The NPR Politics Podcast - Exclusive Interview: Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Adviser

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

Jake Sullivan is the president-elect's top national security adviser. He told NPR's Scott Detrow that he is worried that a lack of communication from top Trump officials could jeopardize a safe transition.Sullivan also emphasized that Americans' economic well-being will be a central tenet of Joe Biden's foreign policy. Although he served in the Obama administration, Sullivan now feels that it didn't do enough to tie foreign policy to domestic concerns.This episode: political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben and political correspondent Scott Detrow.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station. Produced by Barton Girdwood and Lexie Schapitl.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello there. It is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition. And Scott. Yes. Why are you here? You were supposed to be on vacation this week, but as I understand it, duty calls, right? You know, one upside of not traveling anywhere is it's easy to adapt if needed. I had been hoping to interview Joe Biden's incoming National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, for a while now. There are a couple

big picture policy questions that I've wanted to talk to him about. There's been a lot of news lately with these roadblocks that the Biden transition says the Trump administration is putting up when it comes to meetings specifically with the Department of Defense. And it's his first broadcast interview since he was appointed to this job. We did talk about a lot of important newsy topics, but that is not exactly how the interview immediately started. Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm surviving. This is a well-timed interview because NPR just posted a video Of us all doing karaoke And I'm happy to focus my mind on something else Other than the fact that that's out on the internet right now

What were you singing? How Do You Like Me Now by Toby Keith I love that song It is David Green's favorite karaoke How do you like me now, now that I'm on my way You still think I'm crazy Standing here today I could have made you love me, but I always, yep.

Yeah, we've been doing it a lot. It's good stuff. I got to say, I'm genuinely impressed. But OK, I have to imagine the majority of the interview was about other things, right? Yeah, we stopped talking about Toby Keith there. And we shifted to something that the president-elect has gotten increasingly vocal on in recent days. And that is the fact that, according to the Biden transition, the Trump administration,

particularly the Department of Defense, is not cooperating on this transition. The Biden team cannot get meetings right now, and they're running into a lot of roadblocks, as Biden's putting it. We've encountered roadblocks from the political leadership at the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget. Right now, we just aren't getting all the information that we need for the ongoing, outgoing, from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It's nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility. Well, it's got, there's so much to get to in this interview with Jake Sullivan, but this seems like a really important place to start. What are the stakes of having a smooth transition? Experts have long said that transitions are a

period of intense vulnerability for the United States. Even an administration like Joe Biden's, where a lot of people have previous experience, they're just starting on things. They haven't been in charge in a very long time. They don't know exactly what's going on in the world. That's why trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible, being briefed, getting immersed in the information can help administrations start off on a faster foot. But Sullivan told me that is just not happening right now, and it's very frustrating for him. Yes. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense has continued to deny meetings, delay meetings, refuse written requests for information

with the members of our agency review team. And frankly, there hasn't been really meaningful progress since transition officials went out and spoke to the intransigence of the department's political leadership earlier this month. So, you know, at the start of this week, the Pentagon hadn't granted a meeting with the transition team since December 18th. And literally dozens of written requests for information are outstanding as we speak. Now, you might think this is just some bureaucratic exercise, but it has real world consequences. We're not getting the information we need on the major hack that was conducted, we believe, by the Russians. We're not getting the information that we need with respect to Operation Warp Speed and the COVID-19 vaccine. We're not getting the information that we need to have a clear picture of our force posture around the world and the

operations that are currently ongoing. And all of this will make it harder for us to keep the American people safe and to ensure that nothing is lost in the handoff between administrations. What about the hack would you like to know that you are not being looped in on right now? Well, one of the things that we need to understand better from the Department of Defense is what if any systems, whether classified or unclassified, whether directly connected to the Department of Defense or connected to major contractors, have been compromised, what the extent of those compromises and breaches have been, and what steps are being taken to remediate that. Now, we are hearing information from other agencies

with respect to the SolarWinds hack, but we have not heard or gotten the kind of input from the Department of Defense that we would like. My understanding is that there may finally be movement on potential meetings or information on that, but this is a kind of we'll believe it when we see it scenario because the department has been so intransigent so far. or information on that. But this is a kind of we'll believe it when we see it scenario because the department has been so intransigent so far. And last follow up on this, after the president

elect spoke, the acting defense secretary provided a list of classified documents provided the number of interviews that that he says the DOD has had with the transition. He said in short that they are fully cooperating. Is he wrong? Well, he's wrong. I mean, you know, we're now talking to one another on December 29th. It has been 11 days since December 18th. In those 11 days, there has not been a meeting granted to the transition team. And, you know, we're looking at, as I said before, a substantial number of very specific, important requests for information that they are not responding to. And we think we're asking for a set of meetings and information that are completely in line with the historical precedent of transitions and for the

kind of information that the outgoing administration four years ago was prepared to provide the Trump administration. And we hope and expect in the coming days that that kind of cooperation will be forthcoming. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, I talked to Sullivan about how he wants to focus the Biden administration's foreign policy on benefiting the American middle class and how that differs from the approach the Obama administration took. This message comes from NPR sponsor AT&T. There's a lot that's different about this school year, but one thing that hasn't changed is AT&T's commitment to education. They're focused on keeping students and teachers connected to learning. It's why AT&T has connected over 200 million students with

tools and technology for distance learning. Learn more at att.com slash remote learning. At Planet Money, we are also grappling with what's going on in the world. We just don't know, and you're still going to have to decide. So we call up economists like Emily Oster. It's like we're fighting the pandemic by having a bake sale or something. I mean, all due respect to bake sales. Listen and subscribe to Planet Money from NPR. And we're back. And Scott, you mentioned before the break that Sullivan connected foreign policy to the middle class, often with Trump. Trade was the big connection between those

two topics. But Sullivan here, he got so much broader than trade, right? He talked about a whole sort of new way of framing all of foreign policy. So tell me more about that. Yeah, this has been a big conversation over the last couple of years. Joe Biden has talked a lot about it as well. And Jake Sullivan has played a leading role in this ongoing Democratic debate about how do you take foreign policy and make it more explicitly tied to what is going on in this country so that, among other reasons, voters understand that the U.S. government is trying to act to make their lives better. He has said this is going to be a big part of how he runs the National Security Council. So I wanted to get

some specifics of what that will actually mean for some of the policies that come out of the Biden White House. Well, look, we've reached a point where foreign policy is domestic policy and domestic policy is foreign policy. And the work that we do abroad fundamentally has to connect to making the lives of working people better, safer, fairer. And, you know, there you don't have to look far for clear examples of this. Let's start with COVID-19. You know, the United States at one point had something along the lines of three dozen officials in China working on disease and pandemic and public health surveillance. The Trump administration removed nearly all of those officials. And a virus that started in China is now ravaging the United States, causing hundreds

of thousands of people to die and millions of people to lose their jobs, their livelihoods, their small businesses. That's a point at which the United States needs to be focused because it is the kind of disruptive impact from abroad that has a real consequence for the lived experience of American families in every state in the union. And there are other examples as well from climate to trade abuses. And so what Joe Biden is proposing and what I am reinforcing as the national security advisor is that every element of what we do in our foreign policy and national security ultimately has to be measured by the impact it has on working families, middle class people, ordinary Americans here in the United States.

Can you walk me through a specific example of how you apply that filter? You put it recently in a talk, a filter of how does this affect the American middle class when it comes to, you know, one of the things you've talked and written a lot about, pressing China on human rights, on authoritarian tendencies. How do you apply that filter to something like that? Well, let me start with the phase one trade deal that the Trump administration negotiated earlier this year with China. What were their negotiating priorities? What did they push for? Well, one of the things they pushed for was access for major U.S. financial institutions to do business in China. And the question I would pose is,

what does that have to do with jobs and wages here in the United States, making it easier for the likes of J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs to be able to carry out financial activities in Beijing or Shanghai. I would say it doesn't have a strong nexus to the well-being and welfare of the American middle class. So instead, we should be focused on the kinds of abuses, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, dumping, the stealing of intellectual property that actually hollows out America's industrial and innovation base and has real job and wages impacts on Americans. So that's point one. You asked about human rights. On the question of whether the United States is going to ensure, for example, that we have the kind of free and open internet where people can engage in commerce

and speak freely and not have to worry about surveillance by foreign authoritarians. Those are things that affect Americans. Though on the tariffs, I think the president-elect got a lot of attention when the other week he told the New York Times that they won't be immediately revoked. Is that an acknowledgement that some of President Trump's policies do give you more leverage with China next year? Well, the president-elect has said from the beginning of this campaign that in order to get China to change its abuses, we do need to build up leverage. We just have to do it the right way by investing in our sources of strength. So his objection to Donald Trump was not trying to seek leverage against China.

It was doing it in a way that actually hasn't produced results. And one of the major examples of that is that the United States has gone it alone in its trade fight with China, rather than rallying other like-minded democracies, other market economies that collectively comprise 50 to 60% of the world's economy, where if we got all of them lined up and went to China with a common agenda to say we won't accept these subsidies, this intellectual property theft, this dumping, we would be in a position to get China to either change its behavior or we could collectively impose costs on China for not doing so.

That's the difference between a Biden approach and a Trump approach. You have said that when it came to setting economic foreign policy in the Obama administration, this did not get as much attention as it needed. Do you think that was a mistake? And do you think that kind of approach opened the door a little bit to the type of nationalism that we have seen driving the Trump administration's foreign policy? I believe that the fact that we did not elevate and center middle class concerns in our foreign policy and national security meant that we were not delivering for the American people as well as we should have, that we can learn from that,

and then we can do better as we go forward. And frankly, I also think that we should have, that we can learn from that, and then we can do better as we go forward. And frankly, I also think that we can have a more decisive and sustained rebuttal to Trumpism by showing that engagement in the world can deliver the kinds of tangible results by protecting people from pandemics, reducing the worst effects of climate change, increasing the protection against the kinds of abuses we see from China and other economic actors. We can do these things. And it is a story of American engagement and leadership in the world that also is a story about making the American middle class the central player in how we think about whether we're actually succeeding or failing in our foreign policy. All right, Jake Sullivan, incoming National

Security Advisor. Thanks for talking to NPR. Thanks so much for having me. All right, Scott, this has all been really fascinating. And here's the big question I'm left with having listened to all of this. Now, Sullivan is an alum of the Obama White House. He worked for Secretary Clinton. And now he's joining an administration full of people from those orbits. So what are your big takeaways about how policy, foreign policy, national security policy, are going to differ most between the Biden administration that's incoming and the Obama administration and sort of how Clinton and Obama did things? Yeah, I think from talking to him and from reading a lot of the things he's written on this in the last few years, Sullivan realizes that two big things have changed. The first one

is that there has just been this global rise of nationalism and populism. People are skeptical of globalism. They want to know what is in it for them. And you'll notice when I asked him, was it a mistake for the Obama administration not to focus on this a lot? He didn't quite say it, but it seemed to me an implicit statement that it was a mistake that the Obama White House did not do enough to explicitly tie policies to middle class Americans in terms of how the policies were put together and in terms of how they were explained. And I think the Biden White House is going to try to do that differently. So is he criticizing the policy or the framing or both there?

I think a little bit of both, but mostly the policies to begin with. And I think the second big change is that I think the threats are so much greater than they were even a few years ago. And the realization that every single country needs to lower its carbon emissions in order to stave off the worst of global warming, right? Every country needs to do a better job of dealing with pandemics so we're not in this spot again. I think those are a lot more present in everybody's minds than they were just a few years ago. We're going to call that a wrap for today.

But remember, you can support all of us on this podcast by supporting your local NPR station. To get started, please head to donate.npr.org slash politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.