American Thought Leaders - Rep. Rich McCormick Calls for Tougher Measures to Combat CCP Hacking and Espionage

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

In this episode, we sit down with Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), a decorated veteran who served over 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy as a helicopter pilot and a medical corps officer.As a lawmaker, he has co-sponsored legislation to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rampant economic espionage and tech influence campaigns, and a resolution supporting formal recognition of Taiwan.“We now are in a new evolution of warfare where we’re heavily reliant on technologies. This has changed conventional warfare forever,” McCormick says.Three U.S. Army soldiers were recently indicted for stealing top-secret information for the Chinese regime. The U.S. has also charged 12 Chinese hackers and officials for cyber operations targeting U.S. agencies and media outlets, including The Epoch Times.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

They're not the same as Russia. They're much more dangerous. The way they've cheated since they joined the World Trade Organization about 20 years ago, by stealing secrets, by subverting everything that's good in the United States. Congressman Rich McCormick sees communist China as America's greatest external threat. We now are in a new evolution of warfare where we're heavily reliant on technologies. This has changed conventional warfare forever. He's a decorated veteran who served over 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy as a helicopter pilot and a Marine Corps officer. As a lawmaker, he has co-sponsored legislation

to challenge the CCP's rampant economic espionage and tech influence campaigns and a resolution to formally recognize Taiwan. Before taking office, he was an emergency room physician and treated COVID-19 patients. The trouble is when the government starts to define what's truth and what's moral and what's right, they can use any emergency to take control of your life. I was labeled as a quack or as somebody who should be removed from my licensing because what I said wasn't the same as the government. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Congressman Rich McCormick, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. It's great to be with you today. Thanks for having me.

So recently, three US Army soldiers were indicted for spying for the CCP, for the Chinese Communist Party. What's your reaction? We've had this problem in the past with Russia. You can see we have a new peer adversary. China has taken the place of Russia as our greatest adversary, greatest threat. They're on par with us militarily. They have a greater population. They're closing the gap with us on GDP. So in other words, as an economic power, much more powerful than Russia ever was. When you make this side-by-side comparisons, we used to be worried about Russia. Remember, we were competing with them.

And we used to have Reagan talk about Russia and the USSR. Collectively, the USSR was never on par with us. They didn't have the ability to have an economic powerhouse like China does. They didn't have the military that could actually match up with us like China does. If you look at the GDPs comparatively, Russia has a GDP of roughly the size of Texas by itself. Two trillion dollars. To compare that to Europe, which has about 20 trillion dollar economy,

compared to the United States which has a 27 trillion dollar economy. This whole idea that Russia can invade Ukraine and not lose drastically is ridiculous. I mean combined we have a $47 trillion economy. Now I understand that Ukraine has about 1 fifth the population, about 1 20th the economy, but when supported by two great forces,

we should be able to deal with Russia in short order, not just militarily, but economically, make it very difficult for them to proceed in this war. In the same way with China, they're not the same as Russia. They're much more dangerous. The way they've cheated since they joined the World Trade Organization about 20 years ago, by tripling their economy, by stealing secrets,

by subverting everything that's good in the United States, it's just manifested in this new spy rig. We used to do this with Russia all the time. Now China is our main enemy. We should be wary that first of all, it's not just those service members that should be prosecuted, but China should also be punished for what they've done. Oh, that's very interesting. Let's look at a few other things. Recently, there were 12 hackers that were indicted for work over something like at least a seven-year period against Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Commerce, us, the Epoch Times, multiple,

and they're still at large from what we know. And that's the hard thing to do. We have some really neat cybersecurity going on right now. I'm actually on the cybersecurity subcommittee in Armed Services.. Also was on the AI Task Force. Watching a Marine with a computer actually go to war is really cool. When I was growing up, I didn't even have a computer. When I went to college the entire time with no computer, learned how to use a computer in the Marine Corps,

which is a dangerous thing. But now we have these guys who are cybersecurity experts. Marines who literally go to war with foreign adversaries and take down cells. I think it's really cool, but this is a dangerous place. We're going to have quantum technologies come online. We're having developed AI.

You can see what China did in that arena recently making it very cheap. It's not better, but it's cheaper and it's going to revolutionize the way we do production on AI and AI chips. But they are, once again, not friendly to us. These guys are trying to do us harm. What about DeepSeek being available on, I don't know how many Americans have downloaded that onto their phones. Is there an issue with that? Heck yeah. Think about what they're putting on their phones. It's like TikTok. They can track where you are, what you do, what you get online with. The reason we got rid of

TikTok is not only to collect valuable information from your personal information, but it also tries to influence you. It guides you to whatever their truth is. They're going to try to control the truth, confuse us, confound the issues, and deceive the American public on what the truth is. But Congressman, on the question of TikTok, the jury seems still out. So that's confounding to me too. I'll say we made a law. The Senate confirmed this, the president signed it into law. I don't care if it's Biden, Trump, anybody. We made a law. We did it for a reason, because TikTok is not a good actor. It's owned and essentially influenced by the CCP to influence our children. Not to become scientists, not to educate us, but to make them into influencers.

Influencers based on what standard? On anybody who supports a Chinese agenda. And not just Chinese, I'm talking about the CCP agenda. So if you want to be an influencer, you have to agree with their defaults, which means that you're an influencer now for the CCP. Shame on us for doing anything that would support that. Now I get it, it could be useful to President Trump,

but you know what, not at, without a cost. And to me, this isn't about a president. This isn't about the influence of one person, it's about an influence of a very bad actor that owns the TikTok brand, and that is the CCP. We need to get away from it, and get away from it fast, and we need to make laws that are more comprehensive to keep them from coming up with other technologies and other venues to get through to our children and own our populace

and influence them in very bad ways. Well, to your point, Congressman, people argued that Deep Sea could be all that much more influential even than something like TikTok, assuming it's used at the same scale. Absolutely, because it's not just about advertising, it's just not about entertainment. You actually go there as a reference. And when they can control what the truth is, when they can say, oh no, this is reference material, this is what's true, now all of a sudden you warp the truth.

And the truth, I've always said, truth is what sets you free, right? When you can have a discussion about what's right and what's wrong, what's truthful and what's not, whether it be philosophical, legal, scientific? You control the populace, and that's how communists rule, as they deceive you from the truth. And when they deceive you from the truth, you make bad decisions. One of the things I noticed is that you were actually practicing medicine during COVID,

and you were doing types of treatments that were not, according to the official requirements and narratives yet, were very valuable to many people. You probably saved at least a few people's lives along the way. So we need to have a menu because there's no one person that can decide. How do you view that? That's what I went toward with Fauci. If anybody's seen, look it up, McCormick versus Fauci in the hearings. He literally said in interviews, if you don't do what the government says is right, that sounds very communist by the way, then we will close your business. We'll make it difficult

for you to have a business. We'll make it difficult for you to get an education, for you to travel, for you to be anything. And that's when government takes control. They can use any emergency to take control of your life and then they become the standard bearer of science, of health, of truth, of morality. And when the trouble is when the government starts to define what's truth and what's moral and what's right, then they get to control your business. Who you hire, who you fire, how you invest your money. I mean, this just happened recently where they decided if you're not part of the green movement, then you should be divested from as an investor. And it hurt people who are investing even their life savings in. If you don't invest in what the government says is truth, we'll disband you. We'll get you out of medicine. We'll take away your credentials, which they tried to do with me, because I challenged their whole premise on wearing masks or getting vaccinations,

not because I was anti-scientific. As a matter of fact, everything that I said turned out to be true, but I was labeled as a quack or as somebody who should be removed from my licensing because what I said wasn't the same as the government. Why does some guy in the government who doesn't even treat patients,

who's not even there on the front lines developing the technologies, developing the treatments that work the best based on scientific research, on application, real world application, why am I not the expert? Instead they said, no, I was a doctor 20 years ago, but I'm in government now, I decide what's the truth.

If I say that the government should make you get a vaccination, then by God you better do it or I'll make your life miserable. That's what that whole debate between me and Fauci was about. And we expose who he was. And guess what? He also made a lot of money off of that. And that's wrong. And so we wanted to expose all that. And I'm glad we did. And I think the fact that Biden pardoned him before we even charged him shows, tells you everything you need to know. I mean, I think that I think that's egregious.

And I hate to see that because now we have no accountability. So Congressman, going back to TikTok and algorithms, I think the crucial issue is who controls the algorithm. But in the end, isn't it true that whoever does control the algorithm kind of controls the truth? Don't they? Fact. What's your thought? Fact. That's exactly what I'm fighting against. I want to make sure that it's not contrived by CCP, that they don't get to tell us based on their cheap algorithm that, let's say the

majority of Americans start using this cheap AI, which is not better. It's just cheaper. Now, it doesn't cost me anything to download it. To jump in, I've had experts on who tell me that that is also a subterfuge, that it's not actually cheaper. This is just what they sold conveniently to me. The jury's out for me on that. I'm still figuring that out. The fact of the matter is it doesn't cost you any money to download some other chat GPT or whatever. I'm not here to advertise anybody, but the fact is we have plenty of American-designed technologies that are superior. What the cost is nothing advertise anybody, but the fact is we have plenty of American designed technologies that are superior. And what the cost is nothing to anybody, to the average consumer.

You're not costing yourself more money by using a different venue. This is just advertisement by the Chinese government trying to come up with some contrived idea that their product is better. It's not. It's inferior, actually, because it's controlled by a government. You don't want a government to control the truth. You don't want a government to control the message. You don't want a government to guide you to where you're going. You want the truth. That's what this is supposed to be. AI is supposed to take you to where the best information, the most useful information is. It should be

contrived based on usefulness and truthfulness, not on something that's going to benefit a foreign, national adversarial government. Presumably, an American company controlling the algorithm. Many would argue, especially after COVID, there's maybe some issues. I suppose it's a different scale of an issue or something like that. Absolutely. This is why I don't want any government. Now you could say, what about private industry? It could have the same problems, right? That's what we as lawmakers have to control. We have to figure out where is the real risk? Now I've already pointed this out. Who controls the, there's two things

I worry about with AI. First of all, controlling its development so that it's slower than the CCP or someone else. So we're actually handcuffed people who are coming up with the technology that has to compete. We have the same debate over internet, right? We control the internet, then we control the truth. And you can see there's a lot of misunderstandings

of what the truth is on the internet now. And you can say we didn't deal with that well, but I think we did well because we actually came up with so many competitors in internet that you don't have to rely on one source to come up with your information. Same thing with AI, you don't wanna inhibit the production of AI to the point where we fall behind our adversaries.

But at the same time, you want to make sure you do control the truth, that there is some way to reference it to make sure that bots aren't taking over all the information or biasing the information. That's really important to me, and that's one of the things that we looked into as the AI task force. And I think I was the only member of Congress who Congress both on the AI task force and also on cybersecurity. So I take this very seriously. But that's why you have options.

That's why we don't just have one AI model. We have competing AI models and you have to figure out which one makes the most sense. Now how do you fact check that? Now we're getting some really, really serious conversations should it be done by government or a third party audits system? Who controls the truth? Because ultimately, you control the truth, you control the narrative, you control the ability to discuss anything that exists in this world.

And that's why we make good or bad decisions based on that bias. Well, I think you're discussing one of the existential questions of our time. I don't know if we have the solution quite yet. But speaking of bots, you mentioned these bot farms and so forth. So recently, actually, because of our, at Epoch Times, because of our own investigation, X took down a whole bunch of these basically fake accounts that were boosting New York Times hit pieces against Shen Yun, which you saw recently as well, as I understand it, and also combined with bomb threats at Kennedy Center just before you actually attended and bomb threats in many other American cities.

How do you view this? When you think about why would they even worry about something that's basically entertainment, because it tells a story. Anybody who's been to that dance, that entertainment, realizes there's a story of the culture that existed before there was communism, before there was control of the people, when you had to rely on communities, on the tradition, on all the things that we as people vest our heritage in. The fact of the matter is most governments

designed by people have always been based on a monarchy, a theocracy, a dictatorship, something that was centralized command. The United States was the first country to come up with something that was based on a balance of power that was so inefficient and so frustrating that would never become more powerful than the people themselves.

Now, when you had more rural communities like they had in China before, this established really strong central government that basically controls everything, you don't want that story told. And if you go and watch that dance, you watch the story told, it's about a community, it's about a culture that was based on individual relationships. And I would say in America, the ultimate minority is the individual. And that's what this, the basis of the Constitution is about, is protecting the individual from mob rule, where the majority controls everything,

or the tyranny of a minority for that matter. I just want to make sure that we don't have people punished for individualism. And that's what we've always had in the world in communities that thrived, is where people could make decisions that control their own freedoms. Because that whole idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was still upon us naturally. We don't have to, if I, we have a lot of things called natural law. And Thomas Aquinas made this great debate and then C.S. Lewis debated it further. He said, there's certain things you know I don't have to teach you.

If I walked up to you right now and I slapped you, right in front of this interview, I slapped you. You'd be like, that's wrong. Now I didn't have to teach you, I didn't have to look it up in a law book that is wrong. You just knew inherently that's wrong. Now unfortunately we've had to make so many different laws that have contrived what wrong and right are.

But we naturally know what's good. And that's always existed. And this idea that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, all laws should support the defense of that because that's inalienable. That's given to us by God, not by some government. And unfortunately, China has it backwards because the CCP took over and they want to control everything and only make sure the built-in aristocracy of a government is rewarded and everybody else has to pay homage to them.

It's very interesting. You made me think about this. I've seen this. I go see the Shen Yun show every year with my wife for a number of years now. Something that struck me is that you're talking about God-given inalienable rights. Indeed indeed, I think one of the core themes of Shenyuan, though I hadn't thought of it this way before, is that the culture is given by God, by the divine. Right? It's fascinating. The culture and the community. And ultimately, that's what decides. That's like local governments. And what we found here in America right now is centralized government has replaced us in morality. They can decide whether transgender is moral or not. The government said it is, therefore it is. Don't rely on your churches, don't rely on your families,

don't rely on your relationships or any sort of debate. The government says it, therefore it is. Don't talk to a pediatrician. Matter of fact, if the pediatrician is contrary to the government, we'll punish the pediatrician. Not go with the pediatrician, but we'll make sure the pediatrician is educated go with the pediatrician, but will make sure the pediatrician is educated to change their opinion, not based on medicine,

but based on a political agenda. And that's what happened with COVID. That's what happened with the whole transgender movement, in my opinion. It's not that I'm against transgenders. I feel very dearly for them. They're citizens just like everybody else, but I don't want to contrive what the truth is

based on some political agenda rather than the truth. I want what's best for them just like they want what's best for them. We may disagree, but let's have an honest discussion, not one that's controlled by the government. Let's make sure that the government doesn't decide when your business is open or closed. Let's make sure the government doesn't decide whether you wear a mask or not, whether the government decides whether you get a vaccination or not, whether you can travel, whether you can get an education. That is always dangerous, and that's what our Constitution was designed to avoid. I guess I'll ask explicitly, why would the CCP be so

threatened by an American show about Chinese culture coming from God? I think that boils down to that whole inalienable rights thing. It's threatening to their government when a community gets to self-determine. When you're relying on family or spirituality, that's kind of what the whole dance is about. The whole, as you watch it play out. By the way, some beautiful dancing there, some beautiful special effects. I'm a dry-eyed guy. I like it when everything rises out of this fog and just beautiful.

But it tells a story. I like it when everything rises out of this fog and just beautiful. But it tells a story. It tells a story about these relationships that develop and how the culture is rich and beautiful has nothing to do with the government. It's not about the government. What does the CCP want? They want things that enforce their power, that they're the saviors, not a community, not a divineness, not a human spirit, but that the government's what's all powerful

and that's why they're threatened by this. Because you notice that any government that wants to be in power, whether it be a dictatorship, a monarchy, or whatever it is, they have to defeat the religion first or make sure the religion's in step with their rule, because otherwise it threatens their rule. When God can be more powerful than them, they don't want it.

They want the government to supplant morality created by religion. They want the authority to be supplanted by government, not by religion, not by family, not by community, not by church, but by government. Government becomes the end all be all to all answers. And we're having a problem with that in the United States right now. People keep on saying, well, I need to turn to the government to solve my problems. So you've given up on your family, you've given up on your community,

you've given up on the community that you were born and reared in, that you don't want that to solve the problem. You want the government to be your answer. And that's, I wouldn't say it's just lazy, it's actually very dangerous. Because once you give a power to a government to solve your problems, now they have say so over you. Just like if I'm going to pay for your college,

guess what? I have control over your life, whether I be a government or a parent. I always said to my sons, if you can pay for your college, guess what? You can make all your decisions. Now, let's talk about Taiwan. I think you've argued that the U.S. should officially say, yes, Taiwan is its own country. There's traditionally been a lot of ambiguity. There's this policy of strategic ambiguity around this issue, even though obviously Taiwan has been its own country for a very long time. So why would you argue to do that now to make it explicit? The same reason that Trump went out on a limb and recognized Israel and Jerusalem as the capital and did the things that he needed to do to shore up somebody who's a

friend, somebody who's an ally. Taiwan is strategically important to us, not just because they produce all those great chips and at TSMC But because of that strategic location that geographic location with those straits where 70% of the world's traded wealth goes through every year where 70% of the world's population is centered around that that geographical area and And and what it means to us to make sure that that that country remains independent Why not? Pick a winner and a loser? Why not stand up to them?

This is why I believe in a strong military and deterrence. Because it's very hard, I mean, as much as I think China is powerful and on a pure relationship, and I don't wanna have a nuclear war, I wanna have a deterrence so that they realize that an amphibious assault taken from a Marine is not an easy thing to do.

When you have a giant island like that, who's well-prepared, that is a bristling defense and you could really hurt yourself financially and strategically, economically and any other way. I want to make sure that the Quad is strong, that we have Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand all on the same team, not to mention South Korea. I want to make sure that China has a bunch of people in that area that make sure that they feel like, you know, if I do something out of line that doesn't fit with the worldview

of peace and prosperity, then I'm going to be punished for it. I want them to feel that. Economically, it would be a huge hit on them. If they do that, they're going to have permanent sanctions until they reverse course. I want to make sure that militarily, they suffer dramatic casualties by invading an otherwise peaceful country that's been independent from them since the beginning of their existence. Since the Chinese government was established, Taiwan was established at the same time.

Why do you think you have purview over this country when you're established essentially at the same time? That's not logical thinking. We realize that. It doesn't mean that Taiwan can't exist and have a lot of prosperity independently without being recognized. And I would say the same thing to people in Gaza, by the way. You don't have to be recognized as a country to be prosperous.

Look at Taiwan. But if Taiwan's taken over by China and look at what happened in Hong Kong, that's just a microcosm of what would happen in Taiwan, plus the devastation of a military attack there, the who knows how many people would die? How many businesses would be forever changed? There would be no profitability anymore. And they would control your destiny from that point on, just like they do with everywhere else in China. You actually co-sponsored the Economic Espionage Prevention Act, along with Chairman Molinar from the CCP committee. I wanted to talk a little bit about that. It's obviously highly relevant to this issue we just discussed, but you did this

in the previous Congress. You're reintroducing it now. It didn't make it. What's in there? What's important there? Well, so when we look at how Russia's propagated this war and what they've done, we now are in a new evolution of warfare where we're heavily reliant on technologies. This has changed conventional warfare forever. Now we still have nuclear war to worry about. I'm very concerned with that. Anybody who looks at the mutual annihilation

of what happens if there's any sort of nuclear launch, we don't know. Mutual is sure destruction. That's right, and that's been always the preventative measure. We've never had two nuclear powers fight each other ever. It just hasn't happened. We've had these proxy wars, whether it be through Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, you name it.

We've had lots of proxy wars, but we never had direct intervention between two nuclear powers, because of that fear actually. So it comes back to conventional warfare. When conventional warfare now has evolved with this AI technology, with these chips that are involved in these drones. Look at what happened to the Black Sea.

Look at how ships are basically driven off by drones, by missile systems that are controlled by new technologies. Russia has had this huge uptick, over doubled their chip consumptions. And where has it been provided from? China and its proxies. We control AI. We control the chip industry. We should be punishing people and that's what the Espionage Act is all about, is punishing those bad actors who are pass-throughs from China or anybody else for those technologies that are funding the

war. This is a problem I have. I don't care if it's India. I don't care if it's anybody who should be our friend who's funding or supplying Russia with either funds or technologies that propagate this war. We should make it very, very difficult on not only Russia, but all those bad actors who are supporting Russia in those ways. So out of curiosity, President Trump seems to be very set on coming up with a peaceful solution between Russia and Ukraine. How do you view that?

Well, it's great if you can bring people to the table. I think nobody's going to be happy with whatever that compromise is, and that's usually the best compromise. Mediation, anybody who's been through a divorce understands that nobody's happy at the end. Everybody feels like they've kind of got a bad deal, and that means you've got a reasonable deal. I happen to think that Russia's the bad actor here. They invaded a peaceful country, a border that's been established long before most of us were around. In 1994, when they left the USSR, we promised them that we would protect them in the Budapest

Accords in which they gave up their nuclear arms. I think it's a bad precedence to say that in the future anybody who gives up their nuclear arms won't be protected because look what we just did. You may you give your word you keep it. I always told my sons if they went up for sport I get it you may not like it but you gave your word you're sticking from that whole season because you gave your word. This is basic stuff we teach our kids. If you make a promise you fulfill it. Russia invaded that country. A country that voted by I think about 90%. Who votes 90% country, a country that voted by, I think, about 90%.

Who votes 90% on any issue? They voted by about 90% to leave the USSR. You could say, oh, this part of the country likes the Russians speaking, they like Russian more. But you could say the same thing about parts of the United States, that a large portion of the community speaks Spanish, and they're from Mexico.

Does that mean we give them back to Mexico because they want to? Or do you say, no, we don't do that. We had a civil war over these sort of things where we decided that just because you think differently from me doesn't mean you can just leave me. I know that some people want Texas to peel off and some people want California to peel off, and you can state the pros and cons of that. But quite frankly, Ukraine has the right to self-determine.

And I hate that Russia get their way in any way, shape, or form, because they're bad actors. They're not for the United States. They're not friends. But President Trump has been really good at foreign policy, brilliantly, as a matter of fact. I've been very impressed by what he's been able

to accomplish so far. I think the Abraham Accords were worthy of probably a Nobel Peace Prize, a lot more so than anything Obama received it for. He actually created lasting peace in that region like nobody else has in the past. I thought it was amazing. And I hope he can do something similar in this piece of courts where he comes to some conclusion where we establish something that's going to benefit the United States and Ukraine simultaneously and tie us closer together, both economically and militarily.

I want to get your opinion on something. In my opinion, this China-Russia unlimited partnership that was launched, basically the war was actually launched immediately after they announced that at the Olympics, is one of the most dangerous alliances out there. People like Edward Litvak, for example, or Lee Smith have argued that this is actually President Trump's strategy to peel off Russia from this China-Russia alliance. That's indeed actually worth quite a bit to do that, simply because that alliance is so pernicious. But your thoughts? that that's indeed actually worth quite a bit to do that, simply because that alliance is so pernicious. But your thoughts? That might be exactly what. I don't have the inner information on President Trump. I think he confounds a lot of people. You liquidated

with Qassem Soleimani, took out a bad actor. A lot of people said, oh, he's going to start a new war. No, he's going to stand up against Iran, a very bad actor. I would love to punish Iran individually because I think we have the ability to do that now until they become a nuclear power. I don't know why we're waiting on that. But I think you're right. I think President Trump has great insight as to the ability to maybe peel off Russia, but I don't know. These are not simple things.

And I think anytime that Russia feels surrounded, you've seen what they've done with North Korea. They actually used North Korean troops in this war that were just crushed, by the way, by the Ukrainians who've done a lot with very little. But I am very concerned with Russia and China becoming closer. But like you said, that started way early, and we haven't done anything to divide them since. When Russia has a need, when they feel desperate, they're gonna turn to everybody they can, which in this case is North Korea, Iran, and China.

Just goes to show you once again, China is not a friend. They're bad actors, and India should be paying attention to this. India has problems with China too. Don't forget that they play both sides of this very well at times, and I love Prime Minister Modi. I think he's a brilliant guy, but man, when you're buying Russian oil

and selling it back to Europe to fund the war, there's a problem. When you're doing pass-through on technologies from China, that's a problem. And remember, they have lots of troops right there at the Erunuglu press region that elevated terrain that they dispute with China, and they're at war with them, basically.

They should not be friendly with them in any way, shape, or form. They should be helping us in every way we can to punish China for the bad things they do. Yeah, this issue of transshipment, I've been looking at data, basically people from different countries selling things to Russia or selling things to China that they're not supposed to, or China selling things that it's unable to sell because of sanctions through a place like India. It's just become like a huge industry, kind of a central way of moving goods around trans-shipment.

It's the way that Russia funds their government. Remember, they have a $2 trillion GDP. That's it. India is above that. They'll be probably third in the world pretty soon. They'll pass Germany and Japan within the next five years because they're growing that quickly. the world pretty soon, they'll pass Germany and Japan with the next five years because they're growing that quickly. They have 1.47 billion people. They should be power players in this and I want them to be friendly with us. I want them to be good actors and I want them to be rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad behavior, quite frankly, because I think that's really important in forming their future policies. I mean, they have a very similar constitution to us. They have a larger population in China. China is

on the decline. They're going to have a lot of constitution to us. They have a larger population in China, Chinese on the decline. They're going to have a lot of struggles as their population continues to shrink, just like Japan. And I think we should play off that to our advantage. And their economic numbers, I might mention, are actually much more reflective of reality than the Chinese ones. So they are actually growing at this quite impressive rate at the moment. at this quite impressive rate at the moment. That's right. Yeah. As we finish up, I just wanted to touch on your pretty

unique background. I, of course, knew you were a medical doctor, but I didn't fully realize that you're also a helicopter pilot and you did both in the military. I mean, how did that happen exactly? There can't be many people with that set of skills. It's a unique resume that I think I can only give credit to God because I never intended to go into politics.

I wasn't even intended to go into college at one time. I was delayed in a program to go into the Army. And in 1986, I saw this documentary, a real cool documentary called Top Gun. It changed my life. I said, how do you do that? They said you got to go to college. I only planned to go to college as an extra credit assignment for social studies. Got on my contract with the Army, went into the Navy ROTC program as a college programmer, which we had 127 that year, usually have about 25. That's how popular it was. We willed it down to 27 graduates from that 127.

And it changed my life. All the people that impressed me in that class were all Marines. A little more gun-ho, a little more fit, a little more willing to go the extra mile, and that just really impressed me. So I became a Marine, served 16 years in the Marine Corps, went airborne, did aviation. By the way, never trust a pilot who can also jump. Really enjoyed my time. Got to do American Gladiators, got to be on a commercial, nationwide commercial for the Feud and Proud,

the Marines, that was me 30 years ago when I was young and pretty. I did my MBA while I was in the Marines because of the people that inspired me. Made some lifelong friends that will never ever worry about being alone in this life because those guys would go to the wire for me. They'd die, they'd take a bullet for me,

just like I'd take a bullet for them. I went into medicine because it was a calling. Once again, I felt like that was the right thing to do. Not even realizing what it took to become a doctor. Took a leap of faith based on what I felt like I was supposed to do. And as a result, got all those things in my wheelhouse, all those deployments to Africa, to Europe, to Afghanistan, to I've been to Hong Kong several times.

I've been to Japan and Korea, all those areas. Just to have that experience, I feel directly applies to what I do now. I spent a couple of tours in India now. I mean, it's just the relationships that you have cannot be replaced. You cannot replace knife experiences with anything else. And I think it was all to crescendo into this experience I'm having right now where I can actually form good foreign policy, good economic policy, good military policy, all that are going to affect the future of this great nation and keep

us at the top of what's really important when it comes to being a guiding light for the rest of the world. Will Congressman McCormick's final thought be finished? One team, one fight. I think the thing that the United States represents very well is that we epitomize freedom. It's imperfect. We make mistakes along the way. But as long as the people control their own destiny, that it's not the government deciding what's right and wrong for you, deciding what's moral for you, deciding what you do with your business, as long as we protect those individual freedoms, we'll continue to be the shining light and the prosperous nation that we've always been, and we'll set the pace for everybody else. If I may comment just very briefly,

I think the testament to that is despite all the warts and all, all the kind of problems, most of the world still kind of agrees with what you just said, which is why they would like to come here. I think so. And I think people—the famous saying is democracy is the worst kind of government, except every other kind. It's frustrating, it's slow, but it's at least representative. Well, Congressman McC's frustrating, it's slow, but it's at least representative. Congressman McCormick, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Likewise, always a pleasure to be with you. Thank you all for joining Congressman Rich McCormick and me on this episode

of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.