Who’s Going To Win The Future? Dan Wang on China’s Engineers vs. America’s Lawyers | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution

One great power (China) has a relentless thirst to build that comes with a terrible human cost, while its main rival (America) is a more lawyerly and free society that’s prone to stifling ideas both good and bad. On the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Dan Wang, a Hoover Institution research fellow and author of the bestseller Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, joins GoodFellows regulars Niall Ferguson and H.R. McMaster to discuss what the future holds for the two Cold War 2 rivals, plus Wang’s firsthand experiences witnessing China’s engineering boom and enduring its draconian pandemic policies. After that, the fellows weigh in on President Trump’s recent United Nations address and the state of that institution, the likelihood of Trump’s Gaza peace plan coming to fruition, the provision of long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, plus the merits of a US military strike inside Venezuela to counter narco-terrorism. In the lightning round: why America’s military brass gathered at Quantico; National Guard troops head to Portland, Oregon; Scotland’s frustration with illegal immigration; and the feasibility of the US regaining Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base. 

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Episode Transcript

(00:08):
- It is Wednesday, October 1st, 2025.
And welcome back to Goodfellows,
a Hoover Institution broadcast,examining social, economic,
political, and geopolitical concerns.
I'm Bill Whalen. I'm a HooverDistinguished policy fellow.
I'll be your moderator today.
Begin with a little sad news for you.
We don't have our fullcompliment of good fellows today.
John Cochrane is trekkingaround Europe. As we record.

(00:29):
He may jump on the show, he might not.
We will see John, we miss you.
Hope to get you back on the show soon,
but we're gonna make do withour two remaining fellows
who are more than capableof carrying the show.
And those good fellowswould be the historian,
sir Niall Ferguson and formerPresidential National Security
Advisor, Lieutenant GeneralH.R. McMaster. Niall and H.R.,
in addition to, there are many accolades

(00:49):
and honors are Hoover Senior Fellows.
Gentlemen, good to see you.Hope all is well in your worlds.
And today we have two segments for you.
But first we're gonna turnour attention to China.
The timing here is appropriate.Today is October the first.
This is National Day in China,
which is the annual observationof the founding in 1949
of the People's Republic of China.
And we have a very good guest today
to talk about all things China.

(01:11):
And that is Hooverresearch fellow Dan Wang.
Dan is a historian and analyst
to China's technology and development.
More importantly, he is the author
of the New York Times bestseller,breakneck China's Quest
to Engineer the Future.
Dan, welcome to Goodfellows.
- It's great to be here.- So question for you,
if I may dumb down yourbook for you a little bit.
The premise is simply this,
you have two great powerson a competition right now.

(01:33):
The powers have their similarities,
but they have one big difference.
You contend that China is asociety based on engineering.
The United States is asociety based on litigation.
So two questions for you, Dan.
Is there any way the UnitedStates can be more like China,
be more about engineering,
and as you look at these two countries,
which one is betterdesigned to win the future?
The one that builds orthe one that litigates?

(01:54):
- Well, at a first approximation,
I think you wanna bea country that is able
to build something at all,
because it really feels likethe United States has been
stuck in ember for muchof the 1960s onwards.
You know, I was taking thetrain down from New York
to DC a couple of weeks ago to try
to speak at the abundance conference
and the Excel train isall, all fine and good

(02:17):
and a little bit wobbly.
But then I was, while Iwas on the train, I saw
that there's gonna be anew class of Acela trains.
And I got really excited.
That was the headline Iread into the article,
the new Acela trains will be11 minutes slower getting into
Washington DC than the,
than the the present generation of trains.
And so this is where I,I find it really strange

(02:38):
that at a first approximation,we may be moving slower year
by year, decade by decade.
And for the most part,the Chinese are not,
they have been engaged inthis vast construction spasm
of new bridges and highwaysand high-speed rail
and subways, coal plants,nuclear plants, you name it.
And so that is, I think, apretty good thing to have.

(03:00):
And so I think that, you know,
the who's gonna win the future?
I think that is goingto be, it's never going
to be one country that is going
to be ahead over a verylong period of time.
I think that the furtherahead a country is,
the more mistakes it will commit out
of some degree of hubris.
I was living in China between 2020

(03:20):
and, well, between 2017 to 2023.
And in 2020 I observed
that Xi Jinping wasfeeling like he was at the
top of his game.
China was able to control COVID
and Trump's America wasunable to control COVID.
And this is when he decided to smash a lot
of real estate developers,smash a lot of tech companies,

(03:41):
and they made a lot ofmistakes on that basis.
And my view is that whoeveris going to be behind is going
to feel the need really to catch up.
Whoever is ahead is goingto make a a lot of mistakes.
- Hey Dan, if I could pickup on, first of all, hey,
congratulations on a great bookand thank you for writing it
because I think you, you'reproviding us with kind
of the impetus to get ouract together, you know, and,

(04:02):
and start sprinting.
It's a long competition,
but if we don't sprint right now,
I think we're already already behind,
but do you think that the partystill has that same degree
of confidence that you saw in 2020?
I remember like the last meeting we had
with President Trump atthe end of a long day
during his visit in 2017with Lee Kan, you know,
and he didn't wanna meet with the guy and,
but Lee Kan went into thislong soliloquy about, hey,

(04:24):
you guys are finished, right?
We're gonna be the leaders in everything,
in all sorts of advanced manufacturing.
Maybe you can sell us some,you know, pork bellies
and soybeans and, and maybea little bit of energy.
I mean, that was kind oflike, that was kind of the,
you know, the, the,the, the message behind
what he was saying, whichPresident Trump then just,
you know, listened for alittle bit and just got up
and left, which I was glad to see.

(04:45):
But are you as confident after COVID,
after the crackdown on thetech sector, you know, and, and
and after so many of the kindof the own goals that that,
that they've scored onthe real estate sector,
have they createdvulnerabilities in their race
to surpass us?
And is there, is thereconfidence diminishing in your
view at this stage?
- I guess one thing hasnot changed, which is

(05:06):
that America's stilltrying to sell the soybeans
and that has not been verysuccessful at selling all
of the soybeans to China right now.
I think that China made alot of mistakes, made a lot
of own goals, as yousay, H.R. exactly right,
that they smashed the,
what they have triggered isan imploding property sector,
which is kind of slowrolling, it's still going on.
They've raised youth unemployment in part

(05:28):
because of the crackdownin tech companies,
which were employing a lotof youths, for example,
as tutors and English teachers.
And so this, they createda lot of mistakes.
And I remember, you know, I,
I left China at the start of 2023.
I went to become a fellowat the Yale Law schools,
Paul's High China center.
And the narrative at thattime, at the start of 2023 was

(05:49):
that autocracy is weak.
It is on its knees anddemocracies are strong.
And what I remember was that,you know, America had mRNA,
America had Chachi pt
and China did not, the war inUkraine was going badly then
for Russia it looked like it's stalemated.
And that was another signof, you know, success

(06:10):
for democracies at large.
And so, and I think thatin turn produced America
to have some degree of hubris.
It overplayed its handperhaps in various ways.
And right now China is trying to catch up.
China is trying to befriendly towards Jack Ma
and all the other tech titans.
Again, it is trying to resuscitateits economy in a big way.

(06:31):
And so this is part of thedynamic that I think will,
will always observe the winnerwill always make mistakes
and the loser will try harderand harder to catch up.
- Dan, congratulations on the book.
It's a deserved hit.
I want to ask somethingthat hasn't come up yet.
And that's the kind ofunderlying demographic trend in

(06:54):
China, which has turned out
to be much worse than peoplethought even five years ago,
certainly 10 years ago.
So that, you know, theun middle projection is
for China's population to fall by half
by the end of the century.
There's a very strikingdecline in fertility going on,
which it's hard to imaginereversing itself certainly

(07:18):
because of any government policy.
And one has a sense that thatyounger Chinese are reluctant
to marry, reluctant
to have kids are fundamentallypessimistic about,
about the future.
How does one reconcile thatunderlying social reality
with your story of a a,

(07:40):
a great engineering powerthat's unstoppably going
to outbid America?
- Yeah, I think thatdemography is definitely one
of China's big challenges,
but over the longer termright now, the, the slope
of the demographic decline,the curve is not very steep.
The population startedproperly shrinking in 2022,

(08:02):
and right now it is losingsomething like a few hundred
thousand or or or fewmillion people a year.
And I think that is a problem,not for the next 10 years,
not for the next 20 years.
It is more really going
to bite in the next 30 yearswhen the labor force really
starts to contract in a bigger way.
But as our fellowcountrymen has said, Niall,

(08:24):
in the long run, we're all dead.
And what matters is that we have to get
through the short run first.
And what I see in the short runjust over the last 10 years,
you know, I started, I movedto China at the start of 2017,
essentially to cover made in China 2025
and all of these big industrial projects
that the Chinese really wanted to master.
And I would say that, you know, 10 years

(08:45):
after made in China, 2025,
I would say it's beenbroadly pretty successful
that take a look at segment
after segment, whether that'sclean technologies, whether
that's solar, you know, electric vehicles,
industrial robotics,consumer drones, you name it.
Aside from semiconductors
and aviation, it is, China's been going
for the most part fromstrength to strength.

(09:06):
Let's take a look at America.
While China's been growing stronger,
most American apex manufacturershave not done well.
If we take a look at Boeingon aviation intel on chips,
Detroit and even Teslahas, has been suffering
for, for quite a while now.
And so, you know, thedemographics decline is real,
but the, you don't needa very large number
of people in order to have afunctional high tech sector.

(09:29):
You know, the global employmentfor semiconductors is,
or chips is not much morethan a few million people.
Arguably it is, you know,
only a few hundred thousandpeople actually work in the fabs
and China will have, youknow, 700 million people.
That's still plenty of people.
Most of 'em will be pretty old.
But you know, I think that isgoing to be enough of a kernel
of a labor force thereto be pretty competitive.

(09:50):
- Yeah, and if I could pickup on that, it's, it's a pity
that John Cochrane's not here,so you can watch us fight
with him about, about economic statecraft
and versus, you know,free trade and so forth.
But hey, so what, what is,
what is your prescriptionin terms of, you know,
what are the, what arethe top things we have
to do to compete effectively?
And, and could you maybe address
what we debate hereoftentimes, which is really how

(10:12):
to counter China's weaponization
of its status mercantilesmodel against us.
I think we would probablyall agree we don't wanna try
to replicate the Chinese status system,
but we have to protect ourselves, right?
Against, against various unfair trade
and economic practices, youknow, such as, you know, theft
of intellectual property,
industrial espionage overcapacity, overproduction

(10:33):
and dumping to, to drivecompetitors out of markets,
unequal access to markets.
I mean, the list goes on, right?
So what, what do, how,how do, how do we do it?
How do we, how do we sprintcatch up and maintain
and grow a competitiveadvantage over this system
that's kind of incompatible, right?
With our, as, as far as I see it,
our free market economic system.

(10:54):
- Yeah, well glad John's not here
because then we can, we canreally make our views on
industrial policy heard.
So my, my my my my feelingH.R. is that, you know,
to the extent that the Chineseare successful in all sorts
of technologies, we don'thave to copy them wholesale,
you know, we, but let's study them.
Let's understand whatexactly has been going right,

(11:15):
you know, some, something
that I would say it was agiant Chinese success was
that unlike Japan, which mostlyexported its own products,
China has been prettyopen, relatively speaking
to foreign companies in,
in some selected high technologyareas to do a lot of work,
train a lot of its workersand export their goods.

(11:35):
Instead, if you were buyinga Sony Walkman in the 1980s
or some sort of memory chipfrom the Japanese chip makers in
the seventies or eighties,
that was almost entirelya Japanese value add.
Whereas China is very well known
for mostly assembling German
American Japanese componentsinto something like the iPhone

(11:57):
adding only Chinese labor into the mix
and then exporting that product.
China has also the platformfor exporting Tesla vehicles
and you know, 1,000,001other types of goods
that are substantially foreign owned.
And China was really welcomingtowards American investment
in particular, again,in some selected areas.

(12:18):
And I think that there shouldbe some debate about whether
there could be some Chineseleadership in let's say
something like solar orsomething like electric vehicle
batteries to try to train Chinese, try
to train American workers to do the same
to them, is what I'm trying to say.
If they accomplish something
through a force technology
transfer, why don't we do it to them?
If they accomplish something

(12:39):
through industrial subsidies,why don't we do it to them?
Which is why I think it wasparticularly disastrous to
humiliate a lot of South Koreanworkers in Georgia, put many
of them in chains, all of them had visas
to work in the United States.
And then, you know, to do thatto an allied power to try to,
you know, while sendinga lot of engineers to

(13:00):
build American products inthe future, I think that
that is not the rightapproach to really try
to make things better.
- Yeah, speaking of owngoals, yeah, definitely.
That was our own goal for sure. Yeah.
- Okay. Let me jump in with one other idea
that we haven't touched on,you know, litigation lawyers.
These are easy things to be nasty about,

(13:22):
especially if you arenot a lawyer yourself.
And I've certainly said in in the past
that the US no longer has the rule of law,
it has the rule of lawyers.
So I'm guilty of this.
On the other hand, therule of law is something
that the US has compared with China
where you have at best rule by law and,
and that is a law thatthe party stands above.

(13:46):
And that of course is part of the reason
that China needs capital controls
because a lot of Chinesemoney would get out
of China if it could, if only
to diversify away from a system
that doesn't have rule of law.
And that is what makes not only the US
but the Anglosphere generally attractive.
So Dan, can you imaginea future in which China's

(14:09):
institutions are sufficiently advanced
that they no longer need capital controls
because the money nolonger wants to get out?
- I suspect that
the money will always want to get out
and I think that, you know, wetake a look at the top ranks
of the communist party, still so many sons

(14:30):
and daughters of thepoll bureau would love
to send their kids to StanfordUniversity, get an education,
perhaps create a green card
and maybe even naturalize inthe US for their own good mil.
You know, many Chinese havewanted to depart from China
for a very long time.
This is a trend that youknow, has been in place

(14:51):
for arguably centuries
and especially over the lastseveral years in which I've
observed that, you know,many rich people have tried
to move their money to Singapore,the uk, the us et cetera.
Many creative types are going to,
are tired of the censorship.
They've moved to northernThailand where they are able to

(15:12):
smoke drugs that are legalin the state of California
and they are just reallytired of the, the sort
of restrictions that they have to face.
And there are many Chinesemigrants that have flown
to Ecuador where theydon't need a visa to try
to walk across the borderthrough the dairy and gap.
And that is quite astonishing as well.
So I think that there alwayswill be some degree of
immigration and flight out of China,

(15:35):
but that doesn't mean that thecountry can make do very well
because you don't need a verylarge labor force in order
to be globally dominant insomething like semiconductors
or something like aviationor all sorts of industries.
So here's the scenario thatI'm really afraid of, which is
that I don't think
that China will replace America writ large

(15:55):
as the global superpower,
that it won't be a copy one for one.
China will never be, I think a, you know,
military superpower with somany bases around the world.
It will never be afinancial superpower in part
because of capital controls.
It will never be a culturaldiplomatic superpower
because engineers aren'tvery good at speaking
or creating cultural products.

(16:16):
But I think they will achieveadvancement in, you know,
success in the narrow field
of advanced manufacturing production.
And that on its own could be pretty bad
for destabilizing the west.
You know, I think that there's12 million manufacturing
workers employed in the United States,
and I could well see

(16:36):
that haling over somethinglike the next decade
as the US continues
to lose its experience insomething like in industrial
robotics or electric vehicles.
And I think that will not dogood things for the economy.
I think that will not dogood things for our politics.
And already we're seeingChinese industrialization really
biting the German exporters in particular,

(16:57):
and that is, that's notgoing very well for them.
And I fear that for the United States
- And in 1960, John Kennedy ranon the missile gap, the idea
that the United States had fallen
behind the Soviets onon nuclear technology.
What if in 2028 acandidate runs on the idea
of an engineering gap that weare losing this competition
with China, they havemore engineers, we need
to create more engineers.
Very simple challenge.

(17:18):
America's colleges produce more engineers.
But here America has a problem.
Dan four in ten eighth gradersin the United States are not
competent at math and youcannot be a good engineer if you
can't do well at math.
So my question, Dan, is theresomething to be gained out
of looking at the Chinese education system
and seeing how they dothe pipeline in terms
of getting math into the systemand then producing engineers

(17:39):
- Pluses and minuses.
They really train math, theyreally train engineering.
What they don't train muchof is critical thinking.
I think that's very much by design.
They don't love it whenpeople write critical essays.
They don't teach debatein the way that a lot
of American schools really prize.
So I think that is overthe longer term going
to be a crimp in that'sgonna put up crimp in some

(18:01):
of their progress that theycan do if they just have a lot
of people doing science and engineering.
Now there on the otherhand, you know, I just wish
that the US could havea few more presidents
or at least members of congress
that are trained in somedegree of engineering.
So out of a hundred senators,54 of them went to law school,
one of them have had any STEM training.

(18:22):
There's only been two American
presidents who were engineers.
One of them is a portraitright behind you, bill
Herbert Hoover, as well as Jimmy Carter,
who is an engineeringofficer and a submarine.
- And I think it didn't work out too
well for either of those guys, but
- No, they had a prettydismal political instincts
that produced stumpingelectoral defeats, right?
And so that they didn'thave the right instincts.

(18:43):
But I just wish for there
to be a little bit morepluralism within the elites.
And I certainly wish for there
to be more algebra in the classes.
And there, there shouldbe more math teachers
and there should be just morelove of science, more love of,
you know, technology, allsorts of different things
that people are exposed to from,
from an earlier age ratherthan debate class so

(19:03):
that you can get into YaleLaw School or something.
- Hey Dan, just to pickup on, on an earlier point
that you made about China, you know,
not displacing the UnitedStates in certain areas,
but they do have obviouslythese global initiatives, right?
The Global Development Initiative,
the global security Initiative,
and maybe the scariest of all the,
the global civilization initiative.

(19:24):
H how do, how do you evaluatethe, their success or,
or relative failure in these initiatives
and what are they tryingto achieve overall?
What, what does Chinawant to do if it's not
to completely depl displace the us?
What, what, what dothey, what do they want
to achieve in terms of the,the party's leadership?
- Yeah, well here's where, you know,
Niall earlier mentioned rule by law.

(19:45):
And I remember spending a,a fruitless morning trying
to understand the differenceas Xi Jinping outlines
between rule by law, socialist rule by law
and socialist rule by lawwith Chinese characteristics.
And they are just really goodat coming up with these sort
of mouthfuls, like globalcivilization initiative.
What, what in the world does that mean?
You know, let, let, let's figure that out.
- The community of shared destiny, right?

(20:06):
For all of mankind. I mean,that's beautiful, isn't it?
- I, yeah, well, yeah. Andwhat about win-win cooperation?
You know, that's so, I mean some, some
of their slogans work.
I mean, socialist market economy
with Chinese characteristics is just kind
of hilarious, I think.
So, you know, let's, let'sdo something like that.
But I, you know, I'm,I'm still pretty struck
by the relative, youknow, underperformance

(20:29):
of Chinese diplomats
and you, you guys willhave more views about this,
but I think the, you know,what was really striking was
that, you know, earlier thissummer, a few months ago,
there was a brief but fatalborder skirmish between Thailand
and Cambodia, right?
And what I was really struck by was
that this conflict wasn't mediated

(20:50):
by Washington dc it wasn'tmediated by Beijing,
it was mediated by Malaysia.
And it, it seems like, youknow, there's plenty of,
you know, people even, youknow, especially the neighbors
of China that do not trust China.
And I don't see that reversingvery easily anytime soon.
And I think that what Chinawants is at least dominance

(21:11):
of its near neighbors.
I mean, Taiwan is a certainty.They absolutely want that.
And maybe what they want isfor folks in the Philippines
to regularly go to China
and kowtow for the emperor's pleasure.
And that might be pretty bad.
But H.R., what do you thinkabout Chinese diplomats
are, are they, are they winning?
Are is the global, how's the global
civilization initiative going?

(21:31):
- Yeah, I don't thinkit's going well at all.
And I think this is wherewe're missing opportunities,
you know, and,
and you know, of course Chinese diplomats
among other things are afraidof the party leadership.
So my, my encounters
with them have always beenjust the reading off of cards,
you know, and I mean, youcan't get 'em to crack a smile,
you know, you can't get tocome to get off script at all.

(21:52):
I mean, I'm thinking ma mymain interlocutor was ysu.
The only, the other, the other,the one person actually who,
who I felt like I couldhave a real conversation
with was Luha.
And then of course he's out,he's out of the picture now.
So, so I think there's a greatdeal of, of pressure on them
to conform, you know, to thiskind of Xi Jinping thought

(22:13):
and, and the effect that Juanh Ning has had, you know, on,
on all of these people withthis convoluted, you know,
Xi Jinping thought, whichis really unintelligible.
So I, I think, I think alot of it is their fear
of making a mistake makesthem ineffective interlocutors
or ineffective, as youmentioned in mediating in
a crisis for example.

(22:33):
- Yeah. And that also illustrates
that it's not engineersright at the top running
the people's Republic of China.
And, and I think it's important to go back
to something Dan said earlierabout the hubris of 2020
when I was writing my last book Doom,
I concluded very skepticallythat China would do as well

(22:55):
as Xi Jinping thought it would in 2020.
And I think that's beenvindicated, but five years on.
I think I agree with you aboutone important point, Dan,
if you look at what NoahSmith calls the electric tech
stack, if you look at theways in which China has
raced up the value chain,you're right, made in China,

(23:17):
2025 has been a resounding success.
And so I I I give you thatthings now look, in fact better
for Xi Jinping than theydid when I was writing Doom
and correspondingly, the US doesn't seem
to have a great answer
to Chinese dominance in particularly

(23:37):
electricity generation.
I mean the, the most dramaticchart you can show right now
is the one showing themassive increase in Chinese
electrification, this beam, which
- Is related obviously tothe AI tech stack as well
and everything and, and,
and industrial manufacturing.Absolutely, Niall,
- So here's my question, Dan,where's the succession plan

(23:59):
for Xi Jinping?
Because the one thing that no number
of engineers can solve is
how an autocracy handlesthe succession problem.
And there, it seems to me avulnerability has been created
by the extension of she's term in office.
How do you think aboutpolitics at the very top
because rumors swirlabout that very subject

(24:20):
and it seems like a keyvulnerability that takes us back
to the rule of law,constitutional governance
and institutions that China lacks.
- Yeah, well I thinkthat it is absolutely one
of the great vulnerabilities of China,
and there's absolutelyno way around it that sea
by centralizing power inhis own person, so such

(24:42):
that he can be emperoruntil at his pleasure
and, you know, failingto designate a successor
because one cannot possiblydesignate a successor in
authoritarian systems thatis just too difficult to do.
There is no broad solution
to the succession problem inthe authoritarian systems.
So that's just kind of not possible.

(25:03):
And so I think that isgoing to be a source
of giant risk to the system.
And you know, I think theChina is also a country
that I call a Leninist technocracy
with grand opera characteristics.
So they are Leninist
because obviously they areruled by a bunch of a cadre
of revolutionaries that seeitself to be heaving the

(25:25):
population into modernityby hook or by crook.
They are broadly technocratic,I think, you know,
we can't take a look at howstraight their trains are
or how good their bridges are
and not understand it as abroadly technocratic place,
which is able to doplenty of good reforms.
But then there is always something
of the Wagnerian entrance into Valhalla.

(25:45):
And I know Niall, you're,you're an opera fan, so you,
you understand this reference,
but they are, they just havea sense of the apocalyptic,
a sense of the theatricalabout themselves.
And it is really easy for themto veer into some sort of,
you know, apocalyptic thinking, some sort
of manifesting the eschaton or something.
So that that is absolutelyone of these, you know,

(26:07):
just living in China, it, there is kind
of this apocalyptic sense thathangs over a lot of people
and one felt this very acutely
over zero COVID the entiretyof which I lived through.
You never really know whenyour office building is going
to have some sort of a lockdown.
Your, your home will havesome sort of a lockdown.
And even if you're an elite in Beijing,
an elite within the party state,

(26:29):
an elite working at a tech company
or a finance company,everyone has something to fear
because they're gonna cometo the finance people,
they're gonna, you know,crack down on some sort
of tech company or they're gonna purge
or patron inside the military party state.
And then your entirenetwork will un unravel.
And that is always gonnabe a part of China as well.
- So Dan, we talked aboutphysical engineering,

(26:49):
let's talk about socialengineering for a second.
You experienced COVIDin China, so you know
what it's like firsthandto go through lockdowns
and tracking apps and so forth.
How long can China maintainsocial engineering?
At what point will there be a reckoning?
In other words, peoplecan only live under a
thumb for a certain point.
- Yeah, well I think that, I would say
that broadly speaking,

(27:10):
physical engineering though it has a lot
of costs is mostly prettypositive that, you know,
it is good to have newbridges for people in Shanghai
or wherever else in, in OUwho didn't have subway lines.
Now they get subway lines anddidn't have a lot of parks.
Now they have a lot ofparks that's pretty positive
and that gives people a senseof optimism for the future.

(27:32):
But all of that is weighed down
because the fundamentalproblem with China is
that they are not just physical engineers,
they're also fundamentallysocial engineers.
And I think it is, youknow, we can see evidence
of social engineering everywhere,the folks in Tibet as well
as Jiang, these ethnoreligious minorities,
especially in Ang who areshunted off into detention camps.

(27:56):
I write a lot about theone child policy as well
as zero COVID in which thenumbers right there in the names.
And you know, there's no ambiguity about
what these policies could possibly mean.
It's a social optimization problem.
And I think, you know whatthese, you know, traumas
and I think the, the, the
Communist party has beenextremely effective at visiting

(28:18):
traumas at a regular clipof once every generation,
you could have, you know, lived
through the great leap forward
and then you live throughthe cultural revolution.
Then you live, livethrough one child policy.
You know, there's still, you know, that's,
that's on one side of theledger, on the other side
of the lecturer are newsubway stations and new parks
and new cafes and youknow, better class of goods

(28:40):
that you're able to consume.
And you know, you're givenperhaps if you're an urban elite,
two or three apartments thatyou can, that that is given
to you by the state, oneof which you liquidate
and then, you know, you're ableto send your kid off to USC
and buy her a Mercedeson, on the side as well.
And so, you know, I thinkthese things are balances,

(29:00):
you know what something thatreally helps with zero COVID
and the, the memory of itis alcohol, which plenty
of Shanghai needs areable to, to, to access.
And so, you know, these arethe sort of things that that
that always have to bebalanced between, you know,
a growing center standard of life
and material aspects as wellas economic aspects along
with this political trauma.

(29:21):
I don't think it resolvesin any simple way,
becomes a deeply personal decision
for people about what they ought to do.
- Hey Daniel, there's thisthat famous saw Bill Clinton
quotation about, you know,hey China, good luck trying
to control the internet.
It's like, you know,nailing jello to the wall.
- Now, there's no questionChina has been trying
to crack down on the internet, good luck.

(29:45):
That's sort of like trying to nail jello
- To the wall.
But it seems like they've donekind of a good job, you know,
at using social media
and the, the internet tocontrol the population
and control the message that is given
to the Chinese people aboutthe greatness of the party,
what the party's achievingfor them, the decadence
of the west, how the westtrying to keep them down,

(30:05):
you know, what are theopportunities that you see to kind
of reach the Chinese people
and with different sourcesof information and, and,
and maybe generate, you know,the concept of relationships
that over time, you know,might result in an evolution
of the nature of the, of the CCP or,
or the government there suchthat it, it, it ceases its kind
of hostility, you know,to the, to the west,

(30:27):
to representative government, to
the free market economic system.
I mean it, what are theprospects for change?
And then, and then how dowe communicate effectively
and engage in, you know, youknow, do our part in the,
in the cognitive warthat's kind of going on,
- Right?
Well, first of all, nail cello to the law.
That's a weird image. I I've never
tried nailing cello to the law.

(30:49):
I'd like to talk to theClinton speech writer who,
who came up with that line.
I, well, let me share a littlebit H.R. of my experiences
of living in China duringthe first trade war
from basically 2018 to 2020.
And initially I thoughtthat, you know, a lot
of Chinese felt comfortable with Trump.

(31:09):
He's this sort of a figure
that they recognized this business figure
that says weird stuff
and then they, you know, kind of erratic.
And so, and Trump had alwaysbeen saying good things about
the Chinese, and everytime he talked about
top leader Xi Jinping, hewould always say, talk about,
you know, she's greathead of hair like quaif

(31:31):
of well mated hair.
And it was really, it was really only in,
and people felt comfortable with Trump.
You know, Trump seemed to bemuch meaner towards Germans
or Japanese instead.
And the, that all reallyfell apart in 2020 when Trump
started calling it, you know, the con flu
or the China virus.
People felt very deeplyoffended by those types

(31:53):
of remarks in particular.
And a lot of Chinese feltthis sense of hostility
with things like the Chinainitiative, you know, all sorts
of, you know, crazyrhetoric from, you know,
particular politicians, let's say a member
of Congress somewhere
that say something reallymean that, that offended them.
And I think, you know, it isthe right approach to say that,

(32:15):
you know, this, the grievances
that the US has is on the level
of the Chinese CommunistParty, not on the level
of the Chinese people.
But I think there is naturallystill a lot of admiration
that Chinese feel for Americansfor being wartime allies
and building Thu Universitywith boxer indemnities
and, you know, Hollywood
and Disney that is still really,

(32:36):
really appealing in all sorts of ways.
And I think that Chinesenaturally look up to America,
and I want America to bethe strongest that it can be
to be the best version of itself.
That it can be such
that the infrastructure doesnot always feel like it is
falling apart absolutelyeverywhere, especially in New York
as well as California, whichis the first port of call
for a lot of Chinese not

(32:56):
to feel like Shanghai is justan obviously better city,
which right now it is.
But let's not have thedifference be so stark
and to keep creating the culture
and not be super inflammatory.
I think all of thatwould be highly positive.
- The danger, of course, Dan, is that,
that one day people look back on your book
and say he made just the same mistake
that the webs made in theSoviet Union in the 1930s.

(33:20):
They, they looked at all theextraordinary achievements
of the planned economythat they bed dazzled
by everything from MagnetaGok to the new look Moscow.
And then they said, look
how many more engineers theygraduate here than in Britain.
Clearly the Soviet Union is the future.
And my sense is that while it's true that,

(33:42):
that China's clearlyoutperformed the Soviet Union
economically as a much morevibrant private sector than it
ever did, there is still the,there is still this sense
that the fundamental operating system
of one party state isfatally flawed, not least
because it denies peoplethe most foundational
of, of liberties.
And in particular, it doesn'tprotect the property rights

(34:03):
of those who are successful.
My theory is that if UnitedStates actually could sort out
its immigration policy
and make itself more attractive
to talent from Asia ratherthan less attractive,
which is its current strategy,
then it really would bepretty hard to beat the US
because the US would just alwaysattract the talent in a way
that China never can.

(34:24):
So I love the book,
but I have this sneakingsuspicion that it might look very,
very different 20 years down the line.
- I I am sure it will.
And you know, the, as asKane said in the long run,
we're all dead and as friend
of the pod Stephen Kin says
in the short run, we're all dead.
So we're all dead no matter what.
But let's at least getto the short one right?

(34:45):
And figure out a lot of the things
that frankly the US should do,which is build more housing,
build better mass transit
and fix our manufacturing base as well.
That's, that's my callto action for the us.
- Alright gentlemen, an exit question,
and it's an offbeat one to read.
Dan Wang is to understandthat he is a world traveler
and he looks at food
and he uses food as part ofhis calculation for the health

(35:06):
of a society, the, theprogress of society.
So all three of you are world travelers.
So I'd like to ask you this question.
If you were to take meto one place in the world
for stellar cuisine,where would you take me?
Dan, you go first,
- Let's say Tokyo. Tokyo.
- Why?- It has a, a little bit of the best
of a lot of different things.
It is, you know, the,the Japanese are able

(35:28):
to make even the best Neapolitan pizzas.
I feel this is just so unfairthat they're, they're able
to master even the Italian pizzas.
So Tokyo, low endcuisine, high end cuisine,
most amazing food city in the world.
- H.R., where would you, me,
and don't you dare sayPhiladelphia and cheeses sticks.
- Hey, I, you know, I ikind of agree with Dan.
I mean, it, it is prettyfantastic in, in Japan,

(35:48):
but hey, in, in the UnitedStates, south Philadelphia,
you know, I mean great Italian food.
I mean, how could I not say that?
I, I have to say that, you know?
- Yeah, Niall, lemme know thatDan thinks the best food in
the United States is in Austin, Texas,
the city you're more than familiar with.
Where'd you take me sir Niall,where will we go to eat?
- Oh, Milan, I'm sorry.
The Italians are still betterat all of this than everybody,

(36:10):
even now better than the French.
And I think, I think Milan would,
would beat even Tokyo though,I share your, your admiration
for, for Japan, a Japanese cuisine,
as do my younger childrenwho are campaigning for a,
a trip to Tokyo.
I think mainly to binge on sashimi.
So yeah, I I I'm just gonna raise a,

(36:31):
I'm gonna raise a glass, aglass of a glass of Barolo
to the, to the Italians.
They, they, they are still,they're still the place.
They have the culture I most like
to eat in, let me put it that way.
- Well said. So after a weekin Japan with my wife though,
we both agreed that we feltlike dolphins when we were
leaving because we so watch,
we didn't wait too much raw, raw fish.

(36:53):
- Okay, the book again, it'sa New York Times bestseller,
breakneck China's Questto Engineer the Future.
Dan, what else can we find you
besides your book in theHoover Institution website?
- My website dan juan.co.
- Okay, great conversation.
Thanks for joining us. Come back soon.
- Thanks folks. Thanks
- Gentlemen.
It's on to the B block
and let's talk about President Trump,

(37:14):
the United Nations ina few world affairs H.R..
You have been there, done that.
You don't have the t-shirt to show up,
but you have a book to show for it.
In other words, you helpedprepare his remarks when he spoke
to the UN general Assembly in 2017.
Let me read you a passageof what Trump said here,
and I wanna get your thoughtsfirst on the speech H.R. then
Niall, I want to turn to youfor a larger question about
what is it the UnitedNations does these days?

(37:36):
So H.R., here's the quote,
what is the purpose of the United Nations?
The UN has potential.
What they all seem todo is really write a lot
of strongly worded letters
and then never follow that letter up.
It's empty words and emptywords don't solve wars.
So H.R. take us in thehead of Donald Trump.
- Well, you know, he, he wouldalways say that in 20 17, 22,
oh, you know, UN's got greatpotential, you know, and,

(37:57):
and of course we had NikkiHaley there, did a fantastic job
as our ambassador to the un
and was, was working
with Gutierrez SecretaryGeneral Gutierrez on a number
of reforms that reallydidn't get traction.
But what Donald Trump, whatPresident Trump gets is he
understands that this idea
that we would have this condominium
of nations in the post Cold War period,

(38:17):
and we would all cooperatemainly within international
organizations to solveour common problems.
He understands that that'snot the world we're in.
It's a competitive world.
And I think what's beneficialabout Trump's worldview is
that he understands
that these internationalorganizations are competitive
spaces, right?
There's no prize for membership.
You have to compete within them.
And, and, and,

(38:37):
and especially when yousee the, you know, the way
that the UN for example, has dealt
with Israel over the yearsand so forth, you know,
Trump doesn't have any illusionsabout what the, what the UN
can do in terms of solving problems.
But, you know, of course what we tried
to do in this is in 2017 wasto argue against this kind
of soft headed cosmopolitanism
or what some people call a globalism now,

(39:00):
but argue for purposefulinternationalist approaches
to the problems that, that we're facing
because, hey, United Statescan't do it by ourselves, right?
We do have to, we haveto do have to form these,
these co coalitions oflike-minded nations.
And that was a big theme of his speech.
And the way that we bridged into that was
for President Trump beingan advocate for sovereignty,

(39:20):
which he is for Americans.
It kind of goes with America first.
And so we were forstrong sovereign nations
who respect the sovereigntyof other nations
and the sovereignty and rightsof their own people, right?
And, and I think thatwas kind of, that was
what was missing from,from the speech this time.
And, and of course, youknow, they had the issues
with the escalator

(39:41):
and the teleprompter, which had him in a
bad mood to begin with.
But we had a very similarsituation in 2017.
I talk about this in the book. I mean,
we get into the green room.
He had written this line inthe speech about, you know,
little rocket, or not littlerocket man at the time,
rocket man, right on,on, on on on Kim Shogun
- Rocket Man is on asuicide mission for himself

(40:03):
and for his regime.
The United States isready, willing, and able,
but hopefully this will not be necessary.
- And I was trying totalk about, so, hey Mr.
President, listen, yougot a great speech here.
If you say the rocketman thing, it's accurate,
but you know, that's all
that the press is gonna coveris the rocket man thing.
And so, so I was just aboutto really get him to see my,

(40:26):
see my weight on that.
And then they came and said,Hey, you're on right now,
president Trump, because the, the, the,
the Brazilian leader,you know, I guess wanted
to set the record for theshortest UN speech ever.
And so he just said, oh,great to be here, left.
And so anyway, it was chaoticfor me there, you know,
the un it is like, itis like diplomatic speed

(40:47):
dating in a lot of ways.
But, but, but he got a lotoutta that first engagement,
I think with, at the UN General Assembly.
But there's some significant differences.
And those are worth lookingat between those two speeches,
the 2017 speech and, and,
and the most recent speech are there,
there's some significant differences.
- Niall, the UnitedNations is 80 years old.

(41:07):
Is it a vibrant, thriving octogenarian
or a struggling declining octogenarian?
- I think struggling, declining would be
putting it politely.
Let's not forget that farcical seam
in February, January, February, 2022
when the UN Security Council

(41:28):
was debating the,
the impending aggressionof Russia against Ukraine
with the Russian ambassador in the chair.
I remember I son Thomasasking if we were watching
Saturday Night Live.
I said, no, this really isthe UN Security Council.
So I think, I think the UN is, is broken,

(41:51):
And I think it's broken in ways
that I guess have beentrue for a long time.
One is that the SecurityCouncil tends to be dominated
by the vetoes of the permanent members.
That's been true formost of its existence.
The more profound problemis the way that the,
the General Assembly now functions,

(42:13):
particularly when itcomes to the Middle East,
when you can always crank out
anti-Israel resolutions with
almost nobody voting against.
I thought Trump's speech thisyear struck the right tone
of scarcely veiled contempt.

(42:35):
But if you actually got intothe substance of the speech,
I agree with you, H.R.,there was some important
and interesting differences.
I was struck by not just the claims
that he'd settled seven untenablewars in, in seven months,
which I think everybodywould agree. As a stretch,
- I've also been workingrelentlessly stopping

(42:55):
the killing in Ukraine.
I thought that would beof, of the seven wars
that I stopped, I thoughtthat would be the easiest
because of my relationshipwith President Putin,
which had always been a good one.
I thought that was goingto be the easiest one.
But, you know, in war, younever know what's gonna happen.
There are always lots ofsurprises, both good and bad.

(43:17):
- But I think the key pointthat seems to me to be central
to Trump's diplomacy this yearis to lead on the Europeans
to do more.
And a substantial part ofthe speech was telling the
Europeans what they're getting wrong,
particularly on the issue of immigration.
But, but this I think is the key point of,

(43:38):
of Trump 2025.
He has really forcedthe Europeans not only
to increase their defense spending,
but then to take responsibilityfor the war in Ukraine,
which in effect, Trump haswashed his hands off judging
by other things that he said last week.
So that seems to me likewhat's really going on there.

(43:58):
And for those listening to the speech,
particularly European,listen to the speech,
that was the real point.
- H O'Nialll says the UN isbroken, how would you fix it?
- I don't think it'sfixable, you know, and,
and the reason it'snot fixable, I think is
because you have, as Niallmentioned, a security council.
It's just gonna be permanentlydivided between, you know,
between the, the, you know,the, the western states and,

(44:21):
and, and China and Russia
who are authoritarian hostile regimes
who have done actually amuch better job than we have
of competing within the organization.
And so many parts of theorganization have been, you know,
co-opted, you know, by, bythe Chinese Communist Party,
you know, or undermined by the Russians.
I mean, the human rightscouncils joke, right?
And, and I think President Trump was right

(44:42):
to get outta the Human RightsCouncil during his first term.
And the Biden administrationwas wrong to go back in,
you know, with, without tryingto exact some, you know,
some kind of reforms out of it.
You know, unesco, I mean, there are many,
many other examples of, oforganizations within the UN
that could have, could playan ipo, an important role,
but they've been subverted

(45:03):
and many of theseorganizations have been turned
against their purpose.
So the question is, hey, do you reform
or do you create something new?
You know? And, and I thinkat, at this stage, it is time
to create some new organizations
and, you know, coalitions of the willing,
whatever term you want touse, like-minded countries
around issues that can be solved together.
And you see this in certaingeographic locations.

(45:25):
You know, for example, youknow, the, the Baltic states
and the Nordic states areworking very closely together
with Poland within theexisting framework of nato.
But there's like a subgroupnow, you know, where that,
that are cooperating eveven more closely on,
on the shared threat fromRussia and how to deter it
or to counter it and so forth.
So I just think it's timeto maybe do some new work,

(45:47):
some ground break on somenew organizations, break
around some neworganizations that then try
to reform old ones, whichare morbid and are subverted.
- Okay. I have three items inthe news I wanna quickly get
through before we get the lightning round.
First one, Niall Donald Trumpis a 20 point plan for peace
and gazo go anywhere.
- Well, I actually thoughtit was pretty good.
And I have to say

(46:08):
that the president's MiddleEastern strategy is looking much
better at this point than it did five
or so months ago.
I think that he has shown an ability
to get the Arab states back on board
with a process that solves the, the crisis

(46:32):
and reestablishes lines of communication
with Israel.
So I liked it.
Of course, Hamas has to accept it,
which I don't expect they will,
or they'll accept it with so many caveats
that it won't be meaningful.
But I, I feel like thepresident's Middle East strategy

(46:52):
took a, a, a turn for the better.
There was a moment justa couple of weeks ago,
and it seemed as if Israelwas destined to take the place
of apartheid South Africa in the pariah
category, shunned by most of the world
with Europeans lining up
to recognize the non-existentPalestinian state.

(47:15):
So I thought this was a good development
and it was good to see PrimeMinister Netanyahu align,
aligning himself up with this,
with this plan. H.R.. Do you agree?
- You know, I, I do agree and,
and you know, this approachof, of of, of working
with Israel, you know, youknow, pressuring Israel to,
to sign up for something that's acceptable

(47:38):
to Israeli leadership
and then saying to, toHamas, you know, Hey,
this is your last shot.
And I mean, I thinkthat's the right approach.
And, and as you alluded toNiall, it changed the narrative.
What was bothering thehell outta me is that it,
there was this tendencyto blame the Israelis
and Netanyahu for thecontinuation of the war,
while Hamas is still holdingthese hostages, right?
So, so I think this changed the narrative

(48:01):
and has given Hamas one lastchance to avoid destruction,
you know, which, which Ithink, you know, Israel, if,
unless they agree to disarm,
unless they agree to providethis space for this yet
to be named, you know, peaceenforcement force to come in
and ensure their disarmament
and create security space
for a new political entity to emerge.

(48:21):
I mean, that's all,that's all sounds good.
It's gonna be hard to do.But if Hamas doesn't agree to
that, then you know, then,
then I don't think Israel has an
option other than to destroy them.
I mean, and, and, and, and,and I, I know that sounds tough
and, and sad for the Palestinian people.
I would like to see morepressure on, on Egypt to,
to create a safety valvemaybe into the Sinai
for this last phase in the Gaza city.

(48:45):
That's the one additionalthing I think maybe
the Trump administration could
press, but I, I agree with you.
I think it was, it was, itwas the right approach and it,
and it, and it shifted thenarrative back on, on onto,
onto Hamas, where, which iswhere it belongs. I think
- H.R.I wanna stick with you.
Should the United Statessell long range tomahawk
missiles to the Ukraine?
If so, how would that change the war?

(49:05):
Because if I understand this,
you could hit Moscow withthe tomahawk, couldn't you?
- Yeah, I think we should,you know, and, and, and,
and the reason is, you know,
Ukraine has alreadydemonstrated the ability
to differentiate betweentargets that are connected
to the war effort and military targets
and civilian targets whilethey're on the receiving end,
bill, you know, of indiscriminateattacks on their cities,

(49:27):
on schools, on hospitals,on apartment buildings.
So this would give them moremeans really more capacity in
the area of long range firesin combination with the drones
and the capabilities theydevelop themselves to,
to strike at the archer, right?
Because you can't defendyourself against all these arrows
unless you kill thearcher on the other end.

(49:47):
And that's what Tomahawks would give
them a capability to do.
- Niall, did the wordtomahawk come up in any
of your conversations when yourecently or when you Ukraine?
- Yes, of course. What Ukraineneeds is greater capacity
to hit the Russian war machine.
They've already taken 38%
of Russia's oil refining capacity offline

(50:08):
pre tomahawks.
And this is an extremelyimportant development
because it means that
for the first time since thiswar began, the Ukraine is able
to inflict meaningful damageon Russia's war economy.
So I think this is good.
This is a way for to, aswe've been saying, for years
to put real pressure on Vladimir Putin.

(50:28):
Only by putting that realpressure on will you get him
to negotiate in earnest,
and he showed in Alaska
that he was not seriousabout negotiation much
to President Trump's frustration.
This is the kind of thing that can really
change the calculus.
- Okay, final question, H.R.,
we are currently strikingdrug targets in the Caribbean.
Should the United Statesstrike within Venezuela?

(50:50):
- Well, you know, that, that's, that's a
question for the president.
And, and I hope with consultationwith Congress, it would've
to be based on, you know,article two authorities.
If unless he's not gonna getapproved for Congress to do
that, I don't think.
And, and, and so they would'veto show like a direct threat
to the United States, therehave to be a legal review.
It would depend on whatthe purpose is, right?
I mean, strikes sound really good,
but what do they, what do they,what do they really achieve?

(51:13):
I think, you know, what you would want
to do is evaluate strikesbased on the physical effect
that they have, but also the
psychological and political effect.
What you would want is a strike
to strengthen opposition against Maduro
and weaken Maduro's grip on,on power when a strike might.
And you have to consider this,you know, might allow Maduro
to say, Hey, look, I'm beingattacked by the Yankees.
You know, you know, you,you've gotta support me.

(51:34):
You, it might allow him touse Venezuelan nationalism to,
to continue his destructionof his own country.
So yeah, I, I would be skeptical about it
because I would try to tie it to very,
to very clearly defined objectives
and also assess kind ofthe downside of the strikes
and then answer the question.
Okay, then what, whathappens after strike?
- Yeah. And that's myquestion for you, Niall.

(51:55):
How would Trump messagethis to the American people?
'cause you can already imaginethe pushback, distraction,
you're trying to getaway from other problems
by creating another war elsewhere.
How would you sell this to the public?
- Well, I think he'salready been selling it
as actions against narco terrorists.
I don't know that there'senormous public interest in regime
change in Venezuela.

(52:16):
I would be in favor ofthat, have been for years,
can't stand the Maduro regime,
and the Maduro regimeis just gonna get worse.
It's not gonna get better.It's a criminal racket.
But the public, I think is open to action
that punishes drug traffickers.
I don't think that's hard to sell.
I think the public is alsosympathetic to an argument

(52:38):
that Stephen Miller and JD Vance also make
that the US should focuson its own hemisphere.
I call this the DonRow doctrine as opposed
to the Monroe Doctrine and theDon Row doctrine's attractive
to voters who struggle
to understand why the UShas interests as far afield
as Ukraine or as Israelor Taiwan for that matter.
So there are ways of selling it,

(52:58):
but as H.R. says,
it's questionable reallyon constitutional grounds
that the US should be waging a war against
the Venezuelan regime, ifthat's what it's doing.
- Okay. Niall, copyrightDon Road Doctrine.
'cause you didn't copyright Cold War Two,
and I think you're missingout on royalties here.
All right, gentlemen,on the lightning round,

(53:22):
H.R. begin with you, secretary of War.
I have a hard time that Secretary of War,
Pete Eth recently gatheredhundreds of US generals and
and admirals at the Marine Corps Museum in
Quantico, Virginia.
The reactions this H.R.ranged from the benign.
Isn't there cheaper way to do this?
How much is it costingtaxpayers to the obligatory,

(53:42):
hysterical, my God,
our enemy is gonna thinkthis is a prelude to war.
H.R. You wrote about thison your substack, tell us
what the secretary is up to.
- Well, you know, a lotof the message was k kind
of appropriate in terms of whathe wants to achieve, right?
He wants, he wants to reverse, you know,
what I would call radical DEI,which is, you know, this idea
that the Biden administrationwas pushing of the quality
of outcome rather ofequality of opportunity.

(54:03):
You know, the, the, the pushing some
of these reified philosophies and,
and various postmodernistcritical theories that,
that tell people thatyou should judge people
by their identity category.
You know, rather than, you know,
ra rather than their toughness,their courage, their, their,
their sense of honor, their,their willingness to sacrifice
for the nation and for each other.
That's how you evaluate,you know, fellow warriors.

(54:24):
And, and then, and thenalso, you know, this, i,
this valorization of victimhood,all that stuff, right?
But the tote of it kind of buffed me.
Bill it bo bothered me.
You know, because, youknow, I mean, you know, I,
I think our military does havetremendous military prowess,
but we don't need tobeat our chest about it.
You know? I mean, what we need
to do is focus on our competenceand our professionalism.

(54:46):
I also think some of thelanguage veered into language
that could inadvertently encourage
indiscriminate use of force.
You know, and, and, and,
and, you know, I'm all forover matching the enemy, man.
I mean, I used to tellour troopers, I used
to quote Ernest Harmon, Hey,
if it takes a toothpick,use a baseball bat.
But I would also thenqualify that with, you know,

(55:09):
with apply firepower,
overmatch the enemyoverwhelm the enemy in every,
any combat engagement, right?
Because barely winningin battle, that's ugly.
You don't wanna barely win a battle,
but apply firepower with discipline
and discrimination consistent
with our professional militaryethic and our warrior ethos
and our warrior ethos iscritical to combat effectiveness.

(55:30):
But it's also what makeswar less inhumane and,
and preserves, you know,our, our, our morality and,
and our ethical approach to, to combat.
That's consistent with, withThomas Aquinas, you know, and,
and, and, and, andjuice and Bellow theory.
So, hey, I I, I, I didn't like the tone,
but you know, a lot ofthe message was overdue.

(55:52):
I just wish that he, therehad been a border line
with the president and with Secretary Hess
between partisan politics,criticizing predecessors, former,
you know, commanders in chief
and the military keep thatbold line in place, right?
And you saw that with the way those,
those professionals weresitting there, you know,

(56:13):
just listening obviouslyto their leadership.
But, you know, I, I thinkthere might've been like this,
this hope that it wouldbe kind of like a rally.
Well, you're not gonna getthat from the military.
You don't want that, youknow, from your military.
So that was my biggestconcern coming out of it was,
you know, the, you know, the,the, you know, the, this idea
that you could maybe applyfor us with without, you know,
without discrimination.

(56:34):
And then, and then also, youknow, the, this, this sort of,
you know, let missedopportunity to emphasize,
we don't want the militaryinvolved in partisan part
politics and, and, you know, hey,
there are no woke generalsor admirals that I know.
I don't know any of 'em wokegenerals or admirals, you know?
And, and so this was being pushed
by the Biden administration.

(56:55):
They've already won, theywon the election. It's over.
So like, stop trying
to think like you're gonna weed out people
who were bought intothe department of woke,
whatever the hell that was, you know?
So anyway, I feel better now.
Thanks for allowing meto get that out, bill.
Thanks. Okay, Niall,
- Let's stick with the War department.
The Pentagon is sending in200 National Guard troops
to Portland, to Oregon,to quell ice protest

(57:17):
or what the White House calls quote,
premeditated anarchy, Niall.
Now, are we living inan authoritarian regime?
- Well, no, because actuallythere are good legal precedents
for providing protectionfor government officials
who are faced with threats.
There's also, I think,a pretty clear problem

(57:39):
of policing parts ofPortland, which appear
to be lawless and havebeen for some years.
So I think this is, again, something
that can be regarded without hysteria as,
as reasonable underthe, the circumstances.
I, I mean, Portland's not theonly city with major problems.

(58:03):
President Trump's also singled out Chicago
and of course, WashingtonDC it's pretty hard
to make the claim thatthese are well ruled cities
that have the problem of law
and order under good local control.
So, you know, if you wannadefend a chaotic city on,
on a city with high crimerates, go ahead, be my guess.

(58:25):
But you wouldn't win many votes that way.
- Right. Niall, let me takeyou back to your home there.
Now, a recent subjecttimes poll showed that 60%
of Scott's back mass detention
and deportation of legalimmigrants in the uk.
Meanwhile, Scotlandreforms overtaken labor
as the country's sec most popular party.
We've used the phrase a lot on this show.
Is this a vibe shift?

(58:45):
- Well, Scotland's odd
because in many ways, atleast, a substantial part
of Scotland is quite sociallyconservative With a small C
You can see that from survey data on a
whole range of issues.
Scotland is not woke.
Anybody who's been therewouldn't be too surprised
to, to hear that.

(59:05):
But, but Scotland'spolitics has been impaired
by the rise of, of Scottish nationalism.
And for years, thatbecame the alternative to
a labor establishment withthe conservative barely able
to win more than a a dozen seats.

(59:26):
What's novel is the suddenappearance of reform
as a political force.
This is also happening in Wales.
It's odd though becausereform is often seen
as a little England party,and the waving of the St.
George Cross is more common
amongst reform supportersthan the waving of the union.
Jack, what does this tell us?
I think it tells us thatBritish politics is in an

(59:47):
extraordinary, volatile state.
Disillusionment with theestablished parties is now a
national phenomenon, andpeople have turned two reform
because they've decided thatimmigration is the key issue.
That's, I think, what's going on.
And it's, it's a UK wide revulsion.
The question is, does Nigel Farage,

(01:00:08):
who is a very English individual,
does he have momentumsufficient to carry him
to the next general election?
If the election wereheld tomorrow, he'd win
and be Prime Minister.
But we have a long way to go
before Kma has to givehim that opportunity.
And my bet would be thatit will be hard for reform

(01:00:29):
to maintain this kind of momentum
until the next general election.
And that gives Kami Baden o'sconservatives a chance to,
to begin to recover from the rock bottom
that they recently hit.
- Right? H.R. President Trumprecently said that he'd like
for the US to reengage with Afghanistan,
specifically regaining controlof the Bagram Air base,

(01:00:49):
because, and I quote,it's an hour away from
where China makes its nuclear weapons.
Is this at all realistic H.R.?
- You know, it's not realisticunless you're gonna commit a
pretty significant numberof troops, you know,
about a brigade size force on a continuous
basis to secure it.
Bagram Air Force will be easy to take.
It'd be harder to secure andhold in the, in the longer term
because of the mountainsthat are just adjacent to it.

(01:01:10):
And it would have toreally outpost to prevent
indirect fire, you know,drones that kind of, those kind
of attacks on, on the, on the base.
So it would be, it wouldbe manpower intensive.
It's one of the reasons whyit closed when President Biden
made that disastrous decisionto tell the military, Hey,
shut up in color, basically,and I'm giving you a date.
And the number of troops adhered to that.

(01:01:30):
That, I mean, that, thatreally compelled the, the,
the closing of Bagram Air Force Base
and the situation in whichwe evacuated the military
before civilians, like, when
the hell does that ever make sense?
You know, and, and we'reconfined to the, the,
the evacuation of the Kabul airport.
So, hey, I, you know,I'm, I'm glad he's got
that sentiment now.
You know, I wish also he'dhad that sentiment, you know,
a little bit strongerback in, back in 2020.

(01:01:54):
And, and when he sent ZalKhalilzad there to, to, to,
you know, to negotiatewhat I think was kind
of a surrender document, you know, and,
and so anyway, I mean, he's right.
It's a strategic location.
He's right that the bigbenefit geo strategically of,
of our humiliating, you know,
self-defeat in Afghanistan was China

(01:02:15):
to a lesser extent, Russia.
So, you know, he's right aboutthat sentiment, you know,
but I, it's, it's just not,
I don't think realistic based on,
I don't think President Trump was
to commit that level of force there.
- Alright, final question,gentlemen. It's a very quick one.
Welcome to day one in a partial shutdown
of the federal government inthe United States of America.

(01:02:36):
This is the third timethis has happened under
Donald Trump's watch.
The first one lasted one day,
the second one won a record, 35 days.
I'm very cynical on these.
I've been following this for 30 years now.
These happen habitually H.R.,
how long do you think this will last?
And do you much care?
- I don't really care that much. Bill. I'm
asking, you know, Niall,what do you think?

(01:02:56):
- I don't think it lasts too long.
I mean, if you look at thelatest polling, it is sticking
to Chuck Schumer like tar,that its Schumer's shut down.
And that means that the payoffs
to the Democrats just arenegligible at this point.
Interestingly, Republicanleadership in, in the House

(01:03:16):
and in the Senate is polling more strongly
with Republican voters.
Democratic leadership inCongress is polling worse.
So I would say the Democratsare losing wicket here
and they're gonna throwin the towel real soon.
- Niall, why do you thinkChuck Schubert is scared?
What is motivating him here?
- Well, the problem be aboutbeing a Democrat right now is

(01:03:36):
that you have this vertical,very radical leftist base Yes.
That has a lot of energy that is going
to take the Ty of New York.
Yep. And that means that the,
the center in the partiesunder enormous pressure,
'cause they know that democraticsocialism is pretty toxic
in the rest of the country.

(01:03:58):
And it's suddenly notmuch more than a year
till the midterms.
The Democrats have a major problem.
I mean, it's very, very obviousnot only in in the polling,
but also in just theirability to register voters
if they carry on like this.
It's no longer a self, self-evident
that the Republicans lose thehouse in the traditional way

(01:04:18):
of things in American politics.
They may actually hold on
unless the Democrats canget their act together.
I don't see much sign of it right now.
- In this case, Niall, he isup for reelection in 2028.
He has been aroundCongress for a long time
and he fears one thing,
and that is getting primaried by a OC. So
- Seems like a highly probable scenario at

(01:04:38):
this point, I must say.
- Okay. I don't know, whichwould rather have H.R. Senator
Ocasio-Cortez or President Ocasio-Cortez.
- Hey man, I mean, I, I, Ijust, wouldn't it be great?
Wouldn't it be great if ourprimary system produced people
that the vast majorityof Americans would kind
of like a little bit,you know what I mean?
I just think that, youknow, the, this dreamer,

(01:05:02):
this movement to the polar extremes,
you know, I just, I just don't know.
I just, we gotta get beyondit. We gotta get it beyond it.
We gotta get politicianswho get to the politics
of addition, you know, thatthat can bring the majority
of Americans together toprioritize what we can agree on
and build a better future and to get
after kind of the prioritiesthat, that Dan, you know,
that Dan laid out in connection

(01:05:22):
with the competition with China.
Right? We got a lot ofwork to do, you know, and,
and we need leaders whocan bring people together
and, you know, and strengthenour confidence in who we are
as a people and, and,
and confidence in an agenda
that's gonna build a betterfuture for generations to come.
That's the kind of leaders we need.
- Gentlemen, greatconversation. As always.
Hope all is going well with you
and we'll see you in a couple weeks.

(01:05:42):
- Hey, I got one morething, bill. Oh, go ahead.
Happy birthday to the United States Navy.
You know, it's coming up on October 13th,
- Right?
- You know, and then we've got the,
the Marine Corps birthdaycoming up on November 20th,
and the Marine Corps was foundedat a bar in Philadelphia.
You know, so, so I justwanted to put that out there.
Couple birthday celebrations coming
- Up.
Are they getting parades or is that
only the province of the Army?

(01:06:04):
- I, I don't think they'regonna get a parade.
I, I guess, but, you know,
they've got Fleet Weekcoming up here in San
Francisco, the Navy Marine Corps.
It's gonna be a fantastic one this year.
- The but shutdown might affect that.
- Yeah, it might. Ohyeah, that'd be terrible.
That'd be terrible. In terms of, you know,
those are big recruiting opportunities
because young people get tosee, you know, the, the rewards
of service and meet some ofthese extraordinary young men

(01:06:25):
and women who serve in ourNavy and our Marine Corps.
- Okay, guys, great show. We gotta run.
I'll see you in a couple weeks.
That's it for thisepisode of Good Fellows.
Before we leave though, Ido wanna make one pitch.
We're gonna be doing a
viewer mailbag show in thenear future, so not too early
to start thinking aboutquestions for Sir Niall HR
and the truant, John Cochrane.
You do that by going to our website,

(01:06:46):
hoover.org Forge slash ask Good fellows
and ask the most anything.
Niall, is anything off limitsin terms of questions?
- Oh, nothing is off limits.
I, I'm an ask me anything kind of guy.
- There it is. Ask meanything. Niall Ferguson.
All right, gentlemen, onbehalf of the Good Fellows,
Sir Niall Ferguson, H.R.McMaster, John Cochrane,
and all of us here at the Hoover
Institution, we hope we enjoy the show.

(01:07:06):
Till next time, take care.Thanks again for watching
- From the.