here from the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese military, into networks that have really nothing valuable to steal.

00:07:45:05 - 00:08:32:15
Unknown
We're talking small municipalities, water utilities, electric utilities where you don't really have any valuable IP that would be of any benefit to China. But the US government, the US intelligence community, believes this has been done for the purposes of pre-positioning, gaining access to this networks and these networks so that in the event of a conflict, let's say over Taiwan, the Chinese would try to hold our infrastructure hostage for two reasons one, to delay and potentially impede our ability to mobilize and flow forces across the Pacific in support of, defense of Taiwan scenario or the Philippine scenario, and to to actually try to hold that infrastructure hostage and blackmail us by saying, well,

00:08:32:15 - 00:09:04:16
Unknown
you know, if you're going to get into conflict with us, not only are we going to harm your forces in the region, we're also going to attack your mainland through a variety of means, including in cyberspace and try to hit your civilian infrastructure, your financial sector, your energy, and so forth. And, that, you know, goes beyond not just, traditional espionage, whichever one does, but even the economic espionage, which is a norm violation to a whole new level where this is preparation of the battlefield.

00:09:04:18 - 00:09:28:18
Unknown
I believe this is yet another indication which we have numerous indications of. Now, the Chinese are preparing for conflict with us. So this is not a competition. This is something much worse. So I want to take the conversation in kind of a direction that is good for the layman and people out there who maybe not have their their nose deep in geopolitics or, or even understand, you know, what goes on over shores when they're worried about, you know, domestic issues.

00:09:28:20 - 00:09:46:14
Unknown
I think you touched on it earlier, the, you know, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea problem. I don't know if I got the order right, but essentially those are the four countries that are in opposition to the current world order. The US has plenty of its own past and even, you know, current transgressions that, you know, we need to, you know, get our, our, our noses straight on.

00:09:46:16 - 00:10:04:16
Unknown
However, I don't think people realize, you know, when they try to say, you know, the US should step back or it shouldn't be the World police or shouldn't be so transformational. And that is right in certain regard. But I don't think they understand the scope of of what those nations are trying to do. Right? They're trying to change a world order that many of us appreciate but don't because it works so well.

00:10:04:16 - 00:10:24:08
Unknown
That's why we don't notice how great it is, right? The the flow of free trade and information, such things don't occur in those, those countries. So the kind of the conversation I guess I want to have is, is really how do we how do we deal with these nations. And, you know, our traditional tools of trade controls, restriction and sanctions are more challenging when they're state controlled economies, right?

00:10:24:12 - 00:10:41:23
Unknown
When there's not market economies that we can leverage those tools against them. They're a little bit less effective. But there is some ways that I think we've done in the past and you've touched on in your novel, is is immigration right? You know, the United States or some of our economic, most of our economic power comes from attracting great minds from abroad.

00:10:41:23 - 00:11:04:19
Unknown
And I think that's really important. But another one is trade with partners and allies who are very important to trying to maintain this. You know, this view of the world that we have in, in as opposed to the multipolar world those other nations are trying to create. So, you know, where do we work on those areas and not and why are these things important like immigration and trade and trade deals for, you know, Americans who might be focused on domestic issues only?

00:11:04:21 - 00:11:26:15
Unknown
Yeah. Well, first of all, when you look at these four countries, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, they all present different challenges. And I would argue that with the three the Russia, Iran, North Korea, they're mostly regional challenges, right. North Korea is a problem, but it's a problem really for the region. It's it's a problem for the threat that they pose to the South Koreans, to some extent to the Japanese.

00:11:26:17 - 00:11:52:17
Unknown
But it's not a global threat. Iran same thing problem for the Middle East. Russia mostly problem for for Europe. China is a global problem. It's not just a problem for East Asia, right? You're seeing their influence in Africa and Latin America and Europe, right? You name it. Right. They're coming into your own backyard, into the Caribbean, even, building infrastructure, buying influence, building military bases, further and further away from from their own shores.

00:11:52:19 - 00:12:26:06
Unknown
Their ambition is to be the, the global superpower, not just a superpower, but the global superpower. And look, they they have they believe they have a historical right to it, because for much of human history, China was the number one nation, the most populous, the richest, most powerful right. And it is only since the advent of the Industrial revolution very recently, right in the last few hundred years, where they've lost that mantle, first to the Brits and now to the United States, and they believe that they're reestablishing their rightful place as the number one country in the world.

00:12:26:08 - 00:12:53:21
Unknown
And, you know, they talk a lot about this. Chinese need national rejuvenation, right? XI Jinping is obsessed with it. But even it predates even him. The idea that they would achieve it by 2049, which would be a 100 year anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China and would end, finally, that century of humiliation that they had suffered in the 1800s with the unequal treaties and the Opium Wars that they believe in.

00:12:53:21 - 00:13:15:19
Unknown
You know, frankly, rightly believe that, Western imperial nations, particularly Great Britain, but also others have, inflicted on them. Right. And that's when they lost Hong Kong. Macao. They believe they lost, Taiwan to the Japanese. As I write in my book, that the history of Taiwan is much more complicated than that, but nevertheless, this is their belief.

00:13:15:19 - 00:13:39:15
Unknown
Right? So their vision of the world is that they're number one and everyone else is going to be subservient. And by the way, we also see what happens in terms of how they treat countries that they believe are weaker than them. Right? Like Australia, like Lithuania, like many others that they've bossed around when they even dared to suggest, like Australia did, that, you know, the origins of Covid should be looked at, right?

00:13:39:17 - 00:14:05:15
Unknown
And they immediately punish them with, with tariffs and, and bans on, on, on imports of lobster and barley and other things from Australia. They do this all the time. They bully other countries from a position of we stronger. You're not. So it's not just about a rules based order. I don't like that term. And I think that it's hard to tell the American public that we should fight for the rules based order.

00:14:05:17 - 00:14:24:06
Unknown
This is not something that that motivates people. Right. But I think you can't tell them that we should fight for our way of life, for our economic prosperity, that we don't want to be become subservient economically to China. We don't want China to bully us around like that, bully other nations around, and we want to remain the number one nation.

00:14:24:06 - 00:14:41:21
Unknown
I think Americans want to win. We want to be number one in most things. We want. We want wanted to win. You know, the Cold War, the first Cold War. We wanted to get to the moon first. We wanted to be first and all of those things. And I think that this is enough of a motivating factor to say when a new Cold War with China now and we have to win.

00:14:41:23 - 00:15:00:05
Unknown
Losing is not an option. Right. And that is the challenge that, you know, we have to confront now that that's a major part of your book that popped out at me when I read, I go, whoa, he's saying we're in Cold War two. Do you know if you're the first person to kind of coin that phrase here with what we're seeing today?

00:15:00:07 - 00:15:23:16
Unknown
Now, there have been other people, Neil Ferguson, a famous historian, has used it. So many people have used that, I think I, I created a fairly comprehensive framework for how to think about Cold War two versus Cold War one. A lot of people that claim were in Cold War two, like me, make the argument that it's a very, very different Cold War from the first one.

00:15:23:18 - 00:15:48:12
Unknown
And I actually highlighted in the book how similar the two conflicts are remarkably similar. Right. Taiwan, that's the one we have currently with China is very, very similar to Berlin, West Berlin, for the first, 15 years of the Cold War, one was the place where the United States and the Soviet Union almost went into hot war, including nuclear war, until the Berlin Wall was built.

00:15:48:16 - 00:16:17:23
Unknown
You have, so many similarities in terms of global competition for supremacy between these superpowers. You have preparations for conflict. You have an arms race, including a nuclear arms race, by the way, as the Chinese are building up their nuclear weapons, at a very alarming pace for the first time in in many decades since they've acquired them, you have a space race where for the first time in many decades now, we're trying to get back to the moon before the Chinese do, and maybe to Mars after that.

00:16:18:01 - 00:16:36:18
Unknown
You have economic warfare, you scrabble for military bases, you have the world dividing, as as it did, in the first Cold War, but not completely, because, you know, one of the things that people say is, wow, this can be a cold war with China because so many countries don't want to choose. Well, guess what? The exact same thing happened.

00:16:36:18 - 00:17:04:06
Unknown
Cold War one where we had this part of the world, the actually huge part of the world called nonaligned that didn't want to choose countries like India, Indonesia, many others that didn't want to be part of the, you know, first block, the first world block or second world bloc. And wanted to choose their own path. You have the exact same situation and many of the same countries, frankly, deciding that they don't want to choose and and want to play both sides.

00:17:04:06 - 00:17:30:09
Unknown
You have attack, war. You have, you know, an ideological component to the struggle, where once again, by the way, you're facing a truly Marxist-Leninist adversary, because XI Jinping is absolutely Marxist-Leninist. But beyond that, that ideology, certainly authoritarianism versus the democratic, governing, principles, is is present as well. So just so many similarities.

00:17:30:09 - 00:17:56:00
Unknown
And really, the only difference that you can point to is the economic interconnectivity between the Soviet Union, I mean, between China and the United States that you have now, which, by the way, is changing as we speak. Right. You have President Trump saying that he's going to institute tariffs as soon as February 1st on China. Of course, he already started that in his first term in 2018 when he put on tariffs on China, which started the decoupling process.

00:17:56:00 - 00:18:20:13
Unknown
It continue under Biden is probably going to get accelerated now. And as a highlight in the book, by the way, the idea that the economies of the Soviet Union and the West were completely disconnected is also historical fallacy, because there were numerous connections between the two, and many Western companies were investing in China. You know, I grew up in the Soviet Union drinking Pepsi Cola, which was freely available.

00:18:20:15 - 00:18:42:09
Unknown
Coca Cola was not. But Pepsi made a deal with the Soviet Union. So it was one of the companies that, decided to operate and bargain with the Soviets. So that has a pattern, unfortunately. Right, of, you know, many business interests starting perhaps benign, you know, what was a developing market at the time, but it's kind of accelerated China's development and kind of give them an out handed leverage in the marketplace.

00:18:42:09 - 00:19:15:20
Unknown
It out even to the point of, an overproduction crisis. Many, you know, economies are worried about right now, totally. And you see this to this day, which is just so amazing to me that companies still are trying to make this argument that as much as China is violating every rulebook in the world, stealing IP, subsidizing an industry, engaging in overcapacity, you know, not playing by by the rules of the WTO, the World Trade Organization, that we should still work with them because there's money to be made there.

00:19:15:22 - 00:19:56:04
Unknown
And then on the same, in the same breath, argue that, oh my God, China is eating our lunch. You know, why isn't the government doing more, to help us, right? This is literally happening as we speak with the AI right now with the DPC announcements and everyone freaking out. And literally last week you had, that last week, I guess two weeks ago, you had the last, one of the last executive orders of the Biden administration was this so-called AI diffusion rule, which, dramatically escalated export control restrictions on export of chips, primarily to China, but but also to other countries that facilitate black market imports into China.

00:19:56:06 - 00:20:18:21
Unknown
And you had industry completely up in arms about that. How dare would we cut off chips to China? How dare would we try to restrict that and cut off, access, for American goods? And then now two weeks later, screaming, oh my God, look at Chinese progress in the AI. Well, the two are not disconnected. You can't build the AI without chips and one hand in history.

00:20:18:21 - 00:20:47:12
Unknown
You want to sell them chips on the two. You're screaming about the progress they're making when they get those chips, and start building great models. One of the most interesting facts that you listed in your book was how China imported, more than anything, semiconductors last year, and chips more than oil and crude oil by a factor of hundreds of billions, I think, now with this deep sea coming out, one of the another actually a United States based, I forget the name of the firm, but he went on the news on CNBC.

00:20:47:12 - 00:21:09:14
Unknown
He said, well, you don't get it. China has probably 50,001 Nvidia top of the line advanced chips. They just got him illegally. Do you think that that's possible or that they're kind of importing these chips. Or are they maybe just rebuilding lives and trying to figure out, oh, they're they're using, by the way, they actually said in their paper, you know, the published a paper on how they did this.

00:21:09:14 - 00:21:36:15
Unknown
They talked about using 800 chips, which basically is exactly the same as the H 100. So what happened is in 2022, the Biden administration started implementing export controls on GPUs and restricted Nvidia from selling H100 to China. Nvidia immediately turned around, and said, okay, we can't sell H100, but what we're going to do is we're going to look at the technical controls because they didn't call out the model by name.

00:21:36:15 - 00:22:00:06
Unknown
They said that a chip with those performance characteristics is banned from being sold to China. And they said, we'll make a chip. The just tiny bit below that threshold come right up to the line. Right. And what they did with the H 800 is basically take the H100 and limit the interconnect for for memory bandwidth, and and said, oh, you know, this meets the limits.

00:22:00:06 - 00:22:20:01
Unknown
We're going to sell it to China. It took a whole year for the United States government to, of course, work through the bureaucracy to say, well, now that Chip is also banned and lower the standards significantly further. So H 800 got banned in in 2023. But of course, in that time frame, Nvidia sold a ton of them to China.

00:22:20:03 - 00:22:50:12
Unknown
And, at least in their paper, they claim that they use h8 h eight hundreds to the train. This model, many people I've talked to suspect that they also used a bunch of h100, in addition to those, that were smuggled illegally into into China. And by the way, they were smothered illegally, because, you know, the chip makers were selling them to countries without really looking at who they are and customers in great depth.

00:22:50:12 - 00:23:17:05
Unknown
Right? So if Malaysia is suddenly ordering a ton of chips, no one bother asking, well, is Malaysia actually building Khadija Lam's? Should that be a red flag for us? No, we'll sell to Malaysia and then lo and behold, US ships end up to China. I mean, it's exactly the same situation as what's been happening with Russia since 2022, where, you know, you've had a direct ban on exports to China, but suddenly Kazakhstan becomes a huge import destination, export destination.

00:23:17:07 - 00:23:33:19
Unknown
Right. And Armenia and all these countries on Russia's periphery and on bothers asking the question, is it strange that someone we've never sold to before in Central Asia suddenly wants to buy all the stuff that we used to be selling to Russia? Now why bother asking the question? Let's just sell. The money was too good to resist.

00:23:33:19 - 00:23:56:02
Unknown
I guess us. Wow, I could not accept that. Yeah. So coming from the recycling industry specifically, I'm in electronics recycling now, so I can kind of talk a little bit first hand. Over the last few years of, you know, there way to recover semiconductors, especially Ram chips and things like that, to reintegrate them into new products, to recycle batteries, you know, you know, not necessarily legally and put them into new products and things like that.

00:23:56:07 - 00:24:18:07
Unknown
The Chinese are very innovative and good at, you know, evading certain practices that are levied against them. So what you do a lot of your work at the policy accelerator. Accelerator policy Accelerator, and especially several the suggestions in your book are things that we as the United States can do to be competitive. Could you maybe touch on some of those and things that we kind of need to be allocating our resources and commitments to?

00:24:18:09 - 00:24:35:09
Unknown
Yeah. So if you look at the strategy, right, I believe that it is really vital for us to win this new Cold War with China. And I outline, what we need to do to do that, to do that. So first of all, you need to go on offense and invest in innovation. We need to win this innovation.

00:24:35:09 - 00:25:06:22
Unknown
Right? A race, and that means that, we need to secure critical material supply chains. Right now, we have enormous dependency on China for so many critical minerals. Not because they're the only source of money for them. In fact, they don't actually mind that many themselves, of these minerals. But because they've built an enormous processing infrastructure in China for refining and processing of these minerals, because they've been subsidized since the 1980s and driving everyone out of business.

00:25:07:00 - 00:25:26:06
Unknown
So this is something that needs to be corrected with tariff policy and investment, by industry to make sure that we have our own refining processing, which, by the way, is not rocket science. It's not that difficult to do. It doesn't even cost that much money. But something that is absolutely vital to make sure that we are not in danger of being cut off from China.

00:25:26:08 - 00:25:59:16
Unknown
Right? For materials that are necessary for everything from defense application to chips to so many other vital applications. Secondly, I believe that we need to win the chip, chip war, by making sure that we cut off China at the knees and prevent them from building their own independence and chip production. And that is not hard to do, because the once the most sophisticated equipment the man has ever built is actually these machines that you use to manufacture chips.

00:25:59:17 - 00:26:43:10
Unknown
Right. This semiconductor manufacturing equipment companies that, that, that can, you know, stamp, you know, carve out you know, in silicon, these transistors that are, you know, shorter than the width of a human hair. Right? Just absolutely unbelievable level of complexity that goes into it. And the good news is that the equipment that is used to make these chips, both the advanced chips that you need to make GPUs and other AI and, you know, phones and laptop applications, but also foundational chips that go into absolutely everything from your weapons systems to your cars, your refrigerators and so forth.

00:26:43:12 - 00:27:05:05
Unknown
All of the all that equipment that is needed to make those chips is made basically in three countries. It is made in the United States. The leading companies in that space are Applied Materials, Lam and KLA. They're made in Netherlands. And the company that many people probably have heard of called ASML. And they're made in Japan with a couple of companies there, Tokyo Electron, Nikon and a few others.

00:27:05:07 - 00:27:31:08
Unknown
And and it's not one or the other. You need equipment from all these companies because they do different things. You know, ASML does advanced lithography, and others do, do other parts of, of this process that has basically a thousand steps, or more to, to bacon and advanced chip. So, what we need to do is make sure that China doesn't buy any of that equipment, right?

00:27:31:08 - 00:28:02:21
Unknown
Because without that equipment, they're dead in the water, you know, can they build our equipment one day? Maybe, but it will take them decades. They're trying right now. They're trying really, really hard. And by the way, you need to look at the supply chain for that equipment, making sure that they can buy parts because it's not just the final machine, but it has millions of parts that come from other suppliers, Western suppliers that have built expertise over many decades in that, like, for example, a German company called Zeiss that makes the really, advanced mirrors for the SML machines.

00:28:02:21 - 00:28:33:16
Unknown
Right? Without that, you can't really build advanced lithography, laser, companies and so forth. So for China to reproduce that entire supply chain would be incredibly, incredibly difficult if we actually focus, if we actually say not a single machine will go into China, we haven't done that. We've done this very piecemeal where we try to, have our cake and eat it too and say, well, machines that can produce, chips below 18 nanometers, but exclusively can produce chips below 18 nanometers.

00:28:33:16 - 00:29:01:06
Unknown
We're going to bam, right. And and it took us a year to even get the allies on board with this, even though we could afford some, we have something in the Commerce Department that is incredibly powerful tool called Foreign Direct Product Rule, which basically states that any technology manufactured anywhere in the world by any company, as long as it has a certain percentage of intellectual property or material that comes from the United States, we have universal jurisdiction over where it gets sold.

00:29:01:08 - 00:29:23:09
Unknown
This is how we instituted a ban on sales of semiconductors to Russia after their invasion of Ukraine, because every single chip made anywhere else in the world is either made with U.S. equipment, with U.S. intellectual property designs, etc.. So we said any chip, we don't care where it's made in China, in Japan, in Taiwan, not if I can go into into Russia.

00:29:23:11 - 00:29:42:06
Unknown
Now, obviously there's still invasions that are taking place, but, you know, sensibly, you know, not none of that can go, legally into Russia. So we could have done that with our sample. We could have done it with the Japanese companies, but we chose not to. We chose to take a very nice approach, and try to convince them it took years.

00:29:42:08 - 00:30:03:04
Unknown
So we waste a lot of time. And even then, it was full of loopholes because we said, well, only equipment that is exclusively and that word is very important exclusively use for 80 nanometers and below. We will not send, send to China. And then a couple of years later, while we produces a chip that's at five nanometers.

00:30:03:04 - 00:30:29:21
Unknown
And the world is shocked, actually. Sorry, seven nanometers first. Now about getting to five. And everyone's like, how in the world did they do this? And I don't understand why anyone that knows anything about this industry was surprised because six years prior, in 2019, small showed a process in their farm to produce a seven nanometer chip with equipment that you also used to produce 22 nanometer chips, the so-called DV.

00:30:29:23 - 00:30:51:02
Unknown
Yes. Some machines which are allowed into China. So the fact that years later, Huawei reproduces essentially that same process that we knew was possible back in 2019, suddenly everyone's shocked, like, how could they possibly do this? Well, we knew it was possible. In fact, yes, TSMC showed us that it was possible. Right? So we just weren't ever serious about these export controls.

00:30:51:04 - 00:31:12:01
Unknown
And even today, I got so many pins from reporters about this deep sea announcement. Does this mean that export controls don't work? Well? No. It means that we're not serious about implementing them. They're not comprehensive. So if you're not going to cut off everything, you might as well just not even try because it's never going to work. So, you know, it's up to us whether we're going to get serious about this.

00:31:12:01 - 00:31:33:17
Unknown
And we're actually going to focus on winning the Cold War, where we're going to play both sides and try to have our cake and eat it. You. There's no way to fight this conflict and talk about the Cold War. Hopefully not a hot one without pain. It's all going to be painful. There's going to be revenue impacts. You know tariffs are going to have inflationary impacts.

00:31:33:19 - 00:31:53:05
Unknown
You can't have a free lunch. So we have to decide are we serious about doing this or do we just want to give up and lose to China. If that's the case then yeah sure. Let's abandon all these efforts. Let's a ban on all these export control restrictions and just let them win. I don't want to do that.

00:31:53:07 - 00:32:28:17
Unknown
And I hope that the American public doesn't want to do that, but, we need to get serious about this or we're going to lose it. Seems like the Americans are going to almost let the free market play out. And as you're describing, that will lead to a loss. Actually, I wrote something on X this week where I almost praised socialism or communism in the sense of industry, in that you see a chart of all of the intertwined nature between the industries in China, and you have, you know, photo processing together with AI, together with missiles and military technology, together with self-driving and together with battery technology.

00:32:28:17 - 00:32:56:23
Unknown
So if you force them all to integrate, all of a sudden you are forcing this technological advancement. But maybe it's very surface level, as we're kind of also learning and as we've seen in the past, actually this this week, I have in front of me Chinese satellite now beats Elon Musk's Starlink in terms of upload and download. But actually what I wanted to bring this to is a little bit of what you mentioned in your book, because it sounds like what you're describing is Jake Sullivan's small yard, tall fence policy.

00:32:57:04 - 00:33:28:08
Unknown
Could you help me understand exactly what that means when we're referring to a yard and a fence in terms of Chinese imports? Exports? Yeah. So this was a banner that the Biden administration kind of put up to explain their export control strategy, because people were saying, what are you actually trying to achieve? Why are you saying, you know, on the semiconductor manufacturing equipment, that only equipment that's exclusively used for 80 nanometers and below is banned, but other equipment is allowed, and that's, you know, what they were trying to message is that it's not everything in the yard is very, very small.

00:33:28:08 - 00:33:53:16
Unknown
Will put up a very high fence around it. But you know, the limit there will be real limits to what we're going to ban. Right. And that just doesn't work. Like you have to make a yard a lot bigger size of a football field, maybe. For this to actually have an effect. Otherwise you're actually having the worst outcome possible, which is that you are angering China.

00:33:53:17 - 00:34:20:05
Unknown
Right? Because they're very mad about these export controls, and you're not actually achieving your outcome of slowing them down substantially. So why would you want to do that if, if you're going to anger them actually do it for real, cause which is that we're going to actually stop them from developing this advanced technology or don't anger them at all and just let them buy it, let them win, you know, and that way we can avoid, the potential of conflict altogether.

00:34:20:05 - 00:34:45:13
Unknown
Right? We'll lose the Cold War, but at least we won't get into a hot one again. I'm not arguing for that approach. I'm not for it. But you could make a legitimate argument for that path. And some people do. But this middle ground of, again, we're going to have our cake and eat it, too. We're going to have this really small yard to make sure that industry can still sell all their equipment to China and make a lot of money, and that's somehow going to stop.

00:34:45:13 - 00:35:02:05
Unknown
China was always a fallacy. So yeah, the US has always been, you know, has plenty of, you know, a history of saber rattling the things that we've done. But I don't think people also understand the scope of, of what China has been doing over the last few years. You know, we we talk about playing nice and perhaps coming some more mediated agreement.

00:35:02:10 - 00:35:19:21
Unknown
But, China knows the stakes of this. They they know the consequences of it. Right. So, I think we could also put into context a lot of folks just think of Taiwan as this far flung country, and I don't want to reduce them to just the value of, TSMC. But, you know, could you maybe talk about just the role Taiwan plays in all of this?

00:35:19:21 - 00:35:40:13
Unknown
You know, it's it's for many folks, it sounds like just a vestige from the conflict from, you know, decades ago. But there's some real economic implications if we don't have a free, independent Taiwan anymore. Yeah. Well, Taiwan is important for many reasons. And again, I don't want to reduce them to chips, but just on chips themselves. Right. The common refrain is they produce over 90% of all advanced chips.

00:35:40:13 - 00:36:23:02
Unknown
That's very true. TSMC now has the most advanced process in the world, for, for chip production. But, beyond just the advanced chips, they produce 40% of all chips, period. Right. So this is just an absolute powerhouse in terms of chips manufacturing that is not reproducible anywhere else in the foreseeable future. You know, a lot of people have this misconception that the Chips act that we passed a few years ago that authorized about $39 billion of direct grants, and, about $20 billion in, tax breaks and, some research grants as well, that that's going to compete with Taiwan.

00:36:23:03 - 00:36:41:20
Unknown
That was never the goal. That was never the objective. And it couldn't be the objective because the numbers are laughable. Right? The cost of an advanced fab. What just one is about $30 billion right now. We're not paying for the full size, cost of the fab. But nevertheless, you know, this $39 billion is a drop in the bucket.

00:36:41:22 - 00:37:09:03
Unknown
It is important, but you're never going to compete with Taiwan. TSMC built one fab at four nanometers in Arizona. It's actually working fairly well, but they're building one fab a year for the next ten years in Taiwan, right? That is the scale of what you're seeing in Taiwan, right? You're just not going to have in the United States, the cost of labor, the cost of environmental permitting and so forth is just so much higher here than it is in Taiwan, the ecosystem that they've built.

00:37:09:03 - 00:37:33:09
Unknown
I just don't see in the next ten years that changing at all. And in fact, the projections from industry itself is that the United States will go from having about 10% market share before the Chips act passed, to maybe 18, 18% market share of global chip production, in ten years or so. And virtually none of that will come at the expense of Taiwan.

00:37:33:11 - 00:37:55:08
Unknown
It will come at the expense of Korea and some other countries. But Taiwan will still remain the massive producer of chips. Now, the main threat to Taiwan is in kind of, double edged sword way. Is is actually China right. Obviously there's a direct invasion threat, but the other threat is that China is trying to dominate this industry.

00:37:55:08 - 00:38:31:20
Unknown
And they're the ones are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, not 39, but hundreds of billions of dollars trying to create a domestic industry, stockpiling massive amounts of the equipment that we should be banning from transfer to them, stealing engineers from U.S. firms, from Taiwanese firms to try to come in, stealing intellectual property. And that the main threat, on the chip side is that China will actually build that independence themselves and dominate that industry, and Taiwan will become much less important to them, which is probably one of the constraining factors right now.

00:38:31:23 - 00:39:08:03
Unknown
On them, thinking to invade it. Right? Because in a case of invasion, those fabs probably get destroyed. Global economy is ruined, including China's. But if they achieve that, chips breakout, independence of production, then they have a much for your hand to go off to Taiwan without worrying about impact of those fabs. So when we talk about Taiwan, the way that your book opens, and it really caught my attention because I actually am coming off the heels of reading Andy Jacobson, Nuclear War, a scenario where that outlines exactly what would happen if in her situation, nuclear, you know, North Korea launches a bolt out of the blue attack on the United States.

00:39:08:03 - 00:39:26:21
Unknown
And whoa, it made me actually think, and I will delete this if I ever run for president, that I don't think I have the ability to push that button to end humanity, as it were. So when you start your book and you explain this situation or this hypothetical situation where China kind of sails over, I think it was November 13th.

00:39:26:21 - 00:39:55:19
Unknown
They chose the week after the presidential election in 2028. And I know you've run wargames as well. I have a question. Is that wouldn't China be shooting themselves in the foot to do this non diplomatically? They would lose access just like everyone else would to this global economy of chips, which is the new oil. So I would think that this kind of mutually assured destruction, this nuclear proliferation, it almost is a dead end street because everyone's ingrained now in the globalist world.

00:39:55:19 - 00:40:19:21
Unknown
How can you level that? China will do that and that in spite of themselves? Well, again, you're making two assumptions. There are one, that China will remain dependent on Taiwan in their chip production by 2028, which is they're desperately trying not to. Right? In fact, XI Jinping announced ten years ago exactly. Made in China 2025 plan to achieve independence in chip production.

00:40:20:03 - 00:40:42:14
Unknown
There are other aspects to it as well, but this was one of the core tenets. They failed at that largely because we slowed them down. Also because of corruption in China and a few other things. But that even though they missed the deadline, the ambition did not go away. And they're still in that sense, massively. And and again, you see the progress of away with seven nanometers now five nanometers.

00:40:42:14 - 00:41:06:03
Unknown
They're getting there. Right. So you could see a situation where, with this massive amounts and investment and our very ineffective ways of trying to stop them, they'll be much less relying on Taiwan when they ultimately choose to go. And the rest of the world will still be reliant, but China won't be. Right. So, that creates, you know, an enormous opportunity for them.

00:41:06:05 - 00:41:31:17
Unknown
And then secondly, the assumption is that XI Jinping actually cares about economics and everything we've seen in the last three years or so, or four years since he ended zero-Covid suggests that he doesn't actually care that much about economics. Right? The stimulus that they've introduced to their ailing economy is very ineffective and fairly small compared to what many economists believe it should be.

00:41:31:18 - 00:41:54:09
Unknown
He keeps pushing back, even though he's a Marxist-Leninist. He keeps pushing back against socialism and giveaways to, to the people, and, which which is very ironic. You know, I think his experience going through the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s kind of, you know, made him think that, you know, he went through a starvation period and really rough times.

00:41:54:09 - 00:42:18:08
Unknown
So everyone else should just buckle up and, you know, crying because you don't have a job, you know, you're you're weak, right? It's what he's probably thinking. Toughen up. So, you know, I'm not sure that economics alone would deter him from doing what he believes is in the service of, you know, Chinese national rejuvenation as, as he calls it.

00:42:18:10 - 00:42:39:12
Unknown
So, those are the two things that, you know, make make that scenario potentially more likely than many people might think. And and then in your hypothetical war games that you've played out with, with world leaders, has there been any, any positive situation where if that does happen, you know, the United States comes out on top here or it's just a really bad every way cut it.

00:42:39:14 - 00:42:59:10
Unknown
Here's the situation. Right? When you think about three potential outcomes here, and I believe, you know, we haven't talked much about XI Jinping's intentions, but I believe that he is intent on taking Taiwan in his lifetime. Yeah. The man turned 70 last year. Right. So do the actual math. And the next ten years may be very dangerous.

00:42:59:10 - 00:43:26:18
Unknown
And we've just seen what happens to their leaders when they get into their 80s, you know, health wise, mental capacity, etc. who knows what happens. So and the clock is such that he's up for reelection, the Chinese Communist Party, as chairman in 2027, that's going to be a five year term, assuming he gets reelected, which, you know, most people tend to think is is near certainty, given that he's eliminated all competition and instituted loyalists within the party.

00:43:26:20 - 00:43:48:14
Unknown
But in 2032, when that five year term ends, he'll be 79, right? In the Chinese system, they don't tend to elect their leaders into their 80s. Again, health concerns. If economy continues to do as badly as it has been, you know, his power base may, may road. So in his mind, at least, I think 2030 2nd May be that potential deadline.

00:43:48:14 - 00:44:10:17
Unknown
I don't think he's penciled date starting in the calendar. You know, there's a lot of speculation about 27, which I actually don't share. I think that's probably too soon. But sometime in that probably 28 through 32 period, he may decide to go. And the, question will be, you know, first and foremost, what does the U.S. do?

00:44:10:20 - 00:44:35:00
Unknown
Do we fight for Taiwan if they go and, the impact if we do it, if we don't. But, you know, in those scenarios, you basically have three potential outcomes, right? He goes and he loses somehow. He goes and he wins and takes Taiwan and he doesn't go at all. And when you think about the first two possibilities, of war, none of them are good.

00:44:35:00 - 00:44:58:08
Unknown
I mean, obviously it's better if he loses than if he wins. But boy, the outcomes in terms of loss of life, potential for escalation. After all, this is a nuclear power. China with about 500 nuclear warheads and and trying to get to about a thousand by the end of this decade. This is very, very serious business, right. The loss of life we would encounter would be to send them out of trouble.

00:44:58:08 - 00:45:21:05
Unknown
I mean, we haven't seen losses like that since World War two in terms of daily, losses of personnel and, economic devastation, etc.. So, you know, the only, you know, if you remember that 1980s movie War game. Right. The only right move is not to play. The only right move is to deter them from ever launching this.

00:45:21:06 - 00:45:47:22
Unknown
And, this is what we need to focus on with economic deterrence of military deterrence. But, boy, we don't want to be in a conflict with China and having to fight the same. Because even if a win, it'll be horribly, horribly disastrous for for us, for the for the whole world. So let's I, I'd like to touch on some of the ways that we're kind of engaging in the this Cold War to conflict with them, or at least, some of the tactics that they're using.

00:45:47:22 - 00:46:06:15
Unknown
And one of the more contemporary issues is TikTok, the 12 hour ban that that happened. I think it's kind of important. And perhaps I was following the red herring for a little bit, too long when I when I heard one of your comments. So the whole concern even isn't just so much about even where the data is hosted, but it's the algorithm itself.

00:46:06:15 - 00:46:33:09
Unknown
Is that right? Because, as I read, I'm getting about halfway through, Yuval Noah Hari's book, The Nexus, and it kind of really does paint the picture of how powerful and manipulative at times algorithms can be. Yeah. Look, I want to make it very clear, I, I don't speak a lot about TikTok because out of all the things I'm concerned about with China, the progress in the AI chips military buildup, etc., economic warfare, cyber TikTok is somewhere way, way down on the bottom.

00:46:33:09 - 00:46:49:16
Unknown
My list. Got it. I'm not suggesting it's not an issue, but there are other more, much more pressing issues. So I wish that if we were to have a debate about the influence of the CCP in the United States and the nefarious things that they're doing that we would talk about, the police stations are opening up here right, to terrorize people.

00:46:49:16 - 00:47:15:22
Unknown
Right? The economic warfare, that's that conducting the planting of, malicious access and not critical infrastructure. Those things that I think are way more important than TikTok. But it's not to say that TikTok is meaningless. And as you say, is sad. The conversation about this has been, fairly, myopic. Focusing on data, I think, is a red herring.

00:47:16:00 - 00:47:41:10
Unknown
You know, that data is sold and resold right by every social media company, almost by so many ad providers, network providers, data brokers, etc. that if the Chinese want to buy your data, they don't need TikTok for it. It helps a little bit, potentially on the margins if they want to do targeting of particular military units, for example, that may be using TikTok and track their geolocation.

00:47:41:10 - 00:48:11:15
Unknown
But it's not the biggest problem that we've got. But the misinformation, the propaganda that can be present on the platform is a real issue because you're basically allowing an adversary state, China, to have influence. Over half the American population. Right? Suffered mentally. They said 170 million Americans, more than half are, active users on TikTok. And it's not you know, people talk about the algorithm.

00:48:11:17 - 00:48:45:01
Unknown
The algorithm is misleading thing, right? Yes, there's an algorithm, but there's also thousands and thousands of moderators, humans, right, that are taking things down all the time and not taking things down as well. That maybe should be taken down. Right. And you never know why they're doing this. Right. A friend of mine a year ago was telling me that he was watching TikTok video of, some Ukrainian battle that, battlefield footage that was showing Ukrainians, you know, having, quite a bit of success against the Russians.

00:48:45:03 - 00:49:08:23
Unknown
And then he turned to that video an hour later and it was gone from platform. He couldn't find any more, and he didn't know if the content owner took it down voluntarily. If, someone complained about it, maybe it was a violation of terms of service because it was showing carnage and it was taken down. Or maybe because TikTok themselves decided to take it down because it was presenting the Russians not in the light that they wanted to, to to present them.

00:49:09:01 - 00:49:30:13
Unknown
Right. And the fact that you don't know is a real problem. Right. And the fact that you suspect that it might not be an innocent, you know, content owner decided they didn't want to have that video on their feed anymore, is a real issue. And because it's controlled by an adversary state, this is something that we should not allow.

00:49:30:13 - 00:49:59:19
Unknown
Imagine a I mean, would we even have a debate if Pravda, the main newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party during the first Cold War, had the readership of half of the American public, right? I mean, would we even debate this as an issue now like we would? And by the way, this is not even a hypothetical because we actually have laws in this country about media ownership, foreign media ownership, and even concentration of media ownership.

00:49:59:21 - 00:50:31:09
Unknown
For Americans. Right? So, for example, as an American, as an American citizen, you cannot own more than 40% of the television station, local television stations in the United States. You can't. And and newspapers as well. Right. Because of media concentration rules. As a foreign, person, you cannot own a TV network. So this was an issue in the 1980s because Rupert Murdoch, when he was still an Australian citizen, tried to buy the Fox network, not not Fox News, but actual Fox network.

00:50:31:09 - 00:50:50:23
Unknown
And he was prohibited from doing so until he became an American citizen. Right. So this is like Rick real stuff that has been in law for many decades that has been approved by the courts. That has not been controversial at all. Now you have social media that is kind of the new manifestation of this media and you, and it fails on both counts, right?

00:50:50:23 - 00:51:17:13
Unknown
First of all, you have a, social media network, that is, owned by a foreign entity, an adversarial entity. And two, they, Salford mentally have, the user, the user base of over half of the American population. Right. So on both issues, you have the failing of the test. Now, the law, the FCC regulations don't apply to social media.

00:51:17:15 - 00:51:37:10
Unknown
And some people will say, well, it's not really media. I don't, buy that because even though the content is user generated, again, the algorithm and moderation decides what you see when you see it, what you don't see. And, that's, that's a real issue. So again, it wouldn't be at the top of my list of concerns around China.

00:51:37:12 - 00:51:56:22
Unknown
But I just think it's, it's nonsense that we are even debating the fact that an adversary state should have this level of influence over us. I mean, it was so funny to me. You can even look at some of the Twitter feeds. Charlie Clark was, elevated to saying banned TikTok last year, banned TikTok at the end of last year.

00:51:56:22 - 00:52:18:06
Unknown
And then when Trump says, well, maybe we shouldn't ban, he goes, we need the free speech app of TikTok. And then but but then to see China have the little red book app or red note queued up just to be pushed to all of the quote unquote TikTok refugees. It was like a picture perfect chef's kiss. They couldn't have written any better to get the, weak minded Americans.

00:52:18:06 - 00:52:34:14
Unknown
Sorry, everyone on Reddit? No. But. Right. You're seeing all these beautiful areas of China, and you're seeing how much groceries cost and just lacking the information. To put it into context, it really opened my eyes to say, whoa, we've probably been dealing with this for a lot longer than just a couple of months or a couple of years.

00:52:34:14 - 00:52:51:10
Unknown
Sure. What did you find in the, the terms of service there? Cooper, the other day that you tweeted about, right. Yeah. I don't know. It's right on read. No, it says we don't allow anything that goes against the opinions of the Chinese Communist Party. Like how that's in the terms. And certainly, you know, it's it's pretty wild.

00:52:51:13 - 00:53:14:12
Unknown
I think it's by the way, there's also we didn't talk about this, but this basic fairness issue here. Right. Instagram acts Facebook are not allowed in China. Why would we allow their software essentially their equivalent to be to be distributed in the United States? That that seems like until they, they, they even, consider allowing our platforms and we shouldn't even discuss this.

00:53:14:14 - 00:53:34:17
Unknown
Right. Aside from all the other issues. Well, you'll also hear people go even further and say, well, you see Twit on Twitter 1.0 and Facebook censoring Americans. What's the big deal of China does it? But we of course understand. Yeah, I think if it wasn't moral, if it wasn't such a concern, what is trying to ban all of our social media apps that have a, you know, much weaker moderation policies?

00:53:34:17 - 00:54:01:08
Unknown
I would say, but I think, well, by the by the way, the other thing is that, you know, TikTok, you know, they think is worth the board thinks it's worth $200 billion. Let's let's assume that's correct for a second. I mean, they do generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue. And, the fact that they even though this law passed last year, right, last April, I believe, that they've done very little to even explore potential divestitures.

00:54:01:10 - 00:54:20:04
Unknown
Right. The fact that they were completely unprepared for this ban when it came into effect and they're now scrambling, tells you a lot about the fact that, you know, if this was a real business that was driven by commercial interests, they would have had a backup plan, right? Because you don't want to lose $200 billion now that go to nothing, right.

00:54:20:04 - 00:54:38:18
Unknown
And, you know, the fact that they, they don't seem concerned. And the Chinese Communist Party came out originally. I know they're trying to shift that, mindset now, but originally said we're not going to allow divestiture. So you're going to allow $200 billion to be to go up in smoke. While that just validates that that this wasn't a commercial venture to begin with.

00:54:38:20 - 00:54:52:13
Unknown
Very interesting. Yeah, that is something interesting to hold on to. So, yeah, as we get to the last few minutes of the show here, I just want to see if there's anything that you feel that we missed that we didn't want to cover. I would love to touch on Ukraine, but perhaps that's just a whole episode dedicated to their.

00:54:52:18 - 00:55:18:04
Unknown
You unfortunately do hold the title of being able to accurately predict the invasion when most other pundits disagreed with you. Invasion and invasion. I'm sorry. Sorry. Invasion. And I think it's just kind of important to understand, you know, perhaps we can look at recalibration of our foreign policy. But I don't think withdrawal and retrenchment is the answer, because we could see our adversaries moving into the zero sum areas where we would, in theory, be, you know, pulling ourselves from.

00:55:18:04 - 00:55:46:00
Unknown
So again, but is there anything that we missed that you really want to hammer home and some other key themes? Yeah. Well, Ukraine is a much longer conversation. We could spend an hour just on that. But I'll just say one more thing about Taiwan. I know we spent a lot of time talking about chips. I hate reducing Taiwan to chips because it's actually really, really vital piece of land that has been vital to the United States for many, many decades, long before even the dawn of the age of computing, long before a single chip was even produced in Taiwan.

00:55:46:02 - 00:56:24:02
Unknown
General Douglas MacArthur in 1950 called it the unsinkable aircraft carrier because of its strategic position. When you look at the map, you actually immediately see this is the only picture I have in my book. It's a map of China and Taiwan, and it shows you that Taiwan is the quirk that keeps China bottled up, that this is part of the reason it's not the entire reason, but part of the reason why China wants Taiwan is to escape that containment of the so-called first island chain that spreads from the Japanese islands through Taiwan to the Philippines and, escaping that containment would allow them project power across the western Pacific to push the United States out

00:56:24:02 - 00:56:52:18
Unknown
of that region, to make the Japanese the Koreans, and the Philippines much more vulnerable and dominate one of the most important regions of the world, Asia. Of course, you have almost, 50% of the world's GDP. Most of the supply chains, most of economic growth in Asia. And to have the US not be present there, to have China set the rules of trade, of security in that region would be hugely detrimental to the US national security, to the US economic security.

00:56:52:20 - 00:57:19:23
Unknown
That is part of the framework for why Taiwan matters. That is, as has nothing to do with chips. And also, of course, Taiwan is is a burgeoning democracy. It, transitioned from a dictatorship into a democracy in the 1990s. It is a culture that is incredibly proud of its unique history of its indigenous, a history that is separate and apart from China's.

00:57:20:01 - 00:57:49:03
Unknown
So there's many reasons why we would want to have an autonomous Taiwan that is not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and certainly not taken over through the use of force. And, you know, doing so, which absolutely change the dynamics of that region would, I think, put under enormous strain our alliances there and, would in very, very direct way, impact American prosperity and security.

00:57:49:03 - 00:58:13:01
Unknown
And that is the importance of Taiwan. And that is why the stakes are so big right now. You know, the name of my book is world on the brink. It is mostly a book about the threat that China poses to the United States in this Cold War two framework, but that flashpoint is Taiwan. I think it's the one place where the United States and China can go to war, potentially as soon as this decade, as soon as potentially even three years from now.

00:58:13:03 - 00:58:33:14
Unknown
And that is something that we have to avoid at all costs. Awesome. Well, Dmitri, we could not be more grateful. This book highly recommend for people that are calling TikTok a free speech app, or simply just don't understand what we are dealing with in terms of U.S. interests versus Chinese interests. So I will put a link down in the description for world on the brink.

00:58:33:16 - 00:58:54:22
Unknown
Dmitri, if is there anywhere else people can find you, maybe social media or a website you want to direct them to? Sure. Dimitri. Silverado dawg on blue Sky, the Alperovitch on X. So check out my writings and lots of places. War on the rocks, Foreign Affairs, and many other places. So, yeah. And please check out the book.

00:58:54:22 - 00:59:12:21
Unknown
I hope you'll enjoy it. Awesome. Hey, is there a reason you listed blue Sky before? Well, a lot of people are starting to move to blue Sky. But, you know, I still have, I think, ten times more more followers on blue Sky. Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. It was. I'm sorry, but yeah, no I gotcha.

00:59:13:00 - 00:59:21:21
Unknown
Yeah. Awesome, man. Thank you so much. And, keep doing what you're doing because it's terribly important. All right. Take care. Thank you. Dimitri.