The Joe Rogan Experience - #1763 - General H.R. McMaster

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

General H.R. McMaster is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 26th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018. He is also known for his roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom and is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  His books, "Battlegrounds" and "Dereliction of Duty" are bestsellers. He is host of the podcast "Battlegrounds: International Perspectives" and a regular on the podcast "Goodfellows."

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! There you go. Yeah, ready, ready, yeah. Well, thank you, sir. Very nice to meet you. Cheers. Joe.

Cheers, great to meet you. Great to meet you. I always wanted to smoke a cigar and have a scotch with a national security advisor. So here we go. All right, all right. I always wanted to be in one of them smoky rooms where all the shit goes down. Is there a moment, because every person, every civilian wants to know, is there a moment when a president gets into office where someone like you has to sit them down? They just got elected. Someone like you has to sit them

down and go, all right, buddy, here's what's going on in the world. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I, you know, we were facing a number of challenges and opportunities and a new president, you know, I think suddenly realizes that he's responsible for how we respond to those challenges and opportunities. So I think, you know, of course, as a national security advisor, you know, I think suddenly realizes that he's responsible for how we respond to those challenges and opportunities. So I think, you know, of course, as a national security advisor, you know, that's kind of your job, right? You're the only person in the foreign policy national security establishment who has the president as his or her only client, right? So it's your job to help the president succeed in the area of foreign policy and national security. to help the president succeed in the area of foreign policy and national security.

And that job, you have to kind of be like a psychologist as well as a national security advisor, right? Because especially if you're dealing with someone like Trump, who's a big personality. Yeah. And of course, you know, every president is different and receives information differently and has a different set of priorities. And so I think it's really important to ensure that the way you interact with that president is consistent with the way that president receives information. You know, thinks him or herself about about the world and help them evolve their understanding of these challenges and opportunities that we face internationally and then give options. Right. As national security adviser, like your job is not to determine foreign policy. Nobody elected you, right? Your job is to give that elected president the benefit of the best information, intelligence, analysis available, and then to tee up options, right? And have forums for discussion where he can not just listen to you because you're not omniscient, right? You're not an all-knowing national security advisor. You should help convene

groups that can help the president make the best decisions. We always have on the outside, we always have this idea of what a president says they want to do when they're running. And then once they get into office, oftentimes they change or they abandon a lot of their policies, a lot of their ideas. And the speculation is always like, I wonder what they learn. Because people want to say, oh, they're just liars. They were lying the whole time. And I'm always like, maybe, or maybe they get in there and they learn that there's some serious issues that they were not aware of, and that there's some top secret stuff that the general public's not privy to and they get briefed and then it's a whoo yeah well the key is the key

is to think through the long-term costs and consequences of any decision and often that involves a decision to take an action but also not doing something is a decision right so i think what a national security advisor should do, any of the president's advisors should help the president think longer term and to recognize, right, that we're involved in complex competitions, right? The future doesn't depend on what we decide to do. It also depends on the actions of others, oftentimes, you know, adversaries, rivals, and enemies. And that interactive nature of foreign policy and national security competitions is sometimes lost. And this is what I write about in the book is this idea of strategic narcissism, right?

The tendency for leaders to think that what they do or decide not to do is decisive toward achieving a favorable outcome. That's actually a pretty arrogant way to look at the world, right? You have to recognize the agency, the influence, the authorship over the future that others have. But if they decide something that's incorrect or something that's correct, it kind of does have a large impact on the world, right? Oh, absolutely. Right. I mean, if you think of just, you know, decisions in recent history, right, decisions to either engage or not engage, right? How about, you know, for everybody wants to talk about, for example, the invasion of Iraq, right? That's been the big debate over the last couple of decades.

Should we have done it? Should we have invaded Iraq? And I think what we ought to debate more often is who the heck thought it would be easy and why did they think it would be easy, right? Do you think they thought it would be easy just because of the first Gulf War? I think that's a big factor. You know, I write about this in Battlegrounds. It's an odd thing to start a book out on, but I write about our tank battle in Desert Storm. And I write about that in context of our cavalry troop, the same cavalry troopers who were patrolling the border between East and West Germany from Camp Harris in Coburg, Germany in November of 1989 when the wall came down.

And of course, that event, I think, was significant in terms of bolstering our confidence, right, our optimism about the future with good reason, right? I mean, you know, the East German government faded away. The Berlin Wall came down, right? The Soviet Union broke apart. We won the Cold War, right, without firing a shot. And so there was a sense of optimism then going in to the Gulf War as well. And so our troop was training, you know, in August of 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait. And I brought the whole team together, you know, 140 cavalry troopers.

And I said, hey, we need to make the most out of this training because the next operations order I give you will probably be in the desert of Saudi Arabia. And then, of course, our experience during Desert Storm was a lopsided victory. We destroyed a force, you know, much larger than us. We suffered no casualties. It was one lopsided victory in a war that was full of these lopsided victories. And what happened in this period of time, Joe, is that we bought into some assumptions about the future that were over-optimistic, right? And I think those assumptions were that, hey, you know, that an arc of history had guaranteed the primacy of our free and open societies over closed authoritarian systems. The second is, hey, great power competition. That's a relic of the past. You know, how'd that work out? Look

what's going on right now with Russia and China. And then third, and this is what I think you're alluding to, is that there was this idea that future war would be fast, cheap, efficient, right? Waged at standoff range with our advanced technologies. And what we forgot, I think, is this interactive nature of war. I mean, there are two ways to fight. And you know this from jiu-jitsu, you know, asymmetrically, where you use that person's strengths against them, or stupidly. I mean, Saddam fought us stupidly. And we also had a very narrow political objective.

Hey, turn Kuwait back to the Kuwaitis. Now fast forward, okay, to the wars after 9-11, Now, fast forward, OK, to the wars after 9-11, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2003. I think we went into those wars under this assumption, the short war assumption, right? We could just do this quickly and kind of almost take the George Costanza approach to war and just leave on a high note, when in fact war has always been an activity that involves the consolidation of gains to get to a sustainable outcome consistent with what brought you there in the first place. And so this idea in battlegrounds is strategic narcissism, right? This tendency to not consider the interactive nature of war. The interactive nature of war and the consequences of each and every single decision that you have to make. Absolutely. And, you know, I had this wonderful experience in the Army across 34 years, right? And in recent years, you know, the last couple of decades, I was on the

receiving end of plans and strategies and policies developed in Washington that made no sense from where I was in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. So how does that work? Like who – so a person like you as a national security advisor, like a general, who comes to you with these ideas and plans? Well, it's your job to kind of convene the, you know, the president's cabinet, right? The principal's committee of the National Security Council. And, and, you know, Joe, I, you know, I, I write about this in the book. I, I, I walked into that office really unexpectedly, obviously, right? You know, I had been walking down Walnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, all my way to a think tank.

My job at the time was to design the future army. So I'm an active duty lieutenant general. And I was going to brief this think tank community, get their thoughts on a study that we had commissioned, almost a two-year-long study on Russia's annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine and Russian new generation warfare and what it meant, right, for developing the future army and the future military. And my phone rings and it's a partially blocked number from, you know, from the White House. Oh, boy. And they say, hey, the president would like you to interview for the job of National Security

Advisor at Mar-a-Lago. It says partially? So it just says 202. It's just 202. That's it? That's it, yeah. Oh, boy. That's some, like, Batman shit.

So that's why I answered it. Typically, I wouldn't answer my phone on the way to a meeting, but maybe I ought to answer this one. So, you know, it came out of the blue. And so that was a Friday, right? And Sunday, I'm interviewing for the job. Wow. He hires me on, you know, President's Day Monday. I fly back to Washington, right?

You know, on Air Force One. And you interviewed at Mar-a-Lago? At Mar-a-Lago. So you're having, like, I fly back to Washington, right? You know, on Air Force One. And you interviewed at Mar-a-Lago? At Mar-a-Lago. So you're having like shrimp cocktails? Hey, I didn't know how to get food there, man. So after the first interview, right, they said, hey, the president would probably like to talk to you again. So I stayed, they kept me there for the rest of the day. I went into the military aides office, you know, because I know those guys, you know, we're on the military. So I'm hanging out in their office. I'm doing emails for my regular

job and, you know, of course, calling my wife and calling Katie and talking to her about it. And there's no food. I don't know how to get food. So I ate everything that those guys had. I ate their pistachio nuts, man. And I left them a note. Hey, sorry, guys. I'll have to replenish your supplies. You can't ask Trump. Hey, buddy.

Where's the man get a steak around here? I probably could have gotten some meatloaf or something. I'm sure. I'm sure I could have. Missed opportunity. But so anyway, that Monday I fly back to D.C. and I didn't even live in D.C. So they had these Osprey aircraft waiting to take me back to my house in Tidewater, Virginia. I packed the bag and I started on Tuesday, man.

I mean, so it was quick. But I had this, you know, I had this great gift that the Army gave me, which is the opportunity to study history, you know. And so I walk into, to me, McGeorge Bundy's office, the guy who was national security advisor when Vietnam became an American war. And I wrote a book called Dereliction of Duty about how and why Vietnam became an American war and identified all of the deficiencies in the decision-making, policy-making process, right, in Washington. So I resolved at least, OK, I'm not going to make the same mistakes, right? And so one of those mistakes for what you're alluding to is, you know, they didn't spend enough time thinking about the nature of the problem, right? They didn't frame out the problem. You just kind of designed thinking to think about it, right?

problem, right? They didn't frame out the problem. You just kind of design thinking to think about it, right? So when I came into the job, you know, we established, you know, what I thought were the top 16 challenges to our security and prosperity in the world, right? And then we organized a framing effort around those. And we put together a meeting called a principal small group framing session where the president's cabinet, right, the secretary of state and defense and all the heads of the intelligence community come together to really approve how we've described the problem associated with Chinese Communist Party aggression, with Russian aggression, with Iran and Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon, with North Korea and North Korea's nuclear program and other threats from North Korea, threats that are occurring more frequently and are more consequential in cyberspace, for example. And so as I came into the job, I was grateful for the opportunity to study it from a historical perspective anyway. Well, you're famously nonpartisan. You're a guy who didn't even vote while you were in active duty. You decided a long time ago

that that was the best course of action to stay completely unbiased and to concentrate entirely on the goals and objectives of the military. Right, right. So when you're with a guy like Trump, you're going to be associated politically. If you're a part of the Trump administration,

it's like you're immediately associated with Trump and then with all of the good and the bad that comes with that. So was that a shock to the system? What was that like to go from, you get this phone call from this weird number, all of a sudden you're in Mar-a-Lago trying to find some food, and then you're the national security advisor? Well, you know, I really think it was a benefit to stay on active duty, you know, and I really think that, I mean, I know like you do. When I look at the polarization in

our society today, this partisan politics, I think, okay, why can't we just talk about what we can agree on? So I think in the area of foreign policy, that ought to be an area where we could agree. Like, who wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon? Who wants the only hereditary communist dictatorship in the world, you know, the Kim family regime in North Korea, to have the most destructive weapons on earth? Who wants Russia to intimidate all the countries on its periphery, develop destabilizing nuclear weapons, try to coerce us like they're doing now? Who wants to try to eat our lunch economically? Okay, let's talk about that across partisan lines, right? These shouldn't be partisan issues. So I think Donald Trump was the fifth commander-in-chief I served in uniform, right?

When I took the oath of office at West Point, the oath at West Point as a, you know, as a plea there, you know, in, gosh, the summer of 1980, right, Reagan was president, right? So it didn't matter to me who the commander in chief was. I was going to do my best to fulfill my oath, which was to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, right? And to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, you know? And I felt like I could serve Trump well by, you know, by helping him determine his agenda. He's the guy that got elected, right? And then once he made decisions to help orchestrate the sensible implementation of his decisions. And that's the job I took on. It's such a weird time politically and just socially in this country because everyone is so polarized. It's so uniquely polarized that even a good decision, a decision that if someone takes that's the president that is good for America will get attacked by the other side just universally.

No one from the right is going to look at anything that Biden does and goes, that is a great move for America. Kudos to him. It just doesn't happen anymore. I know. And we've got to try to get back to that. And I think the only way to do it is for like your audience, you know, for people to demand better from those we elect and say, okay, hey, stop compromising our principles and our future to score partisan political points. right? And I think you see some inklings of that. I mean, there's a little bit of a consensus, I think, on the threat from the Chinese Communist Party, for example, and that's a big, bold shift we put in place in the early days of the Trump administration. You know, when we pulled together that principles,

small, you know, this small group, you know, framing session on China, I read an excerpt from the existing policy toward China and made the observation, hey, we're about to affect the biggest shift in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. What was the original part, like from the Obama administration? How did they approach China? And what was the difference between the way Trump approached it with the Trump administration? It was a series of administrations. And of course, there's the opening to China in 78, right? And really even before that with Kissinger's trip, right? But then the opening to China was

really based on our view of China in the context of the Cold War. So we saw China as a potential balancer against the Soviet Union. And what Kissinger and Nixon put together was this idea of triangular diplomacy. We would endeavor to have a closer relationship, each with Russia, with the Soviet Union, and with China than they had with each other, right? And so that was the Cold War-generated policy. But then after the end of the Cold War, hey, we thought, again, great power competition's over, right? Arc of history, guaranteed primacy of democratic governments. And so a series of administrations, you know, really took this approach to China that was based on a fundamentally flawed assumption.

And that assumption was that China, having been welcomed into the international order, would liberalize, right? As it prospered, it would liberalize its economy and that it would liberalize its form of governance. And what we didn't consider is the degree to which emotions and ideology drive and constrain Chinese Communist Party leadership. We underestimated the degree to which the party is obsessed with control, maintaining its exclusive grip on power. And the party from the very beginning saw themselves in, I mean, from the beginning of this assumption period in the 90s, in an ideological

competition with us. But they were smart about it, right? They took a hide and bide approach. There's a good book out recently by Rosh Doshi about the long game, about how the party took this as a long game, and that there's a lot of continuity even between Deng Xiaoping in the 90s, right, in the opening up, and Xi Jinping, although Xi Jinping, the current chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, is taking it to the next level in terms of aggression against us. So that was the dynamic was this assumption. President Bill Clinton advocated very hard for allowing China into the World Trade Organization, even though it was a state-directed economy that had all kinds of unfair competitive advantages

like state support for their main state-owned enterprises and so forth. And when asked about, well, what's going to happen in China? He said, well, the Chinese Communist Party is going to have to liberalize, right? Because of the internet and information that's available to the Chinese people. He said trying to maintain control by the party in China would be like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Well, how's that working out? They're pretty good at nailing Jell-O. They're pretty good at nailing Jell-O.

Was there any anticipation at all or did anybody predict that what China's done today is they've developed a sort of unique hybrid economy where they're still communist and they're still run by the Communist Party, and they walk step in step with the orders of the Communist Party. And that's a very unique form of government and a very unique, inexorable connection between the big businesses and the corporations and the government. They all work together. That seems at least tactically to be a unique advantage that they have economically and militarily over the United States. Because we have conflict between our business and our government. There's conflict and there's manipulation and influence, but it's not seamless. What they seem to have is seamless power and control over their corporations. If you are involved in any sort of large business, electronics, military, whatever, you work with the government. You work together. You follow their orders.

Yes, you have to. Or you'll be disappeared. Yeah. And that's what's wild about that country, that they do that. And we have to recognize, right? We have to recognize that this is an authoritarian regime that is determined, right, to succeed at our expense, right? Xi Jinping just said it like last week. He was talking to the provincial chiefs and he said, hey, make no mistake about it. We're in an ideological competition with the United States and other democratic and free market economic countries and systems. And we have to acknowledge that, right? There's a national security law that requires every single company in China, you know, whether it's a state-owned enterprise or like a pseudo-private company, to act as an arm of the government.

It's a requirement. And if you stray from that, he's going to reel you in, right? Look what he did to the tech sector. Look what he did to the education sector. That was a $60 billion a year industry. It's completely gone, right? Look what he's done to many of these executives, but they just disappear from once at a time. Jack Ma, you know? And Joe, what I think would happen there is I think he looked at Dorsey and

others, you know, and Mark Zuckerberg and saw what they were doing to Donald Trump in the United States and said, hey, man, that's not going to happen here. And so Jack Ma disappears. You know, the tech sector crackdown is ongoing. And, you know, I think we just have to begin to alter our behavior and factor in this geopolitical, geoeconomic risk into our business decisions. risk into our business decisions. What kills me, Joe, is I think that we are, in many ways, underwriting our own demise, right, by the huge financial flows and investment flows into China that is giving them the resources that they need to compete unfairly with us under programs, programs that have names like military-civil fusion. There is no difference, right, between their development of military capabilities and what their civilian companies are doing in the area of artificial intelligence,

but even their hardware, you know, even their fighter jets and their naval ships. I mean, companies, Chinese companies that develop those military capabilities list on the U.S. Stock Exchange. I mean, it's nutty. U.S. pensioners, teachers and policemen and firemen, their retirement funds are being invested in China in many of these companies that are developing capabilities to compete against us, right? I mean, it sounds trite to say this, but it's almost as if these pensioners are underwriting and helping the Chinese develop weapons that the Chinese may use to kill their grandchildren, right? If they succeed in maintaining the party's grip on power. So I really think it's important for Americans to all wake up to the multidimensional aspect of this competition, the military dimension,

the economic dimension, and the informational dimension, the influence dimension, the economic dimension, and the informational dimension, influence dimension of the China threat. I'm glad you said that because I think that that's a real concern. And I think that most Americans aren't aware of this. I mean, I think the general population probably isn't totally aware of how the government and the businesses work together and that there is no escape and they are exactly the same. But when the supply chain got hit during COVID, I think a lot of people woke up to realize that, first of all, most of our medicine is made over in China. A lot of our conductor chips, so much of our electronics and so much of what we need for day-to-day life. We can't buy an American-made cell phone. That seems crazy to me, that we have

the biggest cell phone manufacturer, Apple, the number one in the country, number one in the world, and it's made in China. We don't have the ability. We don't have a plant. We don't have the capabilities to make the core components of our day-to-day lives, our computers, our electronics, the electronics in cars. There's a shortage. Can't buy a Ford F-150 if you try to buy a Raptor. You can't get them because the chips. There's an overseas problem with the supply chain. That seems crazy to me that we have somehow or another lost our manufacturing in America to the point where essentials, things that we need to run our society, we have to rely on foreign countries to create. It is crazy.

And if you think about it, it's going to get worse before it gets better, because you mentioned semiconductors and microelectronics and the degree to which that is the critical point, right, the point of failure in many supply chains. But as we transition to renewable energy and green energy, so much of that supply chain is also concentrated in China, solar panel manufacturing, but also what goes into that, rare earth metals and rare earth metal refinement, battery manufacturing. And so what we have seen is an artificial concentration of a huge percentage of the world's manufacturing in the southeastern portion of China. That's unnatural, right? So I

think businesses that get ahead of this, that recognize it's time to adjust, it's time to make supply chains more resilient, it's time to onshore, nearshore, diversify, they're going to be ahead of the game. The ones that are doubling down on their bets in China, look at what Xi Jinping's doing, right? He's completely doing everything he can to extinguish human freedom, right? And any inkling that any Chinese person might have that they might, you know, deserve a say in how they're governed, for example, right? You see this with the extinguishing of human freedom in Hong Kong now and the – you see this with Peng Shui, the tennis star, you know, who disappeared. But you see it in a genocidal campaign in Xinjiang. There's no way. There's no way to say that it's not genocide, right? It's a campaign of slow

genocide. You know, Uyghur birth rates in certain areas are down 60 percent, right? I mean, so I think it's important for us to all take a stand now, you know, and demand better from our leaders and demand better from your pension funds, demand better from if you contribute to universities, right, that they're aware of the threat of China's sustained campaign of industrial espionage against us to steal sensitive technologies and intellectual property. I mean, we really have to wake up to the competition. We have done some things like ban the use of Huawei cell phones in the United States. They came very close to selling. I believe they had a deal with AT&T and some other providers, and they decided to cut that off.

And China's phones are – that's the other thing is like technologically they're at the peak. Like those Huawei phones are like fantastic phones, and especially back then when they imported that that band, a lot of people were very excited about them, like technophiles. But is there something that the government can do to impart to the general public and to put pressure on some of these technological corporations to let them know, like, you're in a quagmire here. It's a bad situation because you're doing what you're doing because it allows you to maximize your profit by utilizing these plants and using, you know, places like, you know, the plant that makes cell phones or iPhones for China that famously has the nets around it to keep people from suiciding themselves. Like, there's got—

I mean, like Nike, right? Yeah. Nike who caved to the party and apologized for saying – making the bold statement that we don't want to use materials that are based on slave labor, right? Right. And then you have VW also with a plant in Xinjiang as well. And there's – I think companies are now coming to this realization, right? Look at how they cracked down on the tech sector. Look at how they cracked down on apparel manufacturers.

Look at how they cracked down on Marriott, the NBA, right? The NBA, who had, I don't think, any backbone, right, to stand up to defend. Daryl Morey, who is now in a good spot in the Philadelphia 76ers, you know, from Philadelphia. So I'm glad to see him land there, the former general manager for Atlanta. So I think, you know, I think we have to demand better from corporations. You know, the big issue on corporate boards these days is ESG, right, environmental sustainability and governance. And there are a lot of concerns now that the companies behave in a way that promotes equity and so forth. And that's all good. But how is genocide not an ESG issue, right? It should be. It certainly should be. And is there a problem also with the corporations in America is that they're all publicly traded companies, so they all have an obligation to their stockholders.

So if they make a big, bold move to start opening up plants in America and those plants aren't as profitable or at least the profit margin is not as high? Like what can we do to incentivize them? Or is it something the government can do to make the general public aware? So maybe the general public puts pressure on these companies to start some plants and to start manufacturing in America. Things, the essentials like cell phones, laptops, things that we're 100% going to need. Right. So that kind of supply chain assessment is happening now. And I think this is where the Biden administration should get a lot of credit, right? I mean, they're doing a complete

assessment of critical supply chains. If there's a star in that administration, I think it's the Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo. She's phenomenal in what she's doing there. And I think we're just not doing it fast enough, right? This is where people should be coming across the aisle in Congress and passing the Strategic Competition Act and the legislation on chips. What is that? Strategic Competition Act is to invest – to match government investment in sectors in which we are unfairly disadvantaged by China's authoritarian statist economic model, right? And so computer chips is statist economic model, right? And so computer chips is one of those, right? And the Chips Act is part of this range of legislation on the Hill, which, you know, I hope gets passed here soon, that will help us return to arenas of competition that we

vacated. You know, Joe, what happened is under this assumption, right, that China would liberalize, it would play by the rules, we just stopped competing, right? And if you're not on the field, you know, you're going to get your ass kicked, right? So a lot of what we're doing is reentering competitions that we'd stopped, right, under this false assumption. And so I think the supply chain issue is a big part of this and the assessment of vulnerabilities. And, you know, we're in a race because it takes, you know, it takes like five, six years to develop a fab, you know, to generate semiconductors. There are big investments happening now in Phoenix. You know, for example, Phoenix is going to be the site of a TSMC, big fab. TSMC is the chip manufacturer that's based in Taiwan,

which is, you know, a single point of failure almost for big parts of our supply chain internationally. And of course, the reason that's significant is it's in a place that's under threat by the Chinese Communist Party as well. Yeah, I think they're making a Samsung plant, a chip plant here in Texas as well. They are. They are. Yeah, right.

And in Austin. It's outside of Austin. Yeah. It's just terrifying to think that we have to catch up in six years. Because six years in the world of tech, that's 100 years. It's an eon. It is. But there's a lot you can do even before that, and I think it's starting to happen in terms of the shifting of supply chains elsewhere. You just saw Intel is going to invest a lot in Malaysia. You might think, well, why in Malaysia? Well, I think the key is it doesn't all have to be in the United States. It has to be in a number of places. So it's resilient, right? What if there's a natural disaster, a power outage, right? You want multiple sources. And of course, as you mentioned,

the reason this became apparent to all of us was at the beginning of COVID, right? When you couldn't get PPE and pharmaceuticals and so forth. So I think we're just waking up to this competition. And this ought to be one of those areas where we all come together, right? This should not be a partisan issue at all. And it should be a multinational issue, right? The reason the subtitle of the book is The Fight to Defend the Free World is we need others to come with us, right? We need the European Union and the UK and Japan and Australia. I think that's starting to happen as well, right? Because, you know, look at what Xi Jinping has done just since the pandemic, right? Foisted the pandemic on the world, you know, crushed anybody who was trying to ring the alarm bells about it. These are reporters and doctors, right? Then added insult to injury with this Wolf Warrior diplomacy, which I know you've talked about on the show here as well. And then a range of aggressive actions like, you know, bludgeoning Indian soldiers to death on the Himalayan frontier, right?

Scores of overflights into Taiwanese air defense identification zone. Weaponizing islands in the South China Sea. And if they succeed, there will be the largest land grab, so to speak, in history. And that's, you know, by the way, an area across which one third of the world's surface trade flows, right? You know, the intimidation towards Japan, a massive campaign of economic coercion against Australia and now Lithuania. And so what I would often hear, you know, from friends, you know, in Southeast Asia and beyond, you know, these are my counterparts who are as engaging when I was National Security Advisor, they would say, don't force us to choose, right? Don't force us

to choose between Washington and Beijing. And what I would tell them is, hey, that's not the choice you face, right? The choice you face is between sovereignty and servitude, right? And, you know, the United States is on the side of sovereignty. China wants servitude because what Xi Jinping wants to do, and the party's clear about this, is they want to establish exclusionary areas of primacy across the Indo-Pacific region and excluding who? Us, right? As the first step in really being able to rewrite some of the rules of international commerce and political discourse and then to isolate their regional rival, Japan, right? And so I think we're at a critical moment where we have to compete effectively.

And this does not mean that we're on a path to confrontation. Actually, I think, Joe, because we had vacated these competitive spaces, China became more and more emboldened and we were actually on a path to confrontation. When now I think this idea of transparent competition is what we ought to really pursue with China. So do you think that that makes us less likely to be in competition with China in terms or less likely to be in conflict with China in terms or less likely to be in conflict with China if we can change our whole economic profile here in terms of tech, in terms of manufacturing?

I do. I do. Because I think really we have to recognize what China's trying to do, right? So people talk about decoupling all the time. And you alluded to this a little bit like, hey, businesses have to make a decision, right? I mean, they've got responsibilities to their shareholders, you know, and so forth. So the whole idea of a complete decoupling, that's always been kind of like a red herring, right? That's not what we're talking about. I mean, what we ought to do is ask businesses, take a Hippocratic oath, right? Don't do any hurt or harm in three areas. areas. First of all, don't help the Chinese Communist Party gain an unfair differential advantage over us militarily or in the emerging data-driven global economy. Second, don't help

the party perfect its technologically enabled Orwellian police state, right? Don't help them do that. Don't invest in Chinese AI companies, right, that are extinguishing human freedom and weaponizing people's social networks against them and everything. And then the third is don't compromise the long-term viability of your company in exchange for short-term profits, right? And so many companies have been through this, right? I mean, and so I think that's a way to think about it and to think about it in light of what the Chinese Communist Party leadership wants, right? So what Xi Jinping talks about is a dual circulation economy, right, where they get a grip on critical supply chains internationally. I mean, if you want to look at human rights abuses, look at what they're doing in the DRC and the Congo, right? In terms of extracting at a horrible humanitarian price, the rare earths that they need to continue their manufacturing of microelectronics, for example. But what he wants to do is get a grip on those supply chains and then create enough domestic

demand that he doesn't need anybody else, right? That he can write the terms to everybody else, that he has everybody else, you know, in a position of where he can use coercive power. And what I describe in Battlegrounds is the strategy, I think the easy way to think about it is co-option, coercion, and concealment, right? Co-opt you, co-opt businesses, co-opt elites, right? With the lure of short-term profits and access to the Chinese market, right? Chinese investment.

And then once you're in, right, to use that influence for coercive purposes, right? Look at what they're doing to Lithuania. Look at what they're doing to Australia, right? Look at what they did to Marriott, MBA, US and international companies. And then to conceal all of this. Oh, this is just normal business practices. Well, it's not normal business practices, right? If you look at One Belt, One Road, right, which is their – they have three main strategies, right?

Military-civil fusion. I'm just going to describe all these in the book. Military-civil fusion, and I describe all these in the book, military-civil fusion, then associated with that is made in China 2025, which is part of this dual circulation economy becoming completely no longer dependent at all on any external sources of advanced technologies, for example, or aspects of supply chains. And then finally, One Belt, One Road, which is an effort to create servile relationships with companies by overly indebting them, right? And so the new vanguard of the Chinese Communist Party, you know,

is a Chinese Communist Party official accompanied by a Chinese national bank guy with a duffel bag full of cash, right? And they get the most traction in corrupt governments, you know, and then once they indebt them for generations, right, then they can trade debt for equity or they can use it for coercive purposes. If you say one crossword about the party, we're going to call back all your debt and you're going to go broke, right? So I think we just have to recognize co-option, coercion, concealment, defend against it. But then, of course, you know, as we look to the future, how do we maintain and expand our competitive advantages? Because we have tremendous competitive advantages in this country, right, that we ought to be aware of and we ought to

accentuate. And especially, I would say, you know, the unchecked, unbridled entrepreneurial spirit, right? I mean, if you look at China's centralized control, do you really think that's going to work in the long term, you know, compared to the freedom that we have here? You know, I don't think so. by co-opting these companies, by getting involved in these companies, by making these enormous investments and getting them to give up whatever it is, semiconductor chip technology, AI technology, and then it's theirs. I mean, Sagar and Jetty from Breaking Points did this brilliant piece on, I forget the name of the company, but there was an American company that sold a large percentage of what they were to China. And then the Chinese people that they were communicating with stopped communicating with them back, renamed the company, and completely took all of the technology and then proclaimed it to be

Chinese technology. And they're going to utilize that technology for AI. Absolutely. I mean, and you see this in so many areas, right? In solar manufacturing, in wind turbines. You've seen it. I mean, you've seen it with other industries as well, like battery manufacturing, right? I think Elon Musk, I know you've had on. I mean, I think he's in for a wake-up call, sadly, there. In China.

In China, yeah. Because he's very high on China. Right. He said China's awesome, and he goes over there, and he's making –. In China. Yeah, because he's very high on China. He, you know, he said China's awesome and he goes over there and he's making, and a lot of people are criticizing it because, you know, where he's put this showroom is. In Xinjiang. Yeah. And a lot of people say, like, well, look what's happening there. Right. And of course, you know, the dilemma is, right, what people say and what he says, I'm sure he believes this is, well, you know, do we really want to give up all engagement with China? Right. Right. And then and drive them even more into sort of a, you know, into an exclusive competition with us and really mask opportunities for cooperation.

Right. And maybe a breakdown of the of the hostility of the Chinese Communist Party. But what I would just say is what we have to recognize is the party is shutting down so many of those opportunities, right? I mean, academic exchanges, think tank exchanges, look at what they did in the education sector. You know, I really think that we have to recognize the nature of the party. We ought to try. I believe we ought to try to advance areas of cooperation. I, for one, Joe, I think we ought to, every Chinese national who comes here for a graduate level education in a key area of science and technology ought to get a green card staple to the diploma, right? I mean, stay here and work for a U.S. company. Now, you have to be careful,

right? Are they able to do that? Like when they get sent over here, I mean, stay here and work for a US company. Now, you have to be careful, right? Are they able to do that? Like when they get sent over here, I mean, do we know what the motivation is of a lot of these guys? I mean, have they been courted by these Chinese corporations and the government? I mean- Absolutely, many of them have. And we were so complacent. I work at the Hoover Institution and we have a program there called the China Global Sharp Power Initiative. I recommend going to the website. There's great material on there. And one of these is a study of Chinese espionage within research facilities in universities and U.S. labs and so forth. How prevalent is it? It was terrible. It's getting better, right? And what we did in the early days of the Trump administration is we stood up the China division in the Department of Justice. And I'm

telling you, they did great work. They did really good work at really starting to focus on this problem. What's happened is once we focused on it and there were investigations and some prosecutions, now the Ministry of State Security, their intel arm, and the People's Liberation Army, who also is in charge of a big part of the infiltration of our sensitive technology and research, they had to back off, right? So a lot of those people who were here under false pretenses as academic researchers or associated with private companies, they've been pulled back. academic researchers or associate it with private companies. They've been pulled back. And so what we need now is a better effort at counterintelligence, right? You don't want to turn, you know, Stanford University where I am into the FBI, right? But the FBI has got to do their job.

But also you have to just do some decent due diligence, right? And if you especially are taking U.S. government money from the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense, hey, I think it's pretty reasonable to say we shouldn't have People's Liberation Army scientists in those programs, for example, right? Yeah. And what's happened in universities in particular, Chinese students are a cash cow. I mean, you know, they pay full price, right, for tuition. And a lot of universities have become dependent on Chinese

international students. Now, I think we should have, I would welcome more Chinese students here, right, but with more diligence and to make sure they get a really good experience in terms of understanding the American system, American democracy, and maybe expose, right, that as a contrast to what they hear from the party, you know, in terms of democracy is a failed system and, you know, the party is superior and you don't really need to say in how you're governed and freedom of speech is overrated. And, you know, so I think, you know, I think that more students here is a good thing as long as they are not working for the PLA and the MSS and infiltrating our sensitive research.

And this is biomedical too, is another area where this has been a big problem. How does one vet that? Like, how do you find out, you know, if you have a student that comes over here from China, how do you know if it's just a student who wants to go to Harvard and learn at the best place in the world versus someone who has been indoctrinated in the Chinese Communist Party and they're sent over here specifically to learn things so that they can aid the party and then also infiltrate and get all sorts of secrets and whatever they could possibly get and then bring it back to China,

particularly if their family is still over in China, which I'm sure has influence over them over here. You can't do a detailed, in-depth investigation on every single Chinese student, can you? No, but what you can do is you can understand the problem better and understand what kind of operations are run out of some of these embassies. And I think what is most galling and what we ought to be the most upset about is how the party is extending its repressive arm into our own country and intimidating Chinese students who are here, who are afraid to say anything in class, right? Because

others might be reporting on them and reporting back to the Ministry of State Security or into this organization called the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, the CSSA, which is really a front organization for the MSS, the Ministry of State Security. And then, of course, these other organizations like Confucius Institutes, which are used as an arm of influence of the party. I mean, those ought to be shut down or marginalized. And then we ought to maybe take it on ourselves. And I think this is what every university president and provost should get behind is, hey, make sure that no student, regardless of where they come from, are subjected to intelligence collection and intimidation,

right? A university campus ought to be a university campus, right, that allows for the free expression of ideas. So I think there's a lot that we can do that's not controversial at all, right, at the university level. And in this report I mentioned on the China Global Sharp Power Initiative, we provide a guide for like, hey, if you run a research, you know, activity, here are just some steps you can take to just to do due diligence, right, not to become an investigator, but just to make sure that you're insulating your sensitive technologies and intellectual property from industrial espionage broadly, not just from China, but especially from China, because theirs has been such a massive effort. of America and the freedom that America provides to its citizens versus this connection that the Communist Party has with all businesses. And looking at it side by side, it's a very unique and unprecedented competition. It's never existed like this before. And there's really no roadmap

to follow in terms of like a historical competition that we can look at like, well, this is how this has fared before. And this is where the shortcomings are. We're kind of navigating it in real time. Would you say that's accurate? I think that's accurate, certainly in terms of scale. Now, as a historian, you're not allowed to ever say anything's unprecedented, right? So I would say that when we realized the scope of the competition with the Soviet Union, which became the Cold War, we did have an assessment like that. You know, there's this idea today that the Soviet economy was completely decoupled from the West. It wasn't really, restricting the flow of

technology and competing against an authoritarian rival with a statist economy. So I think you can learn from some of that. We have systems in place like the Committee for Foreign Investment in the U.S., right, where we look at investments coming into U.S. companies to ensure that those investments aren't, you aren't a Trojan horse designed to exfiltrate sensitive technologies that are critical for defense, for example. But what we need now is kind of reverse CFIUS as well to look at our investments going into China to make sure we're not underwriting our own demise, right? There's a quotation that is probably wrongly attributed to Vladimir Lenin,

right? Which is that the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them. Well, it's actually worse in the case of China because we're actually, you know, we're actually, you know, financing their purchase of the rope so they can hang us. Jesus, that's a crazy way to look at it, but it sounds pretty accurate. It's interesting that up until the Trump administration, I think there was a lot of the general public that wasn't even aware that there was this big economic conflict with China. And when he started this discussion of the unfair exchange and the way trade is done with China and how it's unfair. There's a lot of people that were upset about that. I think, but during that negotiation or during the discussion of that, when it became a public point of interest, it seemed like the fog lifted and showed the threat of China. And I think it's only since 2016 on that most Americans are aware

of how deep the rabbit hole goes with China in terms of what you were saying earlier about what they're doing in the Congo and other places to control and extract minerals and resources and also to give loans out that they know can never be paid back. So then they'll dominate these areas and control

them. And strategically, they've been moving these pieces in place at a kind of frightening rate. Absolutely. And the thing is with, I talked about co-option, coercion, concealment. I mean, the Chinese were really good at the concealment thing, right? I mean, they could just say, oh, we're about to liberalize. It's really coming. And I'll tell you, we have a short attention span, Joe, if we don't look at history. And I think they used, you know, personnel changes and administration changes to say the same thing over and over again. Look what they did on cyber espionage, right? Massive cyber espionage. And President Obama had that Rose Garden session with Xi Jinping.

He said, OK, we'll stop. Well, actually, they ramped it up. They tried to get smarter about not getting caught so easily. And I'm sure he went back and chewed everybody's ass and said, hey, you guys have to get better at this espionage. But they didn't stop it, right? So I think that, you know, we have to stop being chumps, right? I mean, we have to recognize the nature of the competition. And I think, again, you know, this is the strategic narcissism idea, right? Define the world in relation to us. And then what happens is when we do that, we fall into all these cognitive traps. A friend of mine, he's a great historian named Zachary

Shore. It's worth reading anything the guy writes. I mean, but he has this term, strategic empathy is what we need, right? We need to see competitions from the perspective of the other. Take time to look at this from the perspective of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. What are they obsessed with? They're obsessed with the fear of losing control. That's why they're extending and tightening their exclusive grip on power. And that's why they're promoting their authoritarian mercantilist model internationally. And I think once you realize

that, you recognize, hey, we have to take a fundamentally different approach. And this is what happened in early 2017. And I think we had some of the right people in the right place. I mean, this guy, Matt Pottinger, who I got to work with, he was our senior director for China, later became deputy national security advisor, extremely knowledgeable about China, you know, had studied China, had been the Wall Street Journal reporter in China, had been a U.S. Marine, you know, for a break there for a while, and then was involved in international finance and private equity. So he kind of, he saw this multi-dimensional competition and it really helped drive that, what we call an interagency process, right, to frame the problem and to begin to develop a strategy,

which we implemented. And, you know, this strategy was largely part of it. A foundational document to it was declassified right before President Trump left office. It's called the Indo-Pacific Strategy. You can find it on the internet. And it just lays, I sent this out in the form of a cabinet memo in my last few months in the Java's National Security Advisor. And that document was meant to turn the ship completely away from what had been an approach of cooperation and engagement, right? That sounds nice, right? I mean, who doesn't want cooperation and engagement? Well, if you're the only ones really cooperating, man, you're getting your ass handed to you.

Right? So that was a big shift. And then, you know, our U.S. trade representative, Bob Lighthizer, man, that guy's a guy to be reckoned with, man, because, you know, he's extremely knowledgeable. And he had seen all of these previous iterations. Right. So when we started these early in the Trump administration, we started these strategic dialogues, right, with, you know, with the Chinese leaders. You know, how could that be bad? Strategic dialogue, that sounds nice too, right? But all this was another means for them to string us along, you know, and to obfuscate and to really try to avoid any consequences for their unfair practices

and really economic aggression against us, right? And so it was a big shift. Some of the right people were in place. And I think it's an area that has enjoyed some bipartisan support. I just hope people don't go soft on it. I hope that they recognize this is a high-stakes competition. We have to remain determined. It's a high-stakes competition. There's certain aspects of it that just haven't existed before, and one of them is social media.

and there's certain aspects of it that just haven't existed before, and one of them is social media. In watching what's going on with social media, particularly the use of troll farms and bots and even apps like TikTok, when you find the difference between the way China uses their version of TikTok to highlight scientific experiments and athletic accomplishments, and then they shut it off for kids at 10 p.m. Yeah. Like, you're not even allowed to use it.

Meanwhile, in America, kids are drinking piss and lighting their farts on fire and doing anything they can to get likes, and they're rewarded with these likes, and there's unquestionably a concerted effort to make these kids more addicted to these apps, get them more viral with the most ridiculous things they can do. And it's sort of like it's a directed dumbing down of kids. And this insanely addictive app that when software engineers have back-engineered TikTok and looked at how it's operated, it's one of the most invasive applications they've ever found in terms of the way it checks your use of all other platforms and collects data. I mean, it was stunning when they looked at it. Absolutely.

I heard your conversation with Tristan on this, by the way, which was great. And he's awesome on this topic. I think the point that he makes and the point that's absolutely right here is that we made this assumption, right? Hey, the opening up, the internet, social media, it's going to make authoritarianism untenable, right? There's no way they're going to be able to maintain control. Well, I mean, the Chinese Communist Party has figured out a way to weaponize social media and a way to extend their grip on power to do what you mentioned, which is really to condition people with certain messages, right? And in the U.S. too, right? The way that the algorithm presents information is a way to slowly change kind of your opinion of China, Chinese Communist Party and so forth. But internal to China, they've also weaponized people's social networks against them, right? So if you say a crossword about the party, then those who are in your social circle could get punished. And so they put pressure on you, hey, conform, conform, right? And so it's something beyond Orwell even ever imagined in

84. And so I think what we have to do is we have to recognize, obviously, the negative effects of social media here and protect ourselves against it because China and Russia especially is quite adept at this, tries to magnify kind of extreme messages to polarize us further and to pit us against each other to reduce our confidence in who we are as a people, right? And our confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes. You know, for example, I mean, I don't think the Kremlin gives a damn who wins our elections, as long as a large number of Americans doubt the legitimacy of the result. Now-

That's important to state because I think a lot of people are under the impression that they wanted one party or another party to win. Their goal is to undermine democracy in America. Absolutely. And this is what they did in 2016 and again in 2020. In 2016, remember, I went into the – I arrived in the White House at the end of February, right? So unexpectedly, my predecessor had just left, you know, just started the job and left early and quickly. And but again, you already heard this cacophony, right, of of, hey, the election was determined, you know, by the Russians, which I believe is untrue. Right. I really don't think the Russians care who won in 2016 either.

What they wanted to do was to raise doubts about it. And one of the reasons why I conclude that is that if you look at the Russian bot and troll traffic from the Internet Research Agency, this front organization, right, for the GRU and the SVR, the military and civilian intelligence wings who are running this operation, the traffic went like way up, you know, after the election, right? And the purpose of that was, again, to raise doubts about it. The initial campaign that they actually launched and then had to pull back was that on the assumption that Hillary Clinton won. I mean, actually, I think that the Russians were as surprised as Donald Trump was when he won the election, right? And so, you know, their initial campaign was, hey, Trump would have won, but it was rigged. Well, then they realized, oh, God, Trump won. What do we do now?

And so they changed the message to Trump would have won the popular vote if it wasn't rigged, right? So what they want you to do is believe that the results of the election are invalid. Why is that? Because the strength of our democracy is that we believe we have agency, right? We have a say over our future, right? Because we have a vote, right? That's a beautiful thing, man, that we can, you know, we have the opportunity for self-correction and improvement short of revolution.

But if you stop believing that, right, you start believing that I'm disenfranchised, I don't have a say. It encourages all kinds of, you know, maybe even violence, right? And what you saw on January 6th, for example. So I really, or what you saw in Portland, Seattle, on the other end of the spectrum. So what they want is they want more Americans to feel disenfranchised, to feel like they don't have a say in how they're governed. And the main way to do that, hey, reduce confidence in our elections. Did you see Ted Cruz question that woman? I don't remember her name.

She's from the FBI. And he asked her about agent provocateurs at January 6th and whether or not they engaged in any activity there. And she said she could not answer that and whether or not they engaged in any activity there. And she said she could not answer that. And whether or not they engaged in encouraging violence, and she could not answer that. Like, did you see that? I didn't see it. But, I mean, I would be surprised if there weren't, right? Now, the thing is—

Why do they do that? Why would the FBI engage in that? Not answer—oh, the FBI wouldn't. That's what they were talking about, agent provocateurs. Not from us, I wouldn't say. Now, I would say there might be FBI agents who infiltrate organizations that have a violent agenda, right? We want them to do that. But I thought you were talking about the Russians.

I think what the Russians try to do is – But FBI agents that – if the FBI agents were involved in January 6th. Yeah. Right. Joe, that doesn't sound right to me. I mean, I don't know. What doesn't sound right? Agent provocateurs?

Yeah, agent provocateurs from the government. I mean, I can't imagine they would do that. Well, why wouldn't she just say no? I don't know. You want to see it? Yeah, I'll see it. Yeah. Let's take a look at it because there's a, what is the guy's name?

Ray Epps, the guy that everyone keeps discussing because there's a guy who is encouraging people to go into the Capitol. He was a guy that was in multiple videos and some people thought he was a fed like immediately and other people were listening to him. But this guy was trying to encourage people to go into the Capitol building. Here, let's play this just so you can hear Ted Cruz. I want to turn to the FBI. How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of January 6th? Sir, I'm sure you can appreciate that I can't go into the specifics of sources and methods. Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events of January

6th? Yes or no? Yes or no? Sir, I can't answer that. Did any FBI agents or confidential informants commit crimes of violence on January 6th? I can't answer that, sir. Did any FBI agents or FBI informants actively encourage and incite crimes of violence on January 6th? Sir, I can't answer that.

Like, that's disturbing to the American people. They see something like that, and whether it's poor messaging on her part or whether it's – It's like Agent Friday, you know, just the facts, man. It's just like, come on, open up a little bit. You know, the analogy that comes to mind and I, of course, will continue to learn more about this, but is that I'm sure there are DEA agents who participate in drug know, for example, because they're trying to gain visibility of an organization, for example. So my concern would be that, you know, I think – I hope that this commission takes kind of a longer view, right, and says, why were so many people believing, right, believing that the election was invalid and believing that their only recourse was to, you know, to assault the Capitol. And I think, Joe, if you if you take a long view of this, it goes back, I think, to the transition, the global economy in the 90s. You know, I think that there are large numbers of Americans who were disenfranchised, left behind by transitions in the economy. And then and then, of course, after, you know, after World Trade Organization, entry of China,

that accelerated, right? A loss of a lot of good manufacturing jobs. I don't know if you ever saw the, there's a great documentary on Dayton, Ohio, like what happened to Dayton, Ohio, like in this period of time. And then you add on top of that, right? You know, you add the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You lay on top of that, a financial crisis, right, 2008, 2009, and so many people who were affected in a profound way about that. And then how about laying on an opioid epidemic at the same time? And I think our society has received these blows, you know,

and there are a large number of Americans who don't have faith in their political elites. They feel like they don't give a damn about them. They don't understand them, right? That they're, you know, that they're in this Washington bubble. And so, you know, I think that that dynamic of disenfranchisement, loss of confidence also maybe explains some of the far left, you know, violence in Portland and Seattle. So I think what we have to do is work together, man. I mean, to restore our confidence, right? Our confidence in who we are as Americans, our confidence in the great promise of this country. We all have to work together to help the younger generation take advantage of the great promise of this country, overcome the

obstacles associated with, you know, with education, right? I mean, you know, it shouldn't be determined, you know, based on your zip code, how many obstacles you have to overcome before you can take advantage of the promise of this country, you know? So I just hope, oh man, I just hope that this experience that we've had, you know, in recent years can begin to bring us back together because the trend has been, it's just driving us even further apart. Yeah. And that trend is definitely accentuated by social media and I'm sure by foreign actors involved in social media as well. But I think when we're talking about the feeling of disenfranchisement, when you see something like that and you think that maybe the FBI was involved in some agent provocateur maneuvers where they were trying to encourage people to do something violent or stupid.

And, you know, a lot of those people that went to that January 6th thing, they were morons and they were easily manipulated. And it's scary for people to think like the the governor whitmer thing i'm sure you're aware of that that most of the people that were involved in that plot to kidnap her were feds that was revealed and when people said that well what's going on here they're they're organizing some fake kidnapping attempt on a governor and trying to get people involved to uh to do this it was what was the amount of people that were, it was the majority of the people that were involved in this plot turned out to be undercover agents. And that kind of shit is, it does as much to decrease our confidence in the way things are governed as anything.

Well, and that's why we have to really put at the top of our agenda strengthening institutions, right? You know, and, you know, none of our institutions are flawless, obviously, right? And what you want is judicial review, right, for warrants. You know, we know what happened with the, you know, the abuse of warrants and wiretap information associated with, you know, the, you know, the Russia investigation and all that, going back to 2016. But I think that we have to put institutional reform on our agenda. If we want to look at it from a positive perspective, you know, I mean, our founders, Joe, came up with a great system, man. I mean, you know. It's pretty amazing how much they nailed it in the 1700s. They nailed it, man. I mean, separation of powers, right? Due process of law, you know, and representative government. And, you know, the number one branch in our government is the Congress, right?

Because the radical idea of the American Revolution was, hey, the people govern. Sovereignty is with the people, right? Now, not everybody was enfranchised, right? It took almost 100 years for us to remove the greatest blight on our history, the institution of slavery. But our country has been always a work in progress, but founded, I think, on principles that made those previous abuses untenable over time, right? You know, like slavery, like Jim Crow. And so I think what we saw on January 6th, there's a positive story to it, not to be Pollyannish about it or anything, you know, but I'm telling you, you know, look what happened. You know, every case of, you know, of fraud, of potential fraud in the election was brought before judges, right?

And judges heard that, you know, and these were, you know, it doesn't matter who appointed these judges, but they were adjudicated. On that day, you know, I mean, Senator McConnell will never be accused of being charismatic, man, you know, but he gave a pretty damn good speech right before the assault on the Capitol. The vice president did the right thing. Our institutions held up even though they were under duress, right? So when, you know, I think when we look at our system, we ought to be proud of our system and recognize, okay, it's time for us to really reform it and to strengthen our institutions. Do you think that anything could have been done to prevent what happened on January 6th? Like, could the president have done something? Do you think that he could have

given a speech or he could have said something? Absolutely. Yeah, I think a lot of what we've seen in recent years, and I would say this is the case of the president associated with the events leading up to January 6th. But also politicians on both sides of the spectrum. OK. And this is why I got this. I think it's important. I'm a nonpartisan guy still.

Right. I mean, I don't you know, I'm a washed up general. Right. I don't think washed up general should become partisan. You know, I think that I think sometimes that. Did you vote in 2020 for the first time? I did, Matt. I did.

I won't ask you who you voted for. I'm registered independent. You know. Yeah. And so, you know, I think that what we have to do is demand better, right? So you had – I think what you've seen these days is anti-leadership. It's like the opposite of leadership, right? Leadership should convene people together.

It should get to really the politics of addition, right? We should start conversations with, hey, what do we agree on here? And I think if we did that, we could get so much done in so many of these areas just on the basis of what we do agree on. But so much of politics now is performative rather than formative, right? It's to get in front of the camera, right? It's to do a grandstanding interview. It's to get your name of the camera. Right. It's to do a grandstanding interview. It's to be it's to get your your name and your party out there and advance your party's interests. How about just the interests of the American people? And there are leaders who do that. But if you look at President Trump's behavior, which I think is abhorrent up to January 6th, but also look at some of the statements.

But then then candidate for vice president Kamala Harris, when she said, I wouldn't take a vaccine from the Trump administration. Well, she said that for partisan purposes. Or when then Vice President Biden, before the election, said, hey, if President Trump doesn't leave, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will march him out of the... I mean, come on. The military has no role. Actually, what's brilliant about our system, Joe, the executive branch has no role in the transition. If you look at what happened, right, it was under Article 2, Article 1, the Congress, and then especially Article 3 to adjudicate any of the claims of fraud. I've always wanted to ask someone who's deep in the government. At least 12 FBI informants infiltrated the alleged kidnapping plot that led to the arrest of six men. So the crux of the case is whether the five alleged extremists or the FBI fueled the plan. BuzzFeed reported that the FBI helped start the plot, recruit members,

pay travel costs, while the other reporters found one informant even led military training as a part of the plot. Now, I don't know how much of this is real or true. I don't know what's accurate. But why would anybody do that? Well, you know, the good thing about our system is, you know, we're going to find out. Because what I really like about, you know, the good thing about our system is, you know, we're going to find out because what I really like about, you know, when the FBI gets involved in a case, whether it's a terrorist case or anything, it all becomes public record, right? So as these trials go on, you're going to be able to read the whole thing yourself, you know? Right. And not rely on a BuzzFeed report or any other report. But I think it's an important question to ask, right? What is the appropriate role of the FBI and did they conduct the role appropriately? Now, I'll tell you, I've worked with a lot of FBI agents across my career, mainly abroad, you know, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They're tremendous professionals, right? They know that the reputation of DOJ and FBI has been sullied by partisan politics.

has been sullied by partisan politics. And these are people, I mean, who served their whole careers like I did, you know, in the military, in the FBI. They're very concerned about the reputation of the institution. And there's a very strong movement toward reform in a nonpartisan direction. And that's what I think we have to demand, you know, from our leaders at the political level who are appointed, you know, attorney general and so forth. But from the director of the FBI, who, of course, is now serving across two administrations, you know, and I think that's, I'm sure that's the top of their agenda. So in looking at this with giving it the most charitable consideration, would you say that this is what they're trying to do is find people who were trying or actively interested in doing something like this and kidnapping and

then trying to encourage them to go forward with that because then you could infiltrate these organizations? Like what would be the charitable view of something like that? Yeah. You'd have to ask somebody who's done this before. And I know you have some people that you've had on the show who could speak more knowledgeably about it. But, you know, of course, something tips off an investigation, right? You get some kind of report of a crime. Then you have to open a case, you know, and there's a whole process associated with that for opening it. And then, you know, and then you have to get authorities, right, to, you know, to infiltrate, to wiretap and that sort of thing. So, you know, there's,

I think what's good about our country more than anything else is rule of law, right? And the ability to have our rights protected, right, under the law. And so this is going to play out. I would just say I think we have to be patient about it and see what happens. But there's a long history of those kind of activities, right? Agent provocateur activities to infiltrate a peaceful protest and instigate violence and then turn it into a non-peaceful peaceful protest so they could shut it down. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know enough about like the history of law enforcement and that sort of thing. But but, you know, the you know, the the FBI in my in my in my experience

and with the people I've worked with, you know, these are these are professionals who are nonpartisan, the people I knew, you know, not like the, you know, the ones that I think solid the reputation of the, you know, of the, you know, of the Bureau that we've learned about over the past several years, especially associated with, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the Russian investigation and that sort of thing. Yeah, the, but when it comes to eroding the confidence, I mean, this is also a factor in what you're talking about. The Russia investigation is also a factor in eroding the confidence that organizations have in infiltrating our social media getting people to distrust the economic process the political process the democratic process what can be done to mitigate the influence that these social media attacks and these these organized campaigns have had yeah

I think a lot of it and this, and this sounds like a general sort of recommendation, but it's education. I mean, it's the reason I wrote Battlegrounds. I really think the people who are best informed, better informed, about the challenges we're facing internationally, for example, or these issues are those who are least susceptible to manipulation, obviously. And then I think the second is really reform in the media, you know, in what used to be called the mainstream media.

And I don't know if you've had – have you talked to Barry Weiss? Have you spoken with her? Yeah, very good friends with her. She's phenomenal. I love her. She's phenomenal, yeah. I love her too. And she – you know, I think what she did on leaving the New York Times,

you know, pulled the curtain back on the fact that what was really a paper that you could go to, you know, and have confidence in the facts that are presented. Right. You know, it has really been taken over by an orthodoxy. Right. And if you don't adhere to that orthodoxy, you can't be there. Right. And so, you know, why is it that if we lean in one direction, you know, politically, you know, you watch one cable news station. If you lean in the other direction, you watch one of the other two. And I think that the business

models are off, the incentives are off, right? And a lot of social media feels kind of a void associated with the lack of confidence in the mainstream media, but then also are driven by algorithms that are based on the avarice of these companies, right? They want to get more and more advertising dollars. The way they get it is more and more clicks. And the way they get more and more clicks is to show more and more, you know, extreme conspiratorial content to lead you down a path. Right. So I just think, you know, your listeners are self-selecting into long format conversations

because they care about, you know, understanding more holistically the challenges we're facing and what's going on in the world and the country. And I think that if we just educate ourselves, you know, we'll be less susceptible to it. My concern is there's not enough people educating themselves. There's many more people who are just allowing this to take place and they just don't have the time to really pay attention and do a lot of objective analysis of what the true facts are. You know, a lot of them have families and jobs and mortgages. And there's a lot of stuff going on and they don't have enough time to really sit down and parse out all the information. Yeah, right. And there are still places to go. You know, I think that, you know, I think that the think tanks that I've know, that I've been associated with, I mean, at Hoover, I think they do a great job and,

you know, going into more depth. And we're also trying, you know, we have a, you know, we have a serious call, not to plug my podcast on yours, but- Plug your podcast. No, I know. It's called Unimaginatively Battlegrounds, the same as the book, but it's international perspectives on the challenges we're facing. This is the book right here. It's available right now. Look at that handsome bastard. Look at him. Apologize for that. Yeah.

No worries. And so this is long format interviews with world leaders. So one of the themes in the book is strategic empathy, right? We have to see the world from the perspective of others. So the one that came out today is on the collapse of Afghanistan with Ambassador Mohib, who was the National Security Advisor when Kabul collapsed. And I've had him with Prime Minister Abe and world leaders to ask them about the challenges we're facing and to hear it from a Japanese perspective, from the Afghan perspective, from a German or French perspective or Colombian perspective, Mexican perspective.

So that's the idea behind it. And I think that, you know, going to the media like yours and others, you know, listening, taking the time where you're working out, you know, listen to a podcast. I think there are a lot of really solid ones out there. You know, I think from newspapers, I mean, you know, the Financial Times, man, I still, you know, I think that has not been affected, I don't think, that badly. You know, the Journal, I think, is still solid, especially on the China reporting. It's been really good. So, but then, you know, I think, you know, going to, you know, short videos sometimes.

Like we have a policy ed program at Hoover, which are, you know, they're eight minutes long, right? And if you want to know about, you know, the national debt, right, and the effect that, you know, that some of the COVID go quantitative easing and payments and so forth are having on the debt, you know, there's an eight-minute video on that. You know, or, you know, what does deterrence by denial mean and how does that relate to Taiwan and deterring China from an invasion of Taiwan? That's one that we did recently. So the media is out there. It's really, I think it takes time though to find the right ones that you're comfortable with. But I would just say, try to reject those that are trying to manipulate you where you've become the product because they're selling your data, right? And then they're trying to get more and more advertising dollars by showing you extreme content that is often dubious and invalid. grounds and making decisions that are based on what they want people to hear rather than just community guidelines that you know everyone could agree to

like the you know harassment doxing that kind of stuff everyone could agree that that is negative but they're they're censoring in ways that are that have nothing to do with that like they're censoring in ways that have nothing to do with that. Like they're censoring scientific consensus data. They're not allowed. They're removing videos and striking videos on YouTube for talking about consensus scientific data that they believe is harmful to whatever narrative they're trying to project. Yeah. And then recently we just heard the head of the CDC, you know, come out with a responsible question, make a statement that people were removed from Twitter for saying. Yes. Removed from Twitter, removed from YouTube. Yes. Right. So,

so this is a big problem, right? Do we really want, you know, the heads of these tech companies to be the arbiters of free speech? Yes. I don't think so. No, I don't think so either. My friend Lex Friedman, who is an artificial intelligence scientist, formerly at MIT. He's one of the most brilliant people I know. He did a podcast with a gentleman and they were talking about, this gentleman was one of the people that Fauci and Francis Collins had conspired to dismiss and to dismiss as conspiracy theorists in this most recent leak of emails. And he talked about the dangers of COVID. And he said COVID is absolutely dangerous.

And I'm paraphrasing. He said it's more dangerous than the flu, but for children, it's actually less dangerous than the flu. Because of that statement, which is consensus scientific fact, COVID's not that dangerous for children. He got a strike against his channel on YouTube. I mean, this is scientific consensus fact backed up by statistics. He agrees with Lori Lightfoot, you know, the mayor of Chicago, right? He was up against – It's probably the only thing he agrees with her on.

Right. Yeah. That lady. She's right on the teachers, though. You know, my mom taught in inner city Philadelphia for over 30 years. She was a phenomenal teacher, man. I mean, and she really did not like the teachers union because she saw the teachers union as an impediment for reforms. And also she saw them as guilty of, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the soft kind

of soft racism of sort of low expectations, right? And that they become complacent and weren't focused on the student, right? If you look at the discourse now around education, why aren't the students at the center of it, right? I mean, they should be at the center of it. Yeah, they most certainly should. And I'm worried that students are being influenced by these narratives that are being portrayed on social media to the point where it's hard for that their ideological beliefs are superior to the ideological beliefs that they suppose. And by any means necessary, they should diminish and reduce the impact that the opposing perspective has on our culture. And they have this unique opportunity, which has never existed before, where one ideology, which is essentially leftism, controls a vast majority of what's being disseminated. Absolutely.

And so I actually, I read about this in Battlegrounds in the conclusion and in the afterward. And I refer to it as kind of a curriculum of self-loathing that our young people have been exposed to, Joe. And so as a historian, I kind of trace this back to the new left interpretation of history, which is tied to kind of Marxist ideology and now post-colonial theory, right? Post-colonial theory, which really is, I don't know, oversimplify here, is that really all of the ills of the world prior to 1945 were due to colonialism. All the ills of the world after 1945 were due to capitalist imperialism. And this interpretation, of course, is profoundly arrogant because what it does is it doesn't

acknowledge causality except for us. And it assumes that other actors, including enemies and rivals and adversaries, only act in response to us, right? And what we do. It's that they don't have an agenda of their own. And I think this is connected to the really lack of solid history curricula in secondary school and in universities. And many students are subjected to this kind of orthodoxy, right? And what I try to tell students in university settings, whether it's a Stanford or Arizona State University, is to just say, hey, if anybody tries to push an orthodoxy on you, reject it, you know? Do your own thinking. Read a number of different accounts or interpretations of whatever the issue is and come to your own conclusion. Yeah a number of different accounts or interpretations of whatever the issue

is and come to your own conclusion. Yeah, that narrow binary perspective is also profoundly ignorant in its analysis of human beings. Like throughout history, human beings have been evil and ruthless, and we're probably less evil and less ruthless now than ever before. And we should acknowledge that it took a lot of horrible shit to get us this perspective where we know better now. Absolutely. And so this is the problem with, you know, these critical theories, right? And I know you've done some, you've had a couple of shows on this as well, but, you know, essentially, you know, critical theory is based on, you know, the assumption that, you know, that the whole system has to be brought down, right? Because structurally,

it's biased against us, right? So the problem with this theory is that it leaves you with a toxic combination of resignation and anger. And I think if there's a message to the younger generation is, hey, you do have agency. You can build a better world for generations to come. And, you know, just look at our history, okay? We fought a war of independence based on principles that were radical, right? Again, this idea that, you know, sovereignty lies with the people and the separation of powers, you know? And of course, it was imperfect, right? Again, this idea that, you know, sovereignty lies with the people and the separation of powers, you know, and of course it was imperfect, right? You know, it did take almost a hundred years to remove the greatest blight on our history of the institution of slavery. And then of course, you know, that was great because, you know,

we were able to emancipate 4 million of our fellow Americans in the bloodiest war in our history. But of course, disappointments followed, you know, failure of reconstruction, rise of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan, separate but equal, right? Redlining and segregation. But hey, the civil rights movement dismantled, right? De jure segregation, inequality of opportunity. Now, hey, did de facto, you know, segregation and equality of opportunity persist? Yes, it did. Do we still have work to do? Hell yes, we do. So let's get after it.

Let's work on it. Let's improve, you know, our society. And I think this, whenever you put the, if you put the adjectives institutional, you know, or structural in front of every problem, right, what you're saying is, hey, you know, we're all screwed. I think that's a fun thing to say for people too.

Like they love to say structural racism, institutional. That's like those are some terms that people that I don't even think they really know what they're saying. Sometimes they say like online, like a lot of people. It's one of those things you could just sort of like lay a blanket over an issue and go, oh, it's structural racism, which for sure exists, especially when you're talking about redlining. And one of the things that you brought up that I think is very important is you said that just because you come from a different area code or a different zip code, you shouldn't have limited opportunities.

We should figure out a way to make it so that we at least have a base starting point that's similar in this culture, in this country. And we don't right now. And if bad policies got there, right, like redlining. I saw the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. If bad policies got us to where we are, hey, well, good policies should be able to correct it. But people aren't willing oftentimes to discuss real solutions, right? So the problem of education, the way I see it, and of course I'm not an expert in this, but Hoover does a lot of great work on it and I talk to people about it. And it's often a topic on this other podcast we have called Good Fellows where the three Hoover fellows talk about – we talk about issues like these, is that it's an opt-out system, right? So if you're

in a crappy school district, right, you can opt out in a number of ways. You can opt out by, you know, by earning more money, moving out of that district, right, to get your kids a better education. You can opt out by earning more money and send your kids to private school. But if you can't do that, if you don't have the resources to opt out, you're stuck. Right. Right? And so why should that be the case? And why shouldn't school choice be more broadly available, for example? And of course, impediments to this include teachers' unions, right? So I think what you're seeing now is a nascent movement on the parts of parents to be more vocal on this issue. You know, I think education was a lagging issue.

I think it should have been an issue a long time ago, but it's good that it's at the forefront now. But I think all of us, especially washed up, you know, generals like me, like later in our careers or second careers or whatever, you know, I think it ought to be our mission to help build a better future for generations to come, you know, to help strengthen our republic and to help more Americans take advantage of the great promise of this country. The people you talk to who are most enthusiastic about what we have are recent immigrants most often. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, especially – well, what's hilarious is when you talk to immigrants that have come from communist-led countries. And they are the most fiercely American people you're ever going to meet in your life because they know the alternative. Absolutely. And, you know, one of the fellows at Hoover is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, you know, grew up in a hellish situation. I've had her on the podcast.

Oh, yeah. You have had her. That's right. Yeah. She's phenomenal. Yes, she really is. And what she looks at today and laments, right, is tribalism. It's what she describes it as. And she said, hey, I know what tribalism looks like. Hey, Joe, I know what it looks like, right, from places like Afghanistan and Iraq. It's not a pretty picture. Yeah.

And in other similar cases, Yeonmi Park, who escaped from North Korea and her perspective on what is going on in Colombia. She's like, Jesus Christ, this is as scary as North Korea and her perspective on what is going on in Colombia. She's like, Jesus Christ, this is as scary as North Korea to me. When I look at all the woke bullshit that's going on there, she was like, these kids have no idea what they're ushering in. Well, I'll tell you, we have a big problem with this now. This is kind of a revenge of the new left and post-colonial theory and critical theory. We have exported this to parts of the world as well, right? From the American Academy, right? So the home of critical race theory is Harvard Law School, right? Among the disadvantaged there is really where it gained a tremendous amount of momentum. And of course,

that's become a buzz phrase now, you know, but really, I think it's important to look at the aspects of it and to draw the aspects of it into question. So I think we should say to our children, do you really believe that we ought to judge people by their identity category rather than by the content of their character, as Martin Luther King said, or, you know, or their work ethic or their dedication or their loyalty, you know, honesty, right? I mean, of course not, right? Who should believe that? Do you really believe that you're unable to empathize with somebody because they fall into a different category? You can't put yourself in their shoes. You can't be empathetic, right? I think a lot of what we're seeing is this orthodoxy is leading to an end of empathy, right? And if we lose the ability to empathize with one another, we're screwed, you know? And so I hope that these are the conversations that we should be having, like on university campuses, right? And in local communities. And I think if we combine that

with an effort to make concrete improvements, right? You know, whether it's with a Boys and Girls Club, you know, to help them gain access to the great promise of America and calling for reform in education, strengthening kind of the venues that bring people together, whether it's a church or some kind of community organization. Or, you know, how about a rugby pitch or a basketball court or, you know, youth sports? And, you know, I just think that, you know, we have to strengthen communities from the bottom up, right? We can't wait for the political class to do it from the top down. I think we got to work on this at the local level. What do you think could be done in the United States as a whole to deal with these disenfranchised communities like, you know, South Side of Chicago or, you know, some areas of Detroit and Baltimore that have been historically just overwhelmed by gang violence and drug dealers and just crime.

And it's a part of the fabric of the community. And the people that grew up there are just immersed in this despair. And it's very difficult for them to imagine a life where they have a prosperous future, like maybe someone growing up in, you know, Orange County, California would have. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think this is the most important problem we're facing, right? Right. And, of course, it's a combination the years that I spent in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, what happens, right, when there's lawlessness is communities fall back on themselves, on themselves, right?

And they seek protection from within their communities or their tribes. And what that does is it fragments society and it allows extreme elements to operate within that society and to pose as patrons and protectors, right, of the beleaguered community, right? This is what happens in gangs, right? You have adolescent, you know, mostly young males who are seeking affirmation. Where do they get affirmation? They're not getting their family. They're not getting their church. They're not getting any kind of community.

So they're drawn into gangs and criminal activity. And this sort of activity then perpetuates itself because those gangs become strong. They perpetuate the violence. And I think of it as a cycle. Mainly I've thought about this on how to really separate terrorist organizations from sources of ideological support. I think of it as a cycle of ignorance, right? Hatred and violence, right? Ignorance happens when people aren't being educated, right? Where they're not having experiences that allow them to understand the opportunities

that they could have in this country. And then that ignorance is used to foment hatred, right? To portray victimhood as a new heroism, you know, and to have everybody angry about their status as a victim and then to lash out in ways that creates violence, right? You have to break that cycle at the ignorance part, right? At the education part and create a sense of belonging and community that transcends these, you know, these gangs, for example. Yeah. And if we're looking at the United States and we're looking at this as if we have a multi-tiered approach to try to strengthen this union and try to strengthen the community that is the United States, dealing with these disenfranchised communities has to be a key

part of that. Because one of the ways that I've always said, if you really want to make America great, we should have less losers. What's the best way to have less losers? Give people a more even shot at a starting point. That should be something that we concentrate on. That seems like something that China is doing in sort of a long-term strategy. They're looking at the whole of China.

I mean, obviously they're doing it in some ways in a very evil way, like what they're doing with the Uyghurs and what they're doing with dissent. But there should be, in my opinion, some sort of a concerted effort to get this national dialogue going about how we fix these communities and how we fix these aspects of our culture. Because they're not changing. They've been the same way for decade after decade with very little improvement. And what I'd like to see, obviously, as a historian is pay attention to what didn't work. How about that? And, you know, of course, we had, you know, the first book I wrote was called

Dereliction of Duty. It's about how and why Vietnam became an American war. And in the book, you know, I focus on Lyndon Johnson's decisions that led to an American war in Vietnam from November 63 to July of 65. Johnson actually, one of the main reasons he got into Vietnam is because he saw Vietnam principally as a danger to his domestic goals and wanted to keep Vietnam on the back burner. And to do that, what he had to do is placate people on both sides of the issue. So he took this middle course really based on deceit, deception, lying to the American people, which in retrospect looks like, wow, Johnson really wanted to get in the war. Well, he actually didn't, right? What he wanted to do was protect the Civil Rights Act and the Voting

Rights Act and the Great Society. And of course, you know, that legislation was pushed through and had some fundamental flaws in it, you know, and now it's time to inventory what's worked, what hasn't worked, and how do we create opportunities? I think the other way to frame this topic is to, you know, now the buzz phrase is diversity, equity, and inclusion, Now the buzz phrase is diversity, equity, and inclusion, right? Equity has become a word that I think sounds great, right? But I think it really alludes to equity of outcome, right? And it often then becomes associated with income redistribution, for example, or something. When I think we can all agree, who's going to be against equality of opportunity?

And so how come we can't inventory the obstacles that be against equality of opportunity? And so how come we can't inventory the obstacles that are preventing equality of opportunity and then try to overcome those obstacles with effective programs at the national level? But I mean, really, many of these problems are local problems, right? And whether it's education or homelessness or the drug problem associated with both of those and, you know, a lack of a sense of community, right? I mean, there's a great organization here in Austin I've learned just a little bit about called Mobile Loaves and Fishes. I don't know if you're aware of those guys. Yeah. But really what they – they want to create communities of knowledge and of caring, right?

And that's their way out, they think, the way out of the homeless problem or a way to mitigate it. And what they found in their research is that what do all these people who are destitute, who have lost hope, what do they have in common? Well, they've had a series of tragedies that removed any support group from around them, right? Their families and any kind of from around them, right? Their families and any kind of sense of community, right? And so this is connected, I think, to what the discussion we're having earlier on social media. We are better connected to each other than ever electronically, but we are more and more disconnected than ever emotionally and socially and psychologically, right? And the message we hear so often, you know, from

the proponents of, you know, critical theory and so forth is that you can empathize with people, right? You have to sort people, you know, in a hierarchy of oppressors and victims, right? And I just don't see America as being founded on that kind of a way of thinking about our society and what's possible in this country. No, I don't think so either. I think, unfortunately, there's some very charismatic people that promote those ideas for their own gain. And that's where things get very slippery because people, you know, they're young and they're very sympathetic and very compassionate. They see those things.

They think this is the real problem with America. compassionate. They see those things. They think this is the real problem with America. And so they support these ideas and they don't necessarily understand the root of what, you know, where it's coming from. Right. Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's important to listen to alternative voices, right? I mean, you know, I'm at the Hoover Institution where Thomas Sowell is, you know, the guy's amazing. He's amazing. I think if you listen to Glenn Lowry, the next generation of someone who has a really strong and important It has been forever. which brings me back to the censorship that's on social media. Do you think that the government has a role in mitigating some of the censorship that's on social media? Do you think that, like, when Twitter first came around, it was basically just a place where people would post what they were doing today.

Like, you know, hey, me and HR are going to go to the movies. That kind of shit. That's what it was. And then it eventually became a key part of Arab Spring. And it became a key part of how we disseminate information and how people find out the news and breaking world events. And it's also one of the most important features in our society when it comes to whether it's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, these social media companies are most important features when it comes to our ability to express ourselves and the ability to shift and change public narratives. Right.

But they're being censored and they're being controlled by corporations and people will say, well, it's a private corporation. They should have the ability to decide what is and isn't on their own platform and make their own standards. But I think it's bigger than that now. I really do. And I think that they should be regulated the way utilities are. I think not regulated in a sense of the government comes in and says what you can and can't say. But the government says that you can't tell people what they can and can't say. I think they should be protected by the First Amendment.

Right. Yeah, I think so, too. And, of course, then you have the problem of hate speech and you have those who are, you know, who are part of the problem. You have, you know, also you have, you know, foreign agents, you know, who are very active. That's what I was getting to. How do you mitigate that? Yeah, I think that, you know, I think there has to be some degree of legislation, but there has to be, you know, kind of also the ability to have recourse in terms of maybe civil suits and so forth. What would you do to stop like a troll farm, like the IRA?

How would one stop that? Well, you have to gain visibility of really their expropriation of sites, which is often what they do, and the false content that they put on social media. And I'll tell you, when we first got visibility of this, it was pretty easy to take some of that down or to understand, really, where it's coming from. Like, for example, well, I don't know if I can talk about this. I can't talk about it. But for example— Can you tell me later? Maybe. Maybe? I'm good at keeping secrets, man.

But it was very easy to see patterns associated with disinformation. And then once we saw that, then we became more adept partnering with others to be able to take some of that content down. But then they got better, right? And if you look at, okay, if you look at now, this has been openly reported, that a lot of the Russian and Chinese disinformation is run out of places like Uganda, you know, it's offshore. So it's much more difficult now, right, to understand where it's coming from. And then, of course, you have, you know, you have the condition these days where, where, you know, they don't have to create all the bad content.

They just have to amplify the bad content that's already there, that we're already doing. We do this to ourselves fundamentally, Joe. Right. And then what they do is they widen the gaps between us and they make it worse. could help a lot is to is to try to to generate you know what what we could all agree or almost all of us could agree are you know are really verifiable trusted sources of information you know and this is called this is part of the reform in the mainstream media effort this is what Barry Weiss is doing right this is her this is her agenda right as to Is to create media alternatives that people can go to

and have confidence in, right? And then there's a, I read about this in Battlegrounds, there was a startup in Palo Alto called Soap AI. I don't think they really took off, but the idea was that whatever's out there on social media, think of it like soap bubbles, like it's going to bubble up to the top. So today we're talking about the engagement with, you know, with between the Russians and NATO, right? So that's a big topic. Well, if you have these kind of trusted sources of information and you want to know what think tanks are saying about it, what mainstream media is saying about it, you can then go to this kind of clearinghouse of various information sources and know that you're not going to get like the crazy stuff or the manipulative stuff. stuff. So I think that there are ways to maybe block the bad content.

First of all, I would say, why the hell is it possible for the Chinese Communist Party to buy ads on Facebook, right? When Facebook has no access into China and those ads are designed to advance the Chinese Communist Party's disinformation efforts, right? I mean, that's crazy. So there are some defensive measures that I think are no-brainers, right? Don't allow state-supported content through the use of advertising. But then from more of an offensive perspective, right, how do you create a space that people can trust and that people across the political spectrum or whatever, you know, can go to and know they can access, they can access reporting and opinions that will help them understand the issue better. Well, I think even corporations are recognizing that the business model they have of this distorted news that's completely ideologically based,

whether it's on the left or the right, is not as effective. I mean, it's unwatchable, man. Right, it is. It's unwatchable. Especially like CNN and MSNBC, and they're losing ratings in a staggering manner. And I think that if you looked at the future, I think we're going to see corporate-sponsored objective news make a resurgence because it's more profitable. I think if you look at some of the real trusted news sources and particularly trusted journalists that are now operating on

Substack. Look at how sub-substack. Yes, exactly. Guys like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss, these trusted journalists that have ethics and morals and values and they're not beholden to any corporation and their substacks are taking off and now they're independent and more, and they're not beholden to any corporation, and their subtext are taking off. And now they're independent and more profitable than they've ever been before, because they're trusted. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, you can trust certain people. Like, you know, I'll plug my colleagues, you know, Neil Ferguson, who I'm with at Hoover,

you know, he does a great weekly column, you know, I think it's on Bloomberg, I think, you know, it's really, you know, really insightful, you know, and from the perspective of an economic historian about some of the big issues of the day. John Cochran, one of my colleagues, has a blog post called The Grumpy Economist. So, like, I'm not an economist, you know, but I hang out with him sometimes. But I still shouldn't talk about it because, you know, I'm not an expert on the economy. But if you want to learn more about the economy, that's another great example of a place to go, right? So I think you can find places that put together, like there's a, if you're interested in China, there's a China weekly alert that the Hoover Institution puts out. It's worth signing up for.

You can skim through it. It's well categorized. And, you know, and I'm partial to, and I'm affiliated with the Hudson Institute and Foundation for Defense of Democracy, who also have these weekly compendia, right? And so what I do is I, you know, I skim through that in the morning, you know, and I like when there are summaries because you can see what it's about. You know, there's a guy named Bill Bishop who does a newsletter called Cynicism, which is phenomenal. He has eight points every day that's relevant to China. So, I mean, find these sources, listen to your podcast, you know, when you're working out and everything, and then skim through these other sources and curate your

own go-to places, you know, where you can, you have confidence in the information and the analysis. And it's hard for people to find those sources. I'm glad you listed those. And, you know, we talked about the guys and gals on Substack and the like. But for a lot of people, they're getting their news from The New York Times and from these publications that are mainstream publications that were previously very trusted and now at least sometimes suspect. And I think you need you need a grounding of it. So, you know, I'll tell you, you know, I don't do this. I'm not a plugger of my book or anything, but I made a mission statement for myself when I left, you know, 34 years of service in the Army, and it was to contribute to a deeper and more full understanding

of the most important challenges and opportunities we face as a way to bring Americans together for respectful, meaningful discussions and to help us understand better how we can work together to build a better future. I wanted to help reverse the polarization how we can work together to build a better future. I wanted to help reverse the polarization, you know, and that's what motivated me to take on this book. And I worked with, you know, I worked with like, you know, 20 to 30 research assistants who are phenomenal at Stanford. And, you know, I was cursing myself through the middle of it, man, thinking, what the hell did I do taking this on? This is a big ass book. Well, that's a real book.

It's a page turner though, man. It's a page turner. But if you want to learn about Afghanistan or South Asia or Iran or North Korea, the way I organized this was I outlined it. Initially, I was going to have like one chapter on each. I couldn't do it, man. So there's a chapter on how the recent past produced the present, because I believe that that's important, right? If you're going to make a projection to the future, you have to know kind of what's happened in the past, right? And then the second chapter is, okay, what the hell do we do about it, right? And, I mean, I'm not saying I'm right about this stuff, but I think that, you know, the details and the stories that I tell in this and about previous efforts to like get Iran to denuclearize or North Korea to denuclearize. I mean, we ought to at least take a vow, like not to repeat the

same mistakes of the past, right? To try something different. And the idea behind it is that we have to improve our strategic competence, right? And the reason we're incompetent, I think, these days is this idea of narcissism, looking at the world only relation to us, right? And the reason we're incompetent, I think, these days is this idea of narcissism, looking at the world only relation to us, right? Not recognizing the agency and influence of others, but also not recognizing how important it is to integrate, like, all elements of national power and efforts of like-minded partners, right? To help shift, you know, the balance or situation in our favor and to compete more effectively. I mean, I'll tell you, Joe, we really stopped competing at the end of the Cold War.

I mean, I think we – and after the Gulf War. I think we thought, hey, it's easy from this point on. And I think we're waking up to really important 21st century competitions. When you say competing, in what way do we stop competing? Well, we stop competing, I think, from a diplomatic perspective because we assumed, you know, that great power competition was over. So, you know, one of the quotes I use is from John Kerry, you know, when he was Secretary of State. Remember when – do you remember when Russia invaded Ukraine and Anis Crimea in 2014? He said, gosh, you know, that was so 18th century.

Well, no, actually, it happened in 2014. There was this assumption that we weren't going to have to compete like that anymore. And what I think about is this failure-appreciate the costs and consequences of action, right? And I think Iraq invasion 2003 is a great example of that, right? Again, I think we ought to debate, okay, who the hell thought it would be easy, right? Rather than should we have done it. And I think it was because we assumed, right, that wars would be fast, cheap, efficient. But then once we confronted, right, these series of blows, right, the unanticipated length and cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, financial crisis, 2008, 2009, Obama administration comes in.

And what the Obama administration does is I think that they replaced optimism with pessimism and almost resignation. And I think it's fair to say that the Bush administration underappreciated the risks and costs of action, but also fair to say that the Obama administration underappreciated the risks and costs of inaction and disengagement. And, you know, one of those examples is the complete withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, right? Lloyd Austin, General Austin, great guy, he's now the Secretary of Defense. He was there, right, when Vice President Biden went to Baghdad and had the ceremony for a complete withdrawal from Iraq. And Vice President Biden calls up President Obama and says, thank you from Baghdad. Thank you for allowing me to end this goddamn war.

Well, think about the arrogance associated with that. Hey, man, wars don't end when one party disengages. And so what you had is you had the reinvigoration of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS, which, you know, which by, you know, by three years later had taken over territory the size of Britain, became the most destructive terrorist organization in history, you know, conducted, you know, 190 some attacks outside, you know, outside of the area they controlled in Syria and Iraq. And guess what? Hey, we had to go back, right? We had to go back and conduct a sustained campaign really until, you know, 2018, 2017, 2018 against ISIS. You know, and so I think the Libya war is another example, right? The unenforced red line in Syria. I think you can draw a direct line from the unenforced red line in Syria. This is when President Obama had said, hey, I think he said it in 2012, 2013, you know, if you use chemical weapons and commit mass murder with chemical weapons, that's our red line. Well, I mean,

Assad in Syria did it, right? Murdered hundreds of people, hundreds of children, right, in a nerve agent attack. And we didn't do anything except invite the Russians in, right, under this idea that they're going to get rid of the chemical weapons, which they didn't do. Wasn't there some controversy as to whether Assad actually did that or whether it was a false flag? It wasn't a false flag. There's no way. Yeah. I mean, no, no way. There was controversy. Yeah, there was. And I'll tell you why. Is what what you know, what the Assad regime and the Russians especially do is is they send out false reports of jihadist terrorists. Right. Like Al-Qaeda or al-Nusra using chemical attacks. And they do that as a as to kind of set up their disinformation campaign. kind of set up their disinformation campaign. And so the disinformation campaign would be that another foreign agent empowered Al-Qaeda or some other terrorist cell- Right. Or they took over captured stocks. To do this and then blame it on Assad.

Right. Right. So that we would then take action against Assad. It's very confusing for someone on the outside trying to pay attention to all this. Which is what the Russians want, right? So in the book, I describe Russia's strategy. Another string of alliterative words is disruption, disinformation, and denial, right? So Russia disrupts, right? You see what they're doing right now. They're massing on the Ukrainian border.

Disrupt there. They're weaponizing migrants. You've talked about this on the border of Poland through Belarus, right? They're active in Syria, enabling Assad's serial episodes of mass homicide there. They're in Libya. They're encouraging Srpska to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina to start really another Balkans conflict. They're intervening in Kazakhstan, right? So they're disrupting cyber attacks, right? You know, the cyber attacks that we've seen,

solar winds, for example. So disruption and then disinformation, right? And my friend Mark Sidwell, who was the National Security Advisor for the UK, he used to call it implausible deniability. Remember when they shot down the airliner? You know, I think 2014, 2015, 2014. That wasn't us.

Well, you know, it's social media. This is going to power social media, right? I mean, people are taking the photographs of the air defense missiles rolling in, shooting, you know, the debris. I mean, so it was inescapable that they shot it down. And then they just deny, really, you know, even their most egregious acts. And that's what Russia does. Like Russia now is saying, you saw the statement maybe the last couple of days, hey, we don't really want to invade Ukraine. Well, when they say that, what they mean is, yeah, they really do want to invade Ukraine.

Right, of course. It's the opposite of reality. I would never advocate that we follow this pattern. advocate that we follow this pattern, but how much of a disadvantage is it in this country that we have at least the potential for a new president every four years to eight years? That when every four years someone comes on the job and they're really new, they don't really know. They have to sit down with someone like you and get an assessment of what's going on in the world. They have to figure out what to do and what not to do and how everything, I mean, there's so much I would imagine that a president doesn't understand until they get into office. Whereas someone like Putin

has been in power for how many decades now? Yeah, since 2000. He came in on January 1st, 2000. Yeah. Gave a speech that if you go back to that speech, he kind of lays out what he's doing right now. Yeah. Restore Russia to national greatness. He is driven by a sense of honor lost associated with the breakup of the Soviet Union and this associated drive to restore Russia to national greatness. But his advantage being that he has been in that position of power now for 20 years. Yeah. And this 20-year gap between – the difference between 20 years and someone just getting into office is hugely significant. It is. And the biggest disadvantage is continuity in policy.

Right. And I think that there's a way around that. I mean, we wouldn't want to give up our democratic system. We wouldn't want to give up our say in who's in the Oval Office and make sure that the president, you know, is beholden to the American people like Putin is not beholden to the Russian people. But I think that the way to do that is, again, to, you know, have the kind of discussions we're having, you know, to understand the problems we're facing, to build more consensus that's not partisan. I mean, it's not that we – you know, I don't mind about like disunity, right? I mean, we don't have to all be unified on everything. We should have different opinions, right?

But on certain areas, there should be a general consensus that transcends both political parties, right? And especially in the area of foreign policy and maybe even long-term economic policy as well, you know? And the sad part about it is that that's not been the case. And, you know, what I read about is this tendency for new administrations to come in to define their policy mainly as an opposition to those who have gone before them, right? And I think this was the case with the Obama administration, right? The Obama administration's foreign policy was a reaction

to President Obama's opposition to the Iraq war. And you can almost see every decision he makes, especially in connection with the Middle East and South Asia, through that lens, right? And I think that was the impulse for Trump too, because of his, you know, on Obama's policies, although I think, you know, there were a lot of corrections to policy that were long overdue when Trump came in. And I think most of his foreign policy adjustments were positive with the exception of, I would say, South Asia and Afghanistan, which was a disaster, you know. But, you know, I think that we have to demand more from our leaders again and that they not compromise, you know, our prosperity, our security for partisan, you know, for partisan advantage. Is there any other way that we can mitigate the advantage that someone that has a long

reign like Putin or Xi Jinping has? Right. Again, I think it's being educated about the issues, but then it's also, I think, cultivating bipartisan support. So whenever we're going to put in a big change to policy, right? So we're smoking these cigars that are actually made actually made in Miami by by a Cuban Cubans who came to the United States. We put a huge shift in policy on Cuba, you know, between Obama and and and Trump. And as we were doing that, we held sessions with members of Congress for with a session for those who were in favor of the Obama policy. With a session for those who were in favor of the Obama policy, those who were in favor of the Trump policy, what became the Trump policy. And we heard from them at the beginning, explained our rationale to both of them.

And I think the policy has a certain degree of bipartisan support. The same thing with the China policy, for example. You know, I think, you know, these days, I mean, you can't distinguish from what, you know, Tom Cotton is saying and what Senator Schumer is saying on China. Right. I mean, they're pretty much the same message. Right. So so we can we can do it, you know, and I think on Russia, there's a degree of bipartisan support on what we need to do. I think the administration is dropping the ball on this a little bit in terms of actions necessary to deter Russia. But like, you know, like Nord Stream 2 and then and then also the military component of deterrence, I think, is lacking in connection with the actions toward Ukraine. So perhaps our opposition to what we deem as a real threat, whether it's China or Russia,

could be something that unites us. Or a real opportunity too, right? So, hey, everybody's talking about climate, carbon emissions, and how that relates now to energy security, for example. Those are all interconnected. Those are interconnected problems. And so what is the solution to that, to reducing carbon emissions without constraining economic growth, ensuring economic security? I mean, we're beginning to realize the components of that because we're seeing Germany can't keep the lights on, man. And their gas prices are going through the roof because they just said, okay, we're going Germany can't keep the lights on, man. And their gas prices are going

through the roof because they just said, okay, we're going to jump right to renewables and we're going to shut down nuclear at the same time. Well, you can't do that. So what are they doing? They're doing what China's doing, which is they're burning more coal, which is the most damaging to the environment. So what is the solution? Well, it has multiple components. It does involve nuclear, right, for sure. And the EU is debating this right now, whether it's going to be a green source of energy. I think it has to be. It's the most green.

That's what's so crazy. Especially next generation, right? Yeah. You know, next generation. And then natural gas as a bridge, you know, into getting off of coal is immensely important. And then, of course, all the range of renewables, right? From solar to wind and so forth. But it's worth pointing out, man, that if every car in China is electric and they're charged with electricity that comes from coal-fired plants, it doesn't make a difference,

man. It's actually worse. It doesn't make a difference at all. It's worse, yeah. And then you're dealing with conflict minerals as well, that they control the resources. Right. So how is it that energy policy is partisan? I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's weird. We're so divided as a country politically that any time there's a topic that gets adopted by either the left or the right, the opposite side opposes it.

Right. And whatever it is, gun control, free speech, whatever it is, censorship, energy, it's crazy. And at least it's illogical stuff. Like the senators from Massachusetts are calling for price freezes on natural gas while they're canceling pipelines that

would have helped make natural gas more readily available. They have to actually import Russian natural gas to Massachusetts, right? To Boston. Yeah. Really? Yeah, because our infrastructure is not mature enough to use US natural gas. And we're exporting LNG. I mean, it's just, it leads to all this nonsensical. So we canceled a Canadian pipeline, right? And then greenlighted a Russian one. And then by canceling the Canadian one, now we're forcing Canada to sell more to China and giving China economic leverage over Canada.

I mean, it's just like we don't think this stuff through. And the Canadian pipeline canceling was due to environmental concerns, right? When, in fact, it would have been much better for the environment to have the pipeline than to move oil on rail lines. Was the concern, though, some sort of a spill or some sort of an underground leak or anything that could happen that could damage streams and waterways? Absolutely. But actually, the chance of a damaging spill is much greater if you're moving it by rail instead of through the pipeline. Yeah. I mean, any Yahoo can just lay some shit over the tracks, which is crazy. And just the whole process of transferring

it and everything. Yeah. How much of a concern is the vulnerability of our power grid? Yeah. It's a big concern. It's a huge concern. And I think that, you know, we're waking up to it. You know, we're doing a much better work now. You have an organization that was established early in the Trump administration called the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is working with all sorts of service providers and owners of critical infrastructure, power, water, transportation, to establish and help them come up to standards in these areas. Now, pipelines, for example, were voluntary, right? A voluntary participant, unlike utilities, which are a mandatory participant.

And, of course, we saw that problem with the colonial pipeline and the hack on the ransomware on the colonial pipeline. So I think we're getting better at it. But the problem is, Joe, I mean, hackers are getting better and better. think we're getting better at it. But the problem is, Joe, I mean, hackers are getting better and better. Their skill sets are transferable across borders to among hostile nations, which I think are cooperating with each other to develop capabilities. And I would say those that, you know, that includes Russia, China, you know, obviously, you know, Iran, North Korea are at the top list of the state actors we're concerned about. And then the surface area that they can attack us on is just getting bigger and bigger, right? Because of the internet of things

and everything's connected and so forth. So what we need is we need defensive measures so that our infrastructure would degrade gracefully rather than fail catastrophically, like maybe we are at our age, you know, degrading gracefully. But then also you need all companies, you know, private companies that have responsibility for critical infrastructure, communications, and so forth included, to look at their enterprise, you know, as Fort Knox, right? And the data that they have and the infrastructure that they have has got to be the gold that they're protecting. And the only way to do that is with kind of a multilayered defense where you're cognizant of the threats that are out there, which has more and more of an offensive component to it. And then also to really harden your enterprise not only from hacking but physical infiltration and from a traditional counterintelligence capability and so forth. So I think this holistic approach to security is growing in the private sector.

The government is helping more and more. But I think what's going to have to happen is more and more offensive capability against these actors. And I think that we still have the best people at this. And the idea here is that if you think of your surface area for a cyber attack as being subjected to a bunch of arrows that are just being shot into it all the time, I mean, you can shoot down the arrows, right? But you're not going to maybe get all of them. You've got to go after the archer as well. as well. So the offensive component of cyber defense is really important. It's important that those who are doing that for us, you know, have the authorities to do it. Those who are defending our.gov, like our government internet and.mil, the military internet, they do a good job at this. I mean, actually, the head of NSA, I mean, sometimes the government puts the right guy in the right place, man. They did it this time with General Paul Nakasone. He's phenomenal, you know, phenomenal guy.

I think we need something now for the dot com, you know, the rest of our internet, an organization that's more active. So perhaps another organization, like a new organization is dedicated to that? A new organization with different authorities maybe, but tied obviously to the other kind of intelligence work that we're doing in that field. What about the physical vulnerabilities in terms of not a cyber attack on our power grid, but a physical attack on it? I mean, is there any way we can mitigate that? Because one of the things we found in Texas last year when we almost lost the power grid was it's terrifying the idea that a grid can go down. And then I started thinking about like, well, what about all the entire national grid? Like if something happened physically, if there was some sort of a joint effort by multiple players

to simultaneously attack our power grid, I mean, it would be devastating. It would be. And this is why you need systems that degrade gracefully, right? I mean, so we can learn from the experiences of others. When Russia invaded Ukraine and asked Crimea, they tried to shut down the power, right? But the Ukrainian system was old, you know? So, like, I'm picturing a guy, like, in gray coveralls, man. He goes in the back room, throws the switch on, you know, and the power came back on. So, so much of our systems are exclusively digital and so forth.

There are some private companies now that are being formed by really bright people. This is why – this is our advantage, man. I mean it's our unbridled entrepreneurialism, right? And I know some of the people who have formed some of these companies because they teach at the graduate school business at Stanford. formed some of these companies because they teach at the graduate school business at Stanford. And these are people who have formed companies who will design solutions for resilience in power grids, right? And they're developing all sorts of new techniques. I think it's analogous too to the wildfires in California, right? And now, you know, too late, you know, PG&E, for example, you know, the power company in the North realized, well, I guess maybe we should bury our, you know, too late, you know, PG&E, for example, you know, the power company in the north realized,

well, I guess maybe we should bury our, you know, bury our electrical lines, you know, and maybe we should put, you know, wind monitors up, you know, in areas of high risk and so forth. So I think what we have to do is imagine what could happen and as almost a worst case scenario, and then understand what we have to do now to prevent that from happening. Because what we often do is, you know, after a colonial pipeline attack or after the attack on our financial sector, this goes back to, I think, 2012 when the Iranians attacked our financial institutions with denial-of-service attacks.

Our financial sector got much better at cyber defense in partnership with the government and experts in the government. So I think it's time for that now in these other sectors of critical infrastructure. And there's a growing awareness of it. There's a mapping of the critical infrastructure. There are good organizations working on this. There's a pseudo think tank that a lot of people don't know about called MITRE Corporation that is – it's partly government-funded and they do a lot of really good research in this area. But the key is incentivizing the change, right? You got to get people to realize, hey, don't wait for the day after the attack. Right.

Do it now. There's two key areas of concern that a lot of people have in regard to foreign relations. of concern that a lot of people have in regard to foreign relations. One of them is if China attacks Taiwan, and the other is if Russia attacks Ukraine. Now, what if they attacked both of them simultaneously? What if there was a coordinated effort to create a real chaotic situation where America had to act, or the possibility that America had to act? What do you think would happen in that situation? Are we in the position where we would have the potential for a hot war? Absolutely. I'm really concerned about the erosion of deterrence, right? And deterrence by denial, you know, there's a guy named Thomas Schelling who wrote about this in

the 1960s. And essentially, deterrence by denial is convincing your potential enemy that the enemy cannot accomplish his objectives right through the use of force. And the basic equation for this is capability times will, right? You need the capability to impose costs on them beyond the ones that they would accept. And they need to believe you have the will to do it, right? And I think we're deficient in both areas now. You know, the defense budget is big, you know, and people talk about the amount we spend on defense and so forth. But we are addressing a huge bow wave of deferred modernization in the military, again, based on this assumption that we were the top dog, you know. Our security would be guaranteed by America's

technological military prowess. Well, Russia and China, they studied us. Really going back to the ass-kicking that we gave the sixth largest army in the world in Desert Storm. And they said, okay, how do we take apart this American system, joint system? Counter-satellite, offensive cyber capabilities, tiered and layered air defense, drones, like swarmed drones undersea and unmanned aerial systems. How about electromagnetic warfare capabilities, long range fires, like hypersonic missiles, but just long range missiles overall. And so they developed a suite of capabilities, not to replicate like our advantages in stealth, but to break apart like our short communications and our precision strike capabilities.

And so what we need now are countermeasures to those countermeasures, right, to make our force more resilient and to demonstrate to Russia and to China, hey, you know, don't take us on because we can deal with all this. Don't take us on because we can deal with all this. And then the other aspect is will. And I'll tell you, Joe, after the humiliating – I call it a surrender and withdrawal from Afghanistan. I really think that there's a perception that we don't have the will to stand up to them. And I think what's analogous is, again, we were talking earlier about the unenforced red line in Syria, 2014. is, again, we were talking earlier about the unenforced red line in Syria, 2014. I think you draw a direct line from that to the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine, to the building of islands in the South China Sea, you know, and I think Russia and China just conclude, hey, the Americans aren't going to do anything. So, you know, I think it's important what the,

you know, what the Biden administration is doing now on threatening economic sanctions on Russia. But I don't understand why we wouldn't do something like deploy a task force to Romania, right, who's on kind of the front line. That's a NATO country, right? The auspices of deterrence or an exercise. Because what Russia really wants to do is send the message really to countries in the Black Sea area, like, who's your daddy? That's the message, right? And so I think there has to be a military component of deterrence. You see a lot of measures taken in the Pacific, Indo-Pacific, to deter more effectively the quad format, which is India, Australia, Japan, and the U.S. That's tighter diplomatic cooperation, military exercises.

You see, just in the last couple of days, Australia and Japan are going to enter into a defense relationship. And then remember the AUKUS thing at the end of last year, the Australia-U.S. and U.K. agreement. So I think that countries are realizing that together we have to send the message to Xi Jinping and the CCP. Listen, you know, you may say you're going to make China whole again, that you're going to say that, you know, that you're going to resolve the Taiwan issue. But you can only do that at an exorbitant cost. When people, particularly people on the left, discuss the military, one of the things that comes up all the time is the defense budget. And the rising defense budget is always criticized as being extraordinarily expensive and not necessary and the result of corruption and the influence of the military industrial complex and that we create tension and conflicts overseas so that we could justify these budgets. Yeah. create tension and conflicts overseas so that we could justify these budgets. In your opinion, do you think that's accurate?

Or do you think that we actually probably have an underfunded military and we need more resources and more money? I believe we're underfunded, right? And I know that's, you know, people are going to roll their eyes, right? I hear the leftists. You can hear them rolling their eyes in Starbucks. I know. And, you know, military industrial complex. And that's, you know, that's where that's a career I had and so forth. And,

but I think what you have to do is, you know, look at the numbers, right? First of all, Russia and, and China lie about their numbers. So you often hear that America spends more on defense than the next 10 combined or whatever. Right. But what you have to realize is China's going to surpass us in forced modernization, right, and purchase of weapons in about the next, you know, five years or so, you know. So China has increased its defense budget 800% since the mid-90s. And the other aspect of our budget is we are burdened by a lot of personnel costs that they're not burdened by. And this is our, you know, our retirement, uh, you know, I'm getting a pension, you know, and, uh, and the salary for our soldiers,

because we have an all volunteer force and our servicemen and women, I think deserve to be paid for what they do. So you have to really look at the numbers that the organization has done some really good work on that is the Heritage Foundation. If you just, they're a conservative think tank in DC, but they're very good on defense. And they have a recent paper where they just lay out the numbers. Hey, you always hear this about defense. Here's what the reality is. And that doesn't mean there's not waste in defense. Hey, believe me. But, you know, what happened, Joe, over the years is with, you know, with the Budget Control Act, you know, and what's called sequestration, which means you couldn't do multi-year budgeting and you had to, you couldn't project further out. It made the Defense Department do a lot of illogical things. Like we held on to legacy systems that are super hard to maintain

when we could be purchasing more capable weapons, right, at really a reduced cost over the life cycle, for example. So there are a lot of procedural changes that have to be made. You know, there's a guy named Chris Brose who wrote a great book on this, you know, about what needs to happen to fix defense. It's pretty accessible. He's got really it's really well laid out. And and I think that it's time, you know, to change our processes that will help us eliminate the waste.

But I do think that the defense budget is underfunded. Now, Congress, the I think the Biden budget that went to Congress would have been really, you know, a kick in the ass and diminished our defense capabilities. But the Senate approved a budget that was, I think, $25 billion more than the president asked for because they realized bipartisan, you know, which is another one of the few areas where there's bipartisanship is in the National Defense Authorization Act, that that would have been disastrous for deterrence. Because ultimately, what do you want the military to do, right? You want the military to deter conflict, right? It was George Washington who said that being prepared for war is the most effectual means

of preserving peace, right? And then, of course, you want your sons and daughters who are in the military to be able to respond with what they need to fight, right, to fight and win, right, if deterrence fails. One of the most controversial ideas that's floated about when it comes to the military is the idea of compulsory service. Yeah. And obviously some countries have this. Famously, Israel has this. Israel has this, and it seems to, I mean, I'm not saying I'm a proponent or an opponent of it, but it seems to foster a level of patriotism in Israel that is not necessarily present in all of America. It's present in a lot of America, but there's certain parts of America like look I had an American flag in my LA studio behind me and someone accused me of being racist for having an

American flag behind me which is one of the craziest things I've ever heard in my life like what oh it says a lot about you that you have an American flag behind you like bitch you live in America fuck are you talking about that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life right America's all of us right it's supposed to be a community. Like this, that flag to me represents opportunity and freedom and a community. It doesn't represent the worst aspects of what the American regimes have done. It represents the best of what we are as a whole. Do you think that there is a place for the discussion of compulsory enrollment and that service, whatever, a short stint in the military that, of course, you could lead to a

career in the military if you so chose, but that you would say to people that there's some benefit to doing this and it would give us a better understanding of what it really truly means to serve, what it truly means to be a part of this military, and what it truly means to be a part of America. Yeah, I think those are all the advantages. I mean, those are clear advantages, right, to compulsory service. But, you know, I think that what, of course, is difficult in the military is you need to build an organization that can fight, right? Right. And what's amazing about our military are the young men and women who join our military. I'll tell you, I mean, anybody who doubts really the direction our country is taking or our future

just needs to go visit like an army platoon or a company and talk to those people who have volunteered to serve their country. They're phenomenal people. And, you know, I'll tell you, the younger generation is, you know, they're much pilloried, man. You know, they're always criticized as, you know, I'll tell you, you know, the younger generation is, you know, they're much pilloried, man. You know, they're always criticized as, you know, this or that, or I'll tell you, I mean, those, you know, some 17, but, you know, 18, 19-year-olds, I commanded Fort Benning, Georgia, right, which is kind of the, you know, it's a gem in the Army. You know, it's where we train all of our infantry, armor, and cavalry forces, you know. And when those basic training graduations, man, I mean, anybody goes – if you're around Columbus, Georgia, go to one of those, right? They're right off post by the National Infantry Museum and Museum of the Soldier there.

That's a great spot to visit. And so I think that what Americans should understand, first of all, are the tremendous rewards of service, right? I think, Joe, like this whole – I call it the valorization of victimhood, right? Where I think that the perspective people have on soldiers, on servicemen and women is that they're kind of hapless victims of circumstance, that they don't exercise agency, right? And demonstrate combat prowess because we don't exercise agency, right, and demonstrate combat prowess because we don't cover any of that anymore. And, you know, American soldiers are warriors who are committed to each other and they're committed to a mission bigger than themselves. And what you see is what you're alluding to in terms of like the cohesion that builds. I mean,

you know, people come from all over the country, right? They come from all different, you know, backgrounds, identity categories, whatever. And of course, they're going to bring with them certain prejudices and biases. But I'll tell you, when you put people together in a challenging circumstance, you know, and they have to rely on each other as a team, all that melts away, right? And they judge each other by their character and their toughness and their courage, right? And their selflessness and their sense of honor, right, their willingness to sacrifice. That's the warrior ethos that binds these organizations together. And that makes them great soldiers.

It also makes them great citizens, too, you know. Now, can that be replicated to some degree in other forms of national service? I would be all for that. What I'm concerned about is once you lose the all-volunteer force, not everybody wants to be there maybe. And they're not there for long enough, man. I mean, if you're a three-year enlistment, you need that because, I mean, you know, an infantry soldier, a cavalry scout, a tanker, you know, an aviation mechanic. I mean, these are skills you have to develop and then apply, right? It's tough to just come in and out. Now, in Israel, it's different, right? In Israel, you know, they have geographic realities there. They have hostile

neighbors. They need that force to be able to mobilize rapidly, and they need a huge reserve associated with it and everything else. They have a different geostrategic situation that drives them in that direction. But you're right. It gives them a formative experience. Now, you know, all three of our daughters served not in the military, two of them in Teach for America, a program called Teach for America. And one of them served in the government in the area of counterterrorism. And, you know, I think that they had experiences that really make them better citizens in a form of service, right? And so I think that's what I would really advocate for. There was a national commission on national service that concluded its work about two years ago.

I think it was pretty good. But I'd like to see us do it, you know. And you're right. I mean, you could – a step would be maybe not compulsory but provide some incentives. Right. So what I benefited from tremendously, Senator McCain was a big advocate of this, is when I was in Iraq, Afghanistan over those years, they extended GI benefits to your kids or to your spouse. So you would get, I think, four years education paid for, state school level tuition. And it used to be you can use that for yourself, right, as you come out as a soldier.

But they extended it so you could actually also apply that to your kids. So I think there would be incentives like that that would be attractive to people, you know, that could bring more people into service positions. And, you know, I'll tell you, Joe, I interact with a lot of college students. There is a huge untapped desire to serve. And I think a lot of students don't realize what those opportunities are. So I think that one thing that could happen in universities and in high schools in particular would be to highlight the opportunities to serve. I mean, I think that service in our military is a tremendous opportunity. You know, I think that oftentimes, you know, popular culture cheapens and coarsens the warrior ethos. You know, Hollywood doesn't

tell us anything about why, you know, as the soldiers serve, you know, why they fight for each other, you know, the tremendous rewards of being part of something bigger than yourself, being part of an organization which the man or woman next to you is willing to give everything, including their own lives for you, right? I mean, that's an experience you can't really replicate, you know, except maybe as firefighters or other, you know, others that are engaged in those kind of service, you know, that involves, you know, danger and the prospect of death and sacrifice. Some of the best people I've ever met in my life have served. Some of the best people I've ever met in my life in terms of their discipline, their character, and discipline and character are,

it's, there's some of the things that people criticize the most about the youth of America, that they're lacking in discipline, lacking in character. And this thing that the military provides, not just discipline and character, but structure and the ability to overcome adversity creates better humans. And confidence, right? Yes. And what do we hear today, right? We were talking about this early, like structural, institutional, nothing you can do about it. You know what I mean? I mean, hey, if you go to U.S. Army's ranger school, man, you know, you go through that, you have a sense of agency when you come out.

100%. Yeah, 100%. Let's talk about the withdrawal of Afghanistan because in our lifetime, it's one of the most, I mean, I don't want to use the term embarrassing. Disappointing. Yeah, disappointing. Yeah, sickening. Yeah. Yeah, disappointing. Yeah, sickening, yeah. From your perspective, watching it happen, watching the way we would – is it dead?

It's dead, yeah. Thanks. Watching this – watching the Taliban also come in and take over and drive down the street in our Humvees and utilizing all of our equipment that we left behind. Like, what was that like for you and what could have been done better? Well, you know, I'll tell you, I think that these are the consequences of surrender, right? And nobody wants to call it that, you know, but that's what happened, Joe, is we lost our will and we surrendered to a terrorist organization, right? When you say we lost our will, there was, I mean, Obama wanted to get out at one point in time. Trump wanted to get out at one point in time. What was done wrong? So it was, you know, and I've got a chapter on this in Battlegrounds. I call it a, it's a,

you know, a one-year war 20 times over. It wasn't a 20-year war. It was a one-year war 20 times over. How so? What do you mean? It goes back to really the 2001 invasion and the idea this was going to be fast, cheap, and efficient, quick victory, and then we're out of here, right? And remember, everybody talks about President Bush on the aircraft carrier mission accomplished. Yeah. That same day, Donald Rumsfeld was in Afghanistan saying the same thing, hey, we're out of here. Well, guess what was happening across the border in Pakistan?

The Taliban were regenerating with the help of al-Qaeda and the help of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence. And the war was intensifying. And we said, we're out. Now, what did the Afghans do when we said we're out? They looked over their shoulders. Who's got our back, man? Nobody.

We need to hedge our bets. And so what they started to do is to try to gain up a power base within various groups within Afghanistan in advance of a post-US withdrawal. So our short-term approach to a long-term problem lengthened the war. The Obama administration came in. They did a long-term assessment, right, of they took a long time. What are we going to do in Afghanistan? What they came up with was a reinforced security effort, which the president announced at West Point in December 2009. But then he announced the timeline for withdrawal at the same time. How the hell does that work? Right. And then try to negotiate with the Taliban. So you're saying to the enemy, hey,

you know, here's our schedule for withdrawal. Let's let's negotiate an outcome. And of course, that wasn't going to work. And then what we finally did, I think, in the Trump administration in 2017 is, again, you know, I wrote this book, Dereliction of Duty. One of the problems that Lyndon Johnson had is people around him told him only what he wanted to hear, right? You know, and what they did is they shined up one course of action, you know, for one strategy for Vietnam that met the president's domestic political agenda, get elected in 64, pass a great society in 65. And that was the strategy of graduated pressure in Vietnam. That's what led to an American war in Vietnam without

thinking about the long-term costs and consequences and without developing a strategy that was aimed for the reality of the war. So when I got into the job as national security advisor, I believed that the war in Afghanistan had become not only ineffective because of these inconsistent and fundamentally flawed strategies, it had become unethical because we had soldiers fighting and dying there and they didn't know what the hell they were doing it for, right? There wasn't a clear policy and strategy. So the president, remember, he wanted to get the hell out. He said that during the election in 2016. We presented him with multiple options and we showed him the consequences. We said, okay, you can get out right now, but here's what it looks like. And the picture we painted

was what happened in August and September of this past year. And he looked over that precipice and he said, okay, you know, what other options do you have? Right. And so what he did is he gave a speech in August of 2017. I'm telling you, it's worth going back to. That is the strategy we should have kept in place, right, in Afghanistan. Now, what was that strategy? That strategy was really a fundamental shift in our approach there. What we would do is we would take the timeline off. We would not withdraw on a timeline. We would get this, right? We would actually designate the Taliban as an enemy. Under the Obama administration, they said the Taliban is no longer an enemy. They were still killing our soldiers, committing mass murder, you know, in schools and hospitals, you know, in Afghanistan. And we weren't actively targeting them, you know, with intelligence and with air power and so forth. And we weren't actively targeting them with intelligence and with air power and so forth. And we didn't have advisors down at the level where we could help enable Afghan security forces.

And the whole thing was going to hell. If you look at the mass murder attacks, man, in September, in the summer of 2017, it was falling apart then. And so the president made the decision. He designated the Taliban an enemy, took the timeline off, said, OK, Pakistan, you can no longer have it both ways. You can't act like you're helping us and us give you assistance and continue to support the Taliban. and then and then you know he said hey this is this afghan government's got to reform right they've got they've got to take on take on the reforms within their security forces to strengthen them which they began to do now hey uh the endless wars mantra was what we're up against right and i left in march of 2018 april 2018 and i knew i knew that you know that the president had people in his ear saying and the endless, get out of there.

Based mainly on the argument, Joe, hey, Afghanistan's not Denmark yet. Well, guess what, man? Afghanistan's never going to be Denmark. But what we are is we're helping the Afghans fight on a modern-day frontier between barbarism and civilization. And we're doing it, I think at the time, you know, it was like 10,000 troops or something like that. Not a huge amount and a sustainable level, right, of funding with actually a lot of help from European allies and others there as well. So the argument that I was making is it's a sustainable level of commitment. Afghanistan is not going to be Denmark, but it's not going to be the hell that it is now either, right, if we have a sustained commitment.

What was the largest amount of troops that were in Afghanistan? Probably 140,000, and that's including NATO troops. 140,000 at the peak of it, like 2,000, 10,000 troops would have essentially mostly pulled us out, but also left enough troops in there to not allow Kabul and Afghanistan to collapse under the Taliban. Absolutely. And under General Miller, because the big change was, hey, you can fight the enemy now, right? How about that? And so a lot of districts were being taken back over by the Afghan government. Now, a lot of them were still contested. Some were still in Taliban control.

But in Badakhshan in the northeast and in the Pakti area in the east, which have always been very tough areas, the government was gaining some momentum. And we have to remember, right, everybody, you know, the president included, President Biden said, you know, the Afghans, you know, they were willing to fight. the Afghans, you know, they weren't willing to fight. Joe, 70,000 Afghans gave their lives in the military and in the police, right, to prevent the hell that we're seeing today, right? I think that's worthy of support, right? And so what happened is, you know, once the president decided to withdraw at all costs, essentially, you know, buying into the, you know, the endless war narrative. He sent Zal Khalilzad to negotiate a surrender document. I don't, there's nothing else you can call it, but a surrender document. And what kills me about this, what is crazy to me, is that if we were just going to leave Afghanistan, why the hell didn't we just leave? Why did we actually empower the Taliban

and weaken the Afghan government security forces on the way out by delivering psychological blow after psychological blow? Right. So blow one. We negotiate with these jackasses in Doha. Right. The Taliban political commission without the Afghan government. What does that do to the Afghan government's legitimacy? Then we enter into a secret agreement where we start to pull back our intelligence support from them. We start to pull back our active air support from the Afghans. And now they're in defensive battles. Right. They can't get out to fight except in reaction to what the Taliban are doing. And we take away their what their competitive advantages were. Then we force them to release, the Afghans to release, 5,000 of some of the most heinous terrorists on earth, right, for nothing, with no concession. We don't demand a ceasefire. Meanwhile, what's the Taliban doing?

They're attacking maternity hospitals, Joe. I mean, they were gunning down expected mothers and infants in a maternity hospital, attacking girls' schools. And we're doing nothing. We're just executing our withdrawal? And then the Biden administration came in and just doubled down on the withdrawal timeline. They extended it. It's from May to September, but then prioritized withdrawal over everything else. Now, think about this from an Afghan perspective, right? The Americans are leaving, told you they're leaving.

They're taking their support away. What do you think the Taliban are doing? They're going around to at the province district level to court to court. Say, let me tell you how it's going to be. You know, you accommodate with us when we give you the wink or we kill you and your whole family. How does that sound? Right. And and and so it's no surprise at all that a collapse. Think about what these guys are saying now. They're saying, like, well, the collapse really surprised us, but it was inevitable. I mean, it's just completely contradictory. And then the other thing is the worst of all, of all, and this is like the, I call it in the book, the paragon, like the most extreme example of strategic narcissism. We created the enemy we preferred in Afghanistan rather than the actual

enemy. Look at what we heard from some of these Taliban apologists in the New Yorker and the Washington Post, you know, oh, this is just some kind of rural movement, you know, that just kind of came out of the countryside. And maybe they'll be more benign this time and maybe they'll share power, you know. But you know what? This is an international terrorist organization that was built up by al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, the Pakistani ISI, with donations that came in from Gulf donors, right? This is an international organization. Remember those guys all kitted up when they came into Kabul airport? That was Bajra 313. That was an al-Qaeda brigade fighting under the control of the Haqqani network.

And now Siraj Haqqani is the minister of interior in Afghanistan. And then what do you hear today, Joe? You hear the same bullshit, right? You hear, you know, okay, our relationship with Afghanistan, it's just entering a new diplomatic phase. Okay, well, what do you think you're going to accomplish with diplomacy without the threat of force with these guys, right? Haibatullah Akhanzada, all you need to know about the Taliban is that their leader, Haibatullah Akhanzada, encouraged his 17-year-old son to commit mass murder by suicide. That's who's in charge, right? And you hear, well, we just have to ask them to be more inclusive. I mean, really? I mean, these people are delusional, Joe. They are delusional. I saw this one Taliban commander was asked whether or

not they were now going to allow women into government in the military, and he started laughing at them. Yeah. He started laughing at the reporter, like, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you not know who we are? No, we didn't know. We did. We just, we created this illusion of who we think they are. It's almost like a weird, you know how sometimes where abuse victims identify with their abusers, you know? Yes. I think I saw that dynamic, you know, across the U.S. government even and in the press. I mean, it's almost like these people were advocates for the Taliban and they would complain about President Ashraf Ghani. Okay. All right. Do you really think Haibatullah Akhanzada is better? I mean, what should be done? I mean, is what's done, done? And now we just have

to live with the consequences or should there be sort of a re-engagement with Afghanistan? Well, I think we ought to re-engage with Afghans who are not the Taliban, right? And the way to do that is to first help anybody get out who we can help get out of the hell there. And I think what we ought to be doing is helping Afghans organize some kind of a government in exile that's representative. You know, people always talk about like we need more diplomacy. But you know what we did in Afghanistan? We actually, as we're negotiating with the Taliban, we had a really anemic diplomatic effort inside of Afghanistan. We closed our consulates in like 2011, 2012. We closed our consulates in Herat, in Jalalabad, in Mazar al-Sharif, in Kandahar. I mean, went into this Kabul bubble instead of helping Afghans come together around an agreed vision for the future.

And then Zaw Khalilzad, when he went to negotiate with these guys, he actually was advocating for a coalition government to undercut the Afghan government with Karzai, the former president, and Abdullah and others. And so I think we ought to help them organize some kind of a government in exile. We ought to help them take the legal actions necessary to put a freeze on resources, to make sure that we don't do anything to strengthen this Taliban government. It's going to fail, Joe. It's going to fail. I mean, there's no way this government can survive. Why is that? Because it just doesn't have the resources necessary. It's a humanitarian catastrophe. We have to try to address that through like the World Food Program and so forth. But we shouldn't do anything that strengthens this government. You hear people now talking about, you know, should we unfreeze assets? Should we give them resources? Hell no, we shouldn't give

them any resources. And then, of course, what we have to do is work on the terrorist problem now from the outside in, right? Remember you heard all this stuff about, you know, over the horizon counterterrorism? It's a complete pipe dream, right? I mean, if you don't have, you know, on the ground intelligence capability and the ability for sustained surveillance, I mean, you can't get at these groups effectively. You know, we had Afghans who were bearing the brunt of the fight. Now, is it up to us and a couple of drones? I mean, there's no way that's going to work. And we have to put, I think, much more diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. We ought to remember, right, that, you know, that the president of Pakistan, you this whole thing collapsed, this is Imran Khan,

said the Afghan people have been unshackled. That's what he said about the Taliban taking over. I mean, why are we not holding him and the Pakistanis responsible for that? I don't know. How much does this damage the confidence in the United States when it comes to any group in the future participating and cooperating with us? Because there were so many Afghanis that cooperated with the United States military, and then they were abandoned and left on their own and subsequently attacked. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. You know, I'll tell you, one of the things you talk about, the younger generation, I was so proud of our students at Stanford. You know, I have an amazing group of research assistants, you know, and we mobilized for this, like so many other

veterans did. We played a very minor role in trying to fill gaps, right, and to be in communication with Afghans who were under duress and some American citizens as well as American green car holders who couldn't get out. And what was so astonishing, right, is the complete disconnect between what you heard from Washington and the reality on the ground, you know, in Afghanistan. And so we started this effort initially to try to help the State Department people and help the military people who are trying to get people out to build an effective database. department people and help the military people who are trying to get people out to build an effective database. So we took all these WhatsApp messages and we took all of their visa paperwork or applications to paperwork visas. We helped them fill out the special immigrant visas and the P1 and P2 visas, advocated for those visas to be approved. And then in the most harrowing days, we were doing our best to sort of be a broker of information from them, right, to those in the State Department and eventually on the

ground who could help get them out through the right gates, right, to the right aircraft. Because a lot of the people who were authorized to get the hell out of there, you know, couldn't get manifested on a flight. And then they couldn't get through the perimeter, right? And so we went through that harrowing period working on this. Again, very small contribution that we made. Many others were involved in this, including, you know, including certainly our, you know, our servicemen and women on the ground at Kabul and those working in the State Department here and so forth. But what we're shifting to now is a sustained effort to do really four key tasks, right? To continue to help people with the paperwork who

want to get out. These are people who helped us, we're in their armed forces, you know, and so forth. How many people are still over there? Oh, I think, you know, I mean, in that category of those who helped us, I mean, tens of thousands. I mean, you know, it depends on where you draw, where can you draw the line? How is this not taken into consideration at the time of the withdrawal? Well, you know, here's what I think about that. And, of course, you know, I'm a general, retired general. I know a lot of the key guys that are in positions of leadership.

And so I don't want to say, hey, you know, it wasn't on the military or anything like that. I mean, I think there's shared responsibility, certainly. But, hey, once you tell the military, here's the date and here's the troop cap that you have, what do you think you're going to get? Right. I mean, they were actually restricting the number of general officers who could be on the ground. So the main general officer who had responsibility to advise the Afghan security forces was not allowed to sleep in the country. He had to commute from Qatar. So we didn't offend the Taliban.

I mean, it was crazy what was going on. And then, of course, once you say, here's your cap, you know, $2,500, whatever it is, you know, you have to close Bagram, which is the big airbase. But we gave up all these airbases, which makes no sense, right? And so what needed to happen, I wrote an op-ed about this in, I guess it was May or June. It was early, you know, before the catastrophe. And it was essentially, you know, I wrote with a guy named Brad Bowman from the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. It was in the Wall Street Journal. And it essentially was, if we don't do these six things, right, it's going to be an unmitigated catastrophe. And one of those six things was to keep the airfields open. But hey, you can't do that if you don't have enough

troops, right? I mean, Bagram Air Force, Bagram Air Base had, I think, 78 guard posts to man, right, around the perimeter. You need people to run the surveillance operations. You need people to defend that big base. But, you know, what we could have done in this period of time, if we cared to, is we could have made that a safe zone. We could have extended it to Panjshir where Amrullah Saleh was trying to organize the remnants of those who would continue to fight. This is the former vice president and a real scrapper, that guy. You would like this guy. He's a controversial guy. But you know what I love about him?

He always says what's on his mind. And so he fought until he was driven out of the Panjshir. And, you know, when he was driven out of the Panjshir, it was a major Taliban offensive with Pakistani drones being flown against him. So this idea, right, that this is just some rural movement, it's complete nonsense. Right. This is a this is an organization that that enjoyed a lot of international support, some some financial support from Russia and from from Iran as well. support, some financial support from Russia and from Iran as well. Because once we said we're out, right, we're out, that encouraged a lot of other hedging behavior internationally, right? So the Russians are like, hey, we'll get a relationship, you know, let's build the relationship with them, the Chinese. So we created a vacuum and the real victims are the Afghan people. So what we're trying to do is help them with the paperwork. You know, What we're seeing now, Joe, is the best of America.

I mean, you see these charitable and philanthropic organizations that are helping those who are fleeing, you know, and there are a number of those like Spirit of America, No One Left Behind. If you just look at local levels, like the Jewish Family and Community Services in South Bay, where I am, they do a tremendous job helping these families get in here and get integrated. You know what? They're going to be our best citizens. I mean, they're going to be helping these families get in here and get integrated. You know what? They're going to be our best citizens. I mean, they're going to be amazing U.S. citizens, them and their children. And then we're doing an oral history program, Joe, to kind of at the Hoover Institution to amplify their voices, right? Because I keep hearing people saying, well, we need to engage the Taliban on the future of Afghanistan? I mean, how about engaging some of the other, the 90% of Afghans, you know, who were utterly opposed to the Taliban all along?

Well said. Listen, it's been a pleasure and an honor talking to you. I really appreciate it. For everybody listening and watching the book, Battlegrounds, The Fight to Defend the Free World is available right now. H.R. McMaster, thank you, sir. Thanks for your service. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. I really enjoyed it.

Great to be here. Do you have social media or anything where people can follow you? I do. It's at LTGHRMcMaster on Twitter and Instagram. Okay. All right. Beautiful. Thank you. Thanks, Joe.

Bye, everybody.