Cybersecurity and the global threats of tomorrow

Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute and assistant professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, knows better than anyone the growing threats to national security during these rapidly changing times. In this fast-paced episode of Access to Excellence, Jaffer and George Mason President Gregory Washington discuss the U.S.'s position on the global stage, the power of the American Dream, and what we as citizens can do to start solving some of the country's stickiest problems. 

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Trailblazers and research;innovators in technology;
and those who simply have a good story:
all make up the fabric thatis George Mason University.
We're taking on the grand challengesthat face our students, graduates,
and higher education is ourmission and our passion.
Hosted by Mason PresidentGregory Washington,
this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

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We certainly live in challengingtimes as the US navigates
complex national security andcybersecurity issues abroad as well as
rising tensions on our own soil.
We've got wars in theMiddle East and Ukraine.
Rising tensions between the USand Israel over Israel's handling

(00:49):
of the war with Hamas.
Worries about an expansionistChina and Taiwan and
in the South China Sea.
Threats from Iran and North Korea.
And a recent Microsoftanalysis said that Russia,
China, and Iran will likely ramp up new,

(01:10):
sophisticated interference effortsahead of our 2024 elections.
And believe me, that isscratching the surface.
So let's dive deeper with GeorgeMason University's Jamil Jaffer,
one of the most foremost experts onnational security, foreign relations,
cybersecurity,
and counterintelligence in the countryto bring this all into context. An

(01:36):
assistant professor of law at GeorgeMason's Antonin Scalia School of Law,
Jaffer is director of the NationalSecurity Law and Policy Program
and the Cyber Intelligence andNational Security Programs.
He is also the founder and executivedirector of the National Security
Institute. Jamil, welcome to the show.

(01:59):
I'm thrilled to be here,President Washington.
I've been looking forward tothis one for quite some time.
So I wanna familiarize theaudience with you and what you do.
So for those of us who don't know whatthe National Security Institute does
and why it exists, can yougive us a little overview?
Of course. It's a, uh,
academic center at the ScaliaLaw School here at George Mason.

(02:21):
We aim to teach youngpeople, graduates of,
of undergraduate institutions that arereceiving a JM, a Juris Master's degree,
a JD, a Juris Doctorate degree,or an advanced degree in law,
an LLM in cyber intelligenceand national security.
We aim to give them a well-roundeddeep education in these issues, uh,
that spans the scope of foreignrelations, cybersecurity intelligence,

(02:42):
national security,
and a real deep understanding of thelaw and a deep analysis of the law.
And in addition to beingan academic center,
we're also something of a think tank. Weadvocate, we discuss, we debate ideas.
We have a broad group of expertsfrom industry, from government,
a lot of former government officialsfrom across the political spectrum.
But people that I think believe thatAmerica ought to lead in the world,

(03:02):
lean forward, be thestrongest ally to its friends,
be the fiercest foe to its enemies,um, and be president active, right?
The classic way that we've alwaysthought about America for the bulk of our
history of you, by the way, you know,
President Washington's onthe run in large part today.
Yeah, yeah. I hear you man.I love what you're talking.
So give us an idea ofthe size of your org.
So, you know, when we talk about ouradvisory board, we've got about 60,

(03:23):
70 advisory board members. These aresenior former government officials.
These are folks that serve in Senateconfirmed positions and the like.
And then we've got about overa hundred fellows that are,
that are the folks who volunteer withus, who write, who advocate, who talk,
who debate issues and ideas with ourstudents. Got about a dozen or so,
maybe a little more than a dozenfaculty members that teach students,
adjuncts at the law school. Andall these folks are around campus.

(03:44):
They're in all into,they're out here in Fairfax.
They're talking about the issuetoday. They're on television.
They're in before committees of Congress.
And a lot of them are going intogovernment, into the administrations.
We sent six of our advisory boardmembers to the Trump administration--all
women, interestingly enough,
in Senate confirmed positions--eightto the Biden administration already.
And more to come, I thinkas the years go forward.
. Outstanding.Outstanding. So you, you,

(04:08):
you've given a whole bunch of metricshere. How do you measure success?
Look, I think at the end of the day,
when you're thinking about success in anacademic institution, as you well know,
I mean, this is your world. It'sabout the students you educate.
It's about the people youput out into the world.
The values and education you givethem, the skillset they come with,
and the work ethic that they bring tobear on what they do in their jobs. Now,
beyond that, we also look at the impactwe have in the policy space as well,

(04:30):
right? Are we moving theball, um, up on Capitol Hill.
Are we convincing people that thisvision of America is the right one?
Because as we talked about earlier, youknow, back when I was growing up, right?
Uh, my father went out to UCIrvine. I remember when UC Irvine,
where where you used to bewas a one building campus.
We went out there and my dad was inthe chemistry department at UCLA.
They're trying to get him to cometo UCI. We come out there and it's,

(04:51):
it's all farmland,right? But back that era,
there was no debate about America'srole in the world. Everyone understood.
America was the beacon ofhope for the world, right? Uh,
that is not how we view ourselvestoday. And, and I worry about that.
I worry about a world devoidof American leadership.
Is that not how we view ourselves?Or is that not how others view us?
I think it's both, PresidentWashington. I think it's how,

(05:13):
it's how people view us, 'causewe don't view ourselves that way.
We talk about leading from behind.
We talk about other people leadingin the front. The truth is,
we are a world superpower. We'veforgotten that here at home.
And we don't believe that wecan behave that way. Now, look,
when we were a superpower,we acted like a superpower.
There were things we didwrong. I don't suggest it's,
it was all unvarnishedgood. At the same time,

(05:33):
if you wonder what a world devoidof American leadership looks like,
all you need to do is look around theglobe right now. You ran down a list:
a war in Ukraine, a warin the heart of Europe,
a war in the heart of the MiddleEast, a budding war in Asia, right?
That's right.
Terrorists circle in the globe. Right?
This is what a world devoid ofAmerican leadership looks like. Chaos.
No, I, I agree with you a hundredpercent. So you've spoken at,

(05:54):
at length here, but elsewhere,
about there being this globalpushback against the US being so
forward facing and beingin the front in the world.
How does this perceived pushbackagainst the US being a front
facing power, being a lead power,
being the global superpowerharm us in the cyber

(06:18):
domain?
Well, I think in particular, the cyberdomain where we don't lean forward,
what we see is our adversaries takingadvantage, right? So we've seen billions,
maybe even trillions of dollars netwalk out the back door of intellectual
property built in America.
Ideas designed in universities like herein R1 institutions like George Mason
that have gone out into practice beingstolen by China and repurposed for

(06:38):
economic purposes in that country.Trillions of dollars in total,
billions of dollars every single yearover the last decade and even longer.
My former boss, General Keith Alexander,the former director of the NSA,
said it was the greatest transferof wealth in modern human history.
And I think he was exactly right.But that's just one element of it.
You see the Russians, you see the Chinese,
you see the Iraniansgetting into our systems.
They're stoking very real divides thatare, that are real in American society,

(07:01):
but they're throwing gasoline on the fire.
That's exactly right.
They're lighting it up. Right?
And so they're using our own unwillingnessto push back in the cyber domain and
exploit it. And the worry thatI have about that is, look,
we know they're baiting our elections.We know they're stealing our IP.
What happens when they make a tacticalblunder and they make a mistake--'cause
they're trying to see how far theycan push us 'cause we're not pushing
back...they push us too far and thenthey make a mistake--and something bad

(07:23):
happens. And now we have torespond. That's what I worry about.
I worry about them making a mistake,
'cause we haven't set clearred lines and enforce them.
No, that's a good point. You, you know,when you think about it, you, you,
you talked about our IP,
the commercialization effortscoming out of our universities,
coming out of our companies.

(07:44):
It's not necessarily happeningjust in the cyber domain. In fact,
I contend to you the primary capitalleaving the country is human capital.
People are taking those efforts andtaking them over to our adversaries
and helping our adversaries bemore successful against us. Right?
It's not necessarily some person ona computer hacking into your system

(08:09):
and stealing the plansfor the next Boeing 787.
It's literally an employee thatworks at the company that takes those
plans.
Right? Right.
And walks them over to an operativeand gives the plans to an operative.
That does happen quite often.
And what's even worse about it is it'sour own policies that drive part of this.

(08:29):
We take the world's smartest,their best and brightest.
We bring them to core researchinstitutions like George Mason.
We educate them and then we tell them,Hey, you know what? You can't stay here.
You gotta go back to your homecountry and build your business there.
It is crazy. I mean, you know, FareedZakaria said this the other day. I don't,
I don't agree with Fareedon a lot of things,
but he says this theother day on TV, he said,
"this is if you took a stupid systemand made it crazy by adding a lottery on
top of it." Right? Our immigrationsystem is so crazy, right? I mean,

(08:53):
you would think we woulddo what the Canadians do,
you think the Canadians have got itbetter. They pick the smartest, best,
and brightest. They bring 'em to Canada,
and then they incentivize 'em to stayand build their business and build their
lives there. That's right. It iscrazy that we don't do that. I mean,
you look at the Fortune 100, thevast majority of those businesses:
built by immigrants in thiscountry. My father came,
first to Canada and then the UnitedStates, $300 in his wallet. Uh,

(09:14):
uncle he can stay with nothing else.
Well, you know, I, I'llbe honest with you,
this is a relativelynew occurrence, right?
There's always been tensions betweenthose individuals who have come
into the country and those individualswho've already been here. Right?
Right. You wanna pull theladder up behind them.
Oh, yeah. It's always been that tension.That's not what I'm talking about.

(09:38):
I'm talking about policy.
I'm talking about infrastructurehas always been such that
we find a way
to allow many of those best andbrightest into the country so that
they can become successful.
Right.
And I'm afraid that this is our,

(10:01):
one of the first times in ourhistory where we're really,
really losing that and we'relosing it at a significant clip.
Yeah. I mean, imagine if youhad a name for it. I don't know.
Call it the American Dream.. I mean, you know...
Exactly! That, that to metells you what we were doing.
Right? We literally talked about it.We literally said, you come here,

(10:23):
we will give you incentives to stayand you can build your business here.
I mean, look, let's be honest, even today,even as hard as it is in our country,
as much of a, as politicalchallenges we have,
nobody wants to build their businessin Beijing or in Moscow or in Tehran.
Or even in Mexico. See, they wannabuild it here in the United States,
even with all our challenges. Andwe tell these people, no, come here,
get educated. Take the bestin our education system at,

(10:44):
at universities like George Mason,and then go build it at home.
It is literally a crazy system.
And it's only 'cause of our own toxicpolitics that we can't figure out how to
solve that we know this is the problem.
We know it's why we'relosing the brain drain.
It's 'cause we're telling peopleyou have to leave. It's crazy.
That being said, you travelall across the world, right?

(11:06):
And I've been, and and I know you've beenas well, most of the major continents,
all the major continents, but most ofthe continents in general, there still,
there is no better place to livethan where we are currently.
They are nice places, right? Thereare places with great weather,
they're places with great food.They're places with beautiful people,

(11:28):
but there aren't better places. And I,
I will debate individualson that context any day.
And you start to add up allof the entities that go into
just what makes quality of life great.
And you see that there are places inthis country that stack up with any place

(11:51):
else in the world and exceedthem by a significant margin.
Absolutely. And we, the Americantreatment's still alive here.
We may have forgotten it, but theability to move up is here. You know, my,
my father, we had the chancewhen I worked for President Bush,
at the end of the administration,
the president invited people who workedin the White House to bring their
families to the White House. Right?My parents came in and you know,
you walk into the Oval Officeand they take a quick photo.
President says to my dad, hesays, "now, mom, dad, dad,

(12:13):
where are y'all from?" And my dad says,"we're from Los Angeles." He says, "no,
no. Where's your family from?"My dad said, "well, you know,
our family's from Tanzania." Right?Then President Bush says, "well,
I bet when you were growingup in Tanzania, dad,
I bet you couldn't imagine that your sonmight one day work for the president of
the United States." My dadsaid, "no, Mr. President,
that's what makes the countrygreat." And the president,
that is what makes thecountry great, right?
That in one generation you can comefrom, from Tanzania to the United States,

(12:34):
you could be an American. You can'tgo to Germany and become a German.
You can't go to France and become aFrenchman. It's only you come to America,
you become American,become part of the dream,
and become part of the the peoplerunning the country. I mean,
on national security,
a Muslim during the war on terror in theBush administration with a family from
Tanzania, ethnically Indian.Nobody can imagine that. Right?
If you told my parents that theywould've said, you're crazy.

(12:56):
That's right. That's right.
And we still have that. We forgetthat we have that that is still here.
As much as we are mad at each other,as much as we argue and debate,
we have got to remember thiscountry is called to greatness.
It is crazy that we are abandoning thatbecause we can't get along or want to
figure out how to makethings work in this country.
Man, there's so many directions I cango with this. Let, let's start here.

(13:17):
So you've always said,and at the end of the day,
America leaning forward andbeing that forward beacon for the
world is positive for our nationalsecurity, our economic security,
and for the average American.You wanna expand on that?
Yeah. Let's just take one example.
There's a big debate today about whetherwe should support Ukraine in their

(13:39):
fight against Russia.Right? And people say, well,
I don't understand why we can'tget things fixed right at home.
We can't fix the border, we can't do this.
Why are we spending allthis money over in Ukraine?
Right.
You know, where the bulk of that moneyis being spent, President Washington?
It's being spent right here in America.Yes, we're sending weapons to Ukraine,
but we're buying those weapons fromAmerican defense manufacturers creating
American jobs in the United States.

(14:00):
That's right.
95% Of that money isspent here in America.
Right.
For some reason, we can'tget past this conversation.
People don't understand that basic fact.
That's exactly right.
And it's by and large not Americans who
are on the front linesfighting against the Russians.
Right.
It's Ukrainians.

(14:20):
We are fighting an adversary,an adversary that hates us,
that hates everything we stand foron the backs of others. By the way,
as we fought ISIS with the Kurds,right? It wasn't us that we,
we were there in small forces. In Ukraine,
we're simply sending weapons andinformation and training folks.
And the idea that we would say toourselves, oh no, we, we should,
we should really step back from that andwe should focus here at home. I mean,

(14:42):
how many times have we seen thisstory where America retreats,
home retreats from the world, thinkingit's protected by its two oceans,
and then we get hit athome with terrorism.
Right.
Or we get dragged into a bigger, muchworse war. World War I, World War II.
We've seen it over and over again.
And it's like we can't seem to rememberthe lessons of just a few years ago.
That's exactly right. It'slike Lucy with the football.

(15:03):
It's Charlie Brown. Exactly.
We repeated it over and over andover and over again. And I get it.
I understand why, right? Wedo have challenges at home.
We do.
We do need to focus on those challenges.
And when the national rhetoric andthe national discussion focuses on
us being engaged elsewhere, I cansee why a person would say, well,

(15:24):
wait a minute, but whatabout me? You know,
you're fighting more for the Ukrainianthan you're fighting for the American.
Now, I don't believe that's true, butI understand why some would think it,
why some would perceive itbecause of how social media
dominates our worldview andhow, not just social media,
but how the media in generaldominates our worldview.

(15:46):
Yeah. No, I was, you know,
I was in Iowa and South Carolina andNew Hampshire during this last election
cycle, and, you know, talkingto average folks, and, uh,
and you're exactly right.That is exactly how they feel.
They think Washington DCis fundamentally broken,
that it doesn't havetheir interests at heart,
that it's spending money abroadand not spending money here.
And they don't understand why they feelworse off than they did. Name your time.

(16:07):
Whether it was the previousadministration, the one before that, whatever it is,
whichever person you wanna blame,
whether it's--you wanna blame the bigtech companies or social media, or,
you know, mean Donald Trump or mean JoeBiden, right? Everyone's got a beef.
That's right.
What, what people don't have, and what'scrazy to me, is that belief in America.
And it's there. It's, it's insidethem. They know it's there.
They just have forgotten that they'velet this victimization take hold.

(16:29):
And they don't wanna rise up. I mean,
this country's always been a countryof rising up. We've had real troubles.
We have made huge mistakes in the nation.
But what makes America great isour ability to figure that out,
learn for those mistakes, and try to getpast them. And today we're in retreat,
right? We're we're saying, oh,
well look at all these mistakes we madeand blame each other. Blame ourselves.
It's crazy. It's crazy.
Oh, without question.

(16:50):
So if I were to ask you to tellme--to step back and say, "hey,
what are the US' biggest threats andwhere are they coming from?" What would be
your answer to that?
Well, look, I think our long-term largescale threat is, is a rising China.
Right? And their desire to dominatenot just their part of the world,
but the globe, right? They have visionsof a long-term empire around the globe.

(17:14):
They believe that their oppression oftheir own people, right? The oppression,
the Uyghurs, the Muslim Uyghurs, amillion in internment camps, right?
Modern day gulags, their oppressionof democracy in Hong Kong.
Their attempts to, to harass Taiwan. Theywant to expand that around the globe.
And as a long-term threat, that isthe real major threat. And we've,
we've allowed it to grow. We've addictedourselves to cheap Chinese goods.

(17:37):
And by the way, it's fineto buy t-shirts from,
from--we don't need to cut ourselvesoff from t-shirts from China.
But buying semiconductors, relying onthem for critical minerals: that's crazy.
Right?
And then when you add up the fact thatChina's increasingly cooperatative with
Russia, you see it in Ukraine.You see Russia and Iran,
Iran sending drones to Russia, right?Russia sending technology to Iran. Right?
These countries are now making it veryclear to the whole world how closely they

(17:59):
work together, right?And I don't wanna, say,
use a term like axis of evil or anythingthat got us into trouble before,
but let's be real. Iran,Russia, China, North Korea:
they are collaborating and they're doingit out in the open. You don't need to,
it's not behind closed doors. Right?
Well, they're collaboratingbecause they see, and--at least,
this is my interpretation ofit--they see that neither is

(18:22):
strong enough or dominantenough to take on the US
by themselves. So let's band together.
Right.
Let's come together becausethen we have a fighting chance.
It's almost an admittanceof our relative strength.
No, I think that's right.
And so...So

(18:42):
one hotspot we don't hearabout much nationally. I,
I I started to followhere recently is Niger.
Yeah.
Where a military coup occurred.
The US military is now withdrawingand reports say Russian military
advisors. And my understanding isRussian military advisors from Prigozhin.
This is his, his folkhave been brought in.

(19:05):
One senior US military advisortold CBS news that the situation
was a devastating blow toregional counter-terrorism.
And to our counter-terrorismefforts and peace in the region.
Can you explain why Nigeris such a focal point?
What is it about it andwhy is it important?
Yeah. Well, you know, for along time, a lot of these, uh,

(19:27):
terrorist groups operating outta Africahave operated out of Niger in that
region. You're talking about Boca Haram,
you're talking about what used to beAl-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghred--AQIM
now--Isis in West Africa, you've gota number of groups--JNIM--there's
a number of terrorist groups thereoperating in the region, right? Um,
and so we've had active counterterrorismoperations there for a long time in
Mali, in Niger and Nigeria, right?

(19:48):
Working with the governments inSomalia and Ethiopia as well.
And so these counterterrorism effortshave been really important because a lot
of these groups at times have gotteninterested in not just operating there in
Africa,
but expanding beyond the borders intoEurope and into the United States trying
to affect, uh, operations here.
Keeping that pressure up has beena really important part of it. Now,
with this coup in Niger, theRussians and the Wagner Group,

(20:09):
as you exactly laid out, getting in there,
they actually are fomentingsome of these coups. In Chad,
they were influential and trying to,trying to remove the government there.
And so we see this movement and the,
the government there had is a Juntagovernment, right? As you point out a, uh,
coup government. They at one pointsort of wrote us a note and said,
you need to leave. And then we're like,okay. I mean, if you don't want us here,

(20:29):
we, we start packing up. Nowthere's a conversation. Well, maybe,
maybe we want you to stay. And sothe conversation remains ongoing.
The government there in Niger hasbenefited both the coup government and the
prior elected government was a government.The governments have benefited,
the people in Niger benefitedfrom the American presence there.
They're not gonna benefit whenthe Russians show up. Right?
The Russians are there,
there for one purpose to engageand benefit Russian interests.

(20:50):
And so we'll see how this plays out.I do worry though that that loss,
that counterterrorism capability,
will ultimately put the US and ourallies at greater risk, not just in,
in Africa but, but inEurope and the US as well.
So I'm gonna go there. I'mgonna ask you something,
or I'm gonna make a statementhere, and I want you to,
let's just do a little engagement.
All right!
And since we're having fun.

(21:10):
I like it. Let's do it.
Alright.
Because I believe fundamentally that we
are on an arc, a trajectory.
And while that trajectoryisn't straight up, it's jagged,
it kind of oscillates up anddown. But there's a trend,
and that trend is better, notworse. Let me throw out some things.

(21:35):
Okay. Think about a moment intime: the pandemic had just ended.
Isolationism was on the rise.
There was anti-immigrantsentiment because of fear
of other governments, socialism,communism, and the like.
There had been a crackdownon civil liberties.
There were new technologies thatwere being brought into the household

(21:59):
that were changing theway Americans think.
There were state legislators whowere now with these new influences,
felt a need to control curricula,
felt the need to control the wayin which people were expressing
themselves.
If I were to tell youname that moment in time,

(22:22):
you can easily say that thatmoment in time was today.
Or yesterday. Or tomorrow.
That's exactly right. Right? Yeah.But that moment in time was 1923.
And in addition to those things,
because you just had the flupandemic that had just ended, right?
Radio was coming into households ina significant way and changing the
way Americans saw the world. Right?

(22:44):
But in addition to everythingI just highlighted,
the KKK had more than 6 millionAmericans who had joined their
ranks because of anti-crimerhetoric and fear of crime.
And that included 10 senators,
30 members of the House of Representativesand five sitting governors.
Right? And out of the midst of that,

(23:09):
out of the midst of that,from 1923 until today,
we have seen the greatest accumulationof wealth in the history of the world.
You, you, you, you, youget what I'm saying?
I do.
And that is still ongoing tothis, to this very day. Yeah.
I have three students, two studentsof mine who graduated, you know,

(23:29):
I do some work in AI.
They got really good jobs at bigtech companies in California in two
years outta graduation. They'reboth millionaires to this day.
Amazing.
Right? Now that's farbetter than anything I did.
you and me both.
, two years, two yearsoutta school. And, and so look, we're,
we're living in a time ofgreat peril and fraught,

(23:52):
but we're also living in a time oftremendous opportunity and outcomes.
Yeah.
How do we get people to balance andhow does NSI fit into all of that?
I mean, tremendous opportunity, outcomesthat we have created in this country.
Every major AI company in theworld is here in the United States,
Open AI, Anthropic, Scale AI, you name it.

(24:15):
Every single majortechnological advancement,
including the ones published in apaper just today about how the internal
neurons work within large language models.
They're using a single layerof neurons to say, okay,
we're actually identifyingthe various things that code.
Figured out how they work.
How they work, right. That is beingdiscovered here in this country.
Not in Russia, not inChina, not in Europe.
Europeans love to pride themselveson, oh, we do this, we do that. Right?

(24:38):
Let's be real.
The reason they don't innovate is 'causethey don't have an economic system like
ours. It may be close,but it's not like ours.
And they don't give people the opportunityto rise up and rise through the
ranks. Right? They continue to maintainthat, that largely class-based system.
We have problems, don't get me wrong.We are making that middle class smaller,
and that's a problem. But we stillhave opportunity in this country,
just to your point, that youraise about your two students.

(24:58):
Right.
Right. And people forget that. And sowe've got to remember, we, you know,
it's easy to think aboutthe immediate moment. I'll,
I admit I'm probably guilty of it myself,
that even this recency bias that thethings happen to me right now is the worst
possible--
It's the worst possible, but it's not.
It's not.
It's not. And,
and that is the key thing forus to kind of internalize.
You know? And, and I,

(25:20):
and I always struggle with whetherI should talk about it or not,
for two reasons. Number one, I wantpeople worried about our problems today,
. I want 'em focused on 'em. Iwant 'em engaged on them because by golly,
it can get worse.
Right.
Right?
We've seen what it looks likein Europe when it gets worse.
We've seen the rise of fascism.
That's exactly right.
We've seen the rise of communism.

(25:41):
We've seen it. We've seenit. And secondly, man,
we're on such a great trajectory. Right.
It'd be crazy to squander it now.
Yeah!
Be crazy.
I, I want us, I want usto continue, you know,
there have always been adversariesfor America recently on Bill
Maher's realtime show, Jillian Tett,

(26:03):
a member of the FinancialTimes editorial board said,
and you highlighted this earlier,that the new axis of evil is Iran,
Russia, and North Korea. China was leftout of it, right, interestingly enough.
How does that fit into how you seethe international picture today?
Well, I think she's certainlyright about those three,
but I think it's the most telling partis that they left China out .

(26:25):
And what's funny is the...
That's the biggest adversary.
It's the biggest adversary.
And the Europeans seem to thinkthat...here's the bottom line.
We don't survive in a real long termfight with China, without the Europeans,
and they definitelydon't survive without us.
We need to make commoncause across the Atlantic.
Right.
And the idea that the Europeans see usas the problem, right. They literally,

(26:46):
they hate American companies comingover there and selling to their people.
They're putting on all these tradebarriers in place. And, you know,
they put in, you know, GDPR, this lawis about privacy. Everyone says, oh,
it's this amazing privacy law.
GDPR ends up getting enforcedonly against American companies.
Yeah, isn't that something.
The real story is they wanna cut Americancompanies down to size because they
don't like the fact thatwe're innovating faster.
And that's right.
The actual innovation rate is about twicethe rate of European companies right

(27:11):
now. How wild. I just pushback at all of these folk,
you hear it in the nationalrhetoric amongst our politicians about how America's
worst than it's ever been. And wegotta make America great again.
The reality is, is that America'sactually great right now.
We got our challenges, letme make sure I'm clear,
but the country's agreat country right now.

(27:32):
And you know this by how all ourcompetitor countries are acting, right?
They're acting like we'regreat. They're banding together.
They are figuring out ways to counter
American strength and outcomes.
We seem to be the only people in theworld who don't realize how great we
actually are.

(27:52):
I agree with you a hundred percent. So
I was really fascinated. we'regoing down a lot of threads here,
and this is why I loveit. I, I, I, I was really,
really fascinated by thislatest back and forth between
Israel and Iran.
They launched that attackon Israel on April 13th,

(28:16):
and it was incredibly well telegraphed,uh, by the US government Right.
We knew it was coming. We knew whenit was coming. We knew, you know,
pretty much what it was gonnalook like. We had very, very,
very advanced intel. Right. It, it,
it was almost as if, and I'm stretchinghere, but I'm, I'm gonna say it anyway.

(28:37):
It was almost as if the Iranians toldus, we're gonna launch the missiles here,
here. Here's where we're gonnalaunch all of them. And, uh, you know,
just so you know,
we're launching them from right hereand we're gonna launch 'em at about this
time. Right.
Talk to me about the security apparatus,
the national intelligence infrastructure,

(29:00):
and how it was able tobasically telegraph that.
How, how would it know?
Well, you know, we have a tremendousnumber of capabilities, sensors,
satellites, and the like that takepictures that identify threats.
But the single most powerful intelligencecollection tool that we have today
that makes up the bulk ofthe president's daily brief,

(29:20):
the most sensitive intelligence productin the US government is a capability
called the ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Act.
It's a law that allows us to collectcommunications intelligence about
foreigners located overseas. These arenon-Americans outside the United States,
but we're able to capture ithere in the United States.
You might say to yourself,I don't understand that.
How could we capture information aboutforeigners located overseas in the US?

(29:40):
It's 'cause we built the world'scommunications infrastructure.
It all comes to the United States.
And so we're able to gettremendously valuable intelligence.
And there's this big debate over, well,
how do you deal with Americans thatmight be swept up in the middle of it?
And the truth is, every time youcollect a phone call, every time with a,
with a, with a court order,
you're gonna get the person callingtheir dry cleaners or their, or their,

(30:00):
or their donut shop or whatever it mightbe, you know, ordering Chinese food.
Right. And the way we deal with thatin the normal collection context,
we turn that, we turn it on and off.You ever, if people ever watch The Wire,
right? That great show about, about copsin Baltimore, you see them turn the,
the, the, the listening device on andoff. And, you know, if you watch Casino,
right, you see the wives get on thephone. I don't mean to say anything bad.
There are plenty of, there are plenty ofbadass, uh, you know, women gangsters.

(30:22):
But in the case of Casino,the wives get on the phone,
pretend to talk about whatever, andthen when they hear the FBI click off,
they give the things to, to the bossesand they talk about the dirty stuff.
Right? Right. So that's how we doit in the, in criminal context,
in the foreign intelligence context,
because we know thatpeople are gonna use code.
We know that people are gonnarun these sort of operations.
We listen continuously. We remove outAmericans names, American identifiers,

(30:43):
the, like, that's how weminimize collection there. And there's a big debate,
okay. Americans are beingcollected on what are we gonna do?
Those are fair debates to have.
But the idea that we almost let thatentire system stop and it almost
expired.
Well, well wait a minute.Now, we renewed it,
but only for two yearsinstead of five years.
Right.
What, what, what challengedo you think that has?

(31:04):
It just puts us back in the do loop ofhaving to do this over and over and over
again. I mean, it's almost like a Russianroulette with our surveillance thing.
Congress wants to forcethemselves to vote again.
Here's the crazy thing about Congressthough. If they wanna change the law,
they don't have to wait forthe two year reauthorization.
They don't have to wait forthe five year reauthorization.
They can do it tomorrow. The problem isthey create this cliff for themselves.
So they force themselves to re-look atit and debate this thing over and over

(31:27):
again. Be adults. Just do yourjob. If there's a problem, fix it.
There's not a problem. Letit run, make it permanent.
Why do we keep torturing ourselves overand over again one year, two years?
And you know, by the way,
two years is going to end up right inthe middle of the next administration,
whoever that might be. And, youknow, they're gonna have an opinion.
They're gonna have an view.
I have a question. A viable solution.

(31:47):
Every single politician I've talkedto, and I'm, and you know, I've, uh,
given where we're located,
I've gotten to spend a significantamount of time with a number of them.
But every single politician I talkto says that a viable solution to
a problem is to delay a decisionon the solution. In other words,
kick the can down the road. And thatseems like what's happening here.

(32:12):
For those of you who don'tknow what we're talking about,
we're talking about FISA, the ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Act.
And, uh, Jamil just reallyhighlighted why it was put into place.
And, and in, and in my understanding whyit's reauthorization is so important.
Well, you know, President Washington,
why these politicians get tokick the can down the road?

(32:33):
It's 'cause we let them,we voters let them.
Now there is one on thisparticular issue. If I,
if I stay focused here, there is
some good reason for debate here. Right?
Sure.
And it goes back to a guy namedEdward Snowden. Right. Uh,
a good bit of what wesee the issues around

(32:57):
the use of FISA, right,
the use of surveillancereally involved not just
foreign actors, butalso involved Americans.
And now it becomes a little difficultto how you use relative to how
you use these tools. Yeah. Becausewe're so globalized, right.

(33:18):
Is an adversary who is in Russia
as much of a threat to us as an American
who's been radicalized,
or who is now working on behalf of Russia.
Right? Both of them can cause you damage.

(33:42):
FISA was created for one.Right? But the other,
we don't have as many protections against.
So I I I, I understand whyit was, it's been confused,
but can you talk a little bit about it?
So, you know, Edward Snowden part of thestory is a really important one, right?
So, Edward Snowden,
when he stole the classified informationthat he was entitled to receive,

(34:04):
but wasn't entitled to takeaway, wasn't allowed to disclose,
when he engaged that illegalactivity of disclosing it,
he did disclose one program that had areal impact on American's privacy and
civil liberties. It was a program thatinvolved a collection of phone records,
right? The numbers.
Metadata.
That you and I dialed--metadata, right?Dialed phone numbers, date, time,
and duration of a call. No content.Just the fact of the call. And yes,
those were collected across theUnited States. My phone calls,

(34:27):
your phone calls through a,through a set of American carriers.
And all that data was collected.And what you could do is you,
once that data was in a database,
you could dip in and look for a terroristphone number and pull out one, two,
three, three hops. That was a lot ofdata for sure. Mm-Hmm. .
And that did admittedly have a very,
a real impact on Americans' privacy andcivil liberties to the extent that you
believe metadata, right, the, thenumbers you dial have a relevance.

(34:48):
And they do. 'cause you might be callingyour, you might be calling, you know,
somebody, you want peopleto know you're calling,
you might be calling yourlawyer, you might calling your--
But, but wait a minute. But let'spull that thread, 'cause that to me,
this is the whole point. Yeah. Thisis the same point that I'm making.
Let's suppose for a minute,
and actually we're not supposingwe know that this happened.
Mm-Hmm. .
And this is how someof that data was used.
Mm-Hmm. .
You got terrorist X. Right?

(35:12):
Who is actually workingwith operatives who are
in the US and who are US citizens. Right.
And that person is making calls,
passing out information.
And the way they discoveredthe US operatives who were
assisting terrorist X wasby the utilization of that

(35:36):
program.
Right.
And then if you wanna collect on thatAmerican or anybody in the United States--
You need a warrant.
You gotta get a FISA courtorder warrant. Exactly. Right.
So there's no way you can even get thatcontent unless you have a real court
order. And so this whole sort ofmyth that developed around Snowden,
that it was more than the metadata.There was something else going on here.
None of that was true. And in fact,

(35:57):
then you look at the other 99% of whatEdward Snowden revealed highly sensitive
information about very capable terrorismprograms and surveillance programs
against foreign actors overseas.
The bulk of what he distributed that wereleaked out to all these newspapers and
given to the Russians, almost wholesale,had nothing to do with Americas.
It was one program. And yes, thatprogram engendered a good debate. Right?
Right. The law was modified, by the way,

(36:18):
it's worth noting that program was neverstopped under the Obama administration.
It was never discontinued. It keptgoing. Congress even modified it,
even authorized that program withmore limited boundaries around it.
And ultimately decided notto continue that program.
But that program is tremendously valuable.
And the reality of the situation isthat yes, there was one disclosure.

(36:39):
The bulk of it is notEdward Snowden, the hero,
the bulk of it is EdwardSnowden, the traitor.
No I hear you.
And let's be real clear about that.
I, well, look, you, you, you won'tget any pushback from me on this one.
And by the way, that man lives in Moscowtoday, and he has Russian citizenship.
Let's not get it twisted about who thatman really is. That man is not a hero.
It's a very, very interesting, I II, I did watch the docudrama on his,

(37:02):
on his life. I, I found it tobe pretty, pretty intriguing.
So for a while your institute was focused
on China.
I wanna spend a little bit of time herejust because of TikTok and some of the
other things.
Yeah.
I really want to get your, your feeling.And, and so you were focused there.
You did a lot of work there.

(37:23):
But then it looks like itkind of tailed off somewhat.
And I could see why with the Russia ofUkraine piece, with the Israeli Gaza, uh,
piece as well. But is China still at thetop of your list in terms of, of focus?
And can you, can you talk about itsinfluence and why we should be concerned?
Yeah. You know, they areat the top of the list.
Okay.
And what we're seeing increasingly isthe collaboration of these various bad

(37:46):
actors. Right? The Russias, theChinas, the Irans, and North Koreas.
We just saw President Xi andPresident Putin meet in Beijing.
It's their 40th plus meetingin just the last few years.
They met about a yearor two ago previously.
And if you remember atthe end of that visit,
there was a very telling moment wherethey both knew the cameras were on,
and President Xi and whatlooked like a pull aside,
but he knew the camera was running.He says to President Putin, he says,

(38:08):
you know, the world is seeing the biggestchanges it's seen in three decades.
And you, we, you and I, the Russians andChinese we're architecting that change.
He wanted the world to hear that.
That we are working together and weare moving the world. It's not America,
it's not Europe, it's us. And, andthat's a really telling moment.
They right before Russia invaded Ukraine,

(38:29):
China and Russia inked a nolimits partnership. No limits!
They put a name on it and they doubleddown on it just this past week in,
in Beijing. And so, youknow, these, these actors,
so when you see us talk about Russia,Ukraine, that is not different than China.
Taiwan. That is not different than Israel.Hamas and Iran's role in that. And,
and, and Iran's role in Hezbollah,right? These are all interrelated,

(38:51):
interconnected. They're allworking together. Right?
There's a reason why the North Koreanuclear program looks a lot like the
Pakistan nuclear program, which looksa lot like the Iranian nuclear program.
It's 'cause the AQ connetwork from Pakistan sold that information about how to
make those centrifuges.
So there are very direct connectionsbetween these actors in the world.
And you think about it, China'sinterning a million Muslim Uyghurs in,

(39:13):
in term camps in Gulags, in theXinjiang province. Right. You know,
who says nothing about it? Nobody inthe Middle East, Pakistan, Imran Khan,
the famous cricket ear that all the,that all the Pakistani love, right?
Gives China a pass on interning amillion Muslims. It's crazy. Right?
Why is the US have to call out under boththe Biden and the Trump administration
that a genocide is happening inChina to a million Muslim voters?

(39:36):
Why isn't Saudi Arabia and Egypt andJordan and all these people that are
protesting about Palestinians andwhat's happening with Hamas and Gaza,
why aren't we talk, why aren't wetalking about the million Muslims in,
in prison camps in China? Well, it's hardto talk about that because, you know,
we get a lot of really cheap cars,a lot of really cheap shirts,
a lot of really, really goodsemiconductors from there. You know,
it's hard to make trouble there. The NBA,
the NBA in AmericanBasketball League told its own

(40:01):
owners and operators don't talk bad aboutChina as we make too much money there.
They pushed Enes Kanter outta the league'cause he talked too much about the
Uyghurs. Crazy.
So national security concernswith regard to Chinese influence
on American politics inmining user data, for example,

(40:21):
has led to legislation callingfor Chinese divestment of the
app TikTok on national security, uh,
concerns.
Yeah.
Why is it important that the US governmenttake these steps to potentially ban
TikTok in your opinion? Yeah.
Look, you know, people say, I don'tunderstand why people care about TikTok.

(40:42):
It's just kids having dance videos.You know, what's the big deal? Right?
But the reality is, it's not just thesevideos. It's who you share them with.
It's who your social network is.It's who you're communicating with.
It's where you are, where your phone,where your device is at all times.
It's connecting all of that data.
Metadata.
All that metadata with the datathe Chinese has stolen from our,

(41:02):
our credit bureaus, from thesecurity clearance databases.
Everyone with security clearance hadtheir information stolen from OPM,
all of our Marriott hotel records, right?
All these health recordsfrom major insurers.
Wait a minute, they gotour Marriott hotel records?
They got, they got your andmy Bonvoy account: all gone.
But think about what that means.Think about your, your credit records,

(41:23):
your hotel records, your travel, yoursecurity clearance. You combine all that.
Then you add in yoursocial networks on TikTok,
who your kids are communicatingwith, how they operate,
how they play video games, combineall that and then apply AI over that.
And what you now have is an amazing,
very detailed insight intothe live of average Americans,
including the people that hold thehighest level security clearances and who

(41:45):
their kids are friends with,
and how you can approach them for atarget and take advantage of them.
That is what TikTok is about. It's notabout dance videos. And by the way,
this whole claim that oh,
Americans free speech rights are beingtrampled and being trampled upon. I mean,
last time I checked you got Twitter,you got Instagram, you got reels,
you got so many places to put your voiceout there. YouTube. You need TikTok?

(42:06):
That's the only way is aChinese government controlled app that you can get your
voice out there. If that's suppressingfree speech, then we got real problems.
So do you have any predictionson whether or not ByteDance
will comply and divest?
They will not.
Of course not.
Of course not.
And so, you know, my nextquestion, right? What happens next?

(42:29):
I mean, look, we, we put ourfoot down, right? I mean,
it was for a long time itwas very controversial.
And ultimately Congress hasfigured out, you know. Look,
the truth is President Washington,
the American people were waking upto the threat that is China. Right?
They realized that really duringthe pandemic, when we realized, wow,
all of our PPE, our personalprotective equipment,
all of our pharmaceuticalprecursors are made in China.
And so we started to realize that.

(42:49):
We've now started to forget thata little bit because, you know,
Americans were so innovative,we moved so fast, we forget.
Things happen recently.
But I think the American public isfinally waking up to the reality of what
China is and what they're doingand their long-term game here.
So , this isinteresting. I was at a very,
very high level meeting, uh, here.
We had some former high rankingmembers of our government,

(43:13):
also foreign European governments,
a number of leaders from industry,
from some tech companies from avery prominent chip manufacturer who
I, who I will not mention. And, uh,
we were having this similardiscussion and I asked the question,
is Taiwan a Chinese entity?

(43:36):
Because I know what the law says onthis, and I know what the, you know,
and I was surprised how the debate
manifested,
because many of the people therebasically tried to paint the picture
highlighting that it wasn't,
that it's not a Chinese entity.

(43:58):
It was very clear to me that it's aChinese entity. Then, you know, later on,
as I began to pontificateand think as to why they had
such an issue, uh, itbecame very clear to me,
well, if Taiwan is a Chinese-owned
entity,

(44:19):
then the main driver ofwealth in this country,
the semiconductor is basically at least in
some sense owned by the Chinese.
Yeah.
Because TSMC.
Yeah.
Which in my opinion is the most of,
well, it's not, in myopinion, it is, clearly,

(44:41):
they produce the highest quality chips.They produce the most complex chips.
That all of our major chipdevelopment companies use
TSMC to manufacture their chips.
And TSMC is easily five years or so ahead
of the next closest rival. It's theone area. It's the one thing that,

(45:06):
you know, when you look at the US andyou, and we make design the chips here,
right? Uh, you know, our greatcompanies design those chips,
but the bulk of them areactually manufactured by TSMC and
they don't even have a close rival.There's nobody anywhere near them.
Not even close. And and we'vespent billions of dollars in the,

(45:28):
in the inflation reduction act, thebipartisan infrastructure law, uh,
to try and rebuild some capacity isa drop is a tiny drop in the bucket
compared to what TSMC hasgot in the capabilities.
There is no company in the world thatcan do a three to four nanometer process.
That's exactly right.
Other than TSMC, there'sno company that builds the,
that builds the equipment to do thatthree to four nanometer process with EUV

(45:50):
technology other thanASML, a Dutch company.
None of these companies are American.
And that is terrifying because we arecreating those three to four nanometer
processes, the ideas anddesign, but we can't execute it.
We can't make the.
Without the TSMC.
And so this brings tothe point, and to me,
this is the number onesecurity issue that we have.
It's the heart of it.
That's right. If China goes into,

(46:13):
and I think this is driving allof this, it's like a chess game.
They're trying to get your king.
That's the king . The king is,
the king is whoevercontrols TSMC has a very,
very firm hold. Right.
All of this stuff we're talking aboutwith Jensen Wong and Nvidia and Nvidia

(46:33):
chips, where are the chips beingproduced? Right. Where's that come from?
It's coming from TSMC. And ifChina goes in and takes Taiwan,
TSMC is the primaryreason for them doing it.
I don't think they would care aboutTaiwan to the degree they do now,
if TSMC were not, were not there.

(46:53):
And I don't think wewould care either. Right.
And so can you talk alittle bit about this?
I mean, imagine if your king on thechess board had no pawns around it.
Right.
Because that's show Taiwan right now.
If the Chinese decided to invadetomorrow--and they're not gonna invade
tomorrow, 'cause they don'tthink they're ready, right?
They're not gonna invade tomorrow,maybe in a couple years, not tomorrow.

(47:15):
But if they're gonna invade tomorrow.
We couldn't get there in timeto really put up a real fight.
It would take us months to flow theforces to the region that we need.
And we have already a carrierbattle group in the region.
We have a marine expeditiarytask force out there nearby.
We couldn't get there with enough forcesin time to really have a force on force
fight with the Chinese over Taiwan.By the time they went and took it,

(47:38):
the game would be up. Wewouldn't even get in the fight.
The only way we could really fight thatfight is if we put forces forward and no
president, not Trump, not Biden, notObama before, not Bush before him,
was willing to put theforces forward to do that.
And until the Americanpresident is ready to do that,
the Chineses will readthat for what it is,
which is America is not ready todefend Taiwan and won't do it.
And so the only question,they're not waiting for us.

(47:59):
They're waiting forthemselves to be ready.
The lesson they're taking from Russia,Ukraine is don't go in and be not ready.
Don't go without amilitary you can't trust.
Know that you're ready to able to take it.
Make it a fate accompliwithin the first month. Yes,
you may have to fighta long-term insurgency.
Don't even let the US get in the fight.And they don't wanna be in the fight.
They read what we see as asuccessful Ukraine policy.
We've supported the Ukrainians.They've kept the fight going.

(48:20):
They see it as American weakness.
We're not willing to put bootson the ground every little bit.
We're eking in a little bit more everyso often. We're not gonna put M1 A ones,
'cause you might use nuclearweapons. We won't put attack S in.
And then eventually weput 'em in. Oh, surprise,
surprise the only thing to use isnuclear weapons. Chinese know that too.
That's why they're triplingtheir nuclear force.
They know that we're afraid of thatand we won't go up to the line.
And so they view it as, it's aquestion of not if, but when.

(48:44):
And that's the real scary thing.And the problem is the, you know,
the president's trying out there.He goes on TV all the time and says,
we will defend Taiwan withAmerican troops if we need to.
He's done it four times,right? In the last two years.
But every time he does it,
my friend Jake Sullivan comes tothe White House podium and says,
but the president really meant waswe'll send weapons to Taiwan. He didn't,

(49:04):
he didn't mean troops. Nowthe administration says, well,
that's strategic ambiguity. Right. Ofcourse we're, we're keeping it unclear,
of course. But that kind ofstrategic ambiguity, it doesn't help.
It creates risk. It temptsthem to test our boundaries.
You don't want test our boundaries.They should have a clear understanding.
You go to Taiwan, we willfight you toe to toe,
and we're gonna put the forceforward to make that true.

(49:25):
And the reason we won't do ittoday, and Trump wouldn't do it,
and Biden won't do it,they're afraid if we do that,
that we'll be the ones who tripover the wire and start the thing.
It's just like Russia, Ukraine put toomany weapons in. We'll tip it over.
That's the opposite. Our, ouradversaries understand and respect power.
We don't use it, we don't show it.
But they know what's there.

(49:46):
If we're ready to fight, theysee us as unread to fight.
They see American people not ready andthey don't see the kind of leader who
will step forward andbring the American people.
American people will fighta just war if they need to.
But they have to be told by anAmerican leader why it matters--
So let's follow thatthread just a little bit.
What happens if they do take Taiwan?

(50:09):
Oh, it's bad.
You said now. Now you say, okay,well we can't stop 'em. And I,
I tend to agree with you. We can't. So.
In the immediate aftermath--
But, but we would see 'em coming, right?They, they would need to amass troops.
Mm-Hmm. ,
we would know that it is gettingready to happen before it's happened.
Kind of like Russia/Ukraine.

(50:30):
Right? Yeah. We saw, we saw'em coming and, and what,
what I hear you saying isthat they want to be ready.
Do you think they wanna be ready for afight in Taiwan or do they want to be
ready for what they'regonna have to deal with
relative to us? I think it's the latter.
I don't think that they're worriedabout the Taiwanese forces that much.

(50:54):
They want a telegraph to us thatthey're gonna take that island so fast
and so directly that bythe time we get there,
we'd have to fight a rearinsurgency for many, many years.
And we lose a lot of livesto retake the island.
They wanna make it more costly for usthan it was for them to go in and they
assess, I think.
And now I will admit that I maybe applying an American mentality.

(51:17):
Yeah. I think, I think you are.
And I may be mirror imaging. Right?Right. And, and that may, so,
I may be wrong,
but my worry is they see us asunwilling to fight fights post Iraq,
post Afghanistan. The, the, theterrible departure from Afghanistan,
the way we left Iraq,
the way we abandon our Kurdishallies in the Trump administration,
they see America as on the retreat,
unwilling to defend its alliesunwilling to put its forces forward.

(51:40):
They think we're weak and they,they think they can play their card.
So they wanna show strengthand say, we got a strong hand.
Don't even try coming here.
We'll make it very painful for youand you don't wanna bear that cost.
Okay. So I hear what you're saying. Letme tell you why I disagree. Alright?
I like this. Alright.When it truly matters,
we figure out a way to get it done. Right.

(52:02):
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, right.
We saw his troops massing at theborder. We knew what was gonna happen.
We used the rhetoric and allof that to get our folk ready.
You know what I'm saying? You're right.
And then we went in andtook care of Saddam Hussein.

(52:22):
And that was to protect thefree flow of oil. Right.
Because every majorrecession in our country,
including the Great Recession,there was a oil shock. Not everyone,
but most of them. There wasn't oil shock,
a significant increase of the priceof oil that preceded it. Right.

(52:42):
And so they knew that the connection,
our economy's connectionto oil is significant. Our
economy's connection to chips
is as significant. AndI would contend to you,
it might actually even be moresignificant now because of these
other kinds of electricvehicles. There are other modes

(53:06):
where we can make duewithout as much oil. Right?
Yeah, you're right.
There is no substitute globally right now
for TSMC. There's nothing.It, it goes away. It,
it loses ability to do what it does.
We can be a third rate powerfrom a technology perspective.

(53:26):
Yeah. No, you're right.
We would care a lot less about theMiddle East if there weren't fossil fuels
under that, that land.
Of course.
We care a lot less about Taiwan. IfTSMC weren't there, you're 100% correct.
So we will figure out a way todo what we could to support and
defend Taiwan. And I, and I would be,
we would be unwise if therearen't scenarios that,

(53:49):
if they're not people,
hundreds of them right now drawingup the battle plans and drawing
up the scenario analysisrelative to this very issue,
I would be surprised if that were nothappening to this day. You know, Jamil,
we, we, you and I are pretty smart people.They're smarter folk looking at this.
A hundred percent.

(54:09):
I can, I can, I can tell youwithout a shadow of a doubt.
They are doing it.
And the problem is that if wedon't fight on day one for Taiwan
and day two and day three, but we willto wait until day 100 or day one 50.
Right. It is a lot more costlya fight. And yes, you're right.
We may very well take that fight on. Butif you are right, and it's so critical,

(54:29):
which I agree with you by the way,100%, you are absolutely correct,
then it would be insane for usnot to be prepared to fight that
fight on day one and win thatfight on day one and, as a result,
make it clear to the Chinese thatthat is our intent. It is our policy.
And to put the forces in placeto be ready to have that fight.

(54:51):
Every day we don't do that. We temptthem to take action and we wait longer.
No, I, I hear you.
And it's more costly.
And this is like I said, we,
we are going to have a little bit ofdebate on this one. I actually think, uh,
while I can't give you a definitiveanswer on what the strategy is,
I don't know. I would be totallysurprised if there were not a strategy.

(55:12):
It's just too obvious that theChinese are going to take it for the,
for the US not to havea strategy here,, right?
Too many smart people with theirtime and resources on their hands,
they're looking at this, theygotta be. Right. So, you know, I'm,
I'm prior military. Yeah. I spendtime in, in, in the military.
And then I spent a significantamount of time on what's called a

(55:34):
scientific advisoryboard for the Air Force.
And when you're on those scientificadvisory boards as a researcher,
they use researchers in the countryto help them deal with very difficult
problems and challenges todealing with the government.
You are routinely engaging membersof the Pentagon, very high ranking,
uh, senior military officials and thelike. Let me make no doubt about it,

(55:59):
some of the smartest people I've ever met.
A hundred percent.
Brilliant. So there's not acompetency issue there. Now,
politics--
That's what I'm talking about!
Murkys the water a little bit.
I'm talking about thecompetence of politicians.
Yeah. But, but--
The policy makers.
But the politicians aren'tgoing to prosecute that battle.
They gotta decide.

(56:19):
They do.
They're not ready. Theydont have the guts.
They do.
But the people that I engaged
have already taken into accountthe fact that they may be slow to
act or, uh, uh, or may not act at all.
And they have scenario planningin place for those type

(56:43):
of occurrences as well, because they'retoo smart not to. And I know it's,
it's kind of a blind faith,
but I believe it because I'vespent time with these folk. I mean,
real time.
No, you're right.
And so it will be an issue.
I just don't know that I, I would be very,
very surprised if we didn't have aplan in place for how to deal with it.

(57:08):
And I think that not onlydo we have plans in place,
I think the Chinese know that we haveplans in place and that's why they haven't
taken it. Do you see what I'm saying?
I do. I do. You know, by the way, Idon't think you and I are that far apart.
Okay. I think we actuallyagree in large part on this,
which is to say there areabsolutely scenario plans.
There are absolutely plans thatwould allow us to rapidly accelerate,

(57:30):
build the defense forces we need, andget them there fast and fight that war.
Right.
Or, or, or,
or plans to totally isolate and wall off
significant portions of Chineseeconomy that causes them to have real,
real challenges there as well.
Because them taking Taiwanwon't just affect the Americans.

(57:51):
It's actually also gonna affect theEuropeans. It's also going affect, uh,
other countries and, and SoutheastAsia that are developing.
It's gonna affect Vietnam,it's gonna affect the Japanese,
it's gonna affect the Indians.
Everybody will be affected by thisbecause TSMC is that dominant.
Yeah. And by the way, let's not, andpeople don't wanna talk about this,
but let's not take it off the table,that there are probably plans to,

(58:12):
if in fact the Chinese takeTSMC to take TSMC off the map.
I'm not saying that's the plan. I'm justsaying like, let's not kid ourselves.
That's gotta be in the cards as well.
Well, they're building a facilityhere in the US now. Right?
Multiple. But here's what,here's what I worry about, right?
I worry that we have a political systemtoday and political leaders today who
are increasingly responsivetoo much to what they

(58:35):
perceive as the views of the Americanpeople rather than leading. We have a,
we are not, we, we are a representativedemocracy. We are not a pure democracy.
And the more we take this populous turn,
whether you're a liberal or aconservative, doesn't matter.
Oh, no question.
Right? When you don't haveleadership amongst policy makers,
they're trying to take the pulse of theAmerican people and do what the American
people want every single day,that's when you make these failures.

(58:57):
That's when you don'tact when you need to act.
And that's when you put our militaryand the men and women put their lives on
the line every day, asyou did for our country,
that's when you put them atrisk and greater risk every day.
And we make it more dangerous and morecostly for American treasure and American
lives. And that to me iscavalier and inappropriate.
We need real leaders in government.
And you know how we get real leadersin government? We gotta do our job.

(59:18):
We gotta hold our leaders accountable.
Actually, you've given me an idea.
I'm going to get you and acouple of other folk together,
and we're gonna have a round tableto discuss this very, very issue,
the issue of leadership and theissue of leadership in this country.
I think it's something that weshould definitely talk about.
And I think we actually have the righthorses here at George Mason University

(59:40):
in order to do it.
We do.
I'm going to end on thisquestion. As I understand it,
your National SecurityInstitute is a bipartisan
entity. That being said,
we have significant levels of partisanshipin our government, and quite frankly,
as we've been discussing,in a public sphere. What
can NSI do to break through that clutter?

(01:00:04):
I think the key is to talk to the Americanpeople about what makes this country
great. And to recognizethat, as you said earlier,
all those elements ofgreatness are still here.
We are still the mostinnovative country in the world.
We are still the strongesteconomy in the world.
We are still the strongestpeople. We have the best laws.
They may not be perfect. Ourpolitical system may not be perfect.
Our political leaders may not be perfect,
but we have a duty to talk about whowe are, to be proud of who we are,

(01:00:28):
and to be a strong country.It is what we were built on,
is what we were built to do.
And every day that the American peoplespend time at each other's throats and
allow our leaders to put ourselves ineach other's throats is a day we are
losing the battle to the people thatwant us to lose. To China, Russia, Iran,
North Korea. So if you,
if we wanna think about how tofix our problems in the world,
it begins here at home. Itbegins with, with, with voting.

(01:00:52):
Voting every day. It is a crime thathalf the American people that are,
that could vote don't register.
It is a crime that half thosethat are registered don't vote.
Take responsibility.
All our young people that arelistening to this here at George Mason,
every single one of you must register tovote. You wanna go protest, go protest.
But vote. And vote for adults,
vote for people who have real seriousthoughts. And at the end of the day,

(01:01:14):
for me, that's about nationalsecurity, that is about bipartisanship.
Because at the end of the day, thisisn't about Republican, Democrat,
this is about America. This is abouta vision. This is about a dream.
This is about the idealsthat we have in this country,
and they are the right ones. Andwe are called to this mission.
We have been since our foundingand we still are today,
no matter how hard it is. Andthat's what NSI is out there,
talking about andfighting about every day.

(01:01:34):
Oh, man. I love it. I love it. Well,we're gonna have to leave it there.
Jamil Jaffer,
thank you for connecting somedots for us in an extraordinarily
complex puzzle.
I am George Mason University PresidentGregory Washington. Thanks for listening.
And tune in next time for moreconversations that show why

(01:01:58):
we are All Together, Different.
If you like what youheard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take on the grandchallenges facing our students, graduates,
and higher education.That's podcast.gmu.edu.