On with Kara Swisher - Washington’s Top China Hawk Talks TikTok, Taiwan & Trump

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin is on a mission to raise the alarm bell on the Chinese Communist Party and rethink America’s approach to China. As chair of the Select Committee on the CCP, he’s arguably the leading China hawk in DC and has put the squeeze on everyone from Elon Musk and Bob Iger to the NBA and Wall Street to get tougher on China. The person he wants to push the hardest, though, is President Joe Biden. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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all backed by their expert live customer support. It's time to get going and growing with Constant Contact today. Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naeem Araza. And today we're going to be talking about China with the man who loves to talk about China, Congressman Mike Gallagher. He's the Republican lawmaker from Wisconsin's

8th District, and he's chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, which would be the Chinese Communist Party. It's a rare glimmer of bipartisan productivity and potential in a house that has been a mess, I would say, otherwise. Absolutely. Yeah, and a big topic. You know, it's interesting. I've spent a lot of the past week or two talking to people about him on both sides of the aisle, and he's got a lot of respect, I have to say. He does what he wants. They wanted him to run for Senate against Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. He didn't do it. And I think a lot of people, including people who I thought might be more opposed to him or not, they think he's quite smart and he's a real comer.

You know, I think he probably struggles within the Republican Party because he's a sensible fella. But at the same time, a lot of people think he's a China, you know, doing a little scare tactics on China. I don't find him to be that way, but some do. Gallagher is very likable. He's a former serviceman, very smart, very effective, and he's chosen perhaps a winning issue on China. I don't find him to be that way, but some do. Gallagher is very likable. He's a former serviceman, very smart, very effective, and he's chosen perhaps a winning issue on China. And one of the things to remember about him going into this interview is that he's young Washington. He's a millennial, an older millennial, I guess, but that very much comes across in his viewpoints and differentiates him. Absolutely.

I mean, Gallagher and his partner in the select committee, Raja Krishnamoorthi, who's a Democrat out of Illinois and the ranking member of the committee, they have pushed forward a lot. They are poking into, you know, everything from TikTok to investment firms to Berkeley University's partnership with Tsinghua University in China and looking at the funding there and trying to peel back the specter of CCP influence in the United States. And it's a hard job that there seems to be a lot of popular momentum and political momentum for, but some people have kind of thought this is a new Cold War, a kind of red scare. Do you get that? Well, it is. I think, look, there's geopolitics and they are the current rival to the United States. There's no question in tech and manufacturing and everything and influence around the globe. And so, you know, it's not like Russia, which is more of a brute force.

This is a very innovative culture, whether you like it or not. Yes, very much. And authoritarian at the same time. And so they also have a leader, a supreme leader, who is, I think, Joe Biden correctly is calling him a dictator, who has an idea of a techno-autocratic future. And I think it's really dangerous. I think it's a dangerous country. I've thought that for a long time. I don't want to say worthy adversary, but they're very accomplished. And so we have to be thinking hard and not sort of relying on this

U.S. will prevail no matter what kind of attitude. A lot of the history of this has been decades of cooperation with China. From Nixon. Yeah, and Kissinger, who after everything in the Cold War kind of brought China to the table, right, and made some friends with them. Mike Gallagher, of course, is very much against that. When Biden met with Xi a couple weeks ago in San Francisco, it was their first face-to-face meeting in about a year. And Mike Gallagher's reaction to that on Fox News was before the meeting was even over, he was critiquing it and critiquing the price that was already paid for Xi and Biden to sit down for what he effectively called a photo op. And he talked about downplaying the spy balloon, not having a meaningful investigation into the origins of COVID and, you know, criticizing Blinken's trips to China, which he kind of asserted were groveling for, you know, a visit with the president. I think that's overstating it. I think you have

to speak to your most potent rival. There's just no other way or else you're risking war. If you're not continuing to talk, they may think it's acquiescence, but it's not. You need to talk in order to avoid what is inevitable probably at some point, or to at least maybe stave it off. I think there's no way getting around talking to our most potent rival. I think you have to keep talking or else you risk a lot of things, including the inevitability of war. Yeah, you look no further than Iran for what happens when the U.S. kind of cuts off diplomatic ties. You don't know anything that's going on in the country. You don't have State Department officials who speak the language.

And you inherit a mess a generation later. But it behooves this party, it behooves Republicans and people like Gallagher to be critical of Biden, to see everything as acquiescence. At the same time, the Biden administration has made competition with China a key pillar of foreign policy in many ways, keeping and doubling down on Trump-era policies like the tariffs on Chinese goods, the CHIPS Act, curtailing Chinese investment or executive control of key industries, even taking a look at TikTok.

And so all of that is a way in which the president is very much pushing on China. You've been keen to interview Gallagher for a while now. Tell us why. I have. I've been a China critic, and I am concerned about escalation. I have. I've been a China critic, and I am concerned about escalation. So, and I think it's, you know, anyone who has any kind of stake in this world does not want an escalation with China. Yes. Not at any price, of course, but it's ridiculous. We senior producer, was on it early this spring, and they did protest.

But then something switched around fall, and Gallagher started making kind of a lot of rounds. He was at CFR. He was talking to various outlets, and he became willing to chat to us, too. We had to postpone this interview due to the attack in Israel. We wanted to push this interview back. And the timing is great. Right after Biden's first meeting with Xi in a year, it seems like it couldn't be a more opportune time. And I'm sure that Israel and Gaza will come up because Gallagher has been part of the crowd saying that TikTok is brainwashing youth against American allies, in this case Israel.

I know it's something that Scott Galloway has been saying on Pivot as well. Do you buy that? Yes. I don't know. I'd like some proof. That's what I would like. I think it's nice to say it. It makes for an easy soundbite, but I don't know. Yeah. And Gallagher has been asserting that TikTok has a pro-Palestine perspective. TikTok, of course. Which TikTok has pushed back on. Yeah, exactly. TikTok,

of course, disputes that, saying there's a long history of global youth empathy towards Palestinian suffering that predates this attack and even predates TikTok. And then they also noted that the Stand With Israel hashtags are more popular in the United States user base than Stand With Palestine hashtags. But something that Gallagher has been on and gone, and you can talk to him about TikTok as digital fentanyl. That's what he calls it. I'm more concerned about fentanyl, fentanyl. She and Biden talked about that too. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Congressman Mike Gallagher. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash Claude. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. So I'm going to start by talking about China. You said recently that your mission in Congress is to, quote, deter war with China and prevent World War III. Now, that can sound hyperbolic to some people. So I want you to make the case that that's a worry that you have. Well, first of all, it is a bit hyperbolic. But one needs a reason to sort of jump out of bed, particularly if one is then getting on a flight to fly to Washington, D.C. to deal with Congress.

And I think it sort of reflects a bit of my bias in coming into this debate as a military guy who's focused on the sort of conventional side, conventional military side of the competition. the competition. But for the case, for why that's important or why it matters, why it matters for someone in California or Wisconsin, I would say every war game that I've played in this, things quickly escalate to a level that is just absolutely devastating. Even in the lower end scenarios that don't involve a kinetic confrontation, i.e. the PLA rocket force sinking a U.S. aircraft carrier, just a blockade scenario involving Taiwan, would cost us trillions and trillions of dollars. And the scale is so significant that it's almost hard, even if you fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's hard to contemplate what a great power war would look like for someone in 2023. I mean, one aircraft carrier gets sunk, that's 5,000 lives lost. So this strikes me as something to be avoided. And I think having been

so far removed from World War II or even more costly wars like Vietnam and certainly Korea, we can sort of lull ourselves into this false sense of security that something like this is unthinkable in the present day. But it could quickly escalate to that level. So it genuinely concerns me. And I think one lesson of Ukraine, and I promise not to go on, is that when dictators tell you that they want to do a thing, i.e. Putin taking Ukraine, i.e. Xi Jinping taking Taiwan, and he keeps saying by force if necessary, and he said some really troubling things at APEC recently, that we should at least take that seriously. Even if you think it's like a distant tail risk,

it's something that should consume a lot of our time and energy because it's probably the most stressing national security case that we could face. And therefore, I think we, in Congress, I think it's a bipartisan issue, should do everything possible to deter the war. Yeah. Biden met with Xi Jinping for four hours on the sidelines of the APEC conference in November. He described it as some of the most constructive and productive discussions we've had. You obviously disagreed pretty quickly. Explain to me why. What I've criticized is something I've called zombie engagement, which is Explain to me why.

What I've criticized is something I've called zombie engagement, which is engaging based on the same set of assumptions that guided U.S. foreign policy over the last two decades. This idea that sort of just sitting down at the table will result in a more constructive relationship or that further economic ties or an endless series of working groups will sort of somehow convince Xi Jinping to do things differently. I just think we have enough evidence right now to suggest that that's a bad approach. And we tend to- Because it's a feint by them. It's a feint. That's your- Yeah, that's my concern, right? And it seems that in order to even get to the negotiating table, we kind of take our foot off the gas, i.e. the last two years we've seen no sanctions on Chinese officials. We had the delay in the finalization of the export control rule. It's now finalized. No real meaningful effort at transparency around COVID origins. The list goes on and on. In order to sit down, we're very afraid about doing anything that could increase the temperature in the relationship and derail that diplomatic process. Where you look at the other side of the table, they don't take the same approach, right?

Like as Secretary Raimondo was flying over to Beijing or not, I mean, you know, right before they were hacking her emails, you know, the militarization of the South China Sea just continues unimpeded. The threats to Taiwan, we've really kind of normalized an unprecedented tempo of military operations and pressure focused on Taiwan. So that's just, that's my concern. That we should be doing the similar thing to keep them checked in that regard. And as it pertains to APEC, so I am all for the creation of what's called a crisis communication channel. So think, you know, there's a red phone that sits on our Secretary of Defense desk. You know, there's one on the Minister of Defense desk

and we make sure that we don't miscommunicate our way into war. We've been trying to get that set up under the previous administration as well. The Chinese have refused. They cut off the formal ties after Pelosi visited Taiwan. I think that's a constructive step forward, but I don't think that in and of itself

is going to do much to reduce the threat to Taiwan. Put differently, I don't think we're going to – there's going to be an accident that gets us into a war with China. We've had previous accidents that didn't result in a war. If we go to war with China, it's because China and Xi Jinping in particular is going to make the decision to – That it's the time to do it. That it's the time. So the more effective form of communication, and in some ways even more effective and important than Biden talking to Xi—and I'm not saying that's not important, that is obviously important—is us to speak in the language of hard power,

to put in place a deterrence-by-denial posture, i.e. the Navy, i.e. the long-range precision fires, that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for Xi to achieve his goal. This is sort of all sticks and no carrots. How do you incentivize Xi to cooperate with us, or is military deterrence the best we can hope for? Well, I wouldn't say it has to be all sticks and no carrots. I mean, we can negotiate from a position of strength. I mean, we've offered the biggest carrot possible a long time ago, which is access to our market. How do you convince Xi Jinping to communicate constructively? I do think it starts, and again,

I'm aware of my biases, someone who comes in with a military perspective, from a credible deterrent posture. So if we actually can back up the statements that Biden has made at least three times, I think four times, and then his aides had to walk him back, that we will defend Taiwan. I think that puts us in a much more advantageous position when indeed we sit across from Xi Jinping. If we want to compel meaningful cooperation when it comes to cutting off the shipment of fentanyl precursors to the United States. I think it improves our ability to negotiate if we are taking aggressive action to not only secure our own southern border, but to sanction certain Chinese entities that are complicit in that export. I would say it's also, maybe I'm a bit naive in this, but I actually think it helps the president of the United States and the Biden administration more generally to have a Congress that is not all controlled by its own party to have a slightly different position on these things.

There's well-established political science literature on the nature of two-level games where the president, and this is an advantage of our system relative to a techno-totalitarian dictatorship can say when he's talking with Xi Jinping, listen, it's not just me that can strike a deal with you. I then have to go back to Congress and I have to deal with crazy people like Mike Gallagher, who has a totally different view on this. And that's just, hey, that's the nature of our system. I actually think that puts us in a better position over the long term. Compare Biden's policy to President Trump's. He did a lot of stuff, especially for some reason around TikTok, which I thought was directionally correct, but executionally clottish in a way that I was sort of shocked that it got focused in on that. We'll get to TikTok in a little bit, but which do you think was better?

I think, well, first of all, executionally clottish is a great phrase. I intend to steal that. Thank you, please borrow. Yeah. If you trademark that, I'll give you a footnote. Okay. There was a lot of continuity between the two, interestingly enough, I think in the first year and a half of the Biden administration. And I actually think, I think much like the Trump administration, there is a divide. Like with Trump, there was a sort of more hawkish element controlled by the National

Security Council. And then there was the Treasury Department, which under Mnuchin had a much different view of China. That's why there was often tension in the Trump administration that wasn't always productive tension. It was like two steps forward, one and three quarter steps back, if not three steps back. And so, you know, there was good, bad and ugly in the Trump administration approach to China that I'm happy to talk about. And again, TikTok might be the best example, right? It's, you know, directionally right, but then runs into a total legal buzzsaw, to your point about being clottish.

The national security strategy and the national defense strategy, I think, were good pieces of work that were, in some sense, the biggest shift in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, but then weren't, at least the defense strategy wasn't actually implemented. Like, if you actually counted ships and long-range precision fires and, like, the most important variables, there weren't more of those things in the Indo-Pacific at the end of the Trump administration than at the start. And then there was Trump himself, who was, sometimes would wake up and be very hawkish, and then sometimes would sound like he thinks Xi Jinping is his best friend. Biden, again, administration divided. There are things I give the Biden administration a credit for. I think the AUKUS deal was huge. If we're able to actually implement this deal whereby we are going to share our most sensitive nuclear submarine technology

with the Aussies. This is a massive deal for the Aussies, a massive deal for us, that if successful over the long term, will have a huge impact on our deterrent posture in the region. Now, interestingly enough, there's barriers that exist due to outdated laws and regulations that preclude our ability to cooperate even with the Aussies and the Brits, again, with whom we share all sorts of sensitive stuff. So breaking down those barriers is essential. But if we can do that, that's a huge deal. As a united front.

Now, one of the other things is the Biden administration is asking for $2 billion for Taiwan aid. You and six other Republicans on the China Select Committee want $10 billion on top of that. Why are you so far apart? And where is Congress on this on both sides of the aisle? Well, quite honestly, I was actually surprised when Biden's supplemental requests came out. Because when I talk with, for example, high-level Pentagon officials, from Secretary of Defense to Eli Ratner, who's very smart on China. I mean, Eli is a brilliant mind when it comes to China. I think they all agree that we need to do more.

In Congress, this is a bipartisan issue. There is, of course, a near $20 billion backlog of foreign military sales items. So this is stuff that the Taiwanese have bought, but we just can't deliver because our foreign military sales process is so broken. So I was surprised that we only had $2 billion. And the $2 billion wasn't actually even earmarked for Taiwan. It's for the Indo-Pacific more broadly. So you can imagine at least half a billion going to the Philippines, which is important, but that still leaves a huge gap. And that is, again, if you sort of think through the consequences of what a failure of deterrence across the Taiwan Strait would look like, similar to how, like, if deterrence failed there like it failed in Ukraine, just the consequences,

this should be the thing we do first. And again, that's the wrong way to put it. Before Ukraine and Israel. Yeah. And I even hate to say it that way because obviously we're a superpower. We have to do things simultaneously. And that's why I kind of hate this, the image of the pivot as if America has to like, we have to, okay, we're going to stop paying attention to the Middle East. Although some analysts, including Eldridge Colby, who you consider a friend, have said that thinking America can effectively aid Ukraine and Taiwan is comforting, but dangerous delusion. I disagree with Bridge.

We've, you know, we've talked about this. I mean, Bridge is right about the relative prioritization, right? If it were a choice, i.e. you only have one harpoon, it either goes to Ukraine or Taiwan, like, I think you would have to choose Taiwan, but I don't think that's the choice we face. And more broadly, we will miss an opportunity, a huge opportunity, to revitalize our munitions industrial base. Like, the crisis in Ukraine has revealed the insufficiency of our munitions industrial base, and we could harness it in order to not have it be a painful choice between these two things and move to maximum production rates of critical munitions systems.

So if the status quo continues, from your perspective, what's the probability that China invades Taiwan? Well, I hate to put a number on it. I'll do it, though, just so I'm not evading the question. Well, I did have a major asset manager come into my office, and I asked him a similar question, and he said, zero, they're not going to do it. I thought, well, I don't really know anything about- They love money. He would say they love money more than time. Yes, which is interesting. Well, first of all, there's a non-zero probability for sure that it's going to happen. It's probably south of 50%, so I'll put it at 20% and the odds go up to 35 if the DPP, the Democratic Progressive Party, wins in Taiwan in January, in the January election, because Xi Jinping will conclude he can't achieve his lifelong ambition via political warfare.

So he might have to resort to actual warfare. But I'll just put it there. But I do think it gets to this interesting divide between Wall Street and what I would say is a bipartisan core on Capitol Hill. And honestly, like it gets to the mirror imaging that we tend to do, not just with the CCP, but with Putin and all these other regimes where we just sort of think they operate based on a rational, like utility calculating model or things we would think unthinkable, like they would be willing to complicate because they, particularly like they're less casualty averse than we are. I mean, we saw that in the Korean war. Obviously, China's come a long way since then, but we are more set by the nature of our political system. We are more sensitive to casualties than they would be if we got into a war with China. But how do we deter China from attacking in the first place?

Well, here's where Bridge Colby, I think, is unquestionably right and I think has been the most influential thinker in the last few years. His book, Strategy of Denial, basically there's two forms of deterrence. One is deterrence by punishment where you say if you do X, I will retaliate by doing Y. The problem with that is it relies upon the credibility of the punisher, right? Like it relies upon us thinking that if Biden or whoever is the next president says, don't do it, Xi, because we will punish you and it could get really ugly, that those claims are credible. A lot of problems with that, particularly our willingness to escalate to a nuclear level. particularly our willingness to escalate to a nuclear level. It gets really complicated, which is why a deterrence by denial strategy, where you just actually put in place the weapons and forces that make the achievement of the objective difficult,

if not impossible, is a more logical one. A version of don't do it. Yeah, a version of don't do it that isn't just a threat, that Xi Jinping could actually look across the strait and see, okay, I have X number of harpoons ready to sink my ships. The Americans were losing their submarine building capability, and now they're starting to crank out 2.5 Virginia-class subs a year, and they're really making progress on AUKUS. They're churning out 250 long-range anti-ship missiles a year. By the way, the Japanese have made an amazing investment in their own defensive. What's happening in Japan right now is absolutely incredible.

Shout out to Ambassador Emanuel. Speaking of things I'll be bipartisan, he's been incredible as ambassador to Japan and willing to speak clearly about the threat posed by the CCP. So if we do that, I actually think we can affect Xi Jinping's calculus. Again, not easy, but if we can kind of run the gauntlet through this decade, I think it gets better for us in the next decade

because Xi Jinping is going to be facing a lot of demographic challenges, which I actually think make him more... Yeah, how old is he now? He's 70? Yeah. 70. He's older.

Yeah. Yeah, they're all old, Mike. Everybody's old. Except for you, you look pretty young. You look pretty young. I'm aging at a rapid rate, though. Yeah. 70. He's older. Yeah. They're all old, Mike. Everybody's old. Except for you. You look pretty young. I'm aging at a rapid rate, though. Yeah. Okay.

So you laid out a three-step plan for building an anti-Navy you said would be capable of defending Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. Explain anti-Navy because the Chinese are practicing this. Well, it's the best phrase I could come up with to describe what I actually think is the biggest story of the People's Liberation Army over the last two decades. It isn't just that they've built the biggest navy in the world. And they have. Now, the navy nerds will say our ships are more capable. And on balance, they're right. But at some point, quantity has a quality all of its own. And if you actually examine like the last 2,000 years of naval warfare,

it's rare for a technologically superior but numerically inferior Navy to beat a bigger Navy, though less technologically advanced. Right, they're also not the Russians, let's just say. Yes, and probably are learning from the Russians' ineptitude right now, going to school on it.

They built, they turned like a very, almost irrelevant artillery wing into the PLA rocket force, which is for a very modest sum of money relative to the cost of big ships, they're able to build long-range missiles and rockets that can sink our ships and keep us outside of the first island chain and out of the fight. And they're on the right side of the cost curve. So my theory is we got to flip that logic and use it against them. And with a kind of like a series of concentric rings that starts with Taiwan itself

and turning Taiwan into a porcupine, and then extends to the Southern Japanese islands and Northern Philippines islands where you can have small teams of Marines operating with naval strike missiles on joint-like tactical vehicles that can be autonomous, by the way, extending beyond to our facilities and territories

in the second island chain and longer-range missiles. And oh, by the way, if you start to get creative with the use of advanced energetics, which are the things we put in these missiles to make them go and go boom, you can really extend their range without having to wait 10 years for a whole new technological leap.

So when you use porcupine, you mean putting so many things in their way? Yeah, yeah. Here's interesting. Here's where it gets, I think, complicated, right? When I was in Taiwan last, I forget which official said this to me, but it's haunted me ever since. He said, yes, you can't eat a porcupine, but you can starve it, which made me think we should be paying more attention to the blockade or economic and financial scenario, and which is why I then took the committee to New York to do a supply chain, econ, finance-focused war game. Because rarely does DOD do their war gaming concert with Treasury

and Commerce, and these are kind of two different worlds. I think that's a huge gap for our national security. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things. And it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all new reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure from the design and styling to the performance all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system. You can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature,

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Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. So you said you want American companies to act like American companies. What does that mean? Did I say that? I'm just, I'm talking too much. It's one of those words. Porcupines should be like porcupines.

Explain what that means. So here's what I was trying to convey. I think if I can transport myself to when I said that, there are times- That sounds like a Fox News thing, but go ahead. What do you mean? Yeah. American companies should act like American. Oh, yes. I think you accused me at one point of pandering to Tucker Carlson, which I think an honest examination of my career would reveal that that is not true. Yes. Well, I think you did. Okay. All right. We can get into that. We'll table that for another. Okay.

Let's table Tucker Carlson forever. How about that? Let's move along. There is a phenomenon. There's a phenomenon you see expressed mostly in Hollywood and the sports industry. The NBA is probably the best example, right? If a executive, in this case, Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets, has the temerity to support the protesters in Hong Kong, many of which, by the way, were carrying American flags in the hope that we would sort of help them prevent this takeover of their entire civil society, that the NBA then rushes to scold Daryl Morey and apologize to the Chinese Communist Party. I think that just drives your average American crazy. These are the same companies that don't hesitate to lecture us and America for our perceived moral failings. And therefore, I think it would be great if they're willing to champion basic values that aren't just American values, but I would say are human values like freedom of expression and other things. There's been a willingness to turn a blind eye to the genocide

in Xinjiang for the pursuit of profits. That drives me crazy. I'm not suggesting that this is an area that I would legislate a solution, right? I don't want to get into the, I don't want to like dictate to Hollywood what content it produces. At most, what I could do as a member of the Armed Services Committee is say to studio executive that is censoring content at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party that if they want to use the Pentagon's resources for a future film that you can't do that. Like that's the most fair game. But beyond that, it is not my job to dictate content creation. But I don't know. I think American culture is one of the reasons we actually won the old Cold War with the Soviet Union and why your average American actually understood the threat posed by the Soviet Union. But today, there's no cultural reference point because there's nobody willing to criticize the Chinese Communist Party despite a genocide, despite its threats to Taiwan,

despite its abysmal human rights and environmental concerns. Yeah, let's get into that. Let's get specifics with a lightning round where I name American companies that have Chinese exposure, big Chinese exposure. And you tell us what, if anything, they could improve in regards to China. We'll skip the NBA. You just mentioned them. Apple, which I think is one of the most exposed. Yeah, Apple, I think, has said things about concentrating more manufacturing in India. Again, I know it's not going to happen overnight in Vietnam. I think that would be wise. I think it would be wise for us to make it easier. This gets to a broader hypothesis I have, which is if you accept that some form of selective decoupling from China is inevitable, largely because of what China is doing, not because of what we're doing, it only works if we simultaneously increase our economic and technological engagement in other parts of the world, both within the free world and with countries that aren't treaty allies but are critical partners going forward, particularly Indonesia, India, and Vietnam. I would love to see a world in which Tim Cook was willing to speak openly and honestly about what he's seen in China. I suspect he

doesn't want to be asked if there's a genocide underway. He does not. Or at a minimum, don't pay 40 grand to FET Xi Jinping at a dinner and give him a standing ovation. That would be- Well, one of the problems is a lot of their market is there. And speaking of another company, Tesla, very dependent on China. Yeah, which also, by the way, I think full transparency from Apple on what exactly happened on shutting down airdrop functionality

around the COVID protests and the Bridgeman protests, that would go a long way. So that's a specific thing they could do that I think would help a lot. Tesla as well. I think all American automakers and EV producers in particular see BYD as this- Like Ford is included, Ford. Yeah. Well, don't take Inflation Reduction Act dollars and then do a big deal with the dominant Chinese battery company, cattle in this case. That would be a constructive step going forward. So that's for Ford. What about Tesla?

Tesla, it's in a bit of a different situation. Here's my beef. Not that Elon even knows who I am or thinks we have a beef. We had an honest disagreement about— You're better that way, trust me. I did a Twitter spaces, and he said he was talking about AI in this case, but it might be true with respect to electric vehicles. He said that he thinks the CCP is on team humanity when it comes to AI. Yeah, he does.

I just disagree with that. I see them as on team genocidal communism. team genocidal communism. But if Elon, with all of his immense talents, were willing to help us figure out a way to onshore the production of critical mineral mining and processing, I feel like there's got to be a constructive public-private partnership in that going forward, so that we weren't dependent on China for the manufacturing of electric vehicle battery production going forward. Yeah, Elon is very dependent on China for the manufacturing of electric vehicle battery production going forward. Elon is very dependent on China. He met with Xi and he talked about Taiwan.

Let's just give it up. And I think something like that. Well, that's crazy. I mean, so not saying that would be helpful. Well, they're on Team Humanity. What about BlackRock? BlackRock stopped investing in Chinese military companies that are building things like artillery shells, aircraft carriers, nuclear technology, and advanced fighter jets.

Now, BlackRock will point and say, well, we offer state pension funds the opportunity to have an index minus China. Yeah, I get that. I just think there's more they can be doing to – or that they're – when they're investing in companies that are on various government blacklists, these aren't the blacklists that come with legal penalties. We do have a problem in terms of our different lists don't talk to each other. We need to harmonize that list and actually move to a sector-specific set of guardrails on outbound capital flows that builds off the Biden executive order, which I actually think even though BlackRock would be uncomfortable with that, and I've said this to Larry Fink, it's better to legislate a solution that lasts beyond this administration or the next because it's the uncertainty that probably drives BlackRock crazy more than anything else.

Put differently, even if Larry Fink was forced to live in a more kind of hawkish, restrictive paradigm, I think if we had a glide path into that new world and long-term predictability, it's something he and every other major asset manager could live with because we can't continue the status quo, which amounts to us funding our own destruction. I see. So I'm going to move to tech. I'm from finance to tech. You've essentially said that TikTok causes young people in this country to support Hamas, but all social media is problematic and TikTok is pushing back on your claim. For example, TikTok has gotten flack because of the proliferation of hashtag free Palestine on its platform, but Instagram had almost twice as many posts tagged with free

Palestine as TikTok and Facebook had almost three times as many, by the way, they're the owner of Instagram and X is just a snake pit of stuff. I don't even know where to begin with them. But you want to either ban TikTok or force a sale to American company. Well, I concede the point at the outset that social media in general is a cesspool, right? But there's something different with TikTok related to its ownership structure. It's owned by ByteDance. ByteDance is substantially controlled by the Chinese Communist Party that isn't the same thing as dealing with Instagram. The tech is probably just better at some level, right?

And you got to give them credit for producing a better product. So I can see those two points, but there are at least three principles at play here. One is basic reciprocity, right? You know, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube is not allowed in China. Right, they are not., YouTube is not allowed in China, whereas TikTok is obviously

allowed here. And CCP officials spreading hateful propaganda are allowed to have access to our social media platforms. And throughout the pandemic, they were deliberately stoking division here in America. So there's a basic lack of reciprocity, one. There's concerns over espionage, whether TikTok can track your location, your data, which are important. And I think why every major Biden administration official, national security official has- Does not use TikTok. Does not use TikTok and has said we need to take action either in the form of a ban or a forced sale. Yes, this is a bipartisan thing.

This is a bipartisan thing. And then the third thing I think is probably the biggest concern, which is that most people are getting their news from TikTok under the age of 30, and therefore it could be an instrument of propaganda and disinformation going forward. Those are the concerns that are specific to TikTok. Yes, I would say propaganda is the most difficult one. Actually, in July of 2020, I published a column which got a lot of backlash with the headline, TikTok is wonderful, I still don't want it on my phone. So I'm obviously sympathetic to your argument, but I do want proof. You have to prove this though, correct, in order to get these things passed, these bans,

and the retaliation could be vast. Well, first of all, a ban is one outcome. A forced sale is another outcome, which I think I would be fine with. And if it spun off- Seems very anti-capitalist, but go ahead. Why? So foreign ownership of a media company with legacy media, there's an established precedent there that I don't think anyone views as anti-capitalist. It gets to the national security concern. I guess I understand you're always balancing, really in any national security issue, sort of free market versus national security concerns. That's an inherent tension that's been with us since like the dawn of the

republic. But I do think we can figure out a way to prevent an increasingly hostile foreign country from effectively controlling the dominant news and media platform in America without screwing up free market principles or even killing TikTok entirely. If there were TikTok America with control of the algorithm, you'd still have problems with, you know, young people's addiction to social media, but that's a separate problem that I'm not trying to legislate a solution to going right now. So how is that going to happen? Do you really feel like this is going to happen? Because they have been allowed to own the most important media company for years now.

I don't know if I can put odds on whether or not it will happen. I think there was a lot of momentum for doing something at the beginning of this Congress. And then two things reduced that momentum. One is the Senate tried to act with the Restrict Act. It was criticized fairly or unfairly as granting too much authority to the executive branch to make a decision. And the executive branch, as you know, is tied up in this long mitigation project, Texas CFIUS deal. And then TikTok launched a major lobbying campaign. And I think those two things may, to include buying ads at the last few Republican presidential debates,

right? Portraying TikTok as small business, mom and apple pie and all that stuff. Yeah. They've hired some very good people, I have to say. Yes. And now because of that, we've lost momentum. But now there's renewed concerns based on some of the rhetoric related to Israel post-October 7th. I think what we know now is a few things, right? We've had sort of reports of ByteDance employees snooping on U.S. journalists by accessing their location data. We've had admissions that Chinese ByteDance employees have access to the data, despite TikTok's attempts to talk around it.

There's been reports of TikTok heeding certain content. I think you're going to see analysis that just does an apples-to-apples comparison of Instagram to TikTok. Again, you can't control for all the confounding variables because there's differences in these platforms related to like opting into a certain network, et cetera. But like to the extent you can control for as much as possible, showing that there's something weird going on.

And then you always come back to the basic ownership structure, right? If you can't acknowledge the obvious, like what is a point of fact, which is that CCP members are part of ByteDance corporate governance structure, then it's hard for me to take the rest of your argument seriously when the chief editor of ByteDance is a CCP boss, and they have a history of collaboration. So one of the things that I would say, you know, just as the Hamas stuff isn't specific,

TikTok is just the biggest, you know, a meta has been sloppy, to say the least, with children's data. And now there's some recent things coming out about how they knew about things. Google, of course, has settled so many lawsuits around location tracking. I think Apple's the only one that really doesn't usually get caught at stuff like this. But the most persuasive argument is the Chinese Communist Party is on the board, essentially. And the Chinese government has a history of overseeing companies there, correct? Yes. Your point about China is where I tend to land, that the CCP is on its board.

We also have another layer to that, which is what Xi Jinping has said for a long time and recently about what he calls the smokeless battlefield, the ideological and information warfare, and specifically then CCP outlets referencing short-form videos as a primary way to influence foreign society. So even if you don't think they're doing it now, based on the CCP's recent history, I think it would be a risk that we simply can't afford to take. And why not allow then a sale? The fact that the CCP won't allow a sale, I think, tells us something about the value they see in the app beyond just the absolute dollar value of ByteDance. So you don't know if anything's going to happen because, you know, they could be touted. We're going to try to have a responsible

legislative solution that's bipartisan. I think we have a chance. Again, I know it's a complex issue. It's bound up in this bigger issue of cross-border data flows for which there is very little if no regulation. So I think we have a chance. It's not going to be easy, but I don't think the argument that Secretary Raimondo and some others have made that we can't do something for fear of angering 14-year-olds is persuasive, right? I get it. But the national security concerns are significant enough to outweigh the concerns of angering young voters. So what about angering China itself? You've talked about selective decoupling, but they could start banning American companies. Apple lost $200 billion in stock value last September when

China announced it would extend a ban on iPhones to government-backed agencies and companies. And then they said, oh, we didn't mean that. Like, it caused an enormous decline. And NVIDIA, Intel, and Qualcomm are lobbying against more restrictions on chip sales to China. They say restrictions hurt profits and paradoxically lead the Chinese to develop more advanced chips themselves. Yes. Well, one, this is what makes this competition, in my mind, far more complex and difficult than the old Cold War with the Soviet Union, right? We never had to contemplate selective decoupling from the Soviet Union because our economies didn't interact. Whereas, and I think this is probably something that Elon would say correctly, which is we are conjoined twins with China economically.

He does say that. In so many areas, right? Like I take that point, but- Well, he sure is. He sure is. But the lesson isn't to throw up our hands and say there's nothing we can do. It's to get about the business of selectively decoupling or de-risking or diversifying in key areas. Again, difficult, but I think necessary. And I think, you know, we're doing this massive experiment with chips. We're going to learn some lessons from it.

Let's apply those lessons to other areas. I would probably agree with my Democratic counterparts on at least the most important areas beyond that, advanced pharmaceutical ingredients. I mentioned energetics before. AI. AI. Yeah, I think AI, a few simple principles, right? Again, it gets to the outbound capital flows. I don't think, you know, U.S. venture capitalists should be investing in Baidu and things like that. I think we should have greater research security safeguards in our own universities

for advanced technology, AI, quantum, things like that. But I think there's a version of this for AI and quantum. And again, none of it works unless we are willing to assume risk when it comes to reviving a positive trade and technological cooperation agenda with the rest of the world. And that's where both parties, I think- Rather than just China. Yeah. It can't just be, okay, we're getting out of China and then we're going to devolve to autarky here in America. That's not a winning strategy. It's selective decoupling combined with expanding the bounds of the free world and breaking down barriers to cooperation. That, to me, is the big formula for success. One thing you and Ro Khanna, a Democrat from

Silicon Valley who I know very well, have introduced a bill that calls for AI that is advanced, tested, evaluated, and dominated by the members of the Five Eyes Alliance. Tell us how that would work and how would it change AI development? I do know in talking to Silicon Valley executives all the time, they sort of do what I call, Mark Zuckerberg did this, the she or me argument. And again, I'm always like, I don't like either of you. I don't like him more, but okay. But, you know, I would like a more wide-ranging development process where there's more diversity. Not just diversity. I'm not talking about people.

I'm talking about smaller companies and this and that. But what is this bill supposed to do? Protect our AI? Well, I think actually to the point I was trying to make earlier, to turbocharge our collaboration within the Five Eyes Alliance when it comes to AI. Because I just don't believe that we're going to be able to press pause on the development of this technology. We are not.

Or if we did, it would only redound to the CCP's benefit because they're not going to press pause. Absolutely. And because we just have less human beings to throw at this problem, it kind of leads you to two conclusions. One is we need to sort of fix our immigration system in a way that we are actively recruiting the best and the brightest from around the world to work on key national security technologies. But the two is just to think about this less as America versus

China and more our allies, America and our allies versus China. So this would be an attempt to force the Pentagon to have a framework that includes Australia, UK, Canada, and New Zealand, so that when we try to strike the balance between innovation and guardrails so the killer robots don't take over, we're on precisely the same page with our closest allies. And that's what I think is the right formula going forward. By the way, Ro Khanna is incredibly easy to work with. And even though we disagree, it's like it is always a breath of fresh air

when I have to deal with him because he has a bias for action and he's willing to engage in like a good faith debate, which is increasingly rare in today's Congress. Well, speaking of rare, I'm going to finish up with the future of the GOP and your personal ambitions. Let's talk about domestic politics. You recently compared Congress to a high school reality TV program. The Kevin McCarthy, Matt Gaetz saga, the punching, the merry-go-round seems absurd. Is the Republican conference interested in governing?

I think we're having a... I know, I'm walking you right into one. Yeah, exactly. But you said high school reality TV program, not me. It's my fault. It's a fair question. I think our conference has been unwilling to accept the basic fact that with a narrow majority and control of only one aspect of the federal government, one chamber of Congress, that no one gets 100% of what they want. You can push for the best conservative solution, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to compromise within your own caucus and occasionally compromise with the other side. And that is a problem when you have a subset of people that are unwilling to compromise.

And I think that's at the heart of a lot of our problems right now. to the executive branch, that it's as if we've turned Congress into a green room for Fox News and MSNBC, where we spend all our time trying to score soundbites or hug Tucker Carlson to use your phrase. The only reason I said that is because I think you're smart, so that's why it was a compliment. But go ahead. Well, thank you. Thank you. And while we await the coming of a president to solve all our problems,

right? Like that's the story of the modern Congress. We keep giving up our power to the executive. So performative, the performative nature. Yeah, it's performative. It's not substantive to fix that. You have to reclaim some of that authority from the executive branch and then devolve power within the institution from the office of the speaker to the committees, because the committees are really the place where productive work can be done, but we're not really doing that right now. But can you even resist it? I mean, you had a daddy act

that was supposed to shame Hunter Biden, who I think is just a sad drug addict, really, in the end, and corruption between politicians and family, but you didn't talk about Jared Kushner. This is what happens. Nobody is actually, you know, not to equalize anything, but it is equal. Like it's, it doesn't ever apply to anyone. It's always sort of getting one off on the other. Wouldn't it have applied to, and it wasn't like a, the words Hunter Biden weren't mentioned in

the act. Like it would have got to nepotism. Someone could have interpreted it as a sort of slight to either party. I mean, we kind of have like this problem where we basically like— You did mention Hunter Biden on your website, but go ahead. We're infatuated with like political dynasties and royalty. And we have like a very old political class like as a result of this. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, and honestly, a lot of the ethical kind of drain the swamp reforms that Trump promised and put into an executive order disappeared either the day before, like on January 19th, or on the morning of the transition, which just shows you they were empty, empty promises. It's like both parties get sucked into the swamp.

I get you probably don't like that phrase. I don't know a better way to convey this. Yeah, no, I get it. No, I get it. But, you know, I'm saying my only point is you're not immune from it. Gallagher introduces Daddy Act to ban Hunter Biden-like influence peddling. So it could have said Hunter Biden, Jared Kushner-like influence, but you probably would have been thrown out of the party. I will confess, I do at times like to see how we can stretch the limits of acronyms for bill naming. Yes, I guess. Okay, fine. The Five AIs Act that we referenced before was just too

good to pass up. The Antisocial CCP Act, which is an acronym. Maybe this isn't the most productive use of my staff time. All right, I'm not going to give you hard. You're not the worst of them. So, all right. I have two more quick questions. You said earlier that when dictators tell us they're going to do something, we should take them seriously. Trump said that it's great that Xi made himself president for life, and maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday. I've always believed everything he said, and I would argue with people. So, after January 6th, should we take that threat seriously? I would argue with people.

So after January 6th, should we take that threat seriously? Well, I would. Just ask him. I think the wake of January 6th shows that our system, despite the stress put upon it, still held, right? I mean, Xi Jinping could have done any number of things that Donald Trump couldn't have done. Listen, the, it wasn't just January 6th, like all the misinformation leading up to January 6th.

I mean, it was just all these claims made about Dominion voting machines and then filtered through the cesspool of social media. I mean, it really did drive our system crazy, right? And like you had smart people that didn't know what was true and what isn't. So we sort of have to figure that bigger thing out, which I think is bound up

in all these things we've been talking about, for which there's no silver bullet solutions. All the more reason, in my opinion, where if you actually genuinely fear that a strong man could get elected in America and then refuse to leave and successfully achieve that ambition, we should invest less power in the presidency. The presidency shouldn't be this all-consuming office. I don't think this was the intent of our framers and founders, right? Congress needs to step up and reclaim its authority.

The House and the Senate need to do that so that presidents, whether through incompetence or malicious intent, can't do things that are damaging to our constitutional republic. That's a very sensible thing. All right, my very last question is about China. I think a lot about Nixon in China and the impact of that. I was a kid when that happened. And I remember I cut things out of the newspaper, you know, when they,

and they did the panda diplomacy. And it was a great moment for someone like that, who was such a China hawk, to engage with China. Do you ever see that happening again? What a moment that was for the world at the time. Is that ever possible again? Certainly it's possible.

I think in terms of the goal of U.S. policy vis-a-vis China, well, the short-term goal is obvious, right? It's to deter a war. The midterm goal, I think, is something along the lines of for us and our allies to control the commanding heights of critical technology so that the CCP doesn't. And I know I framed it in an adversarial way, but I just think that's the reality based on what they would do with that technology and what we're seeing them do in Xinjiang and other parts of the world. Surveillance economy. Yeah, exactly. The long-term goal is harder to define. And something I'm hoping to devote the committee to next year, if we get through kind of our short-term policy recommendations, is really to think through,

in the same way that there was sort of a general bipartisan agreement on the goal of containment, though there were vicious disagreements about the variance of containment we had in the old Cold War, particularly expressed over what our approach to China and Formosa should be at the time, that we could somehow figure out what the long-term goal of U.S. foreign policy is. I think it's possible to achieve some level of constrainment, like we could constrain their worst impulses, i.e. taking Taiwan, i.e. genocide, i.e. surveillance or irresponsible biotech experimentation, etc., while saying nothing about, let's say, internal regime change. But I suspect it would require a different leader other than Xi Jinping for us to have a breakthrough diplomatically at this point in the near future.

Now, I'm not advocating for regime change, but it just seems Xi is bent on consolidating power and taking the country in a very dangerous direction. And we just forget that this is a profoundly Marxist-Leninist organization we're dealing with. Yeah. Well, let's end on that. Happy note. So when do we think he's running for president? I think he should run for president. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's just the kind of executive we need. Kara Swisher becoming a Republican voter again. No, I have voted

Republican. You backed Republican. I have. I voted Republican too. I think he's smart. I think he thinks clearly. I think he's, you know, he has a fresh viewpoint. And it's Reagan-esque a little bit. It's a little bit of old-timey stuff. But he's a very young man. And so he's thinking in a bipartisan way, which has been all but lost in Washington. Yeah. And he also has a winning issue. And this China issue is not foreign policy. It's very much domestic policy. We bifurcated that interview in a way between international and domestic. But China is a winning domestic issue at this point. I think what they have to do is make a better case. I think Trump didn't make a good case. He also never had any follow through

on anything. And, you know, it's often hard for me to agree with Donald Trump on certain things, but I think he articulated the symbol of it, which is TikTok. But it's a much bigger issue. It's around chips, it's around transportation, it's around AI. We have to deal with China. In a way, it's about globalization. It's about the factors of production, the fact that we can't even right now measure where and how the tentacles of China's economic power touch the United States. It's Chinization. We should have been across the globe. We relied on China because they were so efficient and it was a growing market, people getting wealthier. And we did not think these companies went for what they do, which is the cheapest and best way to manufacture

this stuff. And when people started the China plus one strategy, that didn't start until like the late, it's like 2007. I was in Asia at the time and Vietnam. And I remember everyone was clamoring to get into Vietnam because they needed to diversify. They were just starting to recognize how much power the Chinese suppliers had over American companies. And it's a little late. Did you find there was a sufficient smoking gun on TikTok? I did not. I think he's right directionally.

I think he's got to prove it to us. If he wants it to happen, which is a very big lift, he, not just him, but Mark Warner, all of them have to explain to us, not just say, trust me, they're bad. Well, okay, why are they bad? Let's make a case to the American public. You know, I was at a recent event here in Washington with a bunch of innovative defense companies. And one of them was a company that looks at drone activity. And there's so many Chinese drones over Washington, D.C. They've identified them. It's not just the spy balloon.

They have drones everywhere. They're attacking on so many fronts. I think he's just got to start talking like that, like saying, this is what they're doing. This is what they're doing. This is what they're doing. I just don't know what the remedy is in some way. The remedy is going to be very challenging. No, it's not.

Sanctions. We're going to kick you out. We're going to sanction this. We're going to sell TikTok. We're going to do this. But sanctions, we're scared of angering them and we shouldn't be. They are our rival 100%. Well, I mean, I don't know. Here's a flip side to that argument, which is look at TikTok right now. An analogy for that in the 1990s might have been in Hollywood in a big way. American soft power was everywhere when I was growing up. You know, when American films were banned abroad. They were. That was seen, yeah, that was seen in the United States as a great affront.

And so. We didn't do anything about it. Fine. Yeah. It doesn't matter. It doesn't, they can do it. These countries can do what they want, but they should not be able to operate with impunity here in this country without some repercussions.

And that's what they're doing. And we're letting them do it because we're dependent on them. And in a lot of ways, they're dependent on us. So we have to figure out a way to get along in some fashion. But I have under no circumstances do I think this is a government that wants to do anything but dominate. You listen to what she is saying,

it's rather clear what they want to do. Well, he certainly wants to dominate in his own sphere. He wanted to dominate the world. But one thing that was interesting was him talking about the strategic benefit of the two-level games. In a lot of ways, that interview was him advocating for a renewed role for the House, which has been seen as kind of a complete joke show, right, in many ways. Yeah. It must be very frustrating to be a smart person sitting next to George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I don't think he has quite that seat, but yes.

You know who he should run with? Who? Pete Buttigieg. Yeah, that would be something. A unity ticket. Two white guys. Yay. Two smart white guys.

Better than two dumb white guys. Okay. Saying 2028, Kara. Yeah, I don't think so. And maybe with our next guest, Liz Cheney. She should be on the ticket. She could be on a unity ticket. That would be strong. That would be good. All right, Kara, why don't think so. And maybe with our next guest, Liz Cheney, she should be on the ticket. She could be on a Unity ticket. That would be strong.

That would be good. All right, Kara, why don't you read us out? Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Christian Castro-Osel, Kateri Yoakum, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show,

G will actually let the pandas come back as soon as possible. If not, you have to explain to your teenager why we're banning TikTok. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On With Kara Swisher and hit follow.

Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. We'll see you next time. completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system,

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