April 18, 2025 • 35 mins
Newt’s guest is Admiral Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. They discuss the Chinese Communist Party's potential cyber-enabled economic warfare against Taiwan. He emphasizes the importance of the United States preparing for a cross-strait invasion and the need for a robust shipbuilding capacity to counter China's growing military capabilities. Montgomery also highlights the strategic significance of Taiwan's semiconductor industry and the necessity for the U.S. to support Taiwan's defense. Additionally, he touches on the resilience of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and the critical role of European defense spending. Their conversation concludes with insights into the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the strategic importance of U.S. support for Israel.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
On this episode of News World. My guest today just
returned from a trip to Lithuania and Israel. But the
issue most concerning him right now is the Chinese Communist
Party's ability to conduct a cyber enabled economic warfare campaign
against Taiwan. This campaign might be able to deliver Taiwan
to the Chinese Communist Party with minimal damage. So what
(00:26):
should I say to do to stop it. I'm really
pleased to welcome my guest, Admiral Mark Montgomery, Senior Fellow
at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mark, welcome, and
thank you for joining me on News World.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thank you for having me today here, sir.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's a very important topic. Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of
the US Indo Pacific Command, during a Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing on April tenth, said that quote, China is
in increasing addressive actions near Taiwan. Are not just exercises,
they are rehearsals. Do you think China is ramping up
for something or are these just military exercises?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Sam is right, Admal Paparo, the Peycock commander, the Chinese
are rehearsing. Now. I think what's important I stand here
is that that is the most dangerous scenario when they
do this kind of cross straight invasion, that's what they're
rehearsing for. Maybe the next most dangerous is a full
scale blockade. But what's really got me worried is is
something less than that, what we call the most likely
(01:33):
scenario in the military and the one that you really
need to make sure you're planning for, and that's a
cyber enabled economic warfare campaign against Taiwan. Well, my personal
belief is General Sector G will not do that unless
he knows that should the conflict escalate, he could win
across straight invasion. So admal Paparo as pey Coom, he's
(01:54):
preparing for that cross sate invasion, making sure Chairman G
never wakes up in the morning and says, you know,
I could go if I had to, I could, And
that way we prevent the cyber naval economic warfare campaign
that I think is ongoing and would just have to
be slightly increased on the Riostat for China to be
able to do it.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
How big a challenge would it be for the Chinese
communists to actually try to invade and occupy Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This is really hard. There's one military in the world
that I know could do it, and it's us, But
I wouldn't want to do it against our own defenses.
You know, this is a very dangerous thing and also
inevitably you damage the heck out of Taiwan. I mean,
they want Taiwan for very historical cultural, societal reasons, and
they would take it broken, but they would prefer to
(02:40):
take it whole. And to take it whole, I think
is to get Taiwan to bend the knee so because
it's so hard, because it would be so calamitous, I
think that drives China towards seeking a solution where they
pressure break the societal resilience of Taiwan, bring them to heal,
and then and integrate them fully into their economy.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Currently, the Chinese, they're actually producing slightly more fighters than
we are, about one point two to one, and our
shipbuilding capacity has just collapsed. Something i'd like you to
sort of comment on our concerned to you that despite
the efforts of the new Trump administration that in the
short run, the Chinese are clearly out preparing us.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Well, You're exactly right. In fact, the shipbuilding number is
much worse than the fighter number. The number of warships
are producing three to four to five to one we're
producing each year. The number of merchant ships, by the way,
is two hundred to one. If you really want to
get uncomfortable, you're absolutely right. This is not unsolvable. Korea
has two great, big shipyards, both of which can produce
(03:46):
a support ship, you know, an oil or a logistics
ship for about twenty eight cents on the dollar that
a US ship yard would produce it at. So that
tells you two things. One we can get better. Two
we're going to need help. It's got a great idea
with this executive order, and Senators Kelly and Wicker and
others have been pushing us for years. They've got a
(04:06):
team set up at the NFC just to work this,
led by a guy named doctor Jerry Hendrix. This whole setup,
we can get this right. The problem is, it took
us forty years to get in this hole. We're not
going to get out in four And you know, the
hardest thing in government is to commit to a strategic
plan to fix something that your success or successor will enjoy.
(04:28):
That just is not how our presidents have operated for
the last twenty years. And so I'm concerned that they
won't make the number one thing, number thing, which is
restore our actual ship to capability, reach out to the
Koreans for help and get this.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Fixed in the short run. Could we, in fact still
make it prohibitively expensive to come across the street.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We can't. That's the beauty right now. They couldn't, you know.
An admiral named Phil Davidson back in twenty twenty one said, hey,
China could execute this by twenty twenty seven. That's based
on I think we did. When I was at Indopay
Commons the J three, I would draw a line that said,
here's us capability was slightly with our allies slightly upslope
a little bit of slope game one or two percent
(05:10):
every year, and here's the Chinese capability to do the invasion.
It was exponential in crossing us in twenty twenty seven.
What Adam Davidson forgot to say was that this could
happen in twenty twenty seven unless we take action or
China fails to take action, and a number of things
that happens is twenty twenty one. Number one, Russia invade
Ukraine and we had a Holy Count moment on munitions,
(05:32):
which is one of our big shortfalls, not just in
ground stuff in Ukraine, anti ship stuff and anti air
stuff out in the Pacific. We've really been working on that.
Japan's gotten crazy, you know, they're doubling their defense budget
over about a five year period or four year period.
Taiwan's increased their defense spending and they're going to hit
three percent of GDP this year. Australia's increased their defense spending.
(05:54):
Philippines has gotten more integrated with US with the election
of Marcos Junior, and then most important, China screwed up
COVID response and as a result they've slowed, so we've
increased our upslope, they've decreased their exponential gain. If you
ask me, that intersection is now twenty thirty twenty thirty one,
and we keep pushing it. So, Sarah, there's a lot
(06:15):
we can do. And I'll say one last thing. I
wouldn't believe my son's a young officer at ENSIGN and
he selected a ship out of Japan. I would have
been counseling hard against that. If I thought that this
was a loser.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Somebody else would point out to me. By the way,
that the way the two Straits work north and south
of Taiwan, that it's actually really dangerous for the Chinese
communists to get west of Taiwan because they literally could
get cut off and not be capable of getting back.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Once they get a lodgment. Let's say they get a
lodgment down south, which I think they'll get a lodgment,
They've got to keep logistically, you know, refreshing it. And
if there's something we're really good at, it's killing things
on the move. I mean, we have the best targeting
complex that we have long range missiles. If you have
a high value target like lots of logistics coming across,
(07:03):
you're going to be a lot of trouble. So that's
number one. Number two, they've got to get east of
Taiwan and keep our airpower away. That is hard. Our
air force is obviously the pre eminent air force in
the world. F thirty five has demonstrated over I Ran
twice in the last year and by us on many
occasions to be the pre eminent fighter in the world.
(07:24):
The B two's the preeminent bomber in the world. Those
PLA forces east of Taiwan, they're all going to go away,
and the question is how fast can we move them
back to get airpower. So this is a hard fight
for the Chinese, a military that now has zero people
that have served in combat.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
That's the other thing, which is as the Russians learning
on their three day journey to Kiev, it turns out
if you've not done it, and you haven't practiced it,
it's really really hard.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
You know, you're right, And in fact I was one
of the people they called. I'd been the US European
Command Deputy director for plans, so I spent a lot
of time in the Ukrainians. I was called in before
the invasion, and you know, I gave the wrong estimate
like everyone else. I said, the Russian army is going
to cut through them like a hot knife and butter.
What all of us failed to understand was they're no
longer a large scale maneuver army. They can't do logistics.
(08:14):
This is what we're great at. I mean, civilian lives
were great, Amazon, you know, ups FedEx. We're just really
good at logistics. Our problem, by the way, the military
is to last mile, Like how do I get round
to an infantryman on the front line that last couple
hundred yards to get it to them. The Russian problem
was the first mile is they left their bases, their fuel,
(08:36):
their communications, their food, their command and control. It also
cease to function and they ground to a halt halfway
to Kiev. That's an important lesson for us. We take
our logistics for granted, we can't do that. We have
to continue to invest in it and remind ourselves only
one country in the world can do large scale maneuver warfare,
and that's the United States.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Well, and frankly, as you move towards artificial intelligence and robotics,
we're going to have all sorts of solutions that are
going to revolutionize our capacity to do this stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, add small modular reactors. When I was pay COMJ three,
ye this four thousand troops, five thousand troops spread over
a third of the world. You're trying to get them logistics.
It was a nightmare. And the biggest nightmare was fuel
getting fueled, not just the planes or ships, but to
equipment to ground. Here. I'm of the belief I've been
taking a lot of briefs from these guys who are
(09:29):
running one to five megawat small modular reactors. They're not
that far away, you know, and they're basically in a
Sierra Land container. I'm a nuclear engineer in the Navy.
I understand what inherently safe means. These are inherently safe
the way we cool the reactors and such. So I
feel very comfortable that that's going to be a long
term solution for the US military.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
One of the things you've been focusing on is is
it possible with a cyber campaign to subdue Taiwan without
physical violence walks through that. I mean, I think that's
revolutionary and probably right.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
The Taiwan leadership leaves. I have briefed this to both
former presidents I am current President Lie and his whole team.
They understand exactly what you just said, what I think
China's going to do. They could come to conclusion they
could not win across straight invasion, but also come to
the conclusion that we're not willing to fight it. If
either of those two happens, they will turn the riastat
on financial, energy, and communications critical infrastructure. So what I
(10:28):
mean by that is they will conduct nine cyber attacks
on them, so things like on the energy infrastructure, put
a missile closure area around the southern LNG port liquid
natural gas. Port liquid natural gas is fifty percent of
the Taiwan grid, and they have six days of excess
supply really stowage, and they get one LNG a day.
So if you stop the one lerg a day from coming,
(10:50):
and you can do it by a missile closure area,
you might call their largest distributor, Qatar. If you're trying
to and saying you give five percent to Taiwan that
you give to us, we think we should stop giving
a Taiwan. They just might you convince some of the
countries that have flagged these energy shipping don't go to
tow it. There's all kinds of things you can do
in there. In communications. You could drop an anchor when
(11:11):
that's happened more times than we can count now on
submarine cables, cables that produce ninety five percent of the
Internet flow in the world on these submerged cables. And
there's things you can do to bank stop payments from
mainland Chinese facilities to Taiwan and then lay on top
of it a cyber attack that hits the electrical grid.
One thing I'll say about in addition having that stowage
(11:32):
problem with LNG. The Taiwan grid operates at seventy eight
or seventy five percent capacity at all times. That's the highest.
OECD ours is like forty seven percent, and maybe California
is sixty percent because they're crazy, But those are inherently
fragile electrical power grids when you're operating above sixty percent,
(11:54):
and they're at seventy four percent, the most of an
OECD country, so they're very vulnerable to a cyber attack
on that grid. And there's cyber attacks you can do
on the financial services systems, on the communications networks. Will
Taiwan get access to starlink. There's gonna be a lot
of pressure on Elon Musk from the Chinese to not
allow that to happen. So there's all these factors in
there that give China opportunity. What we've got to do
(12:17):
is figure out, and we're running tabletops on this that say, look,
how do you prevent this, how do you mitigate it
when it starts to happen, and how do you respond
so you can recover really rapidly. If you can fix
all those things and demonstrate that to China ahead of time,
you then restore deterreents in this very hard area.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It seems to me that that's both a defensive cyber strategy
but the capacity for a very aggressive offensive cyber strategy,
which we really haven't demonstrated much of.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So you're absolutely right. I mean, one of the things
that is very interesting for US is that we have
not responded. We've allowed the level of acceptable activity by
the adversary. The adversary can be China, Russia, North Korea, Iran,
or criminal actors allowed the bar about which we'll respond
to be elevated over four or five administrations, so a
very high level. You know what the result of that
(13:07):
is new is that's why volt Typhoon happened. Vault Typhoon
was a Chinese advanced persistent threat. So a Chinese attack
team inserted malicious software into our rail, financial services, aviation ports,
all our critical infrastructures in Kuam, Hawaii, maybe the West coast.
(13:28):
They have a map in the US. I'm pretty sure
they hit everything and we get them a hat tip.
Let good move, boys. If they had done this with
a thousand backpacks with semtechs in it and put the
same kind of effective malware, you know, something that disrupts
this critical infrastructure in wartime with a note that said
courtesy to pla maybe a middle finger, we might be
(13:48):
a war but somehow, like I said in cyber space,
for like a good job, boys had tip. So we
have raised the bar for what we'll respond to to
an unacceptably high level. So we have not demonstrated are
cyber bona fides. People know we have good offensive capabilities.
They suspect we do things, but we haven't actually done
things to hold China accountable with it.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
How much of that is the culture of the National
Security Agency in this whole sense of we don't want
people to know what we can really do, so we
never do what we can really do, or worse, Oh.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I've got this great tool and this great access I
don't want to burn it. You know. My answer to
that is, we pay you a lot of money billions,
have more tools, more accesses. By the way, that Chinese
don't appear to be constrained by that tools and accesses problem.
They're going crazy on our systems. And look, I know
we like to have a higher level of plausible deniability.
I get it. We have a higher attention to colateral
(14:57):
unexpected clateral damage. I get it. It's harder for democracies
to fight in this gray zone, but it's not impossible,
and we need to do a much better job at
it well.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And then frankly, we might like them to know that
we're doing it exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I call that determs by demonstration. I think every once
in a while you get to pull one of the
monkey's out and beat them. You really have to demonstrate
that you have the capability to do something and a
willingness to use it. And this is what Mike Waltz said.
He's had a rough few months, but one of the
really smart things he said coming in is we need
to be more offensive in our reply. And I think
(15:32):
I would put offensive in both terms. I offend you
and I'm more offensive, and I think we really need
to do that, particularly to the Chinese.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Let me go back to Taiwan for a second. The
degree to which the entire planet relies on Taiwan for
computer chips is an astonishing vulnerability.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
By the way, that's logic chips. If you go to
memory chips, they're all from Korea. So we're dependent on
a lot of our allies of partners. If I had
told you were dependent on the UK, for these, you'd
probably let it go. Now. Look, the UK is not
eighty kilometers from Russia. I get it. There's a lot
of reasons I like Taiwan. One that the one Chinese country.
I know that it's a democracy with a freedom of
(16:13):
the press, free elections, and a market based system, right.
And I think they're a great example in mainland China
that you could have done this. You chose not to.
But they're our partner. They really for all intentsive purposes
there an ally, I know we don't call them that.
For the Taiwan Relations Act established the conditions. I mean,
we've agreed to sell you the weapons you need to
defend yourself, and we've agreed to make a war plan
(16:35):
to come defend you. I know there's no Article five there,
although I'm not sure what an Article five is worth
it this exact second. But there's a level of partnership
in an alliance, so I try not to overreact to that.
I do think there's some things that should be home
shored or put in Canada or Mexico, you know, very
closely shored kind of USMCA shored, so that we can
(16:57):
have better guaranteed access to it. Time but it's not
all of Taiwan. It's a percentage of what Taiwan's doing.
And it would be too expensive that the Chips Act
might move three or four or five percent of our
alliance from Taiwan the United States maybe five percent. And
that was what fifty two billion plus several hundred billion
worth of company investment.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So they really are a sort of a world asset.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, smart country, right.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Do you think that was a conscious strategy.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Not initially. The conscious strategy was after the President on
occasion says something that's not quite right. He says, Taiwan
stole TSMC. They did not steal TSMC. Texas Instruments allowed
TSMC to go to Taiwan, went Morris. The team left
when they weren't being properly promoted and advocated for, in
their opinion, went to Taiwan. There's a book called Shipboard
(17:48):
is pretty good on it. Taiwan definitely created the conditions
for success for TSMC. Had a more legacy chip company
called UMC, and those companies have thrived. I would say
if you took a strict wto like microscope to it,
you wouldn't be happy with everything they did there. But
they created the conditions for success. I think somewhere around
(18:09):
two thousand and eight they started to realize, hey, this
is something that can become part of our security envelope,
and by twenty fifteen it was a security envelope. So
I think not the initial attention. Initial attention was make money.
The final intention was security coverage.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
You did an article for National Interests March twenty first,
entitled to confront China, President Trump should target its state
owned enterprises. And I just noticed today that there's an
indication that in all of their tariff negotiations they're going
to have weakening the Chinese relationship as a function of
getting to an agreement. That apparently their strategy in part
(18:51):
is to methodically begin isolating China and breaking its trade relations.
Is this a rational approach?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
That's pretty big. Look, I'm still from the school of
if by sneakers aren't made by weaker prisoners, I'll buy
them from China because they're a lot cheaper. But there's
a list of emerging technologies that we should not do
foreign direct investment in, do co production with, do joint
ventures with, or purchase for our critical infrastructure, our government,
(19:18):
or our military. And that list is getting longer. In fact,
my biggest problem up in Congress because I work every
year with legislation about drones or lied are or silicon carbide,
all kinds of different things that were TikTok and we're
trying to get ourselves off of. And most Congressmen, as
you know, they're good men and women. They want to
do the right thing. But more than one said to me,
(19:38):
how many more things are there? Mark, And I said,
it's unlimited. It's how many places of China get invest
is part of their twenty twenty five and twenty thirty
five plants. And I'll tell you one thing about China.
They lay it out maybe in Mandarin, and I have
to have somebody translated for me that they lay out
their plans and we're going to have to confront them
and all these emerging technologies. So the degree that the
White House targets the right emergent technology for that, that's
(20:01):
the right call. If they try to do everything everywhere,
all at once, I think that's going to be overly
prescriptive and really jam a lot of our partners and
allies throughout Asia. If we try to block all that trade.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
How likely is it that our partners will just get
irritated enough with us so they'll decide China is a
better partner.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Right, that's a big step. Right, it's not the economic
step that hurts, right, because China's economic negotiations or we're
a big country, you're a small country. Now listen to
what's going to happen. Oh, we've only had one president
do that, and it's kind of good, you know. As
you can see, it's been stop and go. It's hard
for us to be that country. But in security, I
don't know that Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore or
(20:44):
Australia are willing to make China their security partner choice.
I think that's too big a pitch, did it. Here's
who would though, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam. They've already got Cambodi,
Allaos and you know you can keep them. But those
last three. Take a look at what chevanje just visited. Right,
he just did bilateral meetings with each of them. And
(21:06):
I guarantee you he's saying, look how I act. I'm predictable.
You may not like everything I do, but I'm predictable.
Look how he acts. And that's a problem.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
For US, it creates a sense of insecurity because it's
not predictable.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Particularly in Asia.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Let me ask you about your most recent trips. On
the one side, you are on the edge of Russia,
and on the other side, you're one of the most
difficult security problems in the world. Talk about both of those.
What are your thoughts. You've just been there, sure, So.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
First I went to Lithuania. It's tough. It's one of
these weird things. You go to Lithuania. Very few America
and no government people are showing up for like conferences.
Every administration has had the beginning illustration. It's especially being
enforced during this administration. Even generals and admirals, you know,
career people can't show up. So I'm there and the
Europeans were coming after me pretty hard on Panels. I said, hey,
(22:16):
wait a minute, let's be clear here. The problem you
have in Europe is you Eastern Europeans are committed to
your defense. You're doing exactly what Donald Trump said. There's
three bolts are all hitting four percent this year or
in the next twelve months, and five percent in the
next eighteen months. Poland's already at four point six percent
headed to five percent those four countries, you're fantastic, great commitment,
(22:37):
no GDP to have this based on then Germany and
they're there, the Germans, the Brits, and the French are there.
I'm like, you guys have all the GDP and you're
a solid one point five to two point one percent.
President Trump's right. I don't know if I call free loading,
but you have been overly reliant on us, and it's
time for you to spend three to four percent of
(22:58):
your defense on GDP. It's time, I'm for you to
stop making energy deals with the Russians. It's time for
you to decide do you consider Vladimir Putin a threat
if you do take the normal actions you would take
if there was a bully in your backyard, and don't
just have us point to the Eastern Europeans and say
they're doing it. Because most of those bolts, I think
their total GDP probably been that up much past ten billion, right,
(23:21):
I mean it's a little more than that, but not
much more a.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Large American county.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, exactly, And so we have that problem, and then
you have to be honest with them. Look, I don't
think it was just President Trump saying it in twenty seventeen,
Vladimir Putin's invasion of Crimea in twenty fourteen and his
invasion of ukraineing more broadly in twenty twenty two. It's
what's driving them up, and whatever it is, I don't care.
The Western Europeans have to match the Eastern Europeans, and
(23:47):
they need to do it quick, because there is a
anti European You can see it in those signal gait,
those signal texts. There's a strong anti European vibe among
some of the President's closest nationals purity advisors, not Mike Waltz,
but some of the other ones. That should really make
europe scared. When people say that in a text that
they think no one will read, that's probably what they believe.
(24:10):
And there's a strong anti European sentiment from both Vice
President Advance and Secretary Defense accents well.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
And in a sense, all they're doing is acting al
what Trump has said publicly. I mean, the Europeans have
to get their act together.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I agree, and I think President Trump's more of an
opportunist than an isolationist.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Nothing he's done indicates isolationism. He has golf courses and
hotels across the planet. He's married to a European. His
mother came from Scotland. I think one of his sons
was in the Balkans looking at opening up a hotel.
But I think he's rapidly committed to America.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
So I'm hoping that we're going to reduce our presence
in Europe, but I think we can do it in
a smart way. Before the Ukraine invasion, there was about
fifty five fifty thousand plus US troops spread throughout Europe
permanently there in Germany and Italy and uk I hope
we don't touch those because those are all enablers. They
would allow Americans to fight. They could be anywhere. They
(25:07):
help us fight in the Middle East, they help us
fight in Africa, they help us fight in Europe. Keep
them there. We then had about fifteen to twenty thousand
rotating through Poland because we liked what Poland's doing in
the Bolts, and then we added about fifteen to twenty
thousand to help the Ukrainian effort. I think their drawdown
should be of that third group, Hey draw that down.
If we're telling Europe, you take over this training mission,
(25:29):
you take over this logistics mission in a very measured way.
Where Europe comes in, we go out, We draw that force,
and I think leave yourself with the permanent forces that
enable we're fighting around the world from European logistics heads
and the forces that are in Eastern Europe that are
(25:49):
a real deterrent. I mean they're not at the Berlin Brigade.
They're more than that their division, but they're a real
deterrent to putin doing something that would be a bad
deal for if a Baltic state. According to Donald Trump's
current math, if a Baltic state or Poland is invaded,
he will defend them. He said, if you spend the
right amount of money on defention, you're the kind of
I like. Well, those are the kind of allies we like,
(26:11):
and they're the most likely to be invaded. We better
keep the deterred force here that says, hey, I'm serious,
don't do this, Vladimir.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
From your perspective, can the Ukrainians continue to fight?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I didn't mention this before, but I go to Ukraine
every quarter or so every two quarters, then do some
training there with their senior officers for a couple of weeks.
So I have a pretty good perception of the look.
But I didn't command an army division or corps anything
like that. I'm a Navy officer, but I have a
good understanding of resilience, resilience and senior officers resilience, senior enlisted.
(26:44):
The Ukrainians are tough, they are not buckling. Solinski is
an outward He reflects his country in a way many
leaders don't. I mean, you know, he really does reflect with.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
So, I mean, how long can putin withstand the scale
of sacrifices They have lost a while a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
That's the interesting thing. Who's resilience breaks first? Is it
the West, which now is really Europe? Is it the
Ukrainians and the Russians? I think the Russians are in
play on this. I mean, he's got a real problem there.
So here's what I'd say first to other questions. I
do want to say, the Europeans can provide the money.
The Ukraine needs to buy some European equipment and mostly
(27:21):
American equipment. It kind of bummed me up the other
night was Lesky said I need to buy patriots and
President Trump was dismissive. I'm like, sir, that's exactly what
you wanted to do. Take someone else's money, go to
Raytheon and buy fifteen million dollars worth of Raytheon stuff
and then go shoot it and a bad guy. I
think we can get to yes on that. As I said,
he's an opportunist. Let him come around on it.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
My hunch is that they may be wrong, but I
think that he and Witkoff honestly believe they're on the
edge of a deal.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
They're not. I think they're wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Look, I'm with you. I'm very skeptical then reflecting what
I think. The reason I think they are so who
virtually soft on Putin is to say, look, you can
relax and agree to it. Sease far.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I think you're right, and I think you're right to
think that they might be misjudging Putin. And so to
get your other question, Putin's got this weird dynamic going
thirty five percent, maybe forty percent of his GDP is
fossil fuel sales. Fossil fuel price is cratered. Turned the tariffs,
Thank you, President Trump. MBS Manzaman and Opek have increased output,
(28:22):
you know, making it harder for Russian to sell. And
if we were to move in with a third element
and really really secondary section, the shadow fleet. That means
going after Chinese and Indian companies that are buying. His
ability to get that thirty five to forty percent will
be put in jeopardy. Here's the other crushing fact for him.
His federal budget's basically two things. Forty percent on defense,
(28:45):
sixty percent on Babushka, you know, buying off his base.
That's even a high percentage by American standard, right, And
so he's gonna have trouble if you reduce the amount
going in. He either has to decrease defense spending or
decrease support to his base. I don't think he's I'm
really excited about doing either of those. No politician would be,
but particularly Putent. So that's going to be a tough
(29:06):
thing for him. I guarantee you there'll be no critical
infrastructure work done in Russia for the next five years
because of the commitments they've done, and they have bad
critical structure of beginning. So yes, is he at risk?
I think so. But the other problem is he's an authoritarian.
He doesn't break until he fully disintegrates. Democracies break when
the people begin to lose faith in the leadership. And
(29:27):
that comes much earlier than the disintegration.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, I think that's right. Tell me just briefly about
your visit to Israel.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
So i'd say, on Israel first, there's a war going
on in Gaza. It's not a small war, it's a
big war. And what's going on is Hammas still exists.
Israel has basically been told by everyone else, go get
rid of that problem. Now no one said it out
loud because they want to be able to criticize Israel privately,
except for the United States. But the Saudis, the uae Qatar,
(29:54):
whoever's going to pay to rebuild and finance whatever becomes
of Gaza, they need him cleared out. The Egyptians who
are going to provide the security, and I use that
term loosely with the Egyptians are not going to be
able to defeat Hamas, So they need Hamas really disarmed
and defeated to the greatest degree possible when they enter
to provide security. Who's going to have to do that, Israel.
(30:17):
This isn't the sacrifice of those hostages. The hostages who
are going to be killed because they're strapped to high
value targets. And whether israelis target them, or they're just
in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they're executed.
I feel very uncomfortable for the remaining hostages. But this
is a hard deal. We're eighteen months into this almost
They've got to take care of business and they've got
to destroy these and so what I saw was armor,
(30:39):
heavy small arms fire and then significant air power being applied.
And the big lesson for Israel here is they better
have munitions orders with the United States. Donald Trump is
an open store to them, which they should take full
advantage of. And I've been telling them, slow down on
building your own defense industrial base right now by munition,
(31:00):
buy munitions, Buy munitions now, because they need to buy
two thousand, five hundred pounders tank rounds, hundred twenty million
artillery rounds to be ready for their next flight, and
they need to buy arrow. Here's the last thing I'll
tell you. The Israelis have always told me for twenty years.
They always said, we never want US troops on our
soil defending US. You know what they have today, US
troops manning THAD batteries, shooting down Huti weapons and preparing
(31:23):
to shoot down Iranian weapons. And they need them because
they're low on arrow is my guests. I mean, otherwise
they have never let this happen. So they need to
build arrow. These guys need to buy munitions like drunken
sailors for four solid years, and we need to be
the munitions factory that does it for them.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
When you have a people's war in an urban area,
how do you actually destroy Hamas?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I think it's destroy and disarmed as much as possible.
At some point you got to get into the Egyptians
and then destroy the whole tunnel network. And I got
to tell you the Egyptians when their own security is
in there, I hope they have the good graces all
Hamas to build a tunnel network to Egypt, which despite
US giving them one point three billion a year for
three decades, they allowed Hamas to build a underground network
(32:11):
that allowed all those terrorists to go out and get
trained in Iran and elsewhere in Turkey and other places.
I mean, this is insane. The Egyptians need as much
help as they can get. I don't think they're a
competent army.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
What do you think happens with Iram?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Look, if I were president, I would actually impose costs
of them right now, for the UTIs Houtas are still
shooting weapons. By the way, at our ships.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
You're not going to bomb the Houfis into submission.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
They'll find another ragged vedouin area. They'll keep moving. What
you need to do is hold their primary sponsor accountable,
a person who provides them with a lot of their
equipment and a lot of their money, and that's Iran.
We should strike the Irani import that they ship from
Iranian production facilities that the Israelis didn't strike because they
struck a lot of them, and one or two they're
spy ships. And we can do this. I won't say
(32:56):
cost free. Every combat sortie has risk, but it's pretty
clear to me now that Elon Musk was not right
about the F thirty five. It can destroy the fourth
largest air defense system in the world without laws. So
we can do this mission with Bee Jesus and do that.
I'm not talking about the full nuclear mission. I give
you a hard destructive mission that says, hey boys, the
(33:17):
US is in. After seventeen years of saying we might
bomb you, we actually bombed you. When Steve Woodcoff shows up,
we want to see a lot of grace and if
we don't see it. We'll talk to our IDF friends
and we'll come visit you again, and this time we'll
bring B two's and we'll take care of your nuclear enterprise.
To me, that's the long term solution here. Start with
a strike that says we're freaking serious. See where it
(33:39):
goes diplomatically. If it doesn't work, then solve it militarily.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
If you were advising Trump, would you say that at
some point, if Putin continues to target civilians, that we
have to pretty dramatically raise the cost for him. Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
What I would do is sell them attack, give them
attack and some PDA our long ring strike weapons them.
The first ones we gave them President Biden didn't give
them the good targeting data and didn't give them permissions.
So they now have good targeting data, and I have
permissions to strike inside Russia. Give them more. Attack thems
and we have lots of them. Give them some. Tell
(34:15):
them you can't strike civilian targets, strike legitimate military and
military service and critical infstructure targets. Only our attackers are accurate,
and they'll have a successful attack. And you tell Trump
putting you in it. Hey, the next attack they get attack,
attack happens, you give attack them and you say we
gave attackers. By the way, enjoy.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Right, got it? That's great. You're always remarkable, and Mark,
I want to thank you for joining me. I want
to let our listeners know they can find more about
the work you're doing by visiting your website for the
Foundation for Defensive Democracies at FDD dot org. And I
really appreciate you taking time to be with us.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Hey, thank you for having me, Sarah. It was a
real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you to my guests. Admiral Mark Montgomery. You can
get a link to Foundation for Defensive Democracies on our
show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by
Gingwid three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan.
Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
(35:20):
at Ginwich three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I
hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us
with five stars and give us a review so others
can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of
Newtsworld can sign up for my three freeweekly columns at
gingwidstree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This
is Newtsworld.
On this episode of News World. My guest today just
returned from a trip to Lithuania and Israel. But the
issue most concerning him right now is the Chinese Communist
Party's ability to conduct a cyber enabled economic warfare campaign
against Taiwan. This campaign might be able to deliver Taiwan
to the Chinese Communist Party with minimal damage. So what
(00:26):
should I say to do to stop it. I'm really
pleased to welcome my guest, Admiral Mark Montgomery, Senior Fellow
at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mark, welcome, and
thank you for joining me on News World.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thank you for having me today here, sir.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's a very important topic. Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of
the US Indo Pacific Command, during a Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing on April tenth, said that quote, China is
in increasing addressive actions near Taiwan. Are not just exercises,
they are rehearsals. Do you think China is ramping up
for something or are these just military exercises?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Sam is right, Admal Paparo, the Peycock commander, the Chinese
are rehearsing. Now. I think what's important I stand here
is that that is the most dangerous scenario when they
do this kind of cross straight invasion, that's what they're
rehearsing for. Maybe the next most dangerous is a full
scale blockade. But what's really got me worried is is
something less than that, what we call the most likely
(01:33):
scenario in the military and the one that you really
need to make sure you're planning for, and that's a
cyber enabled economic warfare campaign against Taiwan. Well, my personal
belief is General Sector G will not do that unless
he knows that should the conflict escalate, he could win
across straight invasion. So admal Paparo as pey Coom, he's
(01:54):
preparing for that cross sate invasion, making sure Chairman G
never wakes up in the morning and says, you know,
I could go if I had to, I could, And
that way we prevent the cyber naval economic warfare campaign
that I think is ongoing and would just have to
be slightly increased on the Riostat for China to be
able to do it.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
How big a challenge would it be for the Chinese
communists to actually try to invade and occupy Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This is really hard. There's one military in the world
that I know could do it, and it's us, But
I wouldn't want to do it against our own defenses.
You know, this is a very dangerous thing and also
inevitably you damage the heck out of Taiwan. I mean,
they want Taiwan for very historical cultural, societal reasons, and
they would take it broken, but they would prefer to
(02:40):
take it whole. And to take it whole, I think
is to get Taiwan to bend the knee so because
it's so hard, because it would be so calamitous, I
think that drives China towards seeking a solution where they
pressure break the societal resilience of Taiwan, bring them to heal,
and then and integrate them fully into their economy.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Currently, the Chinese, they're actually producing slightly more fighters than
we are, about one point two to one, and our
shipbuilding capacity has just collapsed. Something i'd like you to
sort of comment on our concerned to you that despite
the efforts of the new Trump administration that in the
short run, the Chinese are clearly out preparing us.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Well, You're exactly right. In fact, the shipbuilding number is
much worse than the fighter number. The number of warships
are producing three to four to five to one we're
producing each year. The number of merchant ships, by the way,
is two hundred to one. If you really want to
get uncomfortable, you're absolutely right. This is not unsolvable. Korea
has two great, big shipyards, both of which can produce
(03:46):
a support ship, you know, an oil or a logistics
ship for about twenty eight cents on the dollar that
a US ship yard would produce it at. So that
tells you two things. One we can get better. Two
we're going to need help. It's got a great idea
with this executive order, and Senators Kelly and Wicker and
others have been pushing us for years. They've got a
(04:06):
team set up at the NFC just to work this,
led by a guy named doctor Jerry Hendrix. This whole setup,
we can get this right. The problem is, it took
us forty years to get in this hole. We're not
going to get out in four And you know, the
hardest thing in government is to commit to a strategic
plan to fix something that your success or successor will enjoy.
(04:28):
That just is not how our presidents have operated for
the last twenty years. And so I'm concerned that they
won't make the number one thing, number thing, which is
restore our actual ship to capability, reach out to the
Koreans for help and get this.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Fixed in the short run. Could we, in fact still
make it prohibitively expensive to come across the street.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We can't. That's the beauty right now. They couldn't, you know.
An admiral named Phil Davidson back in twenty twenty one said, hey,
China could execute this by twenty twenty seven. That's based
on I think we did. When I was at Indopay
Commons the J three, I would draw a line that said,
here's us capability was slightly with our allies slightly upslope
a little bit of slope game one or two percent
(05:10):
every year, and here's the Chinese capability to do the invasion.
It was exponential in crossing us in twenty twenty seven.
What Adam Davidson forgot to say was that this could
happen in twenty twenty seven unless we take action or
China fails to take action, and a number of things
that happens is twenty twenty one. Number one, Russia invade
Ukraine and we had a Holy Count moment on munitions,
(05:32):
which is one of our big shortfalls, not just in
ground stuff in Ukraine, anti ship stuff and anti air
stuff out in the Pacific. We've really been working on that.
Japan's gotten crazy, you know, they're doubling their defense budget
over about a five year period or four year period.
Taiwan's increased their defense spending and they're going to hit
three percent of GDP this year. Australia's increased their defense spending.
(05:54):
Philippines has gotten more integrated with US with the election
of Marcos Junior, and then most important, China screwed up
COVID response and as a result they've slowed, so we've
increased our upslope, they've decreased their exponential gain. If you
ask me, that intersection is now twenty thirty twenty thirty one,
and we keep pushing it. So, Sarah, there's a lot
(06:15):
we can do. And I'll say one last thing. I
wouldn't believe my son's a young officer at ENSIGN and
he selected a ship out of Japan. I would have
been counseling hard against that. If I thought that this
was a loser.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Somebody else would point out to me. By the way,
that the way the two Straits work north and south
of Taiwan, that it's actually really dangerous for the Chinese
communists to get west of Taiwan because they literally could
get cut off and not be capable of getting back.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Once they get a lodgment. Let's say they get a
lodgment down south, which I think they'll get a lodgment,
They've got to keep logistically, you know, refreshing it. And
if there's something we're really good at, it's killing things
on the move. I mean, we have the best targeting
complex that we have long range missiles. If you have
a high value target like lots of logistics coming across,
(07:03):
you're going to be a lot of trouble. So that's
number one. Number two, they've got to get east of
Taiwan and keep our airpower away. That is hard. Our
air force is obviously the pre eminent air force in
the world. F thirty five has demonstrated over I Ran
twice in the last year and by us on many
occasions to be the pre eminent fighter in the world.
(07:24):
The B two's the preeminent bomber in the world. Those
PLA forces east of Taiwan, they're all going to go away,
and the question is how fast can we move them
back to get airpower. So this is a hard fight
for the Chinese, a military that now has zero people
that have served in combat.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
That's the other thing, which is as the Russians learning
on their three day journey to Kiev, it turns out
if you've not done it, and you haven't practiced it,
it's really really hard.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
You know, you're right, And in fact I was one
of the people they called. I'd been the US European
Command Deputy director for plans, so I spent a lot
of time in the Ukrainians. I was called in before
the invasion, and you know, I gave the wrong estimate
like everyone else. I said, the Russian army is going
to cut through them like a hot knife and butter.
What all of us failed to understand was they're no
longer a large scale maneuver army. They can't do logistics.
(08:14):
This is what we're great at. I mean, civilian lives
were great, Amazon, you know, ups FedEx. We're just really
good at logistics. Our problem, by the way, the military
is to last mile, Like how do I get round
to an infantryman on the front line that last couple
hundred yards to get it to them. The Russian problem
was the first mile is they left their bases, their fuel,
(08:36):
their communications, their food, their command and control. It also
cease to function and they ground to a halt halfway
to Kiev. That's an important lesson for us. We take
our logistics for granted, we can't do that. We have
to continue to invest in it and remind ourselves only
one country in the world can do large scale maneuver warfare,
and that's the United States.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Well, and frankly, as you move towards artificial intelligence and robotics,
we're going to have all sorts of solutions that are
going to revolutionize our capacity to do this stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, add small modular reactors. When I was pay COMJ three,
ye this four thousand troops, five thousand troops spread over
a third of the world. You're trying to get them logistics.
It was a nightmare. And the biggest nightmare was fuel
getting fueled, not just the planes or ships, but to
equipment to ground. Here. I'm of the belief I've been
taking a lot of briefs from these guys who are
(09:29):
running one to five megawat small modular reactors. They're not
that far away, you know, and they're basically in a
Sierra Land container. I'm a nuclear engineer in the Navy.
I understand what inherently safe means. These are inherently safe
the way we cool the reactors and such. So I
feel very comfortable that that's going to be a long
term solution for the US military.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
One of the things you've been focusing on is is
it possible with a cyber campaign to subdue Taiwan without
physical violence walks through that. I mean, I think that's
revolutionary and probably right.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
The Taiwan leadership leaves. I have briefed this to both
former presidents I am current President Lie and his whole team.
They understand exactly what you just said, what I think
China's going to do. They could come to conclusion they
could not win across straight invasion, but also come to
the conclusion that we're not willing to fight it. If
either of those two happens, they will turn the riastat
on financial, energy, and communications critical infrastructure. So what I
(10:28):
mean by that is they will conduct nine cyber attacks
on them, so things like on the energy infrastructure, put
a missile closure area around the southern LNG port liquid
natural gas. Port liquid natural gas is fifty percent of
the Taiwan grid, and they have six days of excess
supply really stowage, and they get one LNG a day.
So if you stop the one lerg a day from coming,
(10:50):
and you can do it by a missile closure area,
you might call their largest distributor, Qatar. If you're trying
to and saying you give five percent to Taiwan that
you give to us, we think we should stop giving
a Taiwan. They just might you convince some of the
countries that have flagged these energy shipping don't go to
tow it. There's all kinds of things you can do
in there. In communications. You could drop an anchor when
(11:11):
that's happened more times than we can count now on
submarine cables, cables that produce ninety five percent of the
Internet flow in the world on these submerged cables. And
there's things you can do to bank stop payments from
mainland Chinese facilities to Taiwan and then lay on top
of it a cyber attack that hits the electrical grid.
One thing I'll say about in addition having that stowage
(11:32):
problem with LNG. The Taiwan grid operates at seventy eight
or seventy five percent capacity at all times. That's the highest.
OECD ours is like forty seven percent, and maybe California
is sixty percent because they're crazy, But those are inherently
fragile electrical power grids when you're operating above sixty percent,
(11:54):
and they're at seventy four percent, the most of an
OECD country, so they're very vulnerable to a cyber attack
on that grid. And there's cyber attacks you can do
on the financial services systems, on the communications networks. Will
Taiwan get access to starlink. There's gonna be a lot
of pressure on Elon Musk from the Chinese to not
allow that to happen. So there's all these factors in
there that give China opportunity. What we've got to do
(12:17):
is figure out, and we're running tabletops on this that say, look,
how do you prevent this, how do you mitigate it
when it starts to happen, and how do you respond
so you can recover really rapidly. If you can fix
all those things and demonstrate that to China ahead of time,
you then restore deterreents in this very hard area.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It seems to me that that's both a defensive cyber strategy
but the capacity for a very aggressive offensive cyber strategy,
which we really haven't demonstrated much of.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So you're absolutely right. I mean, one of the things
that is very interesting for US is that we have
not responded. We've allowed the level of acceptable activity by
the adversary. The adversary can be China, Russia, North Korea, Iran,
or criminal actors allowed the bar about which we'll respond
to be elevated over four or five administrations, so a
very high level. You know what the result of that
(13:07):
is new is that's why volt Typhoon happened. Vault Typhoon
was a Chinese advanced persistent threat. So a Chinese attack
team inserted malicious software into our rail, financial services, aviation ports,
all our critical infrastructures in Kuam, Hawaii, maybe the West coast.
(13:28):
They have a map in the US. I'm pretty sure
they hit everything and we get them a hat tip.
Let good move, boys. If they had done this with
a thousand backpacks with semtechs in it and put the
same kind of effective malware, you know, something that disrupts
this critical infrastructure in wartime with a note that said
courtesy to pla maybe a middle finger, we might be
(13:48):
a war but somehow, like I said in cyber space,
for like a good job, boys had tip. So we
have raised the bar for what we'll respond to to
an unacceptably high level. So we have not demonstrated are
cyber bona fides. People know we have good offensive capabilities.
They suspect we do things, but we haven't actually done
things to hold China accountable with it.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
How much of that is the culture of the National
Security Agency in this whole sense of we don't want
people to know what we can really do, so we
never do what we can really do, or worse, Oh.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I've got this great tool and this great access I
don't want to burn it. You know. My answer to
that is, we pay you a lot of money billions,
have more tools, more accesses. By the way, that Chinese
don't appear to be constrained by that tools and accesses problem.
They're going crazy on our systems. And look, I know
we like to have a higher level of plausible deniability.
I get it. We have a higher attention to colateral
(14:57):
unexpected clateral damage. I get it. It's harder for democracies
to fight in this gray zone, but it's not impossible,
and we need to do a much better job at
it well.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And then frankly, we might like them to know that
we're doing it exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I call that determs by demonstration. I think every once
in a while you get to pull one of the
monkey's out and beat them. You really have to demonstrate
that you have the capability to do something and a
willingness to use it. And this is what Mike Waltz said.
He's had a rough few months, but one of the
really smart things he said coming in is we need
to be more offensive in our reply. And I think
(15:32):
I would put offensive in both terms. I offend you
and I'm more offensive, and I think we really need
to do that, particularly to the Chinese.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Let me go back to Taiwan for a second. The
degree to which the entire planet relies on Taiwan for
computer chips is an astonishing vulnerability.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
By the way, that's logic chips. If you go to
memory chips, they're all from Korea. So we're dependent on
a lot of our allies of partners. If I had
told you were dependent on the UK, for these, you'd
probably let it go. Now. Look, the UK is not
eighty kilometers from Russia. I get it. There's a lot
of reasons I like Taiwan. One that the one Chinese country.
I know that it's a democracy with a freedom of
(16:13):
the press, free elections, and a market based system, right.
And I think they're a great example in mainland China
that you could have done this. You chose not to.
But they're our partner. They really for all intentsive purposes
there an ally, I know we don't call them that.
For the Taiwan Relations Act established the conditions. I mean,
we've agreed to sell you the weapons you need to
defend yourself, and we've agreed to make a war plan
(16:35):
to come defend you. I know there's no Article five there,
although I'm not sure what an Article five is worth
it this exact second. But there's a level of partnership
in an alliance, so I try not to overreact to that.
I do think there's some things that should be home
shored or put in Canada or Mexico, you know, very
closely shored kind of USMCA shored, so that we can
(16:57):
have better guaranteed access to it. Time but it's not
all of Taiwan. It's a percentage of what Taiwan's doing.
And it would be too expensive that the Chips Act
might move three or four or five percent of our
alliance from Taiwan the United States maybe five percent. And
that was what fifty two billion plus several hundred billion
worth of company investment.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So they really are a sort of a world asset.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, smart country, right.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Do you think that was a conscious strategy.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Not initially. The conscious strategy was after the President on
occasion says something that's not quite right. He says, Taiwan
stole TSMC. They did not steal TSMC. Texas Instruments allowed
TSMC to go to Taiwan, went Morris. The team left
when they weren't being properly promoted and advocated for, in
their opinion, went to Taiwan. There's a book called Shipboard
(17:48):
is pretty good on it. Taiwan definitely created the conditions
for success for TSMC. Had a more legacy chip company
called UMC, and those companies have thrived. I would say
if you took a strict wto like microscope to it,
you wouldn't be happy with everything they did there. But
they created the conditions for success. I think somewhere around
(18:09):
two thousand and eight they started to realize, hey, this
is something that can become part of our security envelope,
and by twenty fifteen it was a security envelope. So
I think not the initial attention. Initial attention was make money.
The final intention was security coverage.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
You did an article for National Interests March twenty first,
entitled to confront China, President Trump should target its state
owned enterprises. And I just noticed today that there's an
indication that in all of their tariff negotiations they're going
to have weakening the Chinese relationship as a function of
getting to an agreement. That apparently their strategy in part
(18:51):
is to methodically begin isolating China and breaking its trade relations.
Is this a rational approach?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
That's pretty big. Look, I'm still from the school of
if by sneakers aren't made by weaker prisoners, I'll buy
them from China because they're a lot cheaper. But there's
a list of emerging technologies that we should not do
foreign direct investment in, do co production with, do joint
ventures with, or purchase for our critical infrastructure, our government,
(19:18):
or our military. And that list is getting longer. In fact,
my biggest problem up in Congress because I work every
year with legislation about drones or lied are or silicon carbide,
all kinds of different things that were TikTok and we're
trying to get ourselves off of. And most Congressmen, as
you know, they're good men and women. They want to
do the right thing. But more than one said to me,
(19:38):
how many more things are there? Mark, And I said,
it's unlimited. It's how many places of China get invest
is part of their twenty twenty five and twenty thirty
five plants. And I'll tell you one thing about China.
They lay it out maybe in Mandarin, and I have
to have somebody translated for me that they lay out
their plans and we're going to have to confront them
and all these emerging technologies. So the degree that the
White House targets the right emergent technology for that, that's
(20:01):
the right call. If they try to do everything everywhere,
all at once, I think that's going to be overly
prescriptive and really jam a lot of our partners and
allies throughout Asia. If we try to block all that trade.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
How likely is it that our partners will just get
irritated enough with us so they'll decide China is a
better partner.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Right, that's a big step. Right, it's not the economic
step that hurts, right, because China's economic negotiations or we're
a big country, you're a small country. Now listen to
what's going to happen. Oh, we've only had one president
do that, and it's kind of good, you know. As
you can see, it's been stop and go. It's hard
for us to be that country. But in security, I
don't know that Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore or
(20:44):
Australia are willing to make China their security partner choice.
I think that's too big a pitch, did it. Here's
who would though, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam. They've already got Cambodi,
Allaos and you know you can keep them. But those
last three. Take a look at what chevanje just visited. Right,
he just did bilateral meetings with each of them. And
(21:06):
I guarantee you he's saying, look how I act. I'm predictable.
You may not like everything I do, but I'm predictable.
Look how he acts. And that's a problem.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
For US, it creates a sense of insecurity because it's
not predictable.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Particularly in Asia.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Let me ask you about your most recent trips. On
the one side, you are on the edge of Russia,
and on the other side, you're one of the most
difficult security problems in the world. Talk about both of those.
What are your thoughts. You've just been there, sure, So.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
First I went to Lithuania. It's tough. It's one of
these weird things. You go to Lithuania. Very few America
and no government people are showing up for like conferences.
Every administration has had the beginning illustration. It's especially being
enforced during this administration. Even generals and admirals, you know,
career people can't show up. So I'm there and the
Europeans were coming after me pretty hard on Panels. I said, hey,
(22:16):
wait a minute, let's be clear here. The problem you
have in Europe is you Eastern Europeans are committed to
your defense. You're doing exactly what Donald Trump said. There's
three bolts are all hitting four percent this year or
in the next twelve months, and five percent in the
next eighteen months. Poland's already at four point six percent
headed to five percent those four countries, you're fantastic, great commitment,
(22:37):
no GDP to have this based on then Germany and
they're there, the Germans, the Brits, and the French are there.
I'm like, you guys have all the GDP and you're
a solid one point five to two point one percent.
President Trump's right. I don't know if I call free loading,
but you have been overly reliant on us, and it's
time for you to spend three to four percent of
(22:58):
your defense on GDP. It's time, I'm for you to
stop making energy deals with the Russians. It's time for
you to decide do you consider Vladimir Putin a threat
if you do take the normal actions you would take
if there was a bully in your backyard, and don't
just have us point to the Eastern Europeans and say
they're doing it. Because most of those bolts, I think
their total GDP probably been that up much past ten billion, right,
(23:21):
I mean it's a little more than that, but not
much more a.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Large American county.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, exactly, And so we have that problem, and then
you have to be honest with them. Look, I don't
think it was just President Trump saying it in twenty seventeen,
Vladimir Putin's invasion of Crimea in twenty fourteen and his
invasion of ukraineing more broadly in twenty twenty two. It's
what's driving them up, and whatever it is, I don't care.
The Western Europeans have to match the Eastern Europeans, and
(23:47):
they need to do it quick, because there is a
anti European You can see it in those signal gait,
those signal texts. There's a strong anti European vibe among
some of the President's closest nationals purity advisors, not Mike Waltz,
but some of the other ones. That should really make
europe scared. When people say that in a text that
they think no one will read, that's probably what they believe.
(24:10):
And there's a strong anti European sentiment from both Vice
President Advance and Secretary Defense accents well.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
And in a sense, all they're doing is acting al
what Trump has said publicly. I mean, the Europeans have
to get their act together.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I agree, and I think President Trump's more of an
opportunist than an isolationist.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Nothing he's done indicates isolationism. He has golf courses and
hotels across the planet. He's married to a European. His
mother came from Scotland. I think one of his sons
was in the Balkans looking at opening up a hotel.
But I think he's rapidly committed to America.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
So I'm hoping that we're going to reduce our presence
in Europe, but I think we can do it in
a smart way. Before the Ukraine invasion, there was about
fifty five fifty thousand plus US troops spread throughout Europe
permanently there in Germany and Italy and uk I hope
we don't touch those because those are all enablers. They
would allow Americans to fight. They could be anywhere. They
(25:07):
help us fight in the Middle East, they help us
fight in Africa, they help us fight in Europe. Keep
them there. We then had about fifteen to twenty thousand
rotating through Poland because we liked what Poland's doing in
the Bolts, and then we added about fifteen to twenty
thousand to help the Ukrainian effort. I think their drawdown
should be of that third group, Hey draw that down.
If we're telling Europe, you take over this training mission,
(25:29):
you take over this logistics mission in a very measured way.
Where Europe comes in, we go out, We draw that force,
and I think leave yourself with the permanent forces that
enable we're fighting around the world from European logistics heads
and the forces that are in Eastern Europe that are
(25:49):
a real deterrent. I mean they're not at the Berlin Brigade.
They're more than that their division, but they're a real
deterrent to putin doing something that would be a bad
deal for if a Baltic state. According to Donald Trump's
current math, if a Baltic state or Poland is invaded,
he will defend them. He said, if you spend the
right amount of money on defention, you're the kind of
I like. Well, those are the kind of allies we like,
(26:11):
and they're the most likely to be invaded. We better
keep the deterred force here that says, hey, I'm serious,
don't do this, Vladimir.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
From your perspective, can the Ukrainians continue to fight?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I didn't mention this before, but I go to Ukraine
every quarter or so every two quarters, then do some
training there with their senior officers for a couple of weeks.
So I have a pretty good perception of the look.
But I didn't command an army division or corps anything
like that. I'm a Navy officer, but I have a
good understanding of resilience, resilience and senior officers resilience, senior enlisted.
(26:44):
The Ukrainians are tough, they are not buckling. Solinski is
an outward He reflects his country in a way many
leaders don't. I mean, you know, he really does reflect with.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
So, I mean, how long can putin withstand the scale
of sacrifices They have lost a while a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
That's the interesting thing. Who's resilience breaks first? Is it
the West, which now is really Europe? Is it the
Ukrainians and the Russians? I think the Russians are in
play on this. I mean, he's got a real problem there.
So here's what I'd say first to other questions. I
do want to say, the Europeans can provide the money.
The Ukraine needs to buy some European equipment and mostly
(27:21):
American equipment. It kind of bummed me up the other
night was Lesky said I need to buy patriots and
President Trump was dismissive. I'm like, sir, that's exactly what
you wanted to do. Take someone else's money, go to
Raytheon and buy fifteen million dollars worth of Raytheon stuff
and then go shoot it and a bad guy. I
think we can get to yes on that. As I said,
he's an opportunist. Let him come around on it.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
My hunch is that they may be wrong, but I
think that he and Witkoff honestly believe they're on the
edge of a deal.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
They're not. I think they're wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Look, I'm with you. I'm very skeptical then reflecting what
I think. The reason I think they are so who
virtually soft on Putin is to say, look, you can
relax and agree to it. Sease far.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I think you're right, and I think you're right to
think that they might be misjudging Putin. And so to
get your other question, Putin's got this weird dynamic going
thirty five percent, maybe forty percent of his GDP is
fossil fuel sales. Fossil fuel price is cratered. Turned the tariffs,
Thank you, President Trump. MBS Manzaman and Opek have increased output,
(28:22):
you know, making it harder for Russian to sell. And
if we were to move in with a third element
and really really secondary section, the shadow fleet. That means
going after Chinese and Indian companies that are buying. His
ability to get that thirty five to forty percent will
be put in jeopardy. Here's the other crushing fact for him.
His federal budget's basically two things. Forty percent on defense,
(28:45):
sixty percent on Babushka, you know, buying off his base.
That's even a high percentage by American standard, right, And
so he's gonna have trouble if you reduce the amount
going in. He either has to decrease defense spending or
decrease support to his base. I don't think he's I'm
really excited about doing either of those. No politician would be,
but particularly Putent. So that's going to be a tough
(29:06):
thing for him. I guarantee you there'll be no critical
infrastructure work done in Russia for the next five years
because of the commitments they've done, and they have bad
critical structure of beginning. So yes, is he at risk?
I think so. But the other problem is he's an authoritarian.
He doesn't break until he fully disintegrates. Democracies break when
the people begin to lose faith in the leadership. And
(29:27):
that comes much earlier than the disintegration.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, I think that's right. Tell me just briefly about
your visit to Israel.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
So i'd say, on Israel first, there's a war going
on in Gaza. It's not a small war, it's a
big war. And what's going on is Hammas still exists.
Israel has basically been told by everyone else, go get
rid of that problem. Now no one said it out
loud because they want to be able to criticize Israel privately,
except for the United States. But the Saudis, the uae Qatar,
(29:54):
whoever's going to pay to rebuild and finance whatever becomes
of Gaza, they need him cleared out. The Egyptians who
are going to provide the security, and I use that
term loosely with the Egyptians are not going to be
able to defeat Hamas, So they need Hamas really disarmed
and defeated to the greatest degree possible when they enter
to provide security. Who's going to have to do that, Israel.
(30:17):
This isn't the sacrifice of those hostages. The hostages who
are going to be killed because they're strapped to high
value targets. And whether israelis target them, or they're just
in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they're executed.
I feel very uncomfortable for the remaining hostages. But this
is a hard deal. We're eighteen months into this almost
They've got to take care of business and they've got
to destroy these and so what I saw was armor,
(30:39):
heavy small arms fire and then significant air power being applied.
And the big lesson for Israel here is they better
have munitions orders with the United States. Donald Trump is
an open store to them, which they should take full
advantage of. And I've been telling them, slow down on
building your own defense industrial base right now by munition,
(31:00):
buy munitions, Buy munitions now, because they need to buy
two thousand, five hundred pounders tank rounds, hundred twenty million
artillery rounds to be ready for their next flight, and
they need to buy arrow. Here's the last thing I'll
tell you. The Israelis have always told me for twenty years.
They always said, we never want US troops on our
soil defending US. You know what they have today, US
troops manning THAD batteries, shooting down Huti weapons and preparing
(31:23):
to shoot down Iranian weapons. And they need them because
they're low on arrow is my guests. I mean, otherwise
they have never let this happen. So they need to
build arrow. These guys need to buy munitions like drunken
sailors for four solid years, and we need to be
the munitions factory that does it for them.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
When you have a people's war in an urban area,
how do you actually destroy Hamas?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I think it's destroy and disarmed as much as possible.
At some point you got to get into the Egyptians
and then destroy the whole tunnel network. And I got
to tell you the Egyptians when their own security is
in there, I hope they have the good graces all
Hamas to build a tunnel network to Egypt, which despite
US giving them one point three billion a year for
three decades, they allowed Hamas to build a underground network
(32:11):
that allowed all those terrorists to go out and get
trained in Iran and elsewhere in Turkey and other places.
I mean, this is insane. The Egyptians need as much
help as they can get. I don't think they're a
competent army.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
What do you think happens with Iram?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Look, if I were president, I would actually impose costs
of them right now, for the UTIs Houtas are still
shooting weapons. By the way, at our ships.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
You're not going to bomb the Houfis into submission.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
They'll find another ragged vedouin area. They'll keep moving. What
you need to do is hold their primary sponsor accountable,
a person who provides them with a lot of their
equipment and a lot of their money, and that's Iran.
We should strike the Irani import that they ship from
Iranian production facilities that the Israelis didn't strike because they
struck a lot of them, and one or two they're
spy ships. And we can do this. I won't say
(32:56):
cost free. Every combat sortie has risk, but it's pretty
clear to me now that Elon Musk was not right
about the F thirty five. It can destroy the fourth
largest air defense system in the world without laws. So
we can do this mission with Bee Jesus and do that.
I'm not talking about the full nuclear mission. I give
you a hard destructive mission that says, hey boys, the
(33:17):
US is in. After seventeen years of saying we might
bomb you, we actually bombed you. When Steve Woodcoff shows up,
we want to see a lot of grace and if
we don't see it. We'll talk to our IDF friends
and we'll come visit you again, and this time we'll
bring B two's and we'll take care of your nuclear enterprise.
To me, that's the long term solution here. Start with
a strike that says we're freaking serious. See where it
(33:39):
goes diplomatically. If it doesn't work, then solve it militarily.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
If you were advising Trump, would you say that at
some point, if Putin continues to target civilians, that we
have to pretty dramatically raise the cost for him. Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
What I would do is sell them attack, give them
attack and some PDA our long ring strike weapons them.
The first ones we gave them President Biden didn't give
them the good targeting data and didn't give them permissions.
So they now have good targeting data, and I have
permissions to strike inside Russia. Give them more. Attack thems
and we have lots of them. Give them some. Tell
(34:15):
them you can't strike civilian targets, strike legitimate military and
military service and critical infstructure targets. Only our attackers are accurate,
and they'll have a successful attack. And you tell Trump
putting you in it. Hey, the next attack they get attack,
attack happens, you give attack them and you say we
gave attackers. By the way, enjoy.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Right, got it? That's great. You're always remarkable, and Mark,
I want to thank you for joining me. I want
to let our listeners know they can find more about
the work you're doing by visiting your website for the
Foundation for Defensive Democracies at FDD dot org. And I
really appreciate you taking time to be with us.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Hey, thank you for having me, Sarah. It was a
real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you to my guests. Admiral Mark Montgomery. You can
get a link to Foundation for Defensive Democracies on our
show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by
Gingwid three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan.
Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
(35:20):
at Ginwich three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I
hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us
with five stars and give us a review so others
can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of
Newtsworld can sign up for my three freeweekly columns at
gingwidstree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This
is Newtsworld.
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