We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe where every download your podcasts into the premium version of
our website as well. If you want to support our work, you can
go over to the Federalist dot com sign up. There. We're joined again
by one of our very favorite guests, and this time in person, for
the first time in person. Actually, that would be Chris Fenton. He's
the author of Feeding the Dragon, Hollywood All Around Hollywood Guy, Chris,
That's what I'm going to go with here. Well, I like that introduction,
and it's so amazing being at the Federalist headquarters here. There's a lot
of buzz going on. I see a lot of people doing a lot of
important things. It brings a whole new life to doing this podcast. I
gotta say, Yeah, it's fun. We are I don't want to docs
us, but we are so close to a liquor store, and so when
I told Chris, you know how to kind of find the office, I
got off a line bike and Chris was just outside a liquor store like a
person who you know, needed a drink. Well, you allowed me to
come in with the brown bag around it, so that makes it a lot
more tolerable for sure. Yeah, you're back to your surfer days now,
loitering with the brown bag. I did notice they have a lot of pot
stores nowadays in Washington, d C. I've been coming a long time,
but the smell is pretty much everywhere. Everyone says that it's Yeah, it's
been legals since I think I was in college, so it's I'm used to
it. But well here from California, Wow, legalizednse I was in college,
would mean that's going way back. So yeah, I guess it has
been in what in the last ten years or something. Yeah, but the
stores are everywhere, Yeah, they really are. They're not like the Apple
stores that you'll get in like Denver, but they're they're starting to proliferate.
The crazy part is I saw McConnell like smoking a point right behind the Senate.
He does haunt this part of the city, so you never know where
you said mentioned McConnell. Chris, of course, is a China expert he
does so much work in the space. He's been in basically constant communication.
You can correct me if I'm wrong with Mike Gallagher and all of his team
over at the Select Committee on China, Chris, maybe if we could just
start actually by you giving us some insight. What's your read on all of
the work that Congressman Gallagher is doing with that Select Committee. Well, a
good thing is that it's not just Congressman Gallagher, who's obviously a Republican from
Wisconsin who I personally believe should be running for president in twenty twenty eight.
I think he is an absolutely amazing effective, you know, legislator, and
I think he's really really interestingly bipartisan in certain ways and always thinks about things
in a very constructive manner. But what's fantastic is he's made a bipartisan committee
out of this Select Committee on China. He calls it the Select Committee on
the CCP. And Krishna Morphy, who's the cops are coming to get mcconnoff
or smoking's blunt? Oh my god, I think Fetterman was in the back.
Oh my god, watch out. No, it's really inspiring to see
actually a bipartisan effort to tackle I think what is really America's greatest challenge from
the outside, which is China. He looks at it as if China is
a strong rival, not necessarily an enemy that's going to try to take over
the country, but as a rival. One of the processes that I think
they're always trying to process and figure out how to move forward is how do
we play our a game against China. How do we create the ground rules,
the borders of what capitalism can do when it comes to China. What
do we do on a policy level that allows for engagement, allows for this
ability to have void a kinetic conflict or a war, yet also protects American
interests, whether that's values or principles that make us Americans, or whether it's
national security issues or anything in between. So it's constructive, it's bipartisan,
and they're making a lot of noise, which is fantastic. Well, let's
start on that question of soft power, because right now, again the cops,
they're just they're looking for someone. I guess it's maybe it's wow.
Now we've got a fire truck involved. That's Capitol Hill. Probably not that
different from downtown Los Angeles these days. Yeah, we have quite a bit
of sirens. Well, the soft power question that was really relevant to obviously
your work. Folks will remember you've been on the show many times talking about
the work you did in Hollywood to sort of first broken and understanding with business
interests and cinema interests in China, and at the time you really believed at
that moment this exchange of commerce, this exchange of culture would have a powerful
soft power effect on our relationship between the US and China. That obviously started
to fray and you started to look at things a little bit differently. I'm
going to set hard power side for just a second as we teeter on the
brink of World War three, because that's a kind of different can of worms.
I know they're connected, but on that soft power front right now,
everything you were just talking about, when it comes to bipartisanship, when it
comes to not entirely severing the relationship and separating the Chinese people from the Chinese
government, where do you stand as you look at the potential for those exchanges
right now? Well, it's a really good question, because I was actually
talking to Congressom Gallagher about this yesterday. One of the hard parts about this
idea of soft powers, trying to get the American public to understand how nefarious
or dangerous it actually can be, because when you think about it, who
really cares if the Taiwanese patch is taken off of Maverick's jacket in Top Gun?
Or who cares whether Barbie has the nine ash line in it? Or
who cares whether there's like obvious propaganda that's pitching a particular type of story inside
of China inside a large movie, or or the fact that you can't have
a Chinese villain in a in a James Bond movie or in a Born Supremacy
movie. We always go back to the whole Cold War era. We're in
Top Gun. Actually, yeah, well Top Gun is interesting because we don't
even know what the country was that. Yeah, it was totally nebulous and
they made it well except at snow. You know, some people are like,
it's Iran. I was like, yeah, but there was a lot
of snow right next to the water. I don't think that's you know,
it was just a weird thing to try to disguise what the enemy was was
San Francisco. But what's what I find fascinating is that what's happening with Hollywood
in the way China's trying to whitewash. The way we can depict China in
movies and television is really powerful when you think about how you did, how
you visualize certain things in your life. If somebody said to me, have
you ever been to Russia? No, I've never been to Russia. Well,
what do you think of Russia? How would you visualize it? I
would think about Cold War movies or Born Supremacy movies, or even Gorky Park.
That's what I would visualize is Russia because that's the only way I've seen
it portrayed. And when you think about the fact that China is trying to
always make sure they're portrayed a certain way in a movie, never shown to
have crime, never shown to have bad guys or villains, or if there's
something going awry in China, the bad guys always caught. It's a whitewashing
of who they are as a people and as a nation. And what it
does is it showcases the Chinese system of government only in a great way.
So if you extrapolate that from Hollywood, from the entertainment business, and you
bring it into any other industry, The same exact thing is happening that is
happening in Hollywood. And I'll give a couple of exampimples. Number one is,
if you're looking at an investment in China, you hire diligence firms to
diligencet asset the diligence at potential investment. You want to know what the risks
are, what the potential upside is. In China today, you are not
allowed to diligence and asset diligence and a potential investment vehicle and say anything bad
about it. And if you do, those diligence consultants will have their offices
rated and people will end up disappeared. They never want something bad said about
something in their financial industry. So if you have a financial firm or the
financial industry looking at something like that, it's almost the exact same problem that
Hollywood has, and you have the same thing. Say in the hotel business,
Marriott cannot show the country of Taiwan on their map on their website.
It has to be a China map with Taiwan designated as part of China.
The same thing for airlines, they have to do the same thing. You're
seeing this over and over again in every kind of industry where this whitewashing is
occurring in order to make the Chinese system look perfect. And if you do
that long enough, over time, when somebody says to say, my kids,
hey, how do you visualize China? Like if you ever been there?
They haven't been there, they'll go, oh, well, you know,
I've seen movies about Yeah, like it seems like people were really nice
there. They don't really have crime, seems like stuff is really on the
up and up. Maybe I have a really good system. And then combine
that with the fact that China actually controls the most powerful social media app in
the country of the United States of America via TikTok, and you realize kids
like mine, who are sixteen and pretty much anybody under the age of thirty
five gets their news and information from TikTok. They're not only promoting the good
image of China, but anything that's bad that's happening in the United States of
America, they amplify. They put gasoline on, they light that fire as
big and strong as possible. So when you're comparing the two systems, whoa
China system of government seems to really have its act together. Whoa democracy here
in the United States is really messy. I don't know if I like it
that much. We first started talking, I think late twenty nineteen, and
at the time, TikTok was barely on my radar. I don't know if
it's on yours. At what point, Chris, did you start to realize
that TikTok was an enormously powerful force? And I'm curious, actually, as
somebody who started to see this happen with soft power and films, did you
recognize some of the same things happening with TikTok and some of the same sort
of intentionality coming from the CCP with TikTok. I think TikTok to me,
unfortunately became I became aware of it through my daughter, who really liked being
on TikTok, and in fact, we would catch her on it in the
late at night, sort of getting into that rabbit hole, and then some
of the questions she would ask about particular items of information or news that she
got on there, we would be like, where'd you get that idea from?
And we'd find out it was from TikTok. And then as I started
getting more involved in speaking out about China. Obviously, there were a lot
of different experts that would bring to my attention different things that bite dance in
TikTok we're doing in order to inflame problems that we had here in the United
States of America. And then I started getting brought up on Capitol Hill to
talk about it and more and more in depth. And I even joined a
think tank called Third Way here in the United here in Washington, d C.
In particular to advise on their cybersecurity policy and suggestions for Capitol Hill.
And what's really interesting about the argument on TikTok is that it started as a
day harvesting Where is that data stored problem? What's AI going to be doing
to use that information someday in China? Oh my god, they can spy
on us. For me, I never really thought of that as the number
one issue. I thought it was much more important to focus on the throttling
and amplification of news and information that helps Beijing out and hurts the United States,
because that's where I really saw the problem firsthand, particularly with my daughter,
their friends, all that kind of stuff. That's where it really seemed
that we had to focus our attention on and we've been constantly distracted from focusing
on TikTok and getting it banned from the United States of America. But what's
interesting is today, in the last week, we've started to see studies about
how much more the hashtags of free Palestine prohamas messaging is versus stand with Israel
hashtags. It's almost like a ninety seven than to one difference, which is
unbelievable when you think about that. And what's interesting especially is I imagine with
young people in particular. We've seen stunning polls of how public opinion breaks down
with the youngest demos in America about Israel and Palestine. And some people have
been sort of shocked to see the level of opposition to Israel among younger Americans.
So to some extent, sure, I guess maybe some of those sentiments
are organic because they're coming from college classrooms, they're coming from YouTube. There
are already a lot of sources of bad information. But what the CCP can
do is tweak and fuel things algorithmically. That poor gasoline on the fire.
And if you look at the extent of Russian interference in twenty sixteen, most
of that got into hoax territory. It is true, though, that they
put out these extremely divisive memes on BLM trans stuff to take existing American divisions
and amplify them, to make them more better, more divisive in a way
that poured gasoline on the fire that's already kind of simmering, raging in American
politics. I think that's one hundred percent the case. And I mean,
I have so many examples in my life where you feel like you're on such
a different level as far as perspective and opinion and belief with other people when
you're dealing on social media or just dealing through even texts or something, but
when you're actually sitting with them in person and you start talking about different opinions
and you start realizing, whoa we can respect to disagree here, we can
actually respect the fact that we're both Americans and we can have different opinions and
there's nothing I can do to change yours and nothing you can do to change
mind, but we can have a conversation to try and then realize, well,
maybe we're not going to get anywhere. But that's what life is supposed
to be in the free world, is to have those those conversations and when
you see social media essentially take what's already a really toxic environment of people disagreeing
on social media platforms, and then you have a rival country or an enemy
country, whatever you want to label. China in particular, I'd like to
talk about Beijing being the issue, not China per se, but Beijing sees
that divisiveness and says, Okay, let's just keep sparking that up as much
as possible and really like those flames because they know the art of war,
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Federalist. The one thing that's been pretty interesting, also as the various documents
from Hunter Biden's dealings with CEFC and all of these interesting almost cinematic actually Chinese
business characters, has been the way that business works in China. It's totally
mysterious to me and so very different from how things work here actually, And
one other thing that sort of gave some insight into it is this lawsuit that
you're in Brolden right now with DMG, your former employer. But I was
reading some of the lawsuit and just the way that business is conducted seems so
completely radically different. Some in the entertainment press have actually cast the lawsuits almost
giving insight into that very question. How different is it? I mean when
you're looking at this stuff, what do people in the United States sort of
not realize about how companies like ByteDance, how some of these studios, how
they have to do business when they're in Well, when you're doing business in
China, you always got to realize that the true master, the true owner
of anything that's operating there is Beijing. If Beijing wants something done or not
done, they're going to tell you, and you have to listen. There's
there's just no doubt about that, because they do that right, they use
that power. They one hundred percent do that, and they one hundred percent
make sure you know there's ramifications if you don't do what they ask, whether
it's something that happens to your own family or something that happens to your friends
or your extended you know, employee staff. They will make sure that you
know that this is something that needs to get done. It's a totalitarian dictatorship
when it comes down to it. The Chinese Counties Party definitely runs things over
there, and there's never really true capitalism. So if you know that the
other side always is beholden to that versus the contracts or to the shaking of
hands or the word that's agreed to, then you start to really as wow,
you know, this is a lot riskier of a business environment than you
could ever expect, and that's what makes it really difficult. I just saw
Ken Griffin from Citadel put out some sort of statement about that investors need to
think about China more, they need to start putting more money to work in
that market, and I tweeted out that and just sort of said, well,
can you properly diligence any of these investments anymore? Because it seems you
can't. And if you can't properly diligence something, then you're just literally putting
money into things that have way more risk than you could ever imagine is actually
there, and you could actually see that money go to zero, and Kyle
Bass from him in capital who's been a huge opponent and a critic of the
Chinese system when it comes to what we would like it to be in terms
of capitalism. He's done lots of studies where even if you invested in say
the shenz En Indeck or in the Shanghai Index over the course of like the
last ten years, the returns there are practically zero versus almost any other market
in the world has given you great returns. Well, yeah, I actually
was going to ask you about that. Do you think this is because Ken
Griffin, I did see that. I found it very interesting for the reasons
that you mentioned, and also it seems to me contrary to where we are
seeing some businesses going, and specifically about Hollywood. How do you assess the
state of Hollywood's relationship with China right now in twenty twenty three. It seems
to me like it's shifted dramatically. But I don't think that means necessarily there's
no interest there. You know, if things get moved back to the back
burner and you know you have a cooling of tensions again, what does it
look like. Well, Hollywood is an art meets commerce business. So if
you think about the commerce of how expensive making the art is, you always
have to look to different markets in different ways to create revenues. So Hollywood
will never shut their eyes to the fact that China could be a source of
great revenues and the ability to bring gravy to the returns of any given movie
or television series, etc. That's just the reality of it, because in
a capitalistic mentality, that's the way you have to look at every market.
When you look at just China itself and the way the behavior of that market
has been towards the entertainment business of late starting I would say in say twenty
nineteen, that's really where we saw the peak potential of movies made in Hollywood
performing at their ultimate best. I mean, in fact, the last Avengers
movie did a roughly seven hundred million dollars US in China alone, and if
you add up the totals of every movie that has been released that were Hollywood
titles in that market this year, it's less than what the Avengers made that
one single movie in twenty nineteen. So the potential of the market, or
at least the reality of the market today is way less than it has been
for the last decade. I mean, it's almost taking us back I would
say probably the twenty ten as far as the actual returns there, So the
catering and the cow taling to Beijing, that motivation to do that is definitely
less. But the motivation and ability to sort of say, you know what,
we're going to make a movie that we know is going to make Beijing
upset, that's not there. See that's really interesting because I was thinking about
this when you were talking earlier that China had what Wolf Warrior was at the
name of the movie, this like super high budget action movie that in the
same way that we won't create any negative depictions of China and any action film,
any film that deals with us are generally with jeopolitics, they will gladly
demonize Americans in these massive, high budget, it high gross it like these
projects that it seems like almost everyone in China goes out and seas they will
gladly put us in that role. While it seems like also maybe starting to
shut more of our films out of their market they had that quota system.
Where does that stand. Where does their sort of treatment of Americans in their
own movies stand, they've they've gotten a lot better at making their own movies.
Yeah, well they're they're making world class, world class, best in
class type of Hollywood style movies for their own market that are way more relevant
than anything Hollywood can do. For the Chinese people, we taught them extremely
well how to make world class movies. Now the movies, yeah, exactly.
That was part of that problem. But you know what's interesting is if
anybody listening actually reads my book or or or picks up sort of a summary
about it, you'll realize a lot of us were doing what we thought we
needed to do that was actually in the best and of the interest of the
United States of America. We thought we were, you know, yes,
catering a bit to what Beijing needed in order for us to get access to
their massive consumer market. But in the process, every movie we got in
there, any sports event we got in there, any music we got in
there, any television we got in there, because it was cultural was coming
from the West. It was this idea that we were spreading the aspirational quality
of democracy inside a communist country, and eventually they would get more and more
open and become more like us. Levis in East Germany exactly. And then
on top of it were David Hasselholme Levi's exactly. Yeah, there you go,
dancing on the wall to one of those songs you would sing anyway.
On top of it, yeah, you had that higher calling of spreading democracy
in a communist country, but you also were creating GDP growth here in the
US. You were bringing revenues in from a market that before we never were
able to do, and you're creating jobs here in the So there was a
lot of Wow, all we got to do is teach them how to fish,
to sell our fish, you know, to sell them our fish.
We didn't really think far ahead enough to go, oh, well, once
they learn how to fish, then are they gonna want our fish anymore?
And that's being rins and repeated in every industry. We're seeing it in the
automotive business, even a lot of Musk and Tesla's seeing this problem. You're
seeing it in the airline business because Boeing and Airbusts now have a big competitor
with a Chinese particular airline that's getting off the ground. You're seeing it everywhere.
They have made domestic competitors to some of the stuff that we were the
best in the world at and their consumers are turning towards their own product and
services so and shifting to hard power. This becomes especially relevant. I kind
of joked earlier about teetering on the brink of World War three, but it's
all too true in that you now have China allied with Putin. Essentially,
they just had that big meeting at the ten year anniversary of the Boulton Road
initiative, actually in Beijing. Putin made the effort and went to Beijing to
sort of kiss the ring, and that's a Netanyahu has kind of described I
Ron's relationship with Hezballah and Hamas as an access of evil. We've heard that
phrase before. It's really possible now. In fact, it was just talked
about on the Senate floor yesterday that the Ukraine and Israel conflicts the money has
to be tied together because in the words of Democrats, and I disagree with
this, but this is the argument being made. It's a waving the white
flag to Putin if we tie these things, if we divorce these two sources
of funding, because the conflicts are about the same thing. It's about America
and American hegemony. And America being the sort of world policeman, but China
actually is involved in some of these conflicts as well. China when it comes
to Israel and Palestine, when it comes to the Middle East, they want
to play peace broker and in a way that you know, it probably cuts
against the West West's interests. So, Chris, as you followed the story
as somebody who's had conversations at at very high levels about things in the last
month, how serious is China's potential alliance not just with Putin, but potentially
it's alliances with Iran potentially as alliances with other people in the Middle East.
How seriously is that affecting our relationship with China. Well, it's hard to
are these true friends, you know, like Russia and China are Putin and
She buddy buddies that I think those are friends of convenience. And there's also
that enemy of the enemy is your friend type of scenario. Well, like
Naya who had tried to sort of cozy up to She, Yeah, well
there's a lot of there's a lot of dollars involved in trying to cozy up
to she and cozy up to the China market. And if you look at
that. If you look at the Putin She relationship, it's probably opportunistic in
a large majority because of the amount of commerce that it can occur between those
two countries, the fact that Russia is sanctioned, yet they need a lot
of stuff that China can provide them. Putin really needs that alliance to work,
and she quite frankly, would love anybody but the US to be reliant
on or to provide various goods and services too. So it's a it's a
beneficial relationship for both. It makes a lot of sense as long as there's
trade in commerce between the two. But I would argue if that wasn't there,
they probably wouldn't have much in common other than a border. If you
yeah, and if you're looking at She and the way he looks at probably
a lot of these conflicts were embroiled in. I don't know if he's really
there's this argument that, well, if we give Putin what he wants in
Ukraine, and that's just going to prove to She that he can go into
Taiwan and we're not going to do anything about it. I would argue that
she actually would much rather us stay embroiled in the Ukrainian conflict allow us to
completely damage the amount of supply of arsenal and ammunition and various other things that
will deplete over the course of time by supplying the Ukrainians with as much military
power as they need, and that will just tee up a much easier opportunity
for him to take over Taiwan because they'll know that we'll look at what we
have available and possibly go, wait a minute, is this really worth fighting
a war on the other side of the Pacific. On top of it,
it's also going to make our country very war weary, and the more war
weary we get, the less popular the idea of defending Taiwan is going to
be. I mean, most people don't even really understand the difference between China
and Taiwan and why Taiwan's so important to us, and why we need to
defend it, and why we don't recognize it in the US. I mean,
talk about a weird thing for the average person who's got plenty of other
stuff to worry about, going, wait a minute, Taiwan's not a country.
We don't recognize Taiwan as a country, yet we're going to defend it
as a country. It doesn't have embassies here. It only has this thing
called Techro, mainly because we can't recognize it as its own independent country.
I don't understand what the heck Taiwan is, right, and that is going
to create a real problem if she makes a move on what he calls reunifying
China and bringing everybody back to the homeland, because the ability for politicians to
pull in the populace to support a war that they just completely for the most
part, don't understand is going to be very difficult. I was talking to
someone interesting on the left the other day who as someone whose name people recognize,
who said, she hasn't moved on Taiwan yet, and because you know,
there would have been some opportune moments, in fact, this moment itself,
when we have not reshored the things that we need to reshore. We're
sort of maybe halfway into the restoring of chips process, you know, two
to three years. We started that about a year ago. It takes about
two to three years to get some of those chip fabricating plants off the ground.
It's a really difficult thing to reshore. It's a highly technical thing.
So if he wanted to do it in a time when we would be desperate
and basically have to defend Taiwan, wouldn't he have already done that. I
want to run that argument by you, Chris, what do you I'm not
saying it's right, I'm just saying that I thought that was there was something
interesting about that, because in a couple of years we probably will have reshored
some of this stuff and certainly not all of it. And the Ken Griffin
point is really valid too. What do you make of that? Well?
I think one of the best strategies that could play out for him is the
longer he waits before making a move maybe the better shot, better chance that
he can win a war without ever going to battle. And the reason I'm
saying that is if we stay embroiled, say in the Ukrainian Russian conflict,
for a long time, we get pulled into the Israeli conflict in a really
sort of impactful way when it comes to our resources of the military, and
our country starts to get more and more war weary. He might realize he
can make a move on Taiwan and not ever have to deal with any sort
of Western alliance in taking over Taiwan, which is really I guess I don't
want to be controversial saying that, but I understand the complexity of getting enough
American support around supporting Taiwan. And he's well aware that that is a complicated
issue too, And the longer he waits it probably plays more and more into
his hands to avoid a kinetic con flicked while also getting in the reward that
he is looking to do before he's done with his legacy. Bipartisanship on foreign
policy can sometimes make me nervous because, for example, there's definitely bipartisan sentiment
being shared when the Senate yesterday, as we were talking about, was saying
that it's waving the white flag for on behalf of Ukraine, for Putin surrendering
to Putin to divorce Israel AID from Ukraine AID. It's called kind of the
blob, and it's definitely bipartisan. But at the same time, I know
some of what Congressman Gallagher has been doing has been bipartisan and has been entirely
appropriate and sort of positive. Chris, in your dealings with people here in
Washington, as you've gotten more and more involved in this issue, are you
feeling optimistic that the right steps are going to be taken and that this issue
isn't going to be sort of appropriated by malign interests even here in the United
States. Are you feeling like we're taking some steps in the right. I
think Gallagher and Krysta Morphy are making people more aware of how complicated that Taiwan
situation could be if Beijing makes a move. They did wargames recently up in
New York City. Actually, the Council on Foreign Relations, which is usually
has been very dubvish I'm a member of it, has gotten a much more
hawkish and much more I think practical in terms of how they look at China.
And they actually hosted the committee there for various panels and also behind closed
doors meetings. One of those was actually war gaming out what happens if China
makes a move on Taiwan, and I think almost in every instance we realized
we just didn't have the military might in order to get to get China to
back off and retreat. It actually was sort of a depressing outcome. We
also need to keep in mind that there's going to be a reluctance of our
allies in that region to jump into it too. I mean, there's a
lot of motivations for them to do it, but also they have a lot
at stake by taking that risk fighting on behalf of the Taiwanese and then dealing
with the wrath of China to their own nations and the safety of their own
people being in eyeshot of where the PRC shores are, so, you know,
making sure that we do have allies that come into it, making sure
that they understand the reality of China owning that area of the country, that
vital shipping lane through the Taiwan Straight and the fact that that's going to combine
with their efforts down in the South China Sea and the encroachment on Philippine territory,
et cetera, et cetera. It's just it's a domino effect that will
really have a lasting impact and a promotional impact of China becoming the true regional
power there and having the most say over that part of the world versus the
West having anything to do in turn of influence. It's amazing. I think,
you know, some ten years ago you're involved in making Iron Man three,
and here you are Chris going really deep on the Philippines and the South
China Sea and the Taiwan straight. Did you ever think you would be in
this position? Well, what's it like? No? I never thought.
I never thought I would. I would build a small company that would be
bought by that Chinese either. In fact, the only China you know education
I even had was back in college at Cornell University, where I remember a
teacher saying, if China ever tapped into its coal reserves, it would,
you know, pollute the world so badly because it's got its high sulfur content
and all that kind of stuff, and it would wake the sleeping giant of
dirty energy for the next century. And that was all I remember. And
by the way, I will say he was right, because when you go
over there, you see the reasons. It's of really dirty coal that they
have. It's a very high sulfur content, I guess. But that was
it. And then it wasn't until me being like a Michael Keaton in the
movie Gung Ho or suddenly like I fall into the world of and he was
Japan, but I'd fall in the world of China, and suddenly you have
to learn a lot of stuff on the fly. And then on top of
it, saw power, narrative, propaganda, censorship. That's something that Beijing
is better than anybody in the world at they just really understand how to use
information, news, propaganda content to placate their populace because they got one point
four billion people over there, and they just simply don't have enough resources on
earth to satisfy all of them and give them everything they want. So part
of that is this intangible information that makes the people believe that they have the
best form of government possible, even though they don't have all the tangible stuff
that they need to have this really desirable lifestyle. You know. And if
you go back to even our use of propaganda in the fifties to try to
win over, say Africa from the Soviet Union, we were sending over black
jazz musicians and various actors and so on and so forth to the countries of
Africa to say, look at how amazing our culture is, look at how
amazing our artists are, look at how amazing our music is. Because we're
a free country. We are a democracy, we're a republic. We're different
than Soviet Union, which is a group mentality, communist type of think.
They don't have the stuff we do, so come with us. We will
lead you to the Promised Land versus going with Soviet Union where everything looks like
Gorky Park. You know, you start to realize, well, if the
CIA was using that type of information and propaganda and content to win over people,
you know, China knows how to do it that much better. And
it's that nefarious, it's that dangerous because when you're talking about the CIA using
it, you know, it's that version over in Beijing, the MSS or
the PLA using it too, So it becomes an act of war that we
don't even realize is happening. In fact, it's called unrestricted warfare, and
that's part of the information warfare, part of that. The different spokes of
restrict unrestricted warfare. CIA point is so interesting because if we think our CIA
is non responsive to democratic mechanisms, imagine Chinese intel officers approaching the question of
propaganda and how what level of sort of control they're able to exert and feel
free to exert, in fact, feel obligated to exert over their own population.
Well, if any of your listeners are interested in being entertained while understanding
a little more of how the CIA would use soft power, there is a
podcast called Wind of Change. In fact, I was talking to Congressman Gallagher
about it yesterday and he was like, oh my god, I'm getting it
now. And it's literally how well it's a it's it could be a mythology,
but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that it's true. But it's this
idea that the CIA wrote the song Wind of Change and had the Scorpions,
the heavy metal band, essentially perform it and make it one of their own,
and it became such a huge hit in the Soviet Union and people learned
the lyrics of it in English and translated, and essentially it was about how
to overthrow your own government. And the idea was if people loved the Scorpions
song as much as it did, it would eventually create this more free Soviet
Union breakup. Which which did happen. Did it happen to do with the
song or not? And was the song actually constructed by the CIA. Well
you'd have to watch the or listen to the podcast to know for sure.
But it's a really entertaining look at the power of soft power and how it
has been harnessed and used by military or intelligence hops over the years. I've
got to listen to that. David Talbot has a lot of really good books
on the CIA, a couple of the Dulles brothers, but they basically found
at the Paris Review. I mean, the CIA is control over some of
these Well, you mentioned Hollywood in the nineteen fifties. It looks kind of
ham fisted when we are able to sort of have the benefit of hindsight in
twenty twenty three. And that's what is sort of chilling about thinking of how
trying to learn from us and maybe appropriating some of these mechanisms. Now,
Well, it's weird because if you get if you talk about it too much,
you start to sound like you're a tinfoil hat. Were right, so,
but it's actually a reality. Soft power is a very powerful piece of
weaponry that's used by militaries around the world or intelligence divisions around the world.
And when you understand at least that that is one of the things in the
arsenal, you can start to look at things like I say, TikTok and
go God. I wonder if that's part of that arsenal apparatus, which it
is, but it puts a little more of a you know, reality to
it, rather than some sort of conspiracy. Yeah, that's why you know
trends on TikTok about anorexia and all of those things are especially terrifying, exactly.
Chris Fenton is the author of Feeding the Dragon. If you have not
read that book, I really recommend it. So much insight and so many
stories from his days working on these issues, and of course he's still working
on these issues, so you should make sure to follow him on social media.
Also former Olive Garden waiter. I think that's maybe my favorite part of
your bio. Yeah, And I gotta say one of the things that's a
little disappointing about being in here as I watch everybody buzzing around in the office
is I thought I'd see that guy that plays the guitar at the beginning of
your podcast, that's Grace Potter. I wish we had someone who could do
that. But then let's get him here next time. That would be so
good. That would be good. That would be good. Anyway. I'm
I'm a sit in the now, tackle the bar that's right behind you,
and you've got a lot of good liquor store gifts up there. I think
they definitely supply this off as well. And I think what we get into
cocktail time almost I think so, I mean doesn't matter. Well, thanks
for having me on as always, it's great and it's awesome to come to
the headquarters here, so please keep up the good work. You're doing awesome
and I don't know how you have enough time in the day to do everything
that you do. Appreciate it, Chris, And likewise, I don't know
how you get everything done either, but it's so great to have you here
a person. You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Emily Dashinski, culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon
with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.