60 Minutes - 05/18/2025: China’s Spies, The Future of Warfare, Sounds of Cajun Country

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Chinese hackers have infiltrated U.S. government systems, the private sector, and critical infrastructure, but hacking has not replaced Beijing’s pursuit of old-fashioned human intelligence, aka: spying. Norah O'Donnell reports on Chinese covert agents who monitor and influence events outside their own borders and surveil and intimidate Chinese dissidents right here in America. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi travels to Costa Mesa, CA, to meet with Palmer Luckey, the 32-year-old tech billionaire who founded Anduril, a defense products company that makes autonomous weapons, some already in use by the U.S. military and in the war in Ukraine. Alfonsi explores the artificial intelligence that powers Anduril's systems and reports on some of the company's most advanced weapons, including a submarine that operates without sailors. While several international groups refer to lethal autonomous weapons as "killer robots," Luckey says that these innovations represent the future of warfare. Correspondent Jon Wertheim visits southwest Louisiana, where the sounds of Cajun and Zydeco music - long the soundtrack in this singular pocket of America - are experiencing a remarkable revival. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman

over there with the Italian leather handbag, is that from Winners? Ooh, or that beautiful silk skirt, did she pay full price? Or those suede sneakers? Or that luggage? Or that trench? Those jeans? That jacket? Those heels? Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners find fabulous for less. What has this 76-year-old retired historian been doing in the United States? Were you spying for the Chinese government? According to U.S. intelligence, he was part of a massive network of covert agents recruited by China to spy for its Ministry of State Security. This is, in scale and in scope and in brazenness,

the biggest espionage operation against the U.S. in its history. Palmer Luckey may not look like your typical defense industry executive, but the 32-year-old billionaire is the founder of Andrel, whose line of autonomous weapons is powered by artificial intelligence. It's a scary idea to some people. It's a scary idea, but I mean, that's the world we live in. I'd say it's a lot scarier, for example, to imagine a weapon system that doesn't have any level of intelligence at all. You need no passport to enter Cajun country, but it's an exotic land like nowhere else.

Home to a cuisine, a language, a landscape, even a pacing all its own. And then there's the singular sound. What defines the Cajun sound? Typically, Cajun music has a Cajun accordion, fiddle sung in Cajun French. They play two-step and waltzes. It's got a very unique rhythm, a very syncopated rhythm that you don't hear in a lot of other kinds of music. It's a syncopation that drives the music. And it has a hauntingness about it, the music, and it's just got soul, you know? I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim.

I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. According to the latest assessment from America's intelligence agencies, China remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to the U.S. Its hackers have infiltrated the U.S. government, the private sector, and critical infrastructure like water systems and power grids. Hacking, however, has not replaced Beijing's pursuit of old-fashioned human intelligence. China's Communist Party remains intent on leveraging a worldwide network of covert agents to monitor and influence events outside

its own borders, and to surveil and intimidate Chinese dissidents right here in America. Tonight, you'll hear about why China's spies are on the rise and what happens when one gets caught. This is, in scale and in scope and in brazenness, the biggest espionage operation against the U.S. in its history. Jim Lewis is a former U.S. diplomat whose direct experience with China's intelligence agencies spans more than 30 years. He says since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China's spies no longer seem to fear the U.S. Why do China's espionage efforts appear to be growing so big, so fast under Xi Jinping? Xi Jinping thinks it's China's time to move to the

center of the world stage. Xi Jinping looks at the West and at the U.S. and says, these people are feeble-minded, and I'm going to be able to beat them. It may not be a household name in the U.S., but according to Lewis, China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, is now the largest and most active spy agency in the world. In a propaganda video the spy agency posted last year on China's largest social network, a voiceover boasts that the MSS senses things before they happen and fights against evil. The slick production is a public message to both foreign adversaries

and China's own citizens about the ministry's growing power. It's sort of the equivalent of the CIA, but it has much greater powers. One estimate says the MSS might have 600,000 employees, and they are committed to going after the United States. We are target number two for them. Who's target number one? Target number one is China's own people. When Xi Jinping wakes up screaming in the middle of the night,

he's really worried that the Chinese Communist Party was on the path that the Soviet Communist Party was on. Lewis says to maintain absolute power at home, President Xi looks abroad. Xi Jinping probably remembers that a lot of revolutions start outside the home country, and he doesn't want that to happen to China. So there's a huge effort to pay attention

to the expatriate population. One way Beijing paid attention, according to the FBI, was to secretly open an overseas Chinese police station right in the middle of New York City. It was discovered in 2022, hidden among businesses in a commercial building in Manhattan's Chinatown. expats could renew government documents there like driver's licenses, federal prosecutors said the main purpose of the outpost was to target and harass Chinese dissidents. They've done it in the Netherlands, they've done it in Canada, but the idea that you'd open a police station in another country, that's a signal disrespect of the sovereignty of that nation. After the station was shut down, two Chinese Americans who allegedly opened it were charged with conspiracy to act as unregistered foreign

agents of China. In total, over the last five years, the Department of Justice has indicted more than 140 people for felonies related to harassment, hacking, and spying for China within the U.S. And one of the accused worked for the governor of New York. Federal prosecutors allege a former top aide to Kathy Hochul named Linda Sun accepted millions of dollars to influence who the governor met with and what she said about China. Sun and her husband, who have pled not guilty, owned a multi-million dollar home on Long Island and a condo in Hawaii. Having a Ferrari in two multi-million dollar houses is a bad idea. For a government employee. Everyone leaves a record. Some records are more flamboyant than others.

Flamboyant is not a word that comes to mind when you meet Xu Jun Wang, the 76-year-old retired historian came to the U.S. from China in 1994 as a visiting scholar at Columbia University. In New York, home to more exiled Chinese activists than any other city in the world, Wang helped found a group that met regularly and was dedicated to democracy in China. In the 2010s, the overseas democracy movement was gaining momentum, and I was eager to be a part of it and promote democracy. What was your specific role in the pro-democracy community in Flushing, Queens? I was assigned the role of vice president, secretary general for publicity and events,

all kinds of events. While Xu Junwang became a trusted member of the Chinese dissident community here in New York, he kept another role secret. For almost 20 years, he was spying for China's Ministry of State Security. Did you take notes about who attended these meetings and what they said? Yes. When did you start sharing that information with China's largest intelligence group? That is a very big misunderstanding.

In 2022, Xu Junwang was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for sharing dissidents' names, contact information, and private conversations at the direction of the MSS for 17 years. When we spoke with him in February through an interpreter, he was at times combative and disputed basic facts of his case. So we eventually asked Mr. Wang point blank. Were you spying for the Chinese government? No. Throughout the entire trial, they were very careful.

They never used the word spy. Just look at the record, and you'll see that. We did. And while lying to 60 Minutes may not be a crime, lying to the FBI is. Mr. Wang repeatedly told federal agents he had no contact with the Ministry of State Security. But according to federal prosecutors, he met with these MSS officers in China, and they offered him plane tickets and helped his family with a business dispute. In 2021, someone claiming to be from the MSS showed up at Mr. Wang's door to help delete communications from his computer that might incriminate him. Video from the encounter showed he welcomed the man's help. Unfortunately for Mr. Wang, the Chinese operative was actually an undercover FBI agent. Mr. Wang had pled not guilty.

This past August, he was convicted of making false statements, illegally possessing democracy activists' identification, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of China. Our position has always been that he never had the intent to be an agent of the Chinese government. Mr. Wang's lawyers, Zachary Margulis- Onuma and Kevin Tang, admit their client was in touch with Chinese intelligence. But they argue he didn't break the law and claim FBI agents went after him once they were unable to recruit him for the U.S. They were hoping he would roll over

and identify handlers higher up the food chain. No, he did not do so. And they felt a little vindictive and angry and frustrated about their inability to stop higher-up actual espionage, and they turned him into this fall guy. But when you look at the reality, he didn't have any access to secret, top-secret information. All he passed over is the attendance sheet of the democracy movement.

Those information are available in public. People's names that attend a private event are not public. They're only made public. Can we home in on that? There's no evidence of any harm to the United States' interests or to democracy movement interests from anything that he did. Democracy! Anna Young Chung disagrees. She testified against Mr. Wang in court.

The pro-democracy activist's name and contact information, along with 63 others, was found in Mr. Wang's luggage when he returned to New York from a trip to China in 2019. Did you ever imagine that Mr. Wong was one of the people who was reporting what you were doing and others back to China? Not at all. Did you lose sleep over it? Yeah, and I also make sure my door chain was on all the time at night, because you never know. Born in Hong Kong, Ms. Young Chung is now a U.S. citizen and professor of biology. She organizes demonstrations for the Hong Kong democracy

movement in the U.S., where she's become increasingly wary of who might be watching. I believe they are collecting information. What kind of information? Like what are we doing, what exactly what we are saying in the protests, and how many people are showing up there, things like that. And collecting that information for whom? For Beijing. Why do you think China goes to such lengths to spy on pro-democracy activists here in the U.S. This is their tactics, right?

They try to silence you, harass you, or intimidate you so that you stop what you're doing. They want to cripple me and cripple my ability to advocate for Hong Kong. Anna Kwok now runs the pro-democracy organization that Anna Yong Chung co-founded. Because of her outspoken activism, the Hong Kong government has placed a $130,000 bounty on her head. So every single day I wake up, I open my social media, and then I would see people

talking about how if I keep talking here in the United States, they will come kidnap me and take my body to the Chinese consulate so that they can send me back to China. How are you viewed by the Chinese government? If I do go back to Hong Kong, it's going to be life imprisonment. So basically, they see me as a traitor, as someone who betrays the Chinese government and the Hong Kong government. And what's the crime you've committed?

They think that fighting for democracy, wanting a say in our own future is a crime. The United States is known as the land of the free. Do you feel free here? Honestly with China's long arm repression, it's difficult to feel free anywhere in the world. The thing about the Chinese government is that you can leave the country, you can leave the territory, but you can never actually leave their governance. After we met her, Anna Kwok's father and brother were arrested in Hong Kong. She is currently seeking political asylum in the U.S. In March, the Trump administration announced sanctions against officials in Hong Kong

who have targeted her and 18 other prominent activists living abroad. As for Xu Junwang, on April 14th, a federal judge sentenced him to three years supervised release. He spared Mr. Wang prison time because of health problems, including cognitive decline. But the judge reiterated he had committed serious crimes against the U.S. He was an agent. He worked with the Chinese government to identify targets for them to surveil and compromise. According to China analyst Jim Lewis, there's still no substitute for on-the-ground human intelligence,

even if Mr. Wang was an expendable asset for China's top spy agency. Not exactly James Bond. Definitely not James Bond. was an expendable asset for China's top spy agency. Not exactly James Bond. Definitely not James Bond. Definitely not. That's the scary part though, is that the Chinese are very good. And so he was not number one on the list of assets to protect.

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from Starbucks is made just the way you like it. Handcrafted cold foam topped with toasted cookie crumble. It's a sweet summer twist on iced coffee. Your cold brew is ready at Starbucks. By now, we've all heard about Elon Musk's efforts to reshape the U.S. government. But tonight, we'll introduce you to another tech billionaire, one who set his sights on radically changing the way the Pentagon buys and uses weapons. His name is Palmer Luckey, and he's the founder of Andrel, a California defense products company.

Luckey says for too long, the U.S. military has relied on overpriced and outdated technology. He argues a Tesla has better AI than any U.S. aircraft, and a Roomba vacuum has better autonomy than most of the Pentagon's weapons systems. So Andrel is making a line of autonomous weapons that operate using artificial intelligence, no human required. Some international groups have called those types of weapons killer robots. But Palmer Luckey says it is the future of warfare. I've always said that we need to transition from being the world police to being the world gun store. Do we want to be the world's gun store? I think so. I think we have to. Says the guy who sells weapons. See, I agree it sounds self-fulfilling, but you have to remember, I also got into this industry because I believe that. Palmer Luckey isn't your typical defense industry executive.

His daily uniform, flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt, is more suited for Margaritaville than the military. But the 32-year-old billionaire is the founder of Andrel, whose line of American-made autonomous weapons looks like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie and whose slick marketing videos wouldn't be out of place in one. There's the Roadrunner, a twin turbo jet-powered drone interceptor that can take take off, identify, and strike. If it doesn't find a target, it can land and try again. Andrel also makes headsets, which allow soldiers to see 360 degrees in combat. And there's this. It's an electromagnetic warfare system that can be programmed to jam enemy systems, knocking out drone swarms. It's not

some futuristic fantasy. Andral systems are already being used by the U.S. military and in the war in Ukraine. We shouldn't be sending our people to stand in other countries, putting our men and women, our sons and daughters, at risk for the sovereignty of other nations. So you'd rather have an American-made product in their hands than our soldiers over there? Absolutely, every time. And I think that that's one of the reasons that autonomy is so powerful. Right now, there's so many weapon systems that require manning. If I can have one guy commanding and controlling 100 aircraft, that's a lot easier than having to have a pilot in every single one, and it puts a lot fewer American lives at risk. To be clear, autonomy does not mean remote control. Once an autonomous weapon is programmed

and given a task, it can use artificial intelligence for surveillance or to identify, select, and engage targets. No operator needed. It's a scary idea to some people. It's a scary idea, but I mean, that's the world we live in. I'd say it's a lot scarier, for example, to imagine a weapon system that doesn't have any level of intelligence at all. There's no moral high ground in making a landmine

that can't tell the difference between a school bus full of children and Russian armor. It's not a question between smart weapons and no weapons. It's a question between smart weapons and dumb weapons. Luckey showed us how those so-called smart weapons can be synchronized on Andrel's AI platform. It's called Lattice. Lattice collects data from various sensors and sources, including satellites, drones, radar, and cameras, allowing, he says, the AI to analyze, move assets, and execute missions faster than a human. If you were having to require the human operator to actually map every single action and say, hey, do this, if that, then this, it would take so long to manage it that you would be better off just remotely piloting it.

It's the AI on board all these weapons that makes it possible to make it so easy. There are lots of people who go, oh, AI. I don't know. I don't trust it. It's going to go rogue. I would say that it is something to be aware of. But in the grand scheme of things,

things to be afraid of, there's things that I'm much more terrified of. And I'm a lot more worried about evil people with mediocre advances in technology than AI deciding that it's going to wipe us all out. Luckey says all Angel's weapons have a kill switch that allow a human operator to intervene if needed. But the Secretary General of the United Nations has called lethal autonomous weapons, quote, politically unacceptable and morally repugnant. When people say to you, look, it's evil, how do you respond to that?

I usually don't bother because if I am going to argue with them, I usually poke it. I'm like, OK, so do you think that NATO should be armed with squirt guns or slingshots? How about sternly worded letters? Would you like that? Would you like it if NATO just, they just have a bunch of guys sitting at typewriters, a thousand monkeys writing letters to Vladimir Putin begging him to not invade Ukraine? Our entire society exists because of a credible backstop of violence threatened by the United States and our allies all over the world. And thank goodness for it.

It might sound flip, but part of Palmer Luckey's philosophy is that autonomous weapons ultimately promote peace by scaring adversaries away. My position has been that the United States needs to arm our allies and partners around the world so that they can be prickly porcupines that nobody wants to step on. Nobody wants to bite them. In your mind, is it enough just to have all these things as deterrents, or do they have to be deployed and used? They have to believe that you can use them.

By the end of this year, Andrew says it will have secured more than $6 billion in government contracts worldwide. When you first came into this space and you're a tech guy in a Hawaiian shirt and you're walking into the Pentagon, maybe in flip-flops, I don't know, were you welcomed with open arms? There were a very small number of people who welcomed me with open arms and everyone else thought that I was nuts. Nuts because there hasn't been a new company in the defense industry in a significant way since the end of the Cold War. For decades, five defense contractors called the Primes have dominated the industry. Typically, the Primes present an idea to the Pentagon. If the Pentagon

buys it, the government pays for the company to develop it, even if it's late or goes over budget. Lucky started Andral to flip that procurement structure on its head. The idea behind Andral was to build not a defense contractor, but a defense product company. What's the difference? Contractors, in general, are paid to do work, whether or not it succeeds. A product company has a very different mentality. You're putting in your own money. You're putting in your own time. My vision was to build a company that would show up not with a PowerPoint describing how taxpayers are going to pay all my bills, but with a working product where all the risk has been baked out. It will work for enough things

that you can save our country hundreds of billions of dollars a year. It may not surprise you that Palmer Luckey's father was a car salesman. His mother took on the role of homeschooling him and his three sisters. Luckey says he was fascinated by electronics and spent a lot of time tinkering in his parents' garage in Long Beach, California. By age 19, his tinkering turned into Oculus, the virtual reality company. And at 21, Palmer Luckey fulfilled every young founder's dream when he sold Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion. The wonder kid graced the covers of magazines, but two years later, he was fired from Facebook. Why did you get fired? Well, you know, everyone's got a different story,

but it boils down to I gave $9,000 to a political group that was for Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton to be a Trump supporter in 2016. This was at the height of the election insanity and derangement in Silicon Valley. And so I think that a lot of people thought back then that you could just fire a Trump supporter. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has denied that Luckey was fired for his political

views. What do you think now when you see those tech leaders, Mark Zuckerberg, lined up behind President Trump now at his inauguration? I am inclined to let every single one of them get away with it. Look. What do you mean get away with it? Coming around to a point of view that is more aligned with the American people broadly, I think is good for the country. I think it is not good for you to have techno-corpo elites that are radically out of step with where the American people are. In 2017, Leckie says he left Silicon Valley with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank and a chip on his shoulder.

I was fired at the height of my career. My gears were ground, and I really wanted to prove that I was somebody, that I was not a one-hit wonder, and that I still had it in me to do big things. He says he thought about starting companies to combat obesity or fix the prison system, but ultimately decided to break into the defense industry. Have you run into any people who don't take you seriously because you were never in the military? I don't think so. I think I owe that to the James Bond franchise. Everyone in the military has seen James Bond movies and they all like you, right? I'm the wacky gadget man. I'm the

guy who types on the computer and pushes up my glasses and then gives them a strange thing to help them accomplish their mission. And this is his laboratory, Andral's 640,000 square foot headquarters in Costa Mesa, California. It's a mix of high-tech carpentry and robotic engineering. A sign on the floor pokes fun at the boss's shoe choice. But Lucky wanted to show us something off-campus. We hopped in his 1985 Humvee. The billionaire told us he also owns a decommissioned Blackhawk helicopter, a 48-crew submarine, and a Navy speedboat.

In Dana Point, we took a ride 15 minutes off the coast to see the largest weapon in Andrew's arsenal, this submarine. It's called the Dive XL. It's about the size of a school bus and works autonomously. It's not remote controlled by this computer. It's doing it on the brain, on the submarine itself. So if I told you to go off and perform some mission, it's months long. Like, go to this target, listen for this particular signature, and if you see this signature run, if you see this

one hide, if you see this one follow it, it can do that all on its own, without being detected, without communicating with it. Andrel says the Dive XL can travel 1,000 miles fully submerged. Australia has already invested $58 million in the subs to help defend its seas from China. But Andrel's most anticipated weapon has been closely guarded until this month. Hidden inside this hangar,

Andrewl's unmanned fighter jet called Fury. There is no cockpit or stick or rudder because there's no pilot. The idea is that you're building a robotic fighter jet that is flying with manned fighters and is doing what you ask it to do, recommending things that be done, taking risks that you don't want human pilots to take. Fury represents a big turning point for the company. Andruil was viewed by some inside the defense industry as a tech bro startup

until it beat out several of the prime defense contractors to make an unmanned fighter jet for the Air Force. Fury is scheduled to take its first test flight this summer. If selected by the Pentagon, it, like all Andral products, will be produced in the U.S. The war games say we're going to run out of munitions in eight days in a fight with China. If we have to fight Iran and China and Russia all at the same time, we are screwed. If we go to war, right, your version of what Anduril's place is in a conflict. How do you view it?

I think what we're going to be doing is first connecting a lot of these systems that otherwise would not have been talking to one another. We're going to be making large numbers of cruise missiles, large numbers of fighter jets, large numbers of surface and subsurface systems. I guess I would hope that Andoril is making most of the stuff that's being used on day nine, day 10, day 11, day 100. I think a lot of that is going to be coming out of our factories after everything else is run dry.

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hang out as we did in the marshy interior of southern Louisiana. You need no passport to enter Cajun country, but it's an exotic land like nowhere else. Home to a cuisine, a language, a landscape, even a pacing all its own. And then there's the singular sound. Cajun music and its cousin from across the way, Zydeco, resists easy description. But it is intoxicatingly catchy, often sung in French, and enjoying a most unlikely Renaissance. The sun is out and living is easy on the bayous of Louisiana. The fish are jumping, those are carp, and the cypress trees grow high.

On dry land, the music hangs in the humidity. In Eunice, Louisiana, the Savoy family has lived on this patch of land for eight generations. Music is often a family inheritance down here, and you can think of the Savoys as the Von Trapp clan of Cajun country, Acadiana as it's known. Joel is a Grammy-winning producer and musician, often accompanied by his brother Wilson, also a Grammy winner. Their father Mark, an accordion maker by day, is a prominent musician in his own right,

as is their mother Anne, who once recorded with Linda Ronstadt. What defines the Cajun sound? Typically, Cajun music has a Cajun accordion, fiddle sung in Cajun French. They play two-step and waltzes. It's got a very unique rhythm, very syncopated rhythm that you don't hear in a lot of other kinds of music.

It's the syncopation that drives the music. And it has a hauntingness about it, the music, and it's just got soul, you know? These sounds are sourced from the unique blend of people that converged on Cajun country over the centuries. Music is obviously born out of this swirl of different cultures. The accordion arrived with some part of the population. Fiddle arrived with some part of the population. The fiddle arrived with a different part of the population. The syncopation comes from people that we encountered here,

the African Americans, the Creoles, the Spanish, things like that. It's also a social music. You know, any time there's music, there's somebody hanging out, somebody cooking. These things just are part of life. It's always inclusive. Maybe you'll dance a few times, who knows? As we saw, when the sun sets in Acadiana, the volume turns way up. This music is the soundtrack in dive bars, in nightclubs, in the old French salle de danse dance halls that stud this landscape.

And while it's not topping billboard charts, the music is experiencing a resurgence as young audiences two-step once again to those accordions, fiddles, and washboards. You say Louisiana, the first thing that comes out of their mind is, how's New Orleans? I'm like, I don't know. I don't live in New Orleans. I live in southwest Louisiana. Totally different sound. A totally different sound.

Chubby Carrier is a Grammy-winning accordionist from Church Point, Louisiana. He tours with his group, the Bayou Swamp Band. Chubby Zydeco is a relative of Cajun music, born out of the French-speaking Black Creole community. One time, this couple came and goes, honey, you got to come see this. That's a Black gentleman with an accordion in his hand. I wonder if he played poker, honey.

Oh, poker. Poker. Oh, you had a surprise for them. Oh, my goodness. And I seen that, and they came back, and when I seen them sitting there, I said, watch this. It's time to dance with me tonight, y'all. I started playing my songs, and she started looking over to her husband and going, wow, this is great.

She's just doing this. She thought she was coming for Lawrence Welk. Something like that. Jordan Thibodeau is the frontman of the touring band Les Rue d'Or. It's just the sounds of our community. And I think that just buries into your heart when you're little. And it's not some hipster, ironic thing. No. Most of the people that be in these kind of dances

are as far removed from a hipster as you can possibly imagine. Jordan is Cajun music's equivalent of a rock star. And through his music, he's become something of a global ambassador for Cajun country and its way of life. You've been saying, you say a lot that's in some of your song lyrics. You want to tell us what it is? Tu vis ta culture ou tu tues ta culture, il n'y a pas de milieu. It means you either live your culture or you kill your culture.

There's no in between. What do you mean? You see this vanishing of cultures, of dialects, of everything to just create this one generic human, you know, and it's really sad to me. So I'm going to get up every day and I'm going to live my culture today. I think it's every individual's responsibility to maintain who they are as a people.

Time was Louisiana French could be heard on every street corner, both in Cajun and Creole communities. Jordan learned French from his grandmother. But today the language is dwindling as the march of Americanization proceeds. JORDAN PEELE, Imagine still being home and saying, oh, I miss home. It's a very hard feeling to convey.

DAVID ROCKWELL, I wonder if the language is diminishing, the Cajun music becomes that much more important as this transmitter of culture. JORDAN PEELE, Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt. There are countless kids who are learning the language just from the music. The Cajun story starts in Nova Scotia, where this French-speaking people led a peaceful life until they didn't. In the middle of the 1700s, the conquering British kicked out the Acadians, shortened to Cajuns.

Expelled, they found an improbable home amid the backwaters of French Louisiana, from the craggy North Atlantic to the delta and bayous of the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest swamp in North America. Jordan gave us a tour of the land that shaped his Cajun ancestors. They adapted to survive, and then thrive, in this new and sometimes hostile environment. Did I hear right? You learned to swim in this water? Yeah. That's what happens. Oh, yeah. My mama, they would take the kids, they'd put us in life jackets and throw us out of the boat to go swim so they could fish in peace, you know. And she'd make the turn

if you'd see an alligator, mama, they got an alligator. You can see him? Yes, ma'am. That is fine. If you can't see him no more, let me know. The Cajuns didn't come with much, but they did bring their old French melodies. We sing a lot fishing. When we're sitting fishing, me and my little girl, my youngest, she likes to sit and sing. So while we're fishing, she sings to the fish to get them to come. Long as he brought up fish, well, there's an unwritten rule in Cajun country. You can't have the music without the food. Joel Savoie and his family invited us into their kitchen.

We're cooking some shrimp etouffee. Etouffee is a French word that means smothered. So we smothered them. Where did you learn? From your folks? Yeah. A lot of people say, what's the recipe? I said, I don, what's the recipe? I said, I don't know what the recipe is. New York, you can go into a Michelin star restaurant

and they've got etouffee and gumbo. Yeah, but it's not the same. They don't know what they're doing. I proposed a toast to my grandmother who lived in this house. And with her lack of gentility, she would always say, Arrête de baduler, ass trop, et allons pas frais. Quit your babbling, sit down, and let's stuff ourselves.

Cheers. The music, the food, the drink, the bon temps, the good times, these traditions braid all the communities here, but with slight twists. Chubby Carrier's father and grandfather were sharecroppers who played music at night. He showed us the difference between the blues-heavy Zydeco he grew up with

and the more country-infused Cajun sound. So I took one of my grandfather's songs. Now you see, I did all my Zydeco. That's a Zydeco song. Now watch the waltz. Take it to the Cajun. You hear that? Then I take that same song and I speed it up. It's going to turn into a Zydeco song.

Whoa. All in one, brother. Though entwined musically for decades, the Black Zydeco and the white Cajun scenes couldn't mingle much in the Jim Crow Deep South. We first met Chubby at La Poussière, the Dust, a dance hall in the town of Bro Bridge. He remembers when black bands and patrons weren't allowed in.

I wonder if you thought about what your dad and your grandpa would have been thinking watching you play this venue where they wouldn't have been playing. I mean, we can't even step in that club. Like, daddy and my grandfather, I want to say this, they fought the fight for us, man. Daddy and granddaddy is in heaven looking down going, my son is playing at a white venue that I never thought in the many years that I would ever, ever see. But how good it is, how sweet it is, huh? Today, the Cajun and Zydeco crowd overlap like never before.

The music has found new audiences with new sensibilities. It feels like a train moving. Like virtually all the musicians we interviewed, little Nate Williams has seen a surge in popularity. Last year, his streaming audience jumped by, get this, more than 3,000%. How do you describe your style of Zydeco? It's not traditional, is it? Very much not traditional, man.

It's a fusion. That's how I think of it. Keyboards, synthesizers, a lot of R&B. A lot of R&B. Nate learned to play from his father, also a renowned Zydeco musician. And he's found pushing musical boundaries is not always frictionless. What's dad say about this? My dad has always been encouraging. But I could see his face sometimes. You know, we'll sit down in the studio. He'll look at me and listen to my stuff. Can we put some more accordion in there? Can we put some more French in there?

Can we put this in there? But at the end of the day, you know, we come to some compromising understanding that this is you, this is me. And the music has struck a chord beyond Louisiana. Jordan's band tours across the country and internationally. We met Jordan, Joelle, and Wilson after they'd played a packed show

in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, of all places. The band, like us, ponders what precisely is fueling this interest outside Louisiana. They don't speak French. They're not getting the lyrics. this interest outside Louisiana. They don't speak French, they're not getting the lyrics. What are they connecting to? I wonder that all the time. I really just believe it's the emotion. If we playing and I'm happy,

and we cutting up and you can see and feel that good time, you gonna feel that good time. Same thing, if the song's horribly sad... maybe it makes you feel a little sadness inside of you and you connect on that emotional level. Emotional connection... to a sound that, like the accordion itself, can contract and expand.

Old melodies in a new era. True music, it's emotive. You're gonna feel it. And that's, everybody wants to feel something. The last minute of 60 Minutes. Tonight marks the end of the 57th season of 60 Minutes. It has been a memorable one, for us certainly, and we hope for you, our viewers.

Mr. President. We have covered long-running wars and skirmishes that threaten to become wars. This Chinese boat then rammed us intentionally. Communities devastated by wildfires and rebuilding from hurricanes. I think... A presidential election in America and an ancient Buddhist kingdom in Bhutan.

I loved it. Really? Yeah. We've profiled stars of every stripe. Sixty minutes is here right now on our first day. And taken you to the winter home of the monarch butterfly, the frozen landscape of Greenland, and a most unusual baseball game.

As has been true for more than half a century, some of our segments this season have tackled difficult, controversial subjects. Oh, my God. Others have been pure features and adventures. Whoa! Whatever the subject, our goal remains what it has always been, to be accurate, to be fair, and to engage our audience with respect. We are already at work on stories for Season 58, which will begin in September. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.