Speaker 1: Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Speaker 1: Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore. You're home
Speaker 1: for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime,
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Speaker 1: And here we are just a little more than a
Speaker 1: month into the Trump administration, and much of the attention
Speaker 1: from a diplomatic and a national security point of view
Speaker 1: in the first thirty days, and it's been a busy
Speaker 1: thirty days, has been focused on Europe in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: the two regions that always seem to divert our focus
Speaker 1: for America's greatest competitor in a global sense, and especially
Speaker 1: in the Pacific, and that's the People's Republic of China.
Speaker 1: We often think of the challenge in terms of the
Speaker 1: most obvious area as just the Pacific, but it extends
Speaker 1: from the Arctic to Africa, Central and South America, and
Speaker 1: Europe in the Middle East. They are really putting forward
Speaker 1: a global challenge to what has been the post war normal.
Speaker 1: Is the America, with a little bit of a challenge
Speaker 1: from a thing called the Civic Union, pretty much was
Speaker 1: able to lead and set the international world order. But
Speaker 1: it's gone even beyond that now. They are also challenging
Speaker 1: us in another area that we thought that we had
Speaker 1: the grip on, and that is space from near Earth
Speaker 1: orbit out to the Moon and beyond. China is not
Speaker 1: going to seede that to American primacy forever either and
Speaker 1: today we're going to have a returning guest coming on
Speaker 1: board to discuss this and more, Dean Chang. He is
Speaker 1: currently the non Resident Fellow at the Potomac Institute for
Speaker 1: Policy Studies, a Senior Advisor with the US Institute for Peace,
Speaker 1: and a non resident Fellow with the George Washington University
Speaker 1: Space Policy Institute. Dean, welcome back.
Speaker 2: To midrap Thank you very much for having me again.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's great to have you on board. And I
Speaker 1: think we did a great show in the pre show conversation.
Speaker 1: We'll try to wrap that up as best as we can,
Speaker 1: but let's just go ahead and start with a big
Speaker 1: scene setter. Obviously, the you know, the big presence of
Speaker 1: the room is, like I said in the intro, we
Speaker 1: are a little more than a month into the Trump
Speaker 1: administration and with a lot but not all, of his
Speaker 1: policy people in place. Already a lot of things are
Speaker 1: moving on the chessboard. What have you seen that has
Speaker 1: kind of perked your ears up?
Speaker 2: So I think a couple of things have been striking
Speaker 2: in the first month with regards to the Trump administration
Speaker 2: and Asia. The first one is more than just Asia.
Speaker 2: It's just the broad turmoil slash volatility that's been going
Speaker 2: on at DoD, the removal of various members of the
Speaker 2: Joint Chiefs, et cetera, which of course is the president's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, he gets to have his military advisors. But
Speaker 2: I think that it's going to raise questions in Beijing,
Speaker 2: in Tokyo, in Taipei, what does this mean for where.
Speaker 3: Is the US going to go in the Pacific.
Speaker 2: The second thing that was very striking was the State
Speaker 2: Department's removal of the phrase that the United States opposes
Speaker 2: Taiwan independence. That's been part of our formula for how
Speaker 2: we view the Taiwan Straits for decades. We want a
Speaker 2: peaceful resolution of the Taiwan's rates issue. We do not
Speaker 2: want a unilateral response by either side, which in the
Speaker 2: past basically meant we don't want Taiwan declaring independence and
Speaker 2: we don't want Beijing invading the island. Now we're saying
Speaker 2: we've dropped the line saying we oppose in events we
Speaker 2: haven't command, and said we support it. But Beijing, not
Speaker 2: surprisingly has strongly protested this because from Beijing's perspective, what
Speaker 2: they really want is a formal US statement saying we
Speaker 2: oppose Taiwan independence under all circum we will never support
Speaker 2: it because in the Chinese view, if we would do that,
Speaker 2: it would cut the legs out from Taipei and basically say,
Speaker 2: you know what, you guys really need to negotiate a
Speaker 2: deal which ultimately we'll see reunification. So from Beijing's perspective,
Speaker 2: this is a huge, huge.
Speaker 3: Symbol, if not outright policy delta.
Speaker 2: A third thing is the issue of TikTok. President Trump
Speaker 2: seems to have extended a lifeline to TikTok, which is
Speaker 2: kind of interesting. Now my personal opinion, I want to
Speaker 2: emphasize the Trump administration has not talked to me personally,
Speaker 2: so this is pure speculation on my partners. I think
Speaker 2: this is actually a very interesting move because what it
Speaker 2: basically said was, look, we're still willing to buy TikTok.
Speaker 2: It's going to be on American terms. Above all, you're
Speaker 2: gonna have to move the data out of China. You
Speaker 2: can't so that you guys can't just go rifling through
Speaker 2: it as you already have. If the Chinese turned down
Speaker 2: this sale, which they have said they are going to,
Speaker 2: then it pretty clearly casts the Chinese and a negative light.
Speaker 2: It basically is saying we're willing to work with you. You're
Speaker 2: the ones who are insisting you need access to this
Speaker 2: data and why is that? And then the last part,
Speaker 2: and this just came out in the last few days,
Speaker 2: is the apparent view of mister Musk, who is obviously
Speaker 2: key advisory Donald Trump to bypass the Moon and go
Speaker 2: directly to Mars. And why this is striking to me is,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, I certainly understand mister Musk's interest
Speaker 2: and focus on Mars, but I think that position potentially
Speaker 2: raises the question about cis lunar governance and who is
Speaker 2: going to manage that enormous amount of space that you
Speaker 2: have to transit through on your way out to Mars.
Speaker 2: Because China has made very clear it's very interested in
Speaker 2: having an outsize role in the volume of space between
Speaker 2: the Earth and the Moon.
Speaker 4: China seems to want to rewrite the rules of the
Speaker 4: international order in China's favor, and I think what your
Speaker 4: suggesting is that once they get there, there is an
Speaker 4: outer Space treaty. But just as I think you point
Speaker 4: out one of your articles, they've interpreted the order, the
Speaker 4: rules governing the Law of the Sea that in China's favor,
Speaker 4: that they would do the same thing with the with
Speaker 4: the Outer Space treaty. And we assume that they always
Speaker 4: look at everything, probably naturally from the Chinese perspective. What
Speaker 4: gives us the most leverage and makes us look like
Speaker 4: we're the reasonable people in the room, just reading reading
Speaker 4: the law the way it should be read according to us.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, so, first off, the Chinese are not
Speaker 2: the Russians. The Russians and I'm not a Russia expert,
Speaker 2: but this is my impression. The Russians are okay with anarchy,
Speaker 2: just create chaos. And the Chinese are big believers in order.
Speaker 2: You know, the joke about old Chinese saying, may you
Speaker 2: live in interesting times, the point of that is may
Speaker 2: you know it's a curse, because it's may you live
Speaker 2: in times that are unpredicted. So the Chinese believe in
Speaker 2: a rules based international order. Also, the big question here
Speaker 2: is whose rules, Who writes the rules? And one of
Speaker 2: the things to think about particular for cis lunar space,
Speaker 2: much as with the world's oceans, is whose rules should apply,
Speaker 2: And with regards to cis lunar space, where the Chinese
Speaker 2: are saying we are going to go to the Moon,
Speaker 2: we are going to land there, but more importantly, we
Speaker 2: are thinking about establishing a long term presence there. If
Speaker 2: you fly from Barcelona to Bangkok, two countries where English
Speaker 2: is not the native land, from takeoff to landing, in
Speaker 2: the cockpit cross international air traffic control, the language is English.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what airline you fly, it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: what nationality the pilots are. Everyone speaks English. And I
Speaker 2: think what the Chinese are hoping to achieve by dominating
Speaker 2: cis lunar space here to the Moon and having a
Speaker 2: majority of flights, by setting up a long term presence
Speaker 2: on the Moon, by setting up traffic and therefore space
Speaker 2: traffic management. They want the language of space traffic to
Speaker 2: be Chinese. And that has political implications, that has power implications.
Speaker 2: That's a huge messaging issue. And I don't know whether
Speaker 2: we're not us going to Mars, huge achievement, major epic
Speaker 2: of human achievement, is necessarily going to be enough to
Speaker 2: say yeah, and therefore the language of space travel will
Speaker 2: necessarily be in.
Speaker 1: I think another underappreciated is I share your concern with us,
Speaker 1: not so much as surrendering, but neglecting kind of like
Speaker 1: how we've done with some of the small island nations
Speaker 1: in the Western Pacific, that if we neglect the Moon
Speaker 1: and travel to and front the moon everything you described,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get an idea, if you let
Speaker 1: China not only get to the Moon, but be there
Speaker 1: the Moon by themselves, if you look at what they've
Speaker 1: done and the precedent they have established in South China,
Speaker 1: see with shoals into islands and bases. We were here,
Speaker 1: We'll do what we want to, I dare you, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. They have this mindset, they have this precedence.
Speaker 1: People think that if they go to the Moon, they'll
Speaker 1: have their little base and that'll be it. They can
Speaker 1: create their own precedence in their own reality. And it
Speaker 1: keeps popping into the back of my head that if
Speaker 1: the Chinese were able to establish as the primary full
Speaker 1: time presence on the Moon, that international order they talk
Speaker 1: about on planet Earth that they didn't have a say
Speaker 1: in developing, they show up on the Moon. You know,
Speaker 1: what is their motivation to want to stick to a
Speaker 1: lunar policy that the United States and a defunct empire
Speaker 1: called the Soviet Union established in the previous century. That really,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at what do things look like in
Speaker 1: twenty one hundred twenty one fifty, and that to me
Speaker 1: is a blinking red light.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's useful. The South China see example is particularly
Speaker 2: important because of notice how the Chinese first reclaim shoals
Speaker 2: and turn them into islands, but once it became islands,
Speaker 2: essentially started saying, even though they're artificial, they get all
Speaker 2: the rights and privileges of a real island. What does
Speaker 2: that mean. That means territorial waters, that means exclusive economic zones,
Speaker 2: That means literally keep out zones for other people's navies.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's really striking was a few
Speaker 2: years back that one of the heads of sorry, the
Speaker 2: head of one of China's state owned oil enterprises, came
Speaker 2: out and said that oil drilling rigs are pieces of
Speaker 2: mobile national territory. Now nobody else makes that argument, but
Speaker 2: the implication was that wherever we stick this thing, potentially
Speaker 2: it should have some interesting claims. Now with the Moon,
Speaker 2: with other space bodies, you're not supposed to have sovereignty.
Speaker 2: You can't claim the Moon as a piece of the
Speaker 2: United States for China, and that is part of the
Speaker 2: Outer Space Treaty, but there are health and safety regulations
Speaker 2: that could be invoked that. For example, because lunar dust
Speaker 2: has somewhat different properties than earth dust gets everywhere, is
Speaker 2: very very abrasive, et cetera. The Chinese could recently say, look,
Speaker 2: wherever it is that we're going to set up a base,
Speaker 2: we want to keep out zone of let's say ten
Speaker 2: or twenty miles because the dust that will be kicked
Speaker 2: up by landing craft but interfere with the health and
Speaker 2: safety of the operations. Now, if I put a Chinese
Speaker 2: lunar base at one of the key craters at the
Speaker 2: south pole of the Moon, where we think there is water,
Speaker 2: you could, in theory start creating de facto sovereignty by saying, hey,
Speaker 2: this area you need to keep out because of health
Speaker 2: and safety reasons. Would the Chinese do that? We're watching
Speaker 2: them do something with a far better established set of laws,
Speaker 2: because there's been maritime law long before the Unconvention of
Speaker 2: the Law of the Sea, and the Chinese are clearly
Speaker 2: violating those. So this is this is not without precedent,
Speaker 2: and the Chinese have an entire set of doctrinal political
Speaker 2: warfare that talks about using legal means, public opinion means,
Speaker 2: et cetera, to shape and influence the international situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it I think in another one. I hadn't really
Speaker 4: thought about this. But if they make the same claim
Speaker 4: the same about the mobile oil ridge, that if they
Speaker 4: stationed a geosynchronous satellite out there or a space station
Speaker 4: and then say, you know, this is our sovereign territory
Speaker 4: and for and I think you point out for flight
Speaker 4: safety reasons, for travel reasons, you know you can't get
Speaker 4: within X number of miles feet whatever. You know, that
Speaker 4: allow would allow a party to claim big chunks of space,
Speaker 4: particularly interesting areas of of off Earth where we need
Speaker 4: to have we have the various h stable places where
Speaker 4: satellite can can sit without having to in between the
Speaker 4: gravitational fields of the Moon and the and the Earth
Speaker 4: and other things. Talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2: So one of the interesting things the Chinese have done
Speaker 2: in the last year or so is they filed a
Speaker 2: set of claims against SpaceX and Starlink. And what they
Speaker 2: said was, hey, we have a Chinese space station, it
Speaker 2: is staffed, it's got people on board, and your Startlink
Speaker 2: satellites jeopardized it. Now what was interesting about this was
Speaker 2: they didn't file an immediate claim, and they filed it
Speaker 2: through the United Nations, whereas our Space Forces and Space
Speaker 2: Command will literally pick up the phone and we'll call
Speaker 2: people and we'll email people and say, hey, we believe
Speaker 2: that satellite one and satellite two, your satellite too, are
Speaker 2: potentially going to have what's termed a conjunction event, aka
Speaker 2: a collision. You need to do you both need to
Speaker 2: do something about this. So the Chinese, what is the
Speaker 2: point of their action? It was to set the stage
Speaker 2: for criticizing Startling, which they really hate for a variety
Speaker 2: of reasons, having to do with how it's influential it's
Speaker 2: been in Ukraine, and how a private company can have
Speaker 2: strategic effects. But what they essentially said was you are
Speaker 2: posing a threat to the health and safety of our
Speaker 2: space station, and your constellation is the problem. It is
Speaker 2: an interesting question to your initial laydown.
Speaker 3: If you have let's say a ten or.
Speaker 2: Twenty mile keepout zone for health and safety reasons, if
Speaker 2: you started daisy chaining satellites, what would be the effect.
Speaker 2: And one of the interesting problems here is that with
Speaker 2: the Chinese, much of their space enterprise is run through
Speaker 2: state owned enterprises. That is to say, companies that aren't
Speaker 2: looking to make a profit. A satellite that doesn't go
Speaker 2: into orbit doesn't generate income. Most of the time, you
Speaker 2: don't put something like that up there. You don't build
Speaker 2: extra satellite. At most you might have one with the Chinese.
Speaker 2: Because there are space companies, many of them are not
Speaker 2: looking to make a profit, they can afford to do
Speaker 2: things that we would consider inefficient because that means they've
Speaker 2: got redundancies, they've got resilience, and they've got the ability
Speaker 2: to therefore fairly quickly deploy additional satellites in peace time
Speaker 2: that could be to make up for failures in wartime.
Speaker 2: That's a war reserve, and that's part of actually how
Speaker 2: they write about military space activities. One of the things
Speaker 2: they talk about is the need to be able to
Speaker 2: rapidly deploy additional capabilities, if only for the reason of
Speaker 2: making the adversaries calculations go out the window. If you
Speaker 2: had been projecting eight radar observation satellites and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden the Chinese feel twelve, your targeting and your
Speaker 2: prioritizations kind of gets screwed up. So there's all sorts
Speaker 2: of things that the Chinese are thinking about in terms
Speaker 2: of seriously, how would I achieve space dominance in time
Speaker 2: of crisis and in time of war.
Speaker 1: I could see why SpaceX would upset the Chinese for
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons, one of which not only is
Speaker 1: it private enterprise, but it's a little unpredictable because it
Speaker 1: moves fast, it achieves fast, it's willing to you know,
Speaker 1: there's a big difference between as they're building Starship, they'll
Speaker 1: publicly say we're gonna make this big launch, and there's
Speaker 1: a good chance that's going to blow up, but we'll
Speaker 1: learn from it. No big deal, as opposed to how
Speaker 1: tightly held a lot of the evolutionary developments in the
Speaker 1: PRC rocket program has been. They don't celebrate that kind
Speaker 1: of creative destruction, so to speak, because they seem to
Speaker 1: have a very orderly, cautious, and steady program. You outlined
Speaker 1: in your paper on China that will I think we
Speaker 1: can link to it in the show notes. I'll try
Speaker 1: to about how their program began in nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: with a US trained scientist, and they have iteratively developed
Speaker 1: and developed, and I think people don't have in their
Speaker 1: mind the twenty twenty five reality of what China's capabilities
Speaker 1: are in space because a lot of people and I'd
Speaker 1: be guilty of this myself, build default back to oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the Chinese rocket program back in the nineties with the
Speaker 1: Coffee Clatch era where they Laurel Aerospace taught them how
Speaker 1: to do multiple satellites on a launch. They have not
Speaker 1: sat on their heels. They have advanced bit by bit,
Speaker 1: steady by steady. Definitely not in a SpaceX way. But
Speaker 1: where would you what's a good way to describe to
Speaker 1: people that haven't been tracking on Chinese progress where they
Speaker 1: are relative to that International Space Station snapshot that everybody's
Speaker 1: used to from the American point of view.
Speaker 2: To put it bluntly, the number two space power in
Speaker 2: the world is China. It is not Russia, it is
Speaker 2: not Europe.
Speaker 3: It is China.
Speaker 2: China has a full portfolio of every space capability pretty
Speaker 2: much that we have, which puts them ahead of Europe,
Speaker 2: which has no human rated, man rated launch vehicle. They
Speaker 2: do not have their own ability to put people in space.
Speaker 2: They have way more money than the Russians, and so
Speaker 2: while the Russians in the Soviet Europe produced of a
Speaker 2: wide variety of satellites. Their launch vehicles are pretty much
Speaker 2: old designs. There's nothing new that we can tell on
Speaker 2: the way, at least in the open source. Their satellite constellations,
Speaker 2: some of them are fully populated, a bunch of them
Speaker 2: have sort of eroded. But the Chinese I mean weather,
Speaker 2: position and timing, communications, earth observation, anti satellite systems. They
Speaker 2: have the full portfolio and of course the ability to
Speaker 2: put their own astronauts in orbit on something to think
Speaker 2: about here. As of twenty team, every shot we have
Speaker 2: of Mars from Mars has been American, but in I
Speaker 2: believe it was twenty twenty one the Chinese successfully on
Speaker 2: their first try, landed a lander on the Martian surface
Speaker 2: and beam back photographs. So they have done on their
Speaker 2: first try something nobody did, including us, which is to
Speaker 2: successfully land on Mars and evade Martian air defense. But
Speaker 2: second of all, they have done something that Europe, Russia, Japan,
Speaker 2: India have.
Speaker 3: Not been able to do. Only we have been able to.
Speaker 2: Do, which is land successfully on Mars and beam back
Speaker 2: photos at all. So that should give you a sense
Speaker 2: of where the Chinese are technology was, and by the way,
Speaker 2: have they stolen some of that technology?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: But it is a very very dangerous belief that oh,
Speaker 2: everything they did they stole from other people. That simply
Speaker 2: isn't true. You don't graduate something like fifty thousand engineers
Speaker 2: and technical people every year and then have them just
Speaker 2: sit around twiddling their thumbs. They are innovative, they are
Speaker 2: working hard, and they are producing the technology that they
Speaker 2: are using with the additional benefit of stealing some of it,
Speaker 2: but a lot of it is homegrown.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm an old science fiction fan, and I don't
Speaker 4: know if you remember the book The Moon is a
Speaker 4: hears Mistress, where the Moon was fitted with the catapult
Speaker 4: or something to throw rocks at Earth to ensure peace
Speaker 4: among those of us on the terrestrial sphere. And you know,
Speaker 4: it just worries me. It concerns me that as much
Speaker 4: as as I see the way they operate, that that
Speaker 4: would not be something that they would necessarily avoid doing.
Speaker 4: So that's one thing that really concerns me about whatever
Speaker 4: they're going to do on the Moon. In addition to
Speaker 4: the they see financial and business opportunities up there too,
Speaker 4: which I find fascinating. What I mean, other than grabbing
Speaker 4: an asteroid that's made out of solid gold, what do
Speaker 4: you think is their economic scheme for the space.
Speaker 3: With regards to the Moon.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that there's an economic argument at this moment,
Speaker 2: and I'm also not sure that there is a weapons argument.
Speaker 2: Cool idea, but something fired from the Moon is still
Speaker 2: going to take around three days.
Speaker 3: To come and hit Earth.
Speaker 2: Now, what it does do without getting into the firing
Speaker 2: weapons part, simply having more traffic is going to tax
Speaker 2: our ability to track what's out there. And so if
Speaker 2: you have enough stuff out there, you could do a
Speaker 2: three card Monti shuffle and start having things disappear where
Speaker 2: hopefully the Americans lose track a bit that has implications
Speaker 2: for anti satellite systems, et cetera. Where there are some
Speaker 2: interesting resource issues, and the most interesting is helium three. Now,
Speaker 2: what you often hear about is while we'll want helium three,
Speaker 2: an isotope of helium, because that'll power our fusion reactors.
Speaker 2: The problem I have with that is, please show me
Speaker 2: the working fusion reactor not out there yet. People who
Speaker 2: are doing a lot of the more advanced quantum computing,
Speaker 2: and for looking at the computing demands associated with artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: especially once you start getting into like smart cities and
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of smart cars and all that. You've
Speaker 2: got to fool that. You've got to cool a lot
Speaker 2: of computer cores. Part of that's going to be electricity,
Speaker 2: but part of that is going to be how do
Speaker 2: you keep stuff super cool? And part of the argument
Speaker 2: there is the use of helium like nitrogen liquid. Nitrogen
Speaker 2: liquid helium could be one of the things that you
Speaker 2: would use to cool down all these massive computer arrays.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting thought in terms of why you might
Speaker 2: want lunar regolith. One of the other things to keep
Speaker 2: in mind here is that for the longest time in
Speaker 2: the United States had the largest reserve of helium in
Speaker 2: the world. But I believe that we fairly recently, like
Speaker 2: about two years ago, auctioned off those holdings, So that
Speaker 2: puts US potentially behind the eight ball.
Speaker 1: When we look at coming back a little bit closer
Speaker 1: to Earth here. One of the things that the US
Speaker 1: government US military has become accustomed to, it's their planning assumption,
Speaker 1: is unfettered access to voice data, intel, surveillance, and reconnaissance
Speaker 1: assets in orbit. The Russians have demonstrated a couple of
Speaker 1: times from rather messy anti satellite capability, and of course
Speaker 1: I'm furly believed that that deep hidden inside some compartmentalized program,
Speaker 1: all the space going nations has some really interesting things
Speaker 1: up there. But as everybody looks at a possible conflict
Speaker 1: with the People's Republic of China if things go high
Speaker 1: order that vulnerability that we have, how much of the
Speaker 1: Chinese way of war, at least how they're thinking is
Speaker 1: reliant on those assets in or a bit compared to
Speaker 1: how the US and Western militaries are used to having access.
Speaker 3: That is a great question.
Speaker 2: I hope your audience that would be a good time
Speaker 2: for the quick cup of coffee or something, because this
Speaker 2: is going to be a very long and somewhat involved answer.
Speaker 2: To begin with, it's important to understand the Chinese view
Speaker 2: of the next war is rooted in information. From their
Speaker 2: point of view, how do you win the next war?
Speaker 2: You achieve information dominance. I need to gather information, analyze information,
Speaker 2: move information, exploit information more rapidly and more accurately than
Speaker 2: my enemy. That is the shinshi chant that's a Chinese
Speaker 2: term for it.
Speaker 3: That in turn, with regards to space, as.
Speaker 2: Two implications, I need to achieve space dominance. Either Chinese
Speaker 2: need to achieve space dominance whether I use space or not,
Speaker 2: because I need to prevent the other side from using space.
Speaker 2: And here the Chinese have been very close observers of
Speaker 2: other people's wars because they haven't fought on themselves since
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy and they have concluded that the American way
Speaker 2: of war is all about, as you said, unfettered access
Speaker 2: to information, especially drawn from space. So here geography works
Speaker 2: in China's favor. Whether it's Taiwan, where the South China Sea,
Speaker 2: these are battlefield potential battlefields that are very close to China.
Speaker 2: China doesn't need space to know what is going on
Speaker 2: around Taiwan. It doesn't really need space to know what's
Speaker 2: going on around the sprat leaves or the Paracels. It
Speaker 2: can rely on UAVs, it can rely on aircraft. It
Speaker 2: can rely on land based radars. It can rely on
Speaker 2: high altitude balloons. It can rely on the world's largest
Speaker 2: fishing fleet. It can rely on the world's largest merchant fleet.
Speaker 2: It can rely on human spies. It can rely on
Speaker 2: radio direction finding. It's got massive, multiple overlapping methods of
Speaker 2: common since in surveillance all along its shores and extending
Speaker 2: out to Taiwan.
Speaker 3: Into the South China City.
Speaker 2: We're the ones who need space because we're fighting in
Speaker 2: away game. Two carrier battlegroups operating together has more power
Speaker 2: than two individual carrier groups, but they've got to be
Speaker 2: able to communicate.
Speaker 3: With each other.
Speaker 2: Now, if they're operating within line of sight, sure you
Speaker 2: could do radio, but where if you also want to
Speaker 2: coordinate with an air wing back in Guam, if you
Speaker 2: want to know what is going on in China, you're
Speaker 2: going to need space based assets from the Chinese perspective. Therefore,
Speaker 2: it is absolutely essential to tripple Western space capabilities. Now
Speaker 2: that doesn't have to be shootout at the Okspace Corral
Speaker 2: with ASATs. It can be jamming, it can be spoofing.
Speaker 2: China has done some cyberwork. People may have heard about this,
Speaker 2: but all of that is aimed at making sure that
Speaker 2: the information isn't there for the commanders that the carrier
Speaker 2: group commander, the commander Air group, the commanders of the submarines.
Speaker 2: They are in an ideal Chinese world. Going to basically
Speaker 2: not have access to space based information doesn't mean they
Speaker 2: can't do military operations, but they're going to be at
Speaker 2: a huge disadvantage against the Chinese military that will have
Speaker 2: multiple overlapping channels of comms, connaissance means, surveillance means, and
Speaker 2: the ability to target certainly within Yao one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty miles of the Chinese shore without having to rely once.
Speaker 4: Oh it's always so leasing to hear the things were
Speaker 4: up potentially up against you know, speaking of getting things
Speaker 4: back down to earth. Here, China has set a force
Speaker 4: down to I think it's a three ships down off
Speaker 4: New Zealand and Australia to conduct gunry operations of my
Speaker 4: other things. I can't imagine why they need to go
Speaker 4: all that way what and they've just recently signed a
Speaker 4: deal with the Cook Islands, which happens to sit pretty
Speaker 4: close to the Sea liand communication between the United States
Speaker 4: and Australia and New Zealand. Can you talk about that
Speaker 4: aspect of what China is up to.
Speaker 2: So the Chinese task force is operating in the Tasman Sea,
Speaker 2: which is international waters, and I think what the Chinese
Speaker 2: are saying is fine, you insist on sending your carrier
Speaker 2: groups and your ships and things into the South China Sea,
Speaker 2: which by the way, really are our Chinas because you
Speaker 2: claim that they're international waters. Fine, we'll send our task
Speaker 2: forces into international waters that happened to be in the
Speaker 2: middle of your allies areas, and we'll conduct live fire
Speaker 2: exercises just like you say you have the right to do.
Speaker 2: And if that interferes with air traffic and things, and
Speaker 2: if Canberra basically says, hey, you know airliners, this is
Speaker 2: a dangerous area, well how you like them apples. They're
Speaker 2: doing it to the Australians and the New Zealanders in
Speaker 2: part because the idea here is what turn up the
Speaker 2: pressure on smaller powers too. Ideally, get those powers to
Speaker 2: them and either complain to the Americans or if they're
Speaker 2: going to complain to China, China basically say, hey, the
Speaker 2: Americans are doing this, and honest see you complaining. So
Speaker 2: this is a very interesting, longer term strategic plan of
Speaker 2: trying to detach Australians in our two of our key
Speaker 2: allies in the Pacific away from us. Let's pull that
Speaker 2: camera out a little further and we look at the
Speaker 2: Cook Islands, we look at Chinese deals with the Solomons,
Speaker 2: we look at Chinese efforts to establish a greater presence
Speaker 2: in Papua New Guinea, and the audience for this program
Speaker 2: in particular, is going to remember places like Wattle Canal
Speaker 2: and to Loggie and Bougainville and Port Moresby and the
Speaker 2: Buna campaign. And what we are seeing is a Chinese
Speaker 2: effort to establish footholds in places that would have been
Speaker 2: very familiar to Admiral Yamamota. Why because the geography hasn't changed.
Speaker 2: Because the strategic connections between the United States and Australia
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five are the same as those in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. Sure you've got bigger ships and you've got
Speaker 2: jet airliners, but at the end of the day, the
Speaker 2: sea lanes of communication continue to be vital. The Chinese
Speaker 2: are achieving a presence that in nineteen forty two would
Speaker 2: have been considered strategically threatening, and was considered strategically threatening,
Speaker 2: which is why you had Operation Washtower in the Guatdal
Speaker 2: Canal campaign. And I think that we are also seeing
Speaker 2: the Chinese try to establish closer ties in the Central
Speaker 2: Pacific with the Federated States of Magnesia and other small
Speaker 2: island states out there, again for the same reasons, because
Speaker 2: they are part of the stepping stones across Pacific. Because
Speaker 2: if the Chinese can keep them out of our They
Speaker 2: don't have to join China, they just have to be
Speaker 2: kept out of closed American orbit. Then it is going
Speaker 2: to be more difficult for us to operate in the
Speaker 2: Western Pacific.
Speaker 1: But I was reading about where I'll get to in
Speaker 1: my question, you know one day they can came to
Speaker 1: mind is just like only the Germans can come up
Speaker 1: with the word schadenfreude. That it takes a couple of
Speaker 1: sentences to explain to somebody that there's really no comparable
Speaker 1: English language. But you know, you have to have some
Speaker 1: way to translate things and if concepts, and because there's
Speaker 1: also cultural differences American culture in German culture is a
Speaker 1: lot closer than American culture and Chinese culture and reference
Speaker 1: points and way of seeing things, and so party was going, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a different Chinese concept to it, but I
Speaker 1: think the words are useful because a lot of people's
Speaker 1: mind you can almost see engagement and cooperation in that
Speaker 1: then diagram or ninety percent overlap. But the Chinese see
Speaker 1: something very different on engagement versus cooperation. That when you
Speaker 1: when you understand how they look at it differently, a
Speaker 1: lot of what they're doing makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about how the Chinese view engagement
Speaker 1: versus cooperation.
Speaker 3: So a couple of aspects heare.
Speaker 2: The first is that China has happily engaged pretty much everybody.
Speaker 2: Let's begin with the fundamentals of trade. China trades with
Speaker 2: every country pretty much on the planet. China even trades
Speaker 2: of North Korea, which doesn't trade as anybody. China trades
Speaker 2: with Russia, China trades.
Speaker 3: With the United States.
Speaker 2: So there is economic engagement, diplomatic and political engagement, cooperation
Speaker 2: that implies a degree of shared outcome. And the Chinese
Speaker 2: love to use the phrase win win solutions by Old Boston,
Speaker 2: the Heritage Foundation used to joke, Yes, China believes in
Speaker 2: win win, China wins twice. When we look at international
Speaker 2: relations from the European perspective, it's always been marked since
Speaker 2: the Treaty of Westphalia by alliances, by balance of power.
Speaker 2: Every time you had a single country threatened to take
Speaker 2: over Europe Napoleonic France, Wilhelmy Germany, Nazi Germany, Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: you wound up with a group of countries that came
Speaker 2: together as allies to cooperate, share forces, share information, share
Speaker 2: command and control, to counter that single dominant hedgeble so
Speaker 2: Europe and the United States, as the inheritor of European
Speaker 2: diplomatic history, is used to thinking in terms of alliances, cooperation,
Speaker 2: balance of power. Asia, five thousand years of history easily
Speaker 2: has no history of alliances. Asia is marked by a
Speaker 2: single dominant country, China, and peripheral states states on its
Speaker 2: periphery that were often tributary states. They didn't join each
Speaker 2: other to counter China. They each cut separate deeds, and
Speaker 2: so you had Young j then the Chinese Foreign Ministry,
Speaker 2: I believe what was State Counselor on Foreign Affairs in
Speaker 2: two thousand and three say there are big countries and
Speaker 2: there are small countries, and that is just the way
Speaker 2: of the world. And it was very clear what he
Speaker 2: was saying is, don't expect me to somehow treat small
Speaker 2: countries as equal. I will engage with them, I will
Speaker 2: work with them sometimes, I will pro by aid as
Speaker 2: we see in the Belt Road initiative and investment. But
Speaker 2: you're not my equal, and you shouldn't think that you are.
Speaker 2: That's a very different kind of worldview. It's also important
Speaker 2: to recognize Asia pretty much has accepted this throughout most
Speaker 2: of its history because they didn't allie with each other
Speaker 2: against China. So you have an entire comment, not just China,
Speaker 2: who comes out of fundamentally different diplomatic history, and that
Speaker 2: shapes sort of the groove that is created by thousands
Speaker 2: of years literally of experience. This is one of the
Speaker 2: key things, is that the Chinese that'll work with other
Speaker 2: people or is quote unquote win win. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, actual cooperation, the way we have
Speaker 2: with Britain, the special relationship, the way we have with
Speaker 2: NATO where there are parts of NATO where US forces
Speaker 2: are under somebody else's command, US South Korea, US Japan,
Speaker 2: Australia and New Zealand, our alliance relationships are far more
Speaker 2: cooperation actually working together than we have ever seen with
Speaker 2: the Chinese in terms of quote unquote in coordination. It's
Speaker 2: it's engagement.
Speaker 4: Well, you mentioned I'd love to do this. You mentioned
Speaker 4: cyber earlier. Let's talk about Chinese cyber efforts. I mean,
Speaker 4: somebody in the chatroom mentioned the hack of the or
Speaker 4: the cyber attack on the Khalia, the back doors that
Speaker 4: were built into the the communications systems by demand of
Speaker 4: our government, and the information they were gathering Why does
Speaker 4: China do all this? What do they get out of
Speaker 4: this stuff?
Speaker 2: Well, we don't actually know, per se. I mean, I'm yeah,
Speaker 2: But why are the Chinese engaging in such a broad
Speaker 2: array of cyberactivities?
Speaker 3: For part of it is frankly economic competition.
Speaker 2: And this is where it helps to be the Chinese
Speaker 2: Commist party, where you basically have management over much of
Speaker 2: the economy and the Chinese military, and so you can
Speaker 2: actually tell the Chinese military to engage in economic espionage.
Speaker 3: Which they have.
Speaker 2: At one point, the PLA was hacking into Coca Cola
Speaker 2: not to get the secret recipe, but because Coca Cola
Speaker 2: was apparently making a bid for a Chinese soft drink company,
Speaker 2: and the Chinese wanted to know what was the final,
Speaker 2: best and final offer that Coke was going to make,
Speaker 2: and they held out for that. So that's one aspect
Speaker 2: economic benefod intellectual property. It's not an accident that often
Speaker 2: the Chinese are able to bring products to market ahead
Speaker 2: of the people who are doing the original R and
Speaker 2: D because they swoop in and scoop up a lot
Speaker 2: of that R and D. And this is where the
Speaker 2: Chinese the side has subsequent advantage, are able to more
Speaker 2: promptly put it into production. What is more concerning of
Speaker 2: late are things like volta typhoon that apparently the Chinese.
Speaker 2: We think somebody has been planting malware into critical infrastructure,
Speaker 2: and what that suggests is that in time of crisis
Speaker 2: or conflict, these unknown somebodies could literally flip switches and
Speaker 2: start affecting our water supply, our communications systems, our energy supply.
Speaker 2: Imagine if you blacked out the East Coast. Imagine if
Speaker 2: water systems across the country stopped working, would you be
Speaker 2: able to ship three divisions overseas? Probably not, because you're
Speaker 2: going to have a whole lot of civil unrest inside
Speaker 2: the United States. And there's a psychological aspect to this.
Speaker 2: Knowing that somebody is running around in your infrastructure, knowing
Speaker 2: that your data may be corrupted. How confident are you
Speaker 2: that your force deployment schedule, that your military orders, that
Speaker 2: your spare parts chain is going to work. Have you
Speaker 2: practiced using physically printed out orders? Have you practiced communicating
Speaker 2: by voice rather than data link? At one point, the
Speaker 2: Navy stopped training people to shoot the sun because well.
Speaker 3: We'll have GPS.
Speaker 2: I believe we are now back to training sailors on
Speaker 2: how to shoot the sun because there's a realization maybe
Speaker 2: GPS won't be there. It won't be because somebody started shooting
Speaker 2: down all of the satellites.
Speaker 3: There's a whole.
Speaker 2: Lot of GPS satellites out there, but it could be
Speaker 2: because somebody went in and corrupted or otherwise cyber attacked
Speaker 2: the overall GPS data infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Another area that is getting more attention after a long
Speaker 1: time because for much of the last few decades, we
Speaker 1: all knew that China was a nuclear power, but unlike
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, that and then Russia still had thousands
Speaker 1: of warheads, a lot of them on submarine launcha ballistic
Speaker 1: missiles and ICBMs and other weapons. Nobody really worried much
Speaker 1: about out China's nuclear stuff. It was a niche field
Speaker 1: inside of a niche field. But news started to break
Speaker 1: into open source I don't know, maybe eighteen months ago
Speaker 1: about There has been a rash of construction and additional
Speaker 1: moves in this nuclear strategic deterrence field that hadn't moved
Speaker 1: much for decades inside of China, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: opened up a new field. We're trying to understand how
Speaker 1: China views nuclear deterrence relative to the US. What is
Speaker 1: important for people to keep in mind, who maybe are
Speaker 1: just locked up with the US versus Russia nuclear map,
Speaker 1: that might be different with the Chinese.
Speaker 2: So I came into this field back in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: I actually remember the day after the ABC miniseries about
Speaker 2: a nuclear war. Back in those days, there were literally
Speaker 2: thousands of ICBMs of the US and Soviet side, all
Speaker 2: OpEd with multiple independent re entry vehicles. So we were
Speaker 2: looking at thousands and thousands of strategic nuclear warheads that
Speaker 2: were going to basically pound the US and Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: And at that time, the Chinese had maybe a dozen
Speaker 2: or so ICBMs and a full slew of medium and
Speaker 2: intermediate range ballistic missiles enough to hurt the superpowers by
Speaker 2: vaporizing two, three, four five major cities, but nothing on
Speaker 2: the scale of the US and Soviet Union. Through the
Speaker 2: various arms control treaties, we are both down to, I believe,
Speaker 2: around twelve hundred and fifteen hundred launchers and around that
Speaker 2: number of warheads, and the Chinese for the longest time
Speaker 2: didn't really seem to be interested, as you noted, until
Speaker 2: about two years ago people started looking at satellite photographs.
Speaker 2: And this is one of the fascinating things about commercial
Speaker 2: satellite photography is now anyone can buy pictures of just
Speaker 2: about anywhere on the planet. And what we found is
Speaker 2: that the Chinese are building missile silo fields in western China.
Speaker 2: At least three have been identified so far, each with
Speaker 2: one hundred to one hundred and fifty silos, so we're
Speaker 2: talking about three hundred to four hundred missiles out there,
Speaker 2: and the Chinese have the ability to deploy multiple independent
Speaker 2: re entry vehicles, so pretty much the Chinese are potentially
Speaker 2: fielding numbers of ICBM warheads comparable to that of the
Speaker 2: US and Russia. On top of that, the Chinese have
Speaker 2: also unveiled plans to build the H twenty strategic bomber.
Speaker 2: This is the first strategic bomber outside the United States
Speaker 2: since the old Soviet era Blackjacks the TU one sixties.
Speaker 2: And the Chinese are working on fielding a fleet of
Speaker 2: five to six ballistic missile submarines, which give them a
Speaker 2: ballistic missile submarine force comparable to that of Britain or France.
Speaker 2: But the British and the French don't have ICBMs, so
Speaker 2: we are looking at a Chinese the People's Liberation Army
Speaker 2: Rocket Force is going to have nuclear capabilities comparable to
Speaker 2: that of Strategic Command here on the Russian strategic Rocket Forces.
Speaker 2: We haven't really thought about how to deter too independent
Speaker 2: nuclear forces just about ever, because the Chinese never developed
Speaker 2: a huge force of their own. Now, to be fair,
Speaker 2: the Chinese have had to think about this. They were
Speaker 2: worried about deterring the United States pretty much from nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine until the Nixon Vision.
Speaker 3: In seventy two.
Speaker 2: They also had to separately worry about the Soviets beginning
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty all the way until the collapse of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. And even now, while people talk about
Speaker 2: limitless friendship, I suspect that the PLA Rocket Forces still
Speaker 2: have people who are focused on, if necessary, nuking chunks
Speaker 2: of Russia. So the Chinese have had, basically throughout most
Speaker 2: of their history, had to think about deterring multiple nuclear
Speaker 2: powers independent of each other. Let's not forget the Chinese
Speaker 2: also have to worry about India, which has its own
Speaker 2: nuclear capabilities and again separate from the Russians and the Americans.
Speaker 4: When you're sitting down at night and you go Okay, Well,
Speaker 4: let's see we've discussed all this stuff here. What is
Speaker 4: what is there that we've left out that we should
Speaker 4: be thinking about with China?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 4: Um, yeah, I like a global question.
Speaker 2: Well one of the things to think about here is yeah,
Speaker 2: people sometimes hear all this and sort of say, wow,
Speaker 2: so we're all basically doomed, and we need to start
Speaker 2: learning Chinese because ya hopefully yea, our new Chinese overlords
Speaker 2: will treat us better if we speak the language. And
Speaker 2: I say, look, there are real problems. Shijiking looks at
Speaker 2: the world and has a somewhat different assessment than some
Speaker 2: of the things we've talked about. They have a demographic
Speaker 2: problem that is rapidly snowballing. There simply aren't enough younger Chinese,
Speaker 2: and that's going to create all sorts of interesting problems
Speaker 2: for them with regards to everything from manning their military
Speaker 2: to you have social structure where there are fewer and
Speaker 2: fewer working age people supporting more and more elderly retired people.
Speaker 2: And I will tell you that Yeah, in the United States,
Speaker 2: seventy year olds, even eighty year olds are out there
Speaker 2: playing tennis and going touring around the world and driving
Speaker 2: across the country and RVs and all that. A lot
Speaker 2: of Chinese elderly are nowhere near as healthy, so there's
Speaker 2: going to be some interesting problems for them. Another aspect
Speaker 2: is the economy, and one of the things that yeah, look,
Speaker 2: I don't know whether your listeners love Donald Trump or
Speaker 2: hate Donald Trump, but one of the things to think
Speaker 2: about here is the fact that mister Trump has put
Speaker 2: an end to the EV mandate, the electric vehicle mandate,
Speaker 2: so we are not going to hopefully become an all
Speaker 2: electric vehicle nationwide fleet of cars and trucks by twenty
Speaker 2: thirty or twenty thirty five, wherever you may stand on this.
Speaker 2: This is a u impact on our relations with China
Speaker 2: want because China is the source of a lot of
Speaker 2: the rare earths that go into making electric vehicles, including batteries,
Speaker 2: and they also have established engagement, including trade deals with
Speaker 2: a lot of other countries that also have things like
Speaker 2: lithium for batteries. If we actually tried to become a
Speaker 2: fifty percent EV country by say twenty thirty, we would
Speaker 2: need China enormously because we're not going to make all
Speaker 2: those batteries, certainly not without importing a lot of material
Speaker 2: from China, even if the factories in the United States,
Speaker 2: by ending the ev mandate the Chinese, our need for
Speaker 2: Chinese rare earths went from tons to pounds because you
Speaker 2: still need them for cell phones, you need them for radars,
Speaker 2: you need them for a variety of other things. That
Speaker 2: is a fundamental chain in the potential economic relationship between
Speaker 2: the United States and the PRC. The other thing that's
Speaker 2: striking is that if you're the Chinese, you have I've
Speaker 2: seen Donald Trump one point zero, Joe Biden and Trump
Speaker 2: two point zero, and the tariff situation hasn't changed. If
Speaker 2: you're the Chinese, you see that as at least as
Speaker 2: threatening as the Seventh Fleet in the eighty second air
Speaker 2: because the United States is making it pretty clear that
Speaker 2: we are going to continue our economic pressure on Beijing,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't matter who's president. Those are I think
Speaker 2: some aspects to sort of keep in mind is the
Speaker 2: economy of the economic relationship, which goes to supply chains
Speaker 2: and things like our Earth's and how our domestic decisions
Speaker 2: actually do have an impact on this, and the unchanging
Speaker 2: aspect of demographics, because it's a lot like the Titanic.
Speaker 3: You don't change demographics overnight.
Speaker 1: Like I kind of covered in the beginning, the international relations,
Speaker 1: foreign policy, defense discussion. Since President Trump I became president again,
Speaker 1: it has been focused on Europe in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: but in the background, when you go back to the
Speaker 1: discussions before the ALLOC, there's a recurring theme and we've
Speaker 1: been hearing this since I think what the Obama specific
Speaker 1: pivot was eleven years ago, where everybody wants to move
Speaker 1: the attention back to China. There's been a aggressive back
Speaker 1: and forth about priorities. And what's really been interesting is
Speaker 1: some of the objection to the China primists, those who
Speaker 1: say we need to continue to not let the Middle
Speaker 1: East and Europe get fifty one percent of the attention.
Speaker 1: We need to focus on the real global challenge to us,
Speaker 1: which is the PRC. And Bridge Colby is one of
Speaker 1: those people that kind of has been in the front
Speaker 1: before the election. Even he's been very steady and very
Speaker 1: direct and very open and in the public space about that.
Speaker 1: And there's been a really big pushback about the desire
Speaker 1: by the Trump administration to bring him into a policy decision.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're both old enough that we remember,
Speaker 1: again going back to the nineteen nineties, the China, doves
Speaker 1: were absolutely positively dominant. You could not step your one
Speaker 1: foot forward with a question about the long term challenge
Speaker 1: of the PRC and they just be all over you.
Speaker 1: How do you see the state of that focus? Not
Speaker 1: necessarily bridge coal, we've been in a larger sense for
Speaker 1: those people that are starting to slot in to policy
Speaker 1: positions inside the new administration.
Speaker 2: Well, in answer to the at the top of this show,
Speaker 2: I think the idea that you would make a statement
Speaker 2: about Taiwan is striking, and I think Beijing absolutely noticed
Speaker 2: that Trump one point zero was marked by then President Electrum,
Speaker 2: a private citizen taking a call from the Taiwan president
Speaker 2: that was unprecedent, that never happened before, and from Beijing's perspective,
Speaker 2: that definitely sets the tone. I think that one of
Speaker 2: the things to consider here is that at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, Russia is one bad actor. No one
Speaker 2: should be under any impression other than these are the
Speaker 2: bad guys. But they are, as a good friend of
Speaker 2: mine puts it, a mafia owned gas station with nuclear
Speaker 2: wepins in the basement. They don't have any economy or
Speaker 2: a technology base that really is competitive, unlike China, Asia
Speaker 2: is where technology and innovation come together. I challenge to
Speaker 2: your listeners, how many of you have a European PIEC,
Speaker 2: how many of you operate a European operating system? How
Speaker 2: many of you run a European computer program on your computers?
Speaker 2: Whereas Asia is where your cell phones come from, your
Speaker 2: computers come from, deathly where your chips come from. So
Speaker 2: this isn't to say that we should ignore Europe. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that at all, but we should recognize that
Speaker 2: if we are going to be strategic, we have to
Speaker 2: make choices strategy. A strategy that says be strong everywhere
Speaker 2: is not a strategy, and it's a recipe for failure.
Speaker 2: So where do you prioritize what is most important going
Speaker 2: forward into the second quarter of the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: Where are the technology centers, Where are the technology innovators?
Speaker 2: Where are things going to be produced that we must have,
Speaker 2: everything from drugs to batteries to cell phones and computers
Speaker 2: and the software that runs them. You know, there's an
Speaker 2: interesting chart that came out that said that there is
Speaker 2: not a single European tech company that is in the
Speaker 2: same neighborhood as the Magnificent Seven. That home depot is
Speaker 2: bigger than all of the European startups of the last
Speaker 2: twenty thirty years. Again, does that mean we should turn
Speaker 2: our backs on Europe. Absolutely not. But we need to
Speaker 2: recognize that the long term threat to the United States
Speaker 2: is at least as much engaging, and by the way,
Speaker 2: also a little bit from North Korea, and we need
Speaker 2: to recognize that as a result, we do need to
Speaker 2: prioritize because we can't be strong if we simply can't
Speaker 2: afford it. So it's up to our leadership to make
Speaker 2: the case and to explain why we you know, what
Speaker 2: those choices need to be.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a great point. I think we all
Speaker 4: need to mull it over before we let you go.
Speaker 4: Dean as usual, we could probably keep you for a
Speaker 4: week or two if if we could both all last
Speaker 4: that long. What do you got in the fire now?
Speaker 4: What's what's what's boiling on your stove? What we look
Speaker 4: for next coming from you?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: The George Washington University Space Policy Issue was kind enough
Speaker 2: to publish a monograph of Mind, which is available from
Speaker 2: their website for free. A monograph of several papers that
Speaker 2: I wrote on Chinese views of CIS lunar space why
Speaker 2: are they interested? What are they doing out there? Something
Speaker 2: to sort of think about for listeners who are interested
Speaker 2: in China space program recently had a chapter come out
Speaker 2: in a volume on contemporary international competition looking at intelligence
Speaker 2: isation and the Chinese. We tend to associate artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: with Donald Twutzenega cyberdying systems, Model one one dominatus, and
Speaker 2: the Chinese are much more pedestrian, but at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, they're also much more systematic. It's about
Speaker 2: the Internet of things. It's about the ability to wade
Speaker 2: through terabytes of information and using artificial intelligence to find
Speaker 2: the nuggets and to help humans make that ultimate final decision.
Speaker 2: Those are two recent pubs, and working on a paper
Speaker 2: on why we should keep the Wolf Amendment, which is
Speaker 2: the piece of legislation that limits NASA from engaging in
Speaker 2: open cooperation with China in space.
Speaker 1: Well that's out standing, Dean, and again, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for taking time to come on board. It's been
Speaker 1: a great hour and I still have another page of questions,
Speaker 1: so we'll have to have you on again. I'll look
Speaker 1: forward to the next time.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me and look forward to
Speaker 2: joining you again.
Speaker 4: Always a pleasure. Somebody wants me to remind people about
Speaker 4: the flag raising ceremony on e Regima eighty years ago today,
Speaker 4: and we should all think about the war in the
Speaker 4: Pacific that we fought eighty years ago.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and thank you everybody for joining us for another
Speaker 1: edition of mid Rats and the next time, I hope
Speaker 1: you have a great Navy day.
Speaker 3: Cheers.
Speaker 5: Moll to Need replied, worry Paddy, Mike, my loney one
Speaker 5: to marry me, and all the friend of Codily for
Speaker 5: you being to blame for love.
Speaker 4: Me silly folding.
Speaker 5: You the name.
Speaker 3: It's a long way to.
Speaker 5: It's a long way. It's a long way to really between.
Speaker 5: The Canine's all about thick on it. Fare well, listen, well,
Speaker 5: it's a long long way to sit away.
Speaker 1: But my