The Plane Truth: Playing Chicken with China, Trump Goes Gulf-ing, Tensions in South Asia

America and China take a 90-day time-out in their dispute over tariffs; President Trump’s tour of the Middle East—the first overseas trip of his second term—raises unsettling questions about both his regional strategy and his family’s business dealings; and hostilities between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan raise questions of behind-the-scenes great-power machinations amidst “Cold War 2.”

Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane, and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster discuss what’s at stake in these various parts of the globe. After that: the three fellows debate the severity of Chinese espionage in America’s universities; and how AI’s ability to shortcut the learning process will impact the future of higher education.   

Recorded on May 14, 2025.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[MUSIC]

>> Bill Whalen (00:08):
It's Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
And welcome back to Goodfellows, a HooverInstitution broadcast examining social,
economic, political andgeopolitical concerns.
I'm Bill Whalen,I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow.
I'll be your moderator today.
And joining me, as per usual,are our three Goodfellows.
So welcome back to the show.
Well, he's devout Protestant, but if thenew Pope could somehow engineer a artisan,

(00:30):
an Arsenal, excuse me,Football championship, he might convert.
We welcome back the distinguishedhistorian, Sir Niall Ferguson.

>> Niall Ferguson (00:37):
Very good to be back.
Very good to be back, butmy father would turn in his grave.
Not even Arsenal's winningthe Premiership is worth a mass.

>> H. R. McMaster (00:48):
They're kind of the same, man, I gotta tell you.
Like, I'm Catholic,I went to an Episcopal high school.
It's the same thing.
It's like Henry VIII wanted a divor.

>> Niall Ferguson (00:56):
[LAUGH] there's a whole episode of Goodfellows we could have over
on the Reformation.
We could do it now orwe could stick to topic.

>> Bill Whalen (01:05):
We'll get to topic in a minute.
Also joining us today, born and raisedin Chicago, like the Pope, he is not
the Bishop of Rome here in Goodfellows,he is our high priest of monetary policy.
We welcome backthe economist John Cochran.

>> John H. Cochrane (01:16):
And sadly, the Pope is a White Sox fan.
The devil wins.
[LAUGH]>> Bill Whalen: And our third Goodfellow,
we've already heard from him.
Last but not least, he is born and
raised in Philadelphia where the Pope didhis undergraduate studies at Villanova.
We welcome back formerPresidential National Security Advisor and
Goodfellows Resident optimist,Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.

>> H. R. McMaster (01:38):
Hey, go Wildcats.
And you know what?
They didn't make the tournament this year.
I think they're goingall the way next year.
Thanks to the Pope.

>> Bill Whalen (01:45):
Thanks to the Pope.
Okay, on with the show, gentlemen.
Let's begin with China.
The news, of course, that the US And Chinahad conversation about tariffs in Geneva.
And out of that came an agreement, a 90day pause in their respective tariffs.
John Cochran,I turned you to begin this conversation.
What do you think happens after 90 days?
I call this truce or dare,by the way, the question being,

(02:06):
do you think the truce will hold ordare we see something worse happen?
So tell us what happens after 90 days,John.

>> John H. Cochrane (02:12):
[LAUGH] who knows?
You live in Trumpland here.
I think it's pretty clear that the 145%tariffs are not gonna come back.
Some degree of sanity has prevailedwithin the Trump administration.
Or maybe,they will claim at the end of it,
this was all four dimensional chessto get to whatever outcome we get to.

(02:34):
So I would agree with you now,we haven't quite won yet.
We still have very high bilateraltariffs between us and China.
And we're only going to shoota couple of rounds into the common
boat rather than blowit up with a bazooka.
But nonetheless,that's better than nothing.

>> Niall Ferguson (02:50):
This has been a game of chicken because at one point in April,
the two superpowers wereheading straight for
one another for an economic collision.
The US started it, escalating tariffs in
a series of steps tothe eye watering levels

(03:14):
we saw until Sunday, north of 100%.
In effect, the US imposed whatamounted to a trade embargo on China.
The Chinese did not take the first step.
They retaliated all the way up,step for step.

(03:35):
And as in all games of chicken,the key is who blinks, who swerves.
And I think there's no question thatthe United States blinked because
it was the United States that firstindicated that it wanted to talk.
Xi Jinping didn't pick up the phone.
Then Treasury Secretary Scott Besant saidthat these tariffs were unsustainable.

(04:01):
And sowhen a meeting was agreed in Switzerland,
it really was at the US initiative.
And the only question waswho was going to go first.
The US clearly went first and offereda bigger cut in tariffs than I'd expected.
The Chinese immediately said,we'll do that too.

(04:24):
And that's how the game of chicken works.
The escalation came from the US side andthen it was the US that had to deescalate.
Bit the grand old Duke ofYork who had 10,000 men and
marched them up to the top of the Hill andthen marched them down again.
That's essentially whatPresident Trump did.
Why did he do that?
Because it was explained to him afterthe tariffs had reached these sky high

(04:48):
levels that the impact on the US economyand particularly on voters in his base,
on truck drivers, for example,on longshoremen, would be devastating.
And we could already see the disruptionhappening at the Port of Los Angeles.
And so it was explained to him that thisultimately would be very self harming if

(05:11):
it continued.
Credit, I think to Secretary Besant forbringing about a secret meeting
in Washington three weeks ago that set inmotion the detente or the de escalation.
I think he's emerged as almost a primeministerial figure in the last few weeks,
but there's no getting away from the factthat this was a game of chicken that

(05:34):
President Trump started andhe was the one who blinked or swerved.

>> John H. Cochrane (05:39):
Can I just emphasize, you don't win if you get to put in big
tariffs on them and they don'tget to put in big tariffs on you.
So it's like the game of chicken inwhich just the question is both cars
are gonna get destroyed.

>> Niall Ferguson (05:53):
Well, not necessarily.
That's one outcome.
One outcome is when theyboth get destroyed, and
that's why it's such a good thing forgame theory.
But there's also the outcomewhere they both swerve and
then there's the outcome where oneswerves and the other doesn't.

>> John H. Cochrane (06:07):
I'm just emphasizing, unlike sort of military games I've taken,
there isn't a state where you won becauseyou got to put in big tariffs and
they blinked and they backed down anddidn't put big tariffs on you.
We're just hurting ourselves.

>> Niall Ferguson (06:21):
Maybe HR can comment on this.
I think there is an analogy here becausethere is a resemblance to Cold War
nuclear brinkmanship.
And in the Cold War game of chicken,obviously it was nuclear escalation and
there was this problem of MADmutually assured destruction.
I think what we've seen here is that therewas mutually assured economic destruction

(06:43):
in the case of a trade war, andit would have been disastrous for
both sides if the tariffs hadcontinued at this kind of level.
But am I right to think of this as,by analogy, like the games of chicken
that occurred, for example,in the Cold War in 1962 over Cuba?

>> H. R. McMaster (07:00):
Yeah, I think to a certain extent that is a useful analogy.
But also I would say even a broaderCold War analogy where you're gonna see,
I think, the world kind ofhardening into various blocks.
Blocks associated withreally China's status
mercantilist model that is incompatible,I think, with our free market economies.
Sorry, John, butthen also this is only the beginning.

(07:22):
So John's right.
This is only the beginning, right?
Because I think what you're gonna seenow are a lot this effort to accelerate
bilateral trade agreements.
A lot of those bilateral tradeagreements will be about China and
the need to improve the resilience ofcritical supply chains such that China
doesn't have coercive power overour economies or to address other.

(07:44):
I know John hates this phrase,unfair trade and economic practices
by China associated with overcapacity anddumping and efforts to.
To dominate in advanced manufacturing,such that they have this dual.
Dual circulation economy wherewe're dependent on them.
But, they are insulated from any kind offinancial or economic consequences of,

(08:07):
of their aggression inthe South China Sea or vis a vis Taiwan.
I think this is important, you know, sothe nature of these bilateral agreements,
but I think, and I'd love to hearwhat both of you think about this.
I think there are going to besectoral tariffs coming up now.
Pharmaceuticals, copper,I mean, if you fill in
the blank in terms of whatare the critical commodities and

(08:32):
goods that China has a grip on that wewill want to have alternative sources for.
And I don't know if you,you've seen the, the reporting,
the new book out on how Apple made China,and I really think that it's time for
us to recognize thatover dependence on China.

(08:53):
Whether it's formanufacturing like Apple or
whether it's on on supplychains that are critical,
such as rare earths and other reallycritical minerals and so forth.
Or goods like batteries that, that wehave to diversify our supply chains and
not be beholden to a hostile state.

>> John H. Cochrane (09:15):
Do we wanna go have the, [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGH]

>> H. R. McMaster (09:18):
This is our, hey,
we have to do this periodically, I guess.

>> John H. Cochrane (09:20):
Yeah, I'll just take one of this outburst,
their mercantilist approach isincompatible with our free markets.
Suppose Whole Foods in Palo Altodecides that what they wanna do is
they wanna charge you for arugula.
But they wanna build up a stock of UStreasury bills rather than go out and

(09:41):
buy stuff with it.
Okay, so the arugula is still on sale,how are you hurt, how are we hurt by
their mercantilists, how are weincapable of going on with an open,
free market society because Chinadecides that they wanna be mercantilist?
I don't see how it hurts us at all,
that's just one of the ofthe ten things you said there.

>> Niall Ferguson (10:02):
Can I act as the sort of arbiter here?
Cuz I think there is a middle ground,
I think HR is right that there are certainstrategic areas where dependence or
heavy reliance on China hascreated real vulnerabilities.
That's very obvious when it comes toour defense industrial base that was

(10:23):
greatly eroded in the last 20 years.
But it's also true with respect totechnology, I think it probably did
make sense to de risk that was whatthe last administration talks about.
But to decouple altogether from Chinahas been shown to be impossible,
we've just run the experiment,and when we tried to do it,

(10:44):
that was in effect whatthe very high tariffs did.
It revealed the extent to which the USeconomy is heavily reliant on goods
manufactured in China fora whole bunch of things, shoes, apparel,
dolls, we heard all about those becausethey made it into the discourse.
But it's actually an amazing rangeof different household goods that

(11:07):
are imported from China, and
you can't imagine decouplingwithout enormous disruption.
And it was the warning to the presidentby the chief executives of Target and
Walmart that there wouldbe empty shelves or
high prices that I think helpedchange the direction of travel.
So I think we've got topull back from decoupling,
that doesn't look practical in anytime frame or at an acceptable cost.

(11:30):
And it doesn't seem very obvious whywe need to have dolls manufactured in,
say, Vietnam as opposed to China.
But I think HR has a point that there wasa real strategic problem that developed in
the last 20 years, and I think he's alsoright that China never abided by its world
trade organization commitments.
And I think it was partly folly onthe part of the west not to make those

(11:53):
enforced, and we essentially allowedthem not to stick to those commitments.
And as a result,the strategy made in China 2025,
which was a deliberate industrial policyto give China leadership in batteries and
solar cells and electric vehicles,was executed with incredible success.

(12:13):
There's just no getting away from that,and
that certainly wasn't free marketeconomics, John of the Chicago variety.
So I think there's a way of reconcilingyour positions, and in a way,
we've arrived at it cuz we ranthe experiments of decoupling and
after just a few weeks,it was clear that it wasn't sustainable.

>> H. R. McMaster (12:32):
This is our periodic struggle session,
this is a struggle session.

>> John H. Cochrane (12:35):
Well, obviously.
So me buying a bicycle from Chinadoes not help them to invade Taiwan,
but let's even,even get the national security ones.
So you mentioned rare earths, well,I found the number 0.1% of rare earths
get used by the military in the US thereare many other supplies of rare earths.

(12:57):
It's a long war,you can stockpile some rare earths,
there are other sources that'llget you through a crisis.
We've seen how effective sanctionsare on many other countries,
there's lots of ways to get around them.
So even rare earths, there's noreason why the batteries that go into
my bicycle have to be made in the USin order to win a war over Taiwan.

(13:21):
Second, why did China take over thesethings, was it massive subsidies?
No, it's cuz it's impossible to getanything done in the US good luck starting
a rare earth mine 10 years just toget the environmental assessment.
So China did not take overthese industries because they
subsidized them nefariously anddid their free market system.

(13:42):
China took those over because we shotourselves in the foot on being able to get
anything done, and the WTO.
So here's one way of putting the question,there have been winners and
losers, how much has the US economyoverall been hurt by trade with China?
Let's turn back the clock and
suppose we could keep China desperatelyMiddle Ages poor, make it North Korea for

(14:04):
the last 30 years instead of letting itrise and have no trade of us with China.
How much do you think US income percapita would be higher as a result?
I think that's perfectly clear, it wouldbe tremendously lower as a result.
China's mercantilism, China's notfollowing the WTO rules and so forth,
it would be better still if they had,but we are nonetheless better off for

(14:25):
the trade in China.
So all this economic aggression and
destroying the American economy by sellingus cheap stuff, it just doesn't hold up.

>> Niall Ferguson (14:33):
John, what I was saying, I didn't mention rare earths,
was that there were a whole range of goodsthat the Chinese were producing that it
was a mistake for us to buy.
Remember, until quite recently,
really before HR's time as NationalSecurity Advisor, the US military was
routinely installing Chinese components,including semiconductors, in its hardware.

(14:56):
And so there was a problem there,
it's clear that there was a threatto critical infrastructure
in the United States that wasonly going to get worse if goods
Chinese products wereincorporated into our system.
So there had to be some decoupling.

>> John H. Cochrane (15:17):
This is easy, so military contractors must buy stuff
from US suppliers,not Chinese, at higher prices,
that goes into the defense budget,and then an industry comes up.
You don't need to stop the, the chipsthat go into my kids Game Boys from being
produced in China in order to make surethat military contractors buy US made or

(15:39):
properly certified chips.
This is just an enormous thingbeing done for a tiny effect.

>> H. R. McMaster (15:45):
Well, I mean the other example I would give is really beyond
the military one.
Even cranes at ports, forexample, have been compromised
with threats from the reallyhardware related threats and,
That maybe disrupt our economy,disrupt military deployments.
The other is fifth generationcommunications hardware.

(16:08):
This is ware where the modelhas been that the CCP entices
you with the kinda promiseof short-term profits,
steals your intellectual property,subsidizes,
picks a winner like Huawei,$60 billion of subsidies that we know of,
then produces those goods atartificially low prices, right?

(16:32):
They sell that hardware at a loss so
they can gain control of communicationsinfrastructure and use that for
various purposes, but to indebt countriesto establish long-term relationships,
advance their geopolitical agenda,but then also to
gain a tremendous surveillance andintelligence-collection capability.

(16:53):
So, I mean, John, I mean,I think you're right,
who cares if you're Barbie dollar whetherwhatever's made in or your bicycle?
But China is deliberatelytrying to create dependencies.
We're trying to essentially decouple ontheir own terms with this effort to create
the dual circulation economy.
Deliberately create dependencies that givethem coercive power over our economy.

(17:19):
And of course, we learned from the rendingof the economic relationship with
Russia that that's a really bad idea.
I mean, Germany's dependence on cheapRussian natural gas, for example,
gave Russia considerable course of power.
So, I think what we have todo is do what's sensible,
and protect ourselves fromthat kind of coercion.

>> Niall Ferguson (17:42):
John, I have a question for you.
Should there be free trade in automobiles,which would, of course,
allow China to get a really quite largemarket share of electric vehicles,
given that theirs are very cheaprelative to the competition and
now comparable in quality?

(18:04):
So, as a free trader, would you letChinese EVs come into the US market?
Currently they're excluded by tariffs.

>> John H. Cochrane (18:10):
Absolutely, China turns out can produce EVs at much lower
cost than the US, thanks to all thosewonderful subsidies that the US does.
I mean, thank you, HR.
You wanna accuse China ofbeing evil cuz they subsidize?
You wanna look at what the US does?
We're like 100 to 150,000 bucks forHEV, absolutely.
And would you, Neal, say that it wasterrible for the US to let Datsun and

(18:33):
Toyota into the US market,undermining Ford, GM, and Chrysler,
the American stalwarts who were producingsuch wonderful stuff in the 1950s?
Absolutely, you want free trade.
Now there is a,HR made a national security claim.
Do you really think that thereare secret ships in Huawei equipment
that are reporting everything backto the Chinese Communist Party and

(18:56):
that if you buy their cranes,you are unable to detect this?
And so you simply can't buy the cranebecause of, you said gain control.
There has to be some secret backdoorin every chip sold by China that they
can flip off of a sudden.
Is that actually a reality?
This is an honest question cuzclassified stuff more than I would.

>> H. R. McMaster (19:16):
I won't say that it is reality.
There is quite a bit inthe public domain about this.
I mean, go back to the Super Microincident, for example,
I mean, only some of that'sbeen released publicly.
So, I mean,there is a concerted effort at espionage.
Look at the vault attacksthat have just been revealed.

(19:37):
China is developing the abilityto cripple our infrastructure,
cripple our transportation infrastructure,cripple our communications infrastructure.
And I know this might soundoverly alarmist to you, but
I think that this is an effort to providethem not only with coercive power over us,
but maybe even a first-strikenuclear capability.
Because when you look at what they'redoing from a cyber espionage perspective

(20:01):
and then combine that with the 400%increase in their nuclear forces, combine
that with what the object has been ofmuch of their surveillance, the balloon.
The reason the balloon flew over theMidwest and exited over Norfolk should be
kind of obvious in terms of whatcommunications intelligence they were
trying to collect that can't be collectedfrom low Earth orbit, for example, or

(20:25):
by other means.

>> John H. Cochrane (20:26):
Tariffs on balloons aren't gonna stop that.
So if you have a SBN->> H. R. McMaster: You shoot down
the balloon,you shoot down the balloon, yeah.
[LAUGH]>> Bill Whalen: Guys,
I gotta step in here.
We have only so much time today andwe have Frank Dakota, our colleague,
is on next week, sowe'll talk more about China then.
This will be fun, to be continued, guys.

>> Bill Whalen (20:42):
John, you really have to be more passionate about this, okay?
Bring a little more fire.

>> H. R. McMaster (20:46):
I love this- [CROSSTALK]

>> Niall Ferguson (20:49):
Bill, there's one last
point that has to be made.
We know from what Tesla's doingthat every Tesla is gathering
information from its cars.
It's all the data gathered by Tesla andobviously BYD,
the Chinese EV company, will do the same.
And so, the problem about having a fleetof Chinese-made electric vehicles in
the United States is perfectlyobvious because in time of crisis,

(21:13):
these things would not be,this would not be autonomous.
[CROSSTALK]>> John H. Cochrane: Dollars per vehicle
for that national security privilege.
And so, okay, HR,you don't get 10 aircraft carriers.
I mean, at some point you gottahave some cost benefit and
meet the threat with where, let's look atthe chips in the cars, let's examine them.

(21:34):
Let's not just cut it cuz we are headinginto an extraordinarily expensive
American impoverishing cold warsecurity war, trade war with China.
And there's a history of a little bit ofparanoia in the US about such things.
And I just wanna make sure we'reclear-headed about what we're doing,
what the threat is,what the long-run goal is, and

(21:56):
not just going in down oneof these alleys again.

>> Bill Whalen (22:00):
All right, to be continued.
Let us now segue to President Trump'sfirst trip overseas in his second term.
He goes golfing,gulfing with a U and not an O.
Would you like to talk about the fact thatthe president is coming back with what he
calls a palace in the sky?
This is a Boeing 747, courtesy of theQatari royal family that will be tricked
out as Air Force 1,then one day end up in the Trump library.

(22:22):
Would you like to talk about the Trumpfamily's rather disturbing dealings in
the Middle East and the overlap betweenUS Policy and family money-making?
Niall, pick any of those orall of those if you like.
[LAUGH]>> Niall Ferguson: Well, let me try and
weave them all together.
I think it's getting harder and
harder to discern a strategicconcept in the second Trump term.

(22:45):
In the Middle East,in the first Trump term,
there was a remarkable strategic concept,and it produced the Abraham Accords.
It was one of the most successful partsof the first Trump term foreign policy.
But here it's harder andharder to discern where it's going.
For a time we, I think, assumed thatthe United States would support

(23:07):
Israel as it tried to finish offthe job it started last year with Iran.
You'll remember Iranattacked Israel twice.
The attacks were highly unsuccessful.
And then Israel attackedIran highly successfully,
exposed its air defenses as very weak.
And I think I was waiting for
the job to be finished with airstrikesagainst Iran's nuclear facilities.

(23:30):
That is all now apparently on hold.
Suddenly, Prime Minister Netanyahulooks isolated.
President Trump is talking aboutresuscitating the Iran nuclear deal
in some form.
And it gets more confusing,we launched long overdue strikes against
the Houthis to try to stop their rampantpiracy and disruption of the sea lanes,

(23:54):
and then called it off when it turnedout to be a little harder than perhaps
had been- Expected, so I struggleto see the strategic concept there.
The President is going from onestop to another doing deals.
And it gets harder and harder tofind where the lines drawn between

(24:15):
the United States government andthe Trump Organization in ways that I
think ultimately will get the Presidentinto trouble later in his term.
He's giving his political enemiesa great deal of material to work with.
And it's obviously indefensible toaccept as lavish a gift as the Qataris

(24:36):
are offering, when you think aboutwhat else the Qataris are doing.
One last question, is it right forthe President's emissary,
Steve Witkoff,to negotiate directly with Hamas?
All of this has left me feeling ratherdisillusioned about the direction
of the second Trump terms foreign policy.

(24:57):
Not only have we seen a bungledgame of chicken with China, but
now it seems to me that our entireMiddle Eastern strategy is unraveling.

>> H. R. McMaster (25:05):
Hey, I agree with Niall's observations here,
except that I would say whatis encouraging to me is
that President Trump is engagedin the Middle East at all, right?
Because one of the concerns that I had isthat he tended to regard the Middle East
mainly as kind of a mess to be avoided.
And I think with these engagementswith the Saudis, the Qataris and

(25:27):
the Emiratis that he will see thatthis is an arena of competition,
a geostrategic arena of competitionimportant to the United States.
Because it's relevant to the broadercompetitions with China and Russia.
And problems that originate in the MiddleEast don't stay in the Middle East,
especially the problem ofjihadist terrorism, for example.

(25:49):
So also the free flow of commerce,the effect that
disruption would have onthe global economy, his agenda for
energy security,his desire to drive oil prices down,
but not so far down that itdisrupts the US Investment in

(26:09):
the US Energy export andthe US Energy industry overall.
So hey,I'm just glad he's not disengaging,
I guess the big question is gonna bewill this type of diplomacy, right?
This assumption, and John, I'd liketo hear what you think about this.
I think the assumption is thateconomic integration, right?

(26:31):
And commerce in the regioncan overcome ideological and
geopolitical competitionsthat have created so
much violence andsuffering in the Middle East.
And I think that that's the premisethat kind of underlines a lot of what,

(26:53):
that is at the foundation of a lotof what President Trump is doing.
So I mean, I'm skeptical about that,
you see this with even the reliefof sanctions on Syria based,
I think what will turn out tobe a forlorn hope that Al Shara,
the former Julani leader of Syria isno longer a jihadist terrorist and

(27:16):
is going to be inclusive andbring a degree of stability to Syria.
But I think that's really going to bethe test of this kind of swing through
the Middle East andwhat it does reveal, right?
Which I think again is thisassumption that the commerce,
economic integration can overcome sortof the furies of the Middle East.

>> John H. Cochrane (27:39):
Well, there's no one more dedicated to the proposition that
commerce can help overcome passions thanI witness our discussions about China.
But I think you're right andthat was actually a not very well
heralded element ofthe first Abraham Accords.
Even the part involving Israel andthe Palestinians before October 7th,

(28:01):
there was sort of a plan, why don't we letthem get rich first and then we can talk
about having a country as a->> H. R. McMaster: Yeah,
this is the Jared Kushner plan thatwas revealed, I think was it in Oman?
I can't remember, I think it was in Oman.
Yeah, it was heavy on government investment as
the way to get rich as opposedto just let them get rich.
But certainly that was a very good idea.

(28:23):
Let me comment on the sort ofeconomic aspect of the other part,
the 747 is an interesting story.
Of course, if you're worriedabout buying Cranes from China,
I don't know that the presidential seven,the presidential 747 is one where I
might have a little worry about just wherethe electronic components come from.
But it's also a story,why aren't we building our own?

(28:43):
Why is it taking Boeing 10 yearsto outfit a 30 year old plane for
the President when it tookthem one year to produce B29
bombers from scratch in World War II?
Now, that's partly a storyof the bloat that has
happened in America'smilitary contracting.
Compare SpaceX versus NASA'sability to produce a rocket.

(29:08):
Boeing is really falling apart onits ability to actually build stuff.
But partly, it's what happens whenyou have lots and lots of rules and
security rules.
So why is Boeing having such trouble?
Well, everybody who screws in so
much as a bolt on that plane has to havespecial national security clearance.
Guess what?
There aren't a lot of qualified aircraftmechanics, there aren't enough,

(29:31):
period, because Boeing fired most of them.
But there aren't enough who have alsothe special security clearance, so
it takes a long time to make that thing.
Another point I noticed is Trump is outthere not just making money for himself,
but trying to get investment into Americafrom the Saudis, which is very nice.
But I would like to ask,
where are the Saudis supposed to getdollars to make investments in America?

(29:54):
Well, they have to sell stuff like oil fordollars, fine.
Which they sell to other countrieswho then have to sell goods and
services to America to get dollars.
If you want investment in the US youhave to let people sell us stuff,
trade deficits,finance capital account surpluses.
So it is kind of interesting howthose things don't seem to add up.

(30:18):
And last yet, the connection andfamily wealth with
American diplomacy is oneof the worrying things.
I would start with issuingcrypto in your own name for
the billions of dollars, we've allkind of, everyone's kind of looked.

(30:39):
There's so much else going on thatnobody's paying attention to it, but
I think Niall is right.
If the economy tanks and the Democratstake over the House, you can be sure
that this will be something they'rereally gonna go after Trump for.

>> H. R. McMaster (30:54):
Yeah, or the new social club in Washington that you can join for
half a million dollars.
And I mean, I just remember when I wouldfly like through Shannon, Ireland,
oftentimes when I was travelingas a national security advisor.
And I'll tell you that the directorof that airport was fantastic guy.
He would always give me this reallyawesome bottle of whiskey when

(31:14):
I came through.
And it would always almost bring a tearto my eye every time I would just turn it
over to [LAUGH] the government,cuz yeah, you can either buy it,
which I couldn't afford on a governmentstyle, or you give it away.
I mean, you can't take gifts like thisbecause the expectation is, of course,
you're gonna be beholden.
I mean, this is to our ally, right?
A friend in Ireland, and Gutter, ofcourse, Gutter has a mixed record, right?

(31:41):
Of playing it both ways and so, yeah,I think this is a really bad idea, right?
We don't need the plane, thank you somuch, I appreciate the gesture.
Here's a White House mug,we give the worst gifts, by the way,
Americans get terrible gifts.
I would use my own money to buy sets of Ofglasses with the founders on it to give.

(32:02):
Because I mean,
you would have like the Vietnamesewould come in with all this great,
all this great swag, and then you're like,well, I have this pen for you.
[LAUGH]>> John H. Cochrane: Didn't Obama
give the queen like a CD collection of hisown speeches or something at the start?

>> Niall Ferguson (32:19):
[CROSSTALK] How nice.

>> Bill Whalen (32:22):
Let me ask a very quick but naive question.
We have only a coupleminutes left of this segment.
What is Qatar's end game here?
So they're giving the President A747.
They pump a lot of money into AmericAmerican universities, they help Hamas,
they underwrite Al Jazeera.
What is Qatar doing here?

>> H. R. McMaster (32:38):
Well, Qatar wants to be bigger than they are.
They're an economic power,but they're a tiny country.
They're a tiny country sandwichedbetween Saudi Arabia which hasn't been
friendly to them andIran which has territorial disputes and
disputes over gas reservesin the Gulf with them.
So we've been the big dog,we're the big dog on the front porch.

(32:58):
But also what they do is they wannaplay a big geostrategic game and
to do it mainly by exporting an Islamistideology through the Muslim Brotherhood.
And they wanna be seen as even more thanSaudi Arabia, the defender of Islam.
They do this through Al Jazeera,their news outlet and

(33:19):
news outlet which has gotten better butreally in the early 2000s turned,
killing Americans fromextreme into mainstream.
Based on their advocacy forjihadist terrorist organizations and
the trope of the Zionistcrusader conspiracy and
quick cut images from the west bank towhat was happening in Iraq and so forth.

(33:44):
So I just think they've alwaysplayed it both ways, right?
And hosting Taliban, which theywould say it was at our request,
but allowing them to stay in thesefive star hotels and fundraise there,
same thing with, with Hamas.
And then working with Turkey inlarge measure to fund a lot of these
Islamist organizations includingthe Muslim Brotherhood,

(34:04):
which is kind of the gateway,it's a gateway to jihadist terrorism.
So hey, I've written a little bit aboutthis in, in the last couple books but
Qatar like the Pakistanis,are very adept at playing it both ways and
so you gotta be clear eyedabout it with them and, and
will Sheikh Tamim,will he start to see the light?

(34:24):
Well, maybe, butthis is one of these situations where
you don't want to trust unless youcan verify the changes in behavior.

>> Bill Whalen (34:33):
All right, gentlemen, our final theater we're going to look at.
We haven't discussed as much in the fiveyears we've been doing this show, and
that would be India and Pakistan,who recently engaged in hostilities.
They lobbed missiles anddrones in each other's directions.
Vice President Vance,Secretary of State Rubio got involved.
They talked to the two countries andthey agreed to a ceasefire.
But we believe it'sa very shaky ceasefire.
So let's talk about what is at stake here.

(34:54):
The world obviously holds its breath whenthese two get violent because they both
have nuclear arms.
What I'm interested is also the kind ofbehind the scenes politics here, Niall.
We talk about Cold War 2.0.
Is this lining up as a proxythe United States on one side,
which would be India and China, onthe other side, which would be Pakistan?

>> Niall Ferguson (35:12):
Well, Bill,
I think the interesting thing isthat that's what didn't happen.
Suggesting that our Cold War is probablymoving into a phase of detente, something
I've been advocating for some, not onlyover trade, but over geopolitics too.
The near war, or small war,
began with a terrorist attack in Kashmir.

(35:36):
The Indians retaliated against targetsnot only in Kashmir, but in Pakistan.
Blaming the terrorist attack,
at least in part on the Pakistanigovernment, Pakistan then shot back.
Things escalated rapidly.
It wasn't nearly as big a war asthe 1971 war between India and

(35:59):
Pakistan, butit was one of those echoes of the 1970s
that I keep picking upfrom this administration.
And as in 1971, the US governmentdidn't want the war to escalate.
But actually the critical variablewas that neither did China.

(36:21):
China was very lukewarm in itscommentary on the conflict and
really didn't show any sign ofwanting Pakistan to ramp it up.
So that was probably as important as the,the US intervention.
It's clear that something came throughto Washington and HR may have thoughts
on this that got people prettyworried as things were escalating.

(36:43):
I mean, there were dog fights goingon in the air between jet planes.
And it turned out that the Chinesemade planes that the Pakistanis
were using performed pretty well.
We don't know for sure that they shot downEuropean made jets that the Indians had,
but it seems like at least one wentdown at any event, whatever it was that

(37:05):
triggered the intervention it seemsto have been a diplomatic win for
the Trump administration.
And one should recognizethat Secretary Rubio,
with some help from Vice President Vance,
played an important part ingetting both sides to step back.
And as far as I can see,the worst of the crisis is now over, HR?

>> H. R. McMaster (37:29):
Yeah, I think it was certainly a cause for grave concern,
right?
These are two nuclear armed powerswhich have fought multiple wars
against each other.
It seemed like the situation couldescalate, as Niall mentioned, with these
sort of dog fights that occurred really,not over one another's territory,
but long range air to air engagements,as well as some of the missile strikes,

(37:53):
the retaliatory strikesthat India had taken.
So I think it was a diplomatic win forthe Trump administration.
It showed how effective diplomacy can be.
And then, of course, as you indicated,Bill, with the question,
I think what you're seeing is kindof a geostrategic shift, though,

(38:14):
in South Asia, with Pakistan essentiallybecoming a client state of China's.
And really what had driven ourkind of love, hate relationship
with Pakistan changing because wereally don't have the interest
in Afghanistan that we had whenwe're still in Afghanistan.

(38:34):
And so Pakistan can't kind of play it bothways with us anymore the way it used to.
And so I think there is kind ofa hardening now India is the most
reluctant of partners because Indiais kind of schizophrenic between
a fear of abandonment bythe United States and
the fear of entanglementwith the United States.

(38:55):
And they have a legacy relationship withRussia that I think they're very reluctant
and will remain reluctant to changebecause they don't think we're super
reliable after the withdrawalfrom Afghanistan.
And they need Russia,
as some kind of a hedge against China,who also remember, just a couple years
ago was bludgeoning Indian soldiersto death on the Himalayan frontier.

(39:18):
So I think it's important to viewthat this ongoing competition,
hostility between Pakistan and Indiafrom the perspective of each of them and
to understand how that hostility nowfits in to big geostrategic shifts
involving China, Russia, India, Pakistanand the United States in our interests.

>> Bill Whalen (39:40):
John, India is very much on the radar screen of our director,
Condoleezza Rice.
She took a delegation toNew Delhi a couple years ago.
We have here atHoover Initiative she launched,
it's the Huntington Program onstrengthening US India relations.
I know you have some thoughts here, butin addition to what you're about to say.
Do you buy into the conceptof the Indian century?

>> John H. Cochrane (39:59):
India could have a wonderful century for
If it would simply get out of the way andlet itself grow,
the puzzle is why the last centurywasn't the India century and
why China, a communist dictatorship,I have no more love for them than HR does.
Why did they grow like crazy whereasa democracy is still stuck in
overregulated license,Raj, to a great extent.

(40:21):
The question I wanted to ask HR andNiall was, in this conflict,
isn't this a sign that a few nuclearweapons aren't a terrible thing?
It limits the conventional war,you have, this was a flare up, but
the US and the Soviet Union hadflare ups too around the world, but

(40:42):
always stepping one stepback from the brink.
This did not turn into a full scale war,and surely, the fact that you're
dealing with a nuclear armed counterpartyhad something to do with it.
Now, you have to have some believethat there's sanity on the other side.
The ideal is where India and
Pakistan simply limit themselves tothe parade of funny walks on the border.

(41:06):
If you haven't seen it,
it's just hilarious, the funny walks theydo on each other's border every day.
But occasional small thingsthat then get defused.
And also, why does US and China step back?
We don't want them escalating,because both US and China
understand that a nuke going off in one ofthese things would be a terrible thing.

(41:26):
Much worse than if they were to go atsome conventional war on the other side
of the world.
Which also, back to China a little bit,
to some extent, is Xi Jinping Lenin oris he Brezhnev?
[LAUGH] A risk averse old man whodoesn't wanna stir things up, or
someone willing to have war fora worldwide revolution?

(41:47):
Certainly, in this case,
they did not wanna encouragePakistan to go crazy on it.
So, a few nukes may notbe a terrible thing.
Now, granted, by threatening somethingthat is absolutely awful should it happen,
but it was a stabilizingforce in the Cold War.

>> Niall Ferguson (42:04):
I think, first of all, John,
that you need to updateyour Indian economic data,
because Indian growth has been one ofthe big stories over the last ten years.

>> John H. Cochrane (42:16):
Liberalization in the 1990s was great.
I'm sorry,I didn't mean to indicate [INAUDIBLE].

>> Niall Ferguson (42:20):
You kinda made it sound as if they were still stuck
in that old model, butthey've really broken free of and
it is really one of the bright spotson the global economic landscape.
And that's part of what's happening.
The imbalance between India andPakistan, which is already considerable
demographically, is becomingenormous economically.

(42:40):
Because as India forgesahead technologically,
Pakistan is still kinda stuckin a semi failed state economy.
So that's part of what we're seeing here,the imbalance is enormous.
But I think that the problem abouthaving lots of nuclear armed powers in
the world is that while you might say,well, look, this creates a sort of

(43:04):
mutual assured destruction at the locallevel as well as at the global level.
That's true until it's not true, and themore of these nuclear dyads there are, and
there clearly could bemore in the next ten or
20 years as the regime of nonproliferation breaks down.
The higher the probability that atsome point somebody is gonna use
a nuclear weapon.
And this was always the problem aboutPakistan becoming a nuclear power.

(43:27):
It's not only that Pakistanbecame a nuclear power,
it then became a sourceof nuclear technology.
HR knows all about that,
because he saw the consequencesof its technology transfers.

>> H. R. McMaster (43:39):
Yeah, this is the AQ network.

>> John H. Cochrane (43:42):
I don't wanna apply that to the Iranians, but thank you for
expanding on that.
India has had a remarkableopening in liberalization,
they have a long way to go though.
So India, my numbers may be a little bitold, GDP per capita is around 5,000,
China's around 20,000,US is around 80,000.
So they've been growing, butalbeit from a very low level.
And they have a very long way to go asfar as trade liberalization, openness,

(44:06):
ability to run things in the country,lots of internal dysfunction.
India has that potential, I want to seethem do under a democratic state what
China did and grow up first to be 20,000,and then let's make it 40 and 60,000.
That potential is there, and it wouldbe wonderful if they can let it happen.

>> Bill Whalen (44:26):
Let me ask you a question, gentlemen, do you see the truce holding or
do you see a renewal of tit fortat strikes or
do you see an all out war breaking out?
HR.

>> H. R. McMaster (44:35):
Hey, well, [LAUGH] Pakistan, since maybe 1948, right,
has been using terrorist organizationsas an arm of its foreign policy.
It has never held back on that and I thinkthat they've created these groups for
that specific purpose.
This is Lashkari Tayba and its offshoots,
which were probably responsible forthis mass murder,

(45:01):
this brutal mass murder ofyoung Hindu men in Kashmir.
I think the current army leadership, whichis what you really have to really consider
in Pakistan, remains hostile andremains prone to using these groups.
General Munir, the head ofthe Pakistani army said the week before
the attack in Kashmir,Kashmir is the jugular vein of India,

(45:25):
which seemed to foreshadowthe attacks that occurred.
And so, I think what you'regonna see are continued efforts
of each country to destabilize the otherand impose costs on the other.
There are allegations thatIndia is supporting Balak
separatist groups in Pakistan.
And certainly, the evidence, I think,will become clearer in the next weeks,

(45:51):
maybe even of the Pakistani army'scomplicity in the attacks in Kashmir,
just like we saw after the horrificMumbai attacks of 2008.
But yeah, I mean, this is nota problem set that's gonna go away.
It's a problem set that we'regonna get to continue, I think,

(46:11):
t to monitor and then stay engaged with.
And as you saw,
American diplomacy can be indispensablein diffusing these kind of crises.

>> Bill Whalen (46:21):
John.

>> John H. Cochrane (46:21):
From Pakistan to India to Qatar to US Companies,
everybody likes to playboth sides of the game in
a world that's unclear and not well led.

>> Bill Whalen (46:35):
Yeah, Niall, the theme today seems to be former British problems.

>> Niall Ferguson (46:39):
Well, if you rule the world, you can be blamed for
almost every problem.
And as Britain largely ruled the worldin the 19th and early 20th century,
it's fashionable to say that everythingis a legacy of British imperialism,
from Middle East tothe Pakistan-India problem.
But of course, you don't need tostudy too much history of the period

(47:01):
before the rise of the British Empireto see that many of the conflicts
we talk about today predate British power.
And the British tried to deal withthem the way we try to deal with them,
sometimes more successfully andsometimes less so.

>> Bill Whalen (47:15):
Okay, do you see an off ramp here or
do you think they'regonna renew hostilities?

>> Niall Ferguson (47:18):
Well, I think that there won't be an escalation.
I think the hostilities are a sort ofpermanent feature in the sense that
both governments playthese cards regularly.
We get these crises fairly frequently,because they play well domestically.
And the Modi government, Narendra Modi'sgovernment in India, which has been more

(47:39):
economically successful than anypost independence government.
Also relies heavily on a kind of Hindunationalism for its political success.
And Modi could be seen just a fewdays ago with Indian troops,
whipping up their patriotic fervor.
There's a similar game that can be played.

(48:00):
By the Pakistanis, so I think this isa very good example of the primacy of
domestic politics in foreign policy.
Neither side wants too big a war becausethey don't want the casualties that they
saw, not to mention the economicdisruption of 1971.
But I think we've probably seenpeak conflict this year, but
it'll be back at some point.

>> H. R. McMaster (48:19):
And this is also Hussein Haqqani's observation, I think he
was who said most countries have an army,but in Pakistan the army has a country.
And one of the ways that the armymaintains its kind of grip on
power is they see a hostileIndian behind every tree and
wanna perpetuate the kind of animosityin the conflict, it's not a coincidence.

(48:42):
I think whenever you see diplomaticprogress between the Prime Minister of
Pakistan, it's kind of powerless.
And the Indian prime Prime Minister,
what you think then quickly get soon afterthat is a terrorist attack, which kind of
torpedoes any sort of progress at furthereconomic integration, for example.

>> Bill Whalen (49:03):
All right, gentlemen, on to the lightning round.
Earlier today I was waiting to geton the Stanford Marguerite shuttle.
And as the shuttle approached, sotoo did our colleague Stephen Kotkin.
And I quickly got distracted by Kotkin.
Kotkin and I had an interestingconversation on the ride over to Hoover.
And what we were talking about was a storyin the Stanford Review about Chinese

(49:26):
espionage on the Stanford campus.
The Chinese like to target inparticular Stanford STEM students.
Now Dr. Cochin's position was kind of a,this is not really that much of a story,
it's been going on.
Want to get your gentleman thoughts onwhat is going on here in terms of Chinese
espionage and campuses.
Is it something unique or is it just,once again, another aspect of Cold War II.

>> Niall Ferguson (49:46):
I'm shocked, shocked that the Chinese could be carrying out
espionage at a major researchuniversity in the United States.
Well, I mean,>> H. R. McMaster: gambling,
gambling in the back.

>> Bill Whalen (49:57):
Gambling in Casablanca.

>> Rick Blaine (49:59):
On what ground?

>> Captain Louis Renault (49:59):
I'm shocked,
shocked to find that gamblingis going on in here.

>> Croupier (50:03):
You're winning, sir.

>> Captain Louis Renault (50:04):
Thank you very much.

>> Niall Ferguson (50:06):
[LAUGH] This is the least exciting breaking news.
It's been going on atthe University of California,
I remember having conversationsabout that more than six years ago.
Of course it happened at Harvard andindeed some faculty got implicated there.
And this goes back to the beginning ofour conversation on this episode of

(50:30):
Goodfellows.
The Chinese have been engaged in Cold Wartype activities in the United States for
many years.
And of course, they targeted Stanford,why wouldn't you?
It's probably the leading STEMresearch university in the world.

>> Bill Whalen (50:46):
John.

>> John H. Cochrane (50:47):
So I read the article with interest and
I also spoke to the reporter a bit.
Universities, the article didn't sayanything about what actually might have
been stolen.
Universities are notrepositories of great secrets.
We are here to give away intellectualproperty for free, that's what we do.
Every lab at Stanford is hurried in tryingto publish their results to the open

(51:14):
world as fast as humanly possible to getthere before the other lab publishes it.
There are certainly no secretsin my office at Hoover.
All I want is for anybody to payattention to the research I write.
Now, I guess the Chinesearen't in there yet, so
I think this is an exampleof the paranoia.

(51:36):
Yeah, they're around and they're fordomestic political control and
to keep tabs on what's going on.
But much intelligence gathering justconsists of reading the newspapers of
foreign countries.
Now, there are labs and there are thingsat Stanford that are doing classified
research, and I would presumehave some sort of controls on it.
But I would be much more outragedif I had some concrete idea of

(52:00):
what horrible secretsthey are slipping away,
which was not mentionedat all in the article.
In an institution that is there to giveaway everything we learn as fast as
humanly possible.

>> H. R. McMaster (52:14):
Hey, well, this article,
it's the tip of the iceberg, okay?
There's been extremely deep penetrationof a lot of the research that
goes on in US Universities across thecountry of PLA scientists and MSS agents.
There are huge effortsongoing to extract as

(52:34):
much sensitive technology thathas military applications.
And then apply it to developinga differential advantage,
to building a differential advantage forthe People's Liberation Army.
I don't think that US universities,and certainly government-funded
research from the Department of Energy,the Department of Defense,

(52:58):
should bring into it scientists fromhostile military organizations.
The other aspect of this, though, John andNiall, and that I think needs further
development, is the degree to which theMSS is the Ministry for State Security.
And certain front organizations that theydevelop, like the Chinese Scholars and

(53:18):
Students Association,are here to keep tabs on Chinese students.
And I think every provost in everyuniversity should do everything
in their power to protect their studentsfrom coercion by a foreign hostile state.
And there have been so many incidentsof this, and this is in the public

(53:40):
record of a Chinese student sayingsomething positive about Tibet and
Tibet's need forrelative independence or autonomy.
Or for Taiwan's democracy or, God forbid,criticism of the Chinese Communist Party,
which is engaged in culturalgenocide among other things.
And then their parents gettinga knock on the door back in China.

(54:04):
So I think that there's a lotof work to be done here.
Fortunately, there are someprivate sector solutions to this
that can help universitiesdo the due diligence,
that can work in a tactfulway with universities.
The University ofCalifornia has done this,
many other universities have not done it,and I think it's irresponsible.

(54:25):
Years ago, I think 2018, maybe 2019,Hoover did a really good study
of how to protect the research enterprisefrom state-based espionage, right?
And it doesn't argue that universitiesshould become the FBI, but
it argues that the university officialsshould just be responsible, and make sure
that they're not being penetratedby a foreign intelligence service.

(54:49):
So, I think there's a lot ofwork to be done here, John, and
the situation is muchworse than you think.
And in 2019 or 2020 we had ourfirst tech track two dialogue.
We brought together senior civilianofficials, senior government officials,
and CEOs of companies,tech entrepreneurs, to talk about, really,

(55:11):
the challenge associated withthe competition with China mainly.
To kick off that conference,we had a Stanford senior
brief his senior thesis on Chineseespionage in Silicon Valley.
It was jaw dropping, andit was jaw dropping mainly because of
the degree of utter complacency,negligence.

(55:32):
So, I think I would disagree with you,
John, I think there'sa lot of work to be done.
The CCP, the MSS are all overmany US universities and
we should protect our students at the veryleast, and protect the technology
that's critical to defense at the veryleast from that kind of penetration.

>> John H. Cochrane (55:52):
And there we agree,
protect our students Ithink is very important.
Protect actual secrets,actual military stuff, that's important.
But let's not get paranoid and
where this is going is increasinglyplaces just won't have Chinese students.
They won't hire Chinese orChinese American, even faculty.

(56:12):
It's just, no, can't have China alla bunch of spies and that's a tragedy.
Bringing Chinese students to America isone of the best ways of getting American
ideas back to China.
And simply cutting it all off insome paranoia about they'll discover
the secrets of the anthropologydepartment, I think is, a danger.

>> H. R. McMaster (56:33):
I agree, and some people will say, hey,
we'll try to kind of raisethe Asia hate issue and so forth.
But actually, I think what's racist is,is to conclude that Chinese students or
Chinese American studentswould be sympathetic to
the Chinese Communist Party andwhat it's doing so I think you're right.

(56:53):
We wanna maximize positiveinteractions with the Chinese people,
with Chinese students,with Chinese scholars.
But do so in a way that is cognizant ofthe threats that's posed by the party and
the party's efforts to usethose interactions to advance
its agenda at our expense.

>> John H. Cochrane (57:13):
And like you said, if there's burglars around,
the first thing you dois you lock the door.

>> H. R. McMaster (57:17):
Yeah, right.

>> Bill Whalen (57:18):
All right, let me squeeze in one final question,
according to New York Magazine, collegestudents are using AI to take notes,
draft essays, andbrainstorm at an alarming pace.
Talked to a student she said,
quote, college is just how wellI can use ChatGPT at this point.
And she adds, she used it to pastea chapter from her Genocide and
Mass Atrocity textbook into ChatGPT.

(57:38):
You all are college professors,you are teaching or have taught
at the college level, what, if anything,can be done to harness AI at this point?

>> Niall Ferguson (57:46):
This is a massive threat to the functioning not only of
universities, but of schools.
Most professors don'trealize the extent to which
assignments are now beingdone entirely with ChatGPT.
They don't read the books, they don'tthink, and they don't write the essays.

(58:07):
And the essay which you just quoted,which I think was from New York Magazine,
is a very good exposure ofjust how rampant this is.
Of course there are good uses forAI tools, but
taking your children out ofthe educational process isn't one of them.
And so there has to be a drastic change inthe way that we do things at universities

(58:30):
and in high schools.
That means that assessment of studentperformance can no longer be based on
assignments that they can take home anddo on their laptops,
that's just ChatGPT materialthat you're gonna get back.
We have to go back to pen andpaper examinations without devices
in the room andprobably some VIVA type oral exams too.

(58:53):
The institutions that do this firstwill be able to save their students.
Those that lag behind are gonna create
an educational disaster ona par with COVID maybe worse.

>> Bill Whalen (59:05):
HR.

>> H. R. McMaster (59:06):
Yeah, I agree with Niall,
what I was worried about isthe atrophy of certain skills,
especially the ability to read andthink and synthesize, and
impose order on a broad range ofsources to ask the right question.
And then to conduct effective researchto answer the question on its own terms,
and I mean all those skillsI think are at risk.

(59:29):
And I think what we need, and I haven'treally thought enough about this,
but we need certain guidelines for
the use of this tremendouscapability of large language models.
And the ability to accessinformation in new ways,
maybe to help you improve analyticalskills rather than have them atrophy.
And I just don't know I haven'tthought enough about it.

(59:51):
But I think maybe there should be somekind of a guideline for students and
to convince them, hey, it's in your owninterest in terms of development of your
own intellectual ability, your analyticalskills to follow these guidelines.

>> John H. Cochrane (01:00:06):
I think this is great,
[LAUGH] it's a tumultuous timethere was a wonderful story today.
I won't get the details right, buta professor, I think it was at Columbia,
at NYU, figured out how toChatGPT AI proof his assignments.
The students were up inarms requesting extra time,
I can't possibly do this what do you meanI can't use AI, it's unfair and so forth.

(01:00:29):
We see a big generational dividethis is fantastic, young people have
learned to use AI in a way that most ofus old fogies are still pretty bad at.
And clearly the labor market of the nextten years is going to be really
skewed to people who can use AI butuse it to produce good stuff.

(01:00:50):
Who know how to do chat, the right promptsfor the chat, who know how to edit it when
it's done, who know how tointegrate the various AI systems,
know which one is good for what, sothat is the skill they're gonna need now.
They're gonna need the humanskills on top of those skills, so
I think Niall had essentiallywhat has to happen.
Old fogies like us are going to haveto figure out a different pedagogy for

(01:01:12):
getting those humanskills on top of the AI,
the human knowledge thathas to filter the AI.
When calculators come in, you need humanskills, when you put in two plus two and
it says 5,220, you have to have somesense that something was wrong there.
Our evaluations,our pedagogy, how we do it,

(01:01:33):
how we get that human skillis gonna have to change.
And maybe this new generation will knowhow to change all that when it comes.
Our colleges are producingthe labor force of the future,
which will be AI enhanced inthe way that all of us are not.

>> Bill Whalen (01:01:51):
Right, gentlemen, we'll leave it there good spirited conversation,
thank you very much.
That's it for this episode of Goodfellows,but fear not,
we will be back with a new episode willcome out around the end of May and
our guest will be our colleagueFrank Dikötter, talking about China.
So probably picking up where he leftoff on some of the topics today.
To make sure you don't miss Goodfellows,
subscribe to the show on whatever platformyou're watching or listening right now.

(01:02:13):
If you wanna keep up with what Sir Niall,John and HR are doing and
they all are on social media,they have X accounts.
You should also go tothe Hoover Institution website,
which is hoover.org and sign up forthe Hoover Daily Report,
which comes your inbox weekdays,anytime Niall, John and
HR are in the news or doing somethinghere at Hoover, you'll find out about it.
On behalf of the Goodfellows,Sir Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane,

(01:02:33):
Lt.Gen.HR McMaster,thanks for joining us today.
Hope you enjoyed the show, till nexttime take care, we'll see you soon.
[MUSIC]

>> Presenter (01:02:43):
If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content
featuring H.R McMaster, watchBattlegrounds also available @ hoover.org.