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May 15, 2026 13 mins

During their historic meeting, China's President Xi pressed Pre sident Trump over Taiwan. 

Military expert Mike Lyons joins Jack to talk about the Xi's strong remark. 

Plus, Mike shares the details about his latest op/ed in Real Clear Defense, The Summit Trump Should Schedule After Beijing.

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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So there is a bit of a breaking, big news
story around Trump's visit to Beijing. As President She of
China has pushed this Taiwan thing more and harder than
I think anybody was expecting, like over and over again,

(00:22):
each time they sit down to meet or like, no
matter whatever topic we bring up, she goes back to
Taiwan being a really big deal and very important to him,
and Taiwan belongs to us, and over and over again.
And I think that's interesting. We're getting more reporting on that.

(00:43):
Give you this version from the New York Post before
we get to Mike Lyons, because I want to ask
him about this and a bunch of other stuff. A
very different story began to emerge behind closed doors after
President She continually pressed the issue of Taiwan. The mid
morning sit down ran law about forty minutes over its
scheduled time. Trump was notably quieter. At the next stop.

(01:05):
He ignored shouted questions. The bodied language of both presidents
was noticeably stiffer than it was earlier, as in there
had been some you know, confrontation, and they had reached
a point of things being uncomfortable around this issue, and
their people are putting out very strong language about it,

(01:25):
and we're reiterating that Taiwan is a free nation and
we support them anyway. It's kind of a surprise in
the whole thing. We'd like to welcome to the show.
Mike Lions. We love talking to Mike about anything militarily.
You can follow him that m a j is in
Major m Aj. Mike lyons on his Twitter feed. He

(01:46):
just had an op ed indefense dot Com about ai
in our relationship with China, which we'll talk about a
little bit. But hey, Mike, what do you think about
this hardcore push from President She about how we're taking
Taiwan someday and don't get no way.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Or there will be a war. That's basically what he said.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah, no, I saw that report that comes from, you know,
kind of an old Greek model about kind of rising
powers and existing powers, and the bottom line is that
could ruin everything between the US and China. That seems
to be their hard line. I think I think President
she is trying to understand Donald Trump's language of leverage,

(02:25):
and I think that's what he's trying to use as
leverage back to everything that the President wanted and wants
to accomplish in the summit. He brought all the CEOs.
He's bringing all this with his perceived leverage into the equation,
and I think President She is just trying to pivot
that way, and they see themselves as this rising power
and he recognizes the US as a ruling power. And

(02:47):
to frame it the way he has means that potentially
war could be inevitable if if we decide to involve
ourselves with there. We've just sold them billions of dollars
and ten or twelve billion dollars worth of military equips.
But she is pretty serious about making this whole thing
as a very hands off operation.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Where's the reality on this?

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Just as a like an outside observer, it seems to
me that China's way got the upper hand just because
of the proximity. If they decided to take Taiwan, it
would be really hard for US to stop them.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
It would it would require US forces firing missiles into
mainland China, which would then you start this war. That's
the only way you could you could possibly stop this
and you know, to keep them from from taking it.
And I think right now our mentality has been well.
But besides strategic ambiguity, about it. It's this kind of

(03:42):
porcupine effect. Just give Taiwan enough equipment that it would
make the cost of taking it militarily so high, you know,
similar to what we thought would have happened in Ukraine.
The cost of it was too high. It didn't stop
the Rusians there, you know. Again, for China to be
a global power though in this century, and we're all
convincing ourselves that China is the rising power and US

(04:04):
is the falling power, I just don't buy that yet,
Recorder of the way into the century and China has
still yet flexed any kind of military muscle or any
kind of military might in that regard. Now, this would
be like anything else, would be considered an easier military
operation to your point because of proximity, but it could
start a very large conflict in the region that frankly,
I'm not sure the US would give up potentially a

(04:26):
West coast city for if they decided to fire a
nuclear weapon at It's based on what we're doing, man,
And this is.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
The headlines everywhere that I'm looking that Taiwan emerges as
key topic and all that sort of thing where we
were kind of hoping to make it a backburner topic,
but not the way things have turned out. Okay, Well,
I'm glad I got to ask you all about that.
So you've got this piece at defense dot Com about

(04:53):
AI and how the next summit between China and the
United States should be a cooperational very AI. I can
talk about AI all day long. I don't know if
you've heard where of this, but I read all the books,
I listen to all the podcasts. I'm fascinated by the topic.
What's your take on it from a military standpoint?

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Well, I think, you know, I put my Cold War
you know hat on again and look back and say,
you know, AI is a potential nuclear weapon that can
destroy the Earth if we let it involved with targeting
and if we let it make decisions. Think of you know,
the terminator. And it's not a joke anymore. I mean,
we're we're operating a war right now at scale with
AI in terms of our targeting and the closing the

(05:29):
kill chain, the time in between we recognize the target
and then can engage that target. And we've got to
get with China to create someone like another Salt treaty,
a strategic arms limitation treat You treat it like it's
a nuclear weapon. Get them in US to agree to
certain red lines about where AI is used in specifically
the offense. You know, it's one thing to use AI
techniques in the defense, as Israel does with it's Iron Dome.

(05:51):
Iron Dome is fundamentally AI driven. A rockets coming at Israel.
The computer decides whether or not to engage that that
rocket or not. It's not a human pulling the trigger. Well,
if you had that on the offense, that just creates
a whole different set of variables that you might not
be able to ever stop. So you can get what's
instead of having mutually assured destruction, which is a strategic

(06:12):
to terms for nuclear weapons, you could have, you know,
mutually automated destruction, where once it starts, both sides would
be completely destroyed just based on automation alone. So we've
got to sit down with them very quickly and get
both sides to agree on certain red lines. When it
comes to the military use of artificial intelligence.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, well, of course, you know the wild card is
if it goes to artificial general intelligence or super general intelligence,
that you know, there might not be any controlling AI
at all by anyone. So that's Yeah, that's out there
as a possibility. I'm glad you're taking it this seriously.
I feel like it's that big a deal too, and
it just doesn't getting enough talk.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, I think. I think a lot of it just
has to do with the decisions are being made in
corporate America by the AI companies and what they're going
to do and what they're not going to do. When
it comes to our government, I think that the US
Congress has got to get involved. If there's a uniform code,
similar to way the President conducts covert operations, we need
to put a US code in place that says this

(07:11):
is how we're going to use artificial intelligence, and this
is how the military will use it, and codify it
in law, and then show that to the Chinese's similar
to what we did the Russians, get them to agree
on doing it in their side and with their military,
and again, at least we don't have it in the offense.
It's one thing for the defense. I think in the defense,
artificial intelligence is a game changer in some ways and
it protects you, but doing it in the offense is

(07:33):
really where the red line has to be drawn.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
If you're interested in this topic.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Mike's got a piece at defense dot com, So we
got to talk about Iran. Obviously wor at war with
that country, and we seem to be stuck. They think
they can wait us out, we think we can wait
them out. And then there is that a new story
that came out. It was anonymous quotes from our intelligence,
but it seemed pretty well sourced that Iran has way more.

(08:00):
There are rockets and missiles and rocket launchers that left.
Then we were led to believe, first of all, do
you believe that?

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah? I don't, right, they have I mean again, it's
all it's not even just the rockets themselves. It's it's
all of the systems together, and they just can't scale
it on any level anymore. It's one thing, you know,
to launch a rocket, it is not just you know,
pointing and shooting. At this point, you have to have radars,
you have to have fire direction. All the different components

(08:28):
of it are destroyed. So it's it's, you know, it's
like having you know, empty weapons. If they have then
the I'm sure they have you know, fifty to one
hundred or so. Maybe if the fact that they started
with ten thousand, they started with a large amount, but
at scale they just can't deploy them, is really what's
going on here. So I don't believe any of that
at all. I think I think the weight out period
that you know, the president is trying to be as

(08:50):
diplomatic as possible, and those of us in the military
are like, let's go come out, let's finish this off.
I mean, every single analysts you see on television right now,
that's what they're saying. And I think that would be
the most you know, viable, quickly, quick way to end
this thing. But you know, the president wants to stick
to the plomacy right now, So that's what we're going
to do well.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
And I think MBS of Saudi Arabia would agree with you,
and MBZ at the u over there at the UAE
would agree with you. So do you expect that to happen.
That's what I expect to happen.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
I do. I think they can't risk leaving Iran weak
but still able to move forward, and that's you know,
it does mean regime change and never seen this historically happen,
you know from the air in that regard. But they're
looking for the country to internally collapse economically, but we
can't leave them in a situation where in twenty years

(09:39):
they're back doing it to you know, another different population,
and that's still threatening the Middle East. And this president
again is taking care of all family business. I think
that he's not finishing. He says it all the time.
He says, it's more important that we take care of
the nuclear aspect here, and so I'm glad to see
him do it. It's long overdue.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Seems like there's a lot of flashpoints out there right now.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Different yeah, no, in different spots. It's still they can
still happen in the Pacific, in any of those straits
that are there. Venezuela looks like that's going well. You know,
Trump's talking about making them a fifty first state. I
think Cuba will get resolved once Iran does. But I
think again, the major one is in the Middle East,
and you know, there's no proxy force that's been out
there for Iran. Right now, we haven't seen terrorist attacks.

(10:25):
Could be the calm before the storm. We'll see. Maybe
Trump's try to get China to intervene.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I don't think.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
I don't think there's a lot of people that are
not happy with Pakistan being the mediators. They're not Trump,
They're not independence here. They're on the side of Iran.
And I think you seldom's Graham go go kind of
crazy over that at a sentate hearing the other day.
Maybe China was going to get involved. Trump's doing whatever
he can, but I think he's very Machiavelian. He's treating China,
he's flattering them, he's doing all he can, but he's
also brought the hammer. He's not looking to be loved,

(10:52):
he still wants to be feared by them.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
That's Mike Lyons. You can read his AI piece the
next Summit that Trump should have at Defense dot Com.
You can follow them at m Ajmike Lyons on Twitter.
Thanks for your time today, Mike, appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Ye ye please me? Um?

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Was it oh reeldefense dot com? Sorry, is just underlend
defense dot com? Cleardefense dot com, Realclear defense dot Com.
What is the actual title here, Michael? Okay, why is
it only interlined at defense dot com? Okay, it's realclear
defense dot Com. Sorry about that. I got another comment
about that, but first I got to tell you this
about Incogne, which is just really, really a good idea.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
I hate the fact that.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Every time I have to give somebody my name, address,
phone number, whatever, then they have that information and they
sell it to somebody. Then everybody has it, or sometimes
they steal it, and then I get all these texts
and emails and sometimes there are people trying to steal
from me, and I hate the whole thing. You needed Cogny.
That's what we do in Cogni. They actually go to
the data brokers because they know who they are, and

(11:56):
they use the laws that already exist and force the
people to take your information off there. And you're going
to notice a drop in spam, texts, emails, and calls
right away, protecting you from all this stuff real digital threats.
They can't scam you if they can't find you. Take
your personal data back within Cognitate. That's I n cog ni.

(12:18):
That's how it's spelled. Get sixty percent off the regular
price when you use the code armstrong and a Cognitate
dot com slash armstrong. That's sixty percent off when you
use the code armstrong and at Cogni dot com slash
armstrong and Cogniti dot com slash armstrong. So I hope
my clients is right. He has a lot of sources himself.
In the pushback against that big story of The New

(12:39):
York Times had the other day saying that RAN still
retains something like seventy percent of their rockets and thirty
out of thirty five, I think they said of the
rocket launchers right there along the straight or horror moves.
Mike doesn't believe that. I hope he's right. Would the
New York Times go with some analyst that wants to

(12:59):
make Trump look bad?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Hell yeah they would. So what's actually the truth?

Speaker 1 (13:03):
I don't know, But in terms of hoping, I hope
Mike's right.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Armstrong and Getty
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