The Ricochet Podcast - Bull in a China Shop

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

We jet eastward and then into the ether this week, unfortunately without our pal James Lileks who’s vacationing somewhere on planet Earth. Our first guide is Elbridge Colby, who explains why we better not sleep on the Pacific theater. Then we’ve got Rich Goldberg, host of our new podcast: Cryptonite. He’s here to tell us that even a smart person like you can wrap your head around cryptocurrency. Source

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We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I should say, by the way, we didn't underestimate Vladimir Putin. We overestimated Joe Biden. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm not James Lilacs. This week we've got Elbridge Colby on why we can't take our oil off China and Rich Goldberg explains blockchain. As Lilix would

say, let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Hello and welcome to Ricochet podcast number 583. Incredible. 583. I am Rob Long, one of the co-founders of ricochet.com along with me is peter robinson in palo alto another co-founder of ricochet peter how are you i'm fine actually you say that you're surprised i am a little surprised i'm fine i didn't even know i mean the world is crumbling i'm behind in my work it's a rainy day in palo alto since moving to california

you've done the opposite you've moved to new york freezing i have become extremely sensitive to weather if there's a cloud in the sky i'm depressed all day that's also the worst thing i have to tell you i'm sad no no don't say such a thing it is the children are frolicking in the rain and the snow and those cold they don't care you get older it starts to steepen your bones we are usually joined by james lilacs he is off today i actually don't know where james is do we know where james is i know he's not here but i'm not quite sure where i think there's a he's taking his daughter on a trip maybe something like that that's excellent he's being a good father i'm sure of that he's somewhere being a dad yeah that makes sense uh and he's of course he's missing this exciting podcast on this exciting week um you know i i i i do not um

i do not i don't know how to say this i don't like the maudlin peter as you know as my professionally uh my professional constitution is against anything more than I have to say in our church, my church here in New York on Ash Wednesday, the imposition of ashes for the six o'clock. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what happens at the 8 a.m. Or the 9 a.m.

But I do know what happens at the 6 p.m. And the imposition of ashes is done by the young of the youth, not the youth. I mean, they're young. They're like, you know, elementary school,

middle school age children. And you go up to the kids and they say, you know, basically. Yes. You know, you're dust. You'll return,

which is creepy and weird and all sorts of like, Hey kid, you know, having some young face, look at you and say, good time for you to go old person kind of right but there is something on a week like this where that happens and you suddenly realize oh so this is all there i mean this is so mom i can't believe i can say this but i did

think this they're going to inherit all this i'm not sure i know how i for the first time in a while i'm not sure i know how i feel about that that we should say that this is friday morning so we had a podcast last friday in which we um the world seems slightly different although it's continued on its trajectory um they're now predicting i guess that the russians will have total victory over Ukraine sometime in May. Yeah, right. We'll see. We have a guest coming on who knows more about this than I do, certainly. I am still at the stage where I keep thinking two thoughts. One was, you never know. Now, that sounds trite and foolish. You, of course, you're resisting the model and I'm resisting the trite

this morning. But I remember back in the Reagan administration, my boss, the chief speechwriter, Tony Dolan, Tony Dolan used to say that the thing about Ronald Reagan is he understands the open-endedness of reality. Tony's theory was that it was because in the old days when Reagan was shooting, they would often get ahead of the writers and they'd have to improvise. Reagan could see different endings. He could see different ways for each scene to play itself out. And he certainly could see it. He certainly could see a different... So, this was a time in the 80s when even conservatives thought that we were fighting a losing battle. When Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided the Soviet Union was a permanent presence, we would just have to learn to live with them, Whitaker Chambers in his memoir Witness said

that when he left the Communist Party in the 1930s it was, he did so with the consciousness that he was leaving the winning side to join the losing side. And it seemed predetermined. And the point about Ronald Reagan, my boss and friend Tony used to say was, he just rejects predetermination. You just, reality is really open-ended. All right. So, in of wrecking it was just unthinkable. And here we are back in and that that's the first thought that just which is why i tend to resist a prediction the soviets will have conquered ukraine also because i did a an interview yesterday with steven codkin and steven said victory in ukraine for the soviets is not a possibility you cannot soviets which i think

i beg your pardon no but i mean but it does... But it does seem appropriate, doesn't it? Yes, yes, yes, it does, it does, it does. I'm sorry. Victory for the Russians, in any conventional sense, is not possible. They will not be able to occupy the largest land, the largest country in Europe. Ukraine has the largest land mass of any country in Europe that has a population of 42 million people. The Nazis couldn't occupy Ukraine. They got to Kiev, they took over, as Stephen reminded us, they took over all the big mansions and all the hotels and set themselves up in great style. And three days later, the bombs started to go off and the

assassinations began. And even the Nazi... All right, so, Steven's concern is that what the Russians want to do at this point is just, if we can't have it, you can't have it either, and they just want to destroy the country. All right. And the second thought is, oh, this does... Now I can understand certain pieces of history that i couldn't get before what did it feel like when the nazis invaded poland on september 1st 1939 oh it must have felt something if you were

english or american it must have felt something like this the unthinkable has happened yeah and also maybe this is what i've been thinking about so so you're i'm going to resist the modeling you're going to resist the trite i'm now going to resist um the modeling and the trite together i guess all right um i i think it i mean i don't know 39 but i suspect in 1939 if you were of a certain age the the german invasions the beginning of the German invasions, didn't seem, they didn't seem shocking. They seemed like a remembrance. Like, oh, I remember this. I remember Europe like this.

I remember when this happened. And of course, all turned horrible, more horrible than I think it had been in the century before. I have, I no longer, I sort of feel like if we're shocked by what happened in ukraine um that we we have it's because we've lulled ourselves to sleep a little bit i don't mean the fact that you know america's strength i mean just sort of psychologically right for 50 years um the entire world and the united states were gripped by one thought and one thought only one foreign policy uh uh issue was paramount which

was the who has nukes who doesn't have nukes right where are those nukes pointed where they're not what can we do uh to this to the soviets that won't provoke i mean that's what a cold war is we didn't have cold wars before because we didn't have nukes before. So in 1994, we basically forced Ukraine, Ukraine buys its independence by giving up all the nukes. And they give up all their nukes and they interpret this as meaning that their

borders are now being guaranteed by the international order. And we consider this like, well, no, you're just giving up your nukes and we're saying, okay, you can fly your flag. None of this is going to happen until you give up your nukes because they had plenty of them which i'm sure now they regret giving up which i'm sure now many countries around the world are saying well hey we better get some nukes yes because that seems to be the only thing the only chip in the game that has any leverage but i think that since i don't know since 89 since

since 1990 and i again i i returned constantly to this theme peter that it is entirely your fault since the collapse of the soviet union we have kind of forgotten about nukes yeah um but nukes haven't forgotten about nukes and russians have forgotten about nukes and the world hasn't forgotten really they they're no long they're not unimportant it's like I keep thinking that this is this is really about the hangover of a incredibly long nuclear cold war and we're still paying the price and we thought it was over psychologically and it's not it's like that moment in a slasher movie you know it's nearly it's in the last reel but it's not the last reel, where the teenage couple have finally killed the slasher somehow, and he's dead behind the sofa.

And they're on the sofa embracing happiness because now he's dead, and they're starting to make out even. And then in the background, the slasher rises. He's not dead with his knife. And then that's the last reel. That's kind of where we are glenn close exploding from the bathtub exactly that's kind of where we are and it's the nukes that are rising and we thought we were done with them but actually if russia has nuclear weapons we are not going to issue a no-fly zone we are not going to send troops to Ukraine. We are going to sacrifice Ukraine.

And that will be also the calculus if, and we'll talk about this, I guess, if China takes over Taiwan, we will not be doing the things that we think we'll be doing because we have forgotten that there are still nuclear-tipped missiles everywhere. And that is ultimately the only leverage you need in 2022, just as it was the only leverage you needed in 1962. Right. I'm going to grant a lot of that. Well, again, we'll have a guest in a moment or two who knows more about this than I do.

But yes, we're not going to put American Air Force pilots in the position of having to shoot down MiGs as if this were Korea in 1950. That won't happen. On the other hand, Stephen Calkin made this point yesterday, tyrannies in their final stages become narrower. They become more and more delusional. The information flow begins to get choked off. This is what happened to Stalin. Stalin knew more about what was happening in the Soviet Union when he was a young man than he did when he was at the peak of his powers because it had been a long time since anybody told Joseph Stalin anything he didn't want to hear. Democracies are reality recognition machines. They can learn. Even when Joe Biden is

the president, there's a way in which the democracies can learn. And Stephen made the point that the Chinese are watching this as, of course, the Chinese are always watching. And they are discovering that the West has rallied in a way that no one... The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is a left-of-center Chancellor. He called the Bundestag into an emergency session and announced that we're spending 100 billion euros more on German defense this year. We're sending them Stingers. We're sending them anti-tank missiles. From now on, we're going to meet our NATO obligation and spend 2% of GDP, which will give Germany the biggest defense budget of any country in Europe. I mean, this is astonishing.

And we're discovering just what you can and cannot do when you close a large economy out of the international system. Well, there's a certain sense in which this is a rehearsal for Taiwan. And if we play our role well, the Chinese will think more, it will change their calculations. It'd be much more complicated. And we have a guest, so we'll keep our guest thing up. Oh, and the guest actually knows what he's talking about. I don't know why that should... But meanwhile, because James is not here, I will not attempt a segue.

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So go to headspace.com slash ricochet today, headspace.com slash ricochet. We thank Headspace for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. And now coming up, we have a great guest. Elbridge Colby is a co-founder of the Marathon Initiative, which he'll explain, and author of 2021's The Strategy of Denial, American Defense in the Age of Great Power Conflict. From 2018 to 2019, Colby was the director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, where he led the center's work on defense issues. For essential updates on the precarious and dangerous and tumultuous world we live in, you can follow him on Twitter at Elbridge Colby. It will

also put that in the show notes. Elbridge Colby now here to from that from this point on bridge. Let's just start with what caught my attention, which is your piece in the Wall Street Journal before the invasion. We note that it was before the invasion. I also note, I suppose I'd better in fairness to you note that the headline was not yours, right? But the headline was Ukraine is a distraction from Taiwan. And your argument, which you argue in the book you have out now, I'm quoting your piece in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. can no longer afford to spread its military across the world. And you just put it very bluntly, honestly, when it comes to it, Taiwan matters more than Ukraine. That all sounds, now that we have this horrible disaster taking place, it sounds colder than I have the feeling you must have meant it to. And so, I'd like you to explain that. And also, it took, what, 72 hours for John Bolton to put a piece in the Wall Street Journal smacking you around.

John Bolton said, Beijing is not a regional threat. Treating the rest of the world is a third-tier priority, a distraction. If the U.S. does that, it plays directly into China's hands. Foreign policy is not a zero-sum game. Weakness in Afghanistan emboldens Xi Jinping. Okay. We have a huge event taking place in Ukraine, which is now turning into a humanitarian crisis. Explain how your thinking fits into what we're facing today. Sure, and thanks, and great to be on with you, Peter and Rob. A pleasure to meet and to be on your important show. I mean, fundamentally, my thinking hasn't changed because my thinking wasn't dependent on the idea that Russia was going to behave in a sort of a civilized way.

So I actually laid out how we should address the Ukraine, the abomination, the abominable aggression against Ukraine in a piece in Time magazine that came out about four or five days ago that I commend to your attention, because I think it gives a, you know, after the point. And I will confess to you, Peter, it does sound cold, but my view is that we need a lot more cold water on our thinking. I'll get to Mr. Bolton in a few minutes, but it's thinking like that and sort of that has led us to this sorry place that we didn't need to be. And it was the kind of if we had followed the sort of thinking that I'm advocating, we actually wouldn't be in this place. And that is because of including because of power. So the fundamental the fundamentals of the international situation have not changed.

Russia was a threat before. It is now obviously a threat, although some of the same people who are arguing that Russia is is the Russian military is is performing so poorly or the same people are calling for a doubling down in Europe. But we can get it out if you want. But the fundamentals, you know, Asia is 50 percent and growing of global gdp china is 20 percent uh and growing as a relative fraction europe is 20 percent going down to 10 percent over the next 20 years according to eu and russia is you know the i think the 11th or 12th largest economy in the world uh with a significant military uh but one that is limited in its capacity it's one-tenth the gdp of the size of china and the fundamental fact and I mean, my basic view on Ambassador Bolton's subtweeting op ed is that now I really know I'm right, because if John Bolton opposes me, I'm sure I'm correct, because I actually think he's exceeded

even maybe Joe Biden in being wrong. And in fact, if we had followed Ambassador Bolton's advice, we would be in a worse situation. So the thing that an Ambassador Bolton's op-ed that is most revealing is that he said our power is not zero sum. And I don't know how a hawk or a realistic person who grapples with military power, certainly President Reagan, I don't think you would know him better than I, but that was not the idea of the Reagan administration, is that we needed to rejuvenate, and we need to focus our military power, and we need to be very careful in its application. And that, to me, is like the conservative mindset, which is we live in reality. I mean, missiles can't be used in more than once. Airplanes can only, they live in space and time. Frankly, I mean, despite Ambassador Bolton being such a fan of employing military power,

unlike myself, I not support the only war I've supported in my adult lifetime is the original mission against Afghanistan. Ambassador Bolton supports supply, support them all and more that we didn't even do. But those there is scarcity. If you talk to a military audience, because it's to serve in the Pentagon, that is the world in which they live. So the notion that that is a self-discrediting point that he made there. Now, obviously, in elements like soft power. So you just said something really interesting.

So the military mindset is one of constant calculation and recalculation. And part of it is if they do this, we do this, then what happens next? And part of it is constantly sorting through priorities, priorities and sequences. Is that correct? So you're always up against your, so to speak, your budget constraint. You only have so many true... Is that... No, I would say this, Peter. I think you're getting at it, but two things. I would say the military mindset is one that deals in reality and the way... How do we have enough to do what we're supposed to do? And if we don't, how do we rack and stack? And as the military mindset is one that deals in reality and the way, how do we have enough to do what we're supposed to do? And if we don't, how do we rack and stack? And as the military says,

take risk. And then I think the conservative mindset, so I'm a conservative realist, the conservative mindset is we live in the real world and power is a reality. And if you don't have good police force, you can't rely on people's good nature, et cetera, that we have to account for power. And if I think of the Reagan administration, what they were saying about Carter was he didn't have a serious way of dealing in Europe. And then you look back at the Nixon and Ford administration after Vietnam, we don't have a good strategy in Europe. And President Reagan was prepared to say, I'm going to, you know, obviously before the relaxation of tensions at the end, but was I'm prepared to fight a war with the Soviets

in order, and we have to be clear and we have to be strong enough. And so it's not that, you know, my view on the defense budget issue is, I think it's lame for defense experts to start out by calling for more spending. You know, it's our job to say, here's the priorities, here's what we can do, and it's up to the American people to decide. And what I did in my book, Peter, as you referred to, is to say, here are the priorities. And the most important thing for the American people's interests is to deny China regional hegemony, because that's 50% of global GDP, and they can do it. Breach, let me ask one more question. I can see Rob's face. Rob wants to get in, but I'm going to ask one more question, if I may. So, what about the argument?

I talked yesterday to Stephen Kotkin, and Stephen said, well, now, it's important for us to get Ukraine right, because the Chinese are watching. All right, so that's the simple... Go ahead. Two things. First, to directly address your question. One is the Chinese are watching. But again, Peter, let's go back to what the Chinese are fundamentally going to assess, which is our ability to defend. It's not like this very linear kind of the Americans did this over here and they don't do that over there.

If we're remembering that we live in the world of space and time and physics, there are constraints on our power. So if we get tied down in Europe too much, we will have fewer things and ability to fight. I think you're a student of history. Winston Churchill apparently said we can win one war or fight two, right? And this is why we had a Europe strategy. And they pulled air power out of the Asian theater to Britain, because that was the decisive theater. So this is strategic thinking. And it sounds corny and trite, but we need strategic thinking. And Bolton is the antithesis of strategic thinking because he's getting us in fights everywhere and trying to impose his will. But we don't have the power base. And I'm not saying that in some self-lacerating way in the way that some conservatives

are now. No, this is like what we have, given that the Chinese are the largest economy to emerge in the international system since the 19th century. The second point I'd like to say here is I'm not saying we abandon Europe, so the Boltons of the world are distorting my argument, but I'm saying that we should at least do four things. One, arm the Ukrainians to the hilt. I was on TV yesterday. The Soviets did it to us in Vietnam and Korea. We can do the same to them. We've got to take their nuclear arsenal seriously, but we also need to stick to our guns second there's a fundamental disproval of the bolton view of the world that's happening right now which is that our allies are feckless and they'll never step up they are stepping up doesn't mean

we completely skedaddle from europe tomorrow but hey bridge did that surprise you i mean olaf schultz calling the bundestag into emergency i mean that was an astonishing thing was that's historic right i mean that is historic and i've been haranguing the Germans. I wrote an op-ed in the German press the week of the Munich Security Conference, taking them to task, telling them they were following a Germany first policy. So I have to give them credit. They finally did. And the polls were at 3%, Peter. The Romanians had turned out. So there's a capacity. And by the way, European NATO is much larger than Russia. third thing sanctions of course we got to think about exactly what that is fourth energy independence reduce russian reliance that's a strategy so we

have and then we can prioritize the pacific um hey bridge this is rob thanks for joining us but that is what we're doing i mean i think when you talk about the living in space and time and physics mostly what we're doing is not atoms it's bits that we're fighting the russians with because there are two pressure points really only two right natural gas and oil um our interaction with russia russians interaction with the world is pretty pretty limited to two basic channels china's very different there i can't imagine. Seven days ago, we didn't know what these sanctions would look like. They look pretty good. between the united states and china between long beach california and seattle and oakland and china are so complicated that the idea of financial sanctions against china as a weapon against china seems to me to be fantastical so i guess what i'm saying is that if if as as you predict

is coming to pass is that i i think the one thing we can probably say will be true a year from now is that the european our allies in europe will have taken a greater interest and a greater financial stake in their own defense what does that leave america to do to china how on earth could we dissuade china um military force sorry that i totally agree with you economic sanctions don't work very well in general compared to the amount of time we spend talking about them. I mean, we talk about sanctions all the time, and they've not been very successful against Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, Iran, etc. They seem like they'll work against Russia right now, right? Well, yes, they're working, but Saudi is fighting. This is the key thing.

And these sanctions didn't work. They didn't deter, right? It's not the sanctions that are the critical thing. They are important't work they didn't deter right it's not the sanctions that are the the critical thing if they are important as a secondary mechanism as a punishment and as a penalty exactly but the main thing that's happening is the ukrainians are standing up and fighting we should arm them and that's the thing is like we don't have to be doing the fighting all the time contra john bull we can have well he's not doing the fighting but others doing the fighting for him they they can others can do the fighting and that's the point right the problem is in asia can i just make this one because it's different in asia

because the power balance and that's economic that's military power but it's economic power fundamentally is china's 50 of asian gdp and they're the allies that we have are disaggregated they're they're distinct from each other so they can pick us off and our sanctions a forget it a lot of these sanctions countries aren't going to do and also that's the other thing about scarcity that people are missing the point on unfortunately a lot of these sanctions probably can't be can't be shot more than once i was at a lunch with a german official a couple days ago and the guy's talking about how they're going to reduce their reliance on german on russian gas and so forth and he's like this is going to hit us but we're going to do it that draws against their willingness to do that against china right so some of these you know the japanese and that's why i say like we

shouldn't be giving the japanese the indians too hard too hard of a time because we're gonna need their sanctions on china in the event of a taiwan fight even though that's not going to be enough we're going to have to have a military denial strategy and that's okay so military strategy is why we need to prioritize so let me let me i need to understand because it's i'm i i suffer from a terrible lack of imagination i can only think about things in real um the only actual i mean maybe there are more i maybe i'm just blocking blotting them out the only actual american actions that are being advocated sort of is a the enforcement of a no-fly zone which would be in ukraine i'm talking about which would uh in my opinion would be insane um i agree it's crazy right um yeah the deployment of u.s troops seems silly the uh

encouragement of the of the the Germans to meet their obligations and spend 2% seems brilliant. Seems like a positive outcome. Are you suggesting that, I mean, you started by saying we didn't need to be here. So one of the ways I'm going to ask you this hypothetically. One of the ways that we could avoid being here now

could it have been a more robust, enthusiastic, generous arming of the ukrainians over the past decade decade and a half i mean we took we we traded we talked to this before you got here 1994 we basically said well you give us your nukes and we'll give you your country and they interpreted this as a as a quasi not quite guarantee but a quasi guarantee that they had a country that they had a country. That's how they, I mean, we didn't interpret it that way,

but that's how they took it. And it's a pretty good deal for us, right? Because we got, we removed one potentially crackpot, unstable country with nukes, and we just concentrated all the danger. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race.

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And Russia. Would you recommend, assuming that's one way we could have avoided being here right now, is by 2x, 3x, 10x, 15x Javelin missiles in Ukraine. Is that what we should be doing with Taiwan? It's not enough, again, for Taiwan. And this is a critical thing, is people are taking, they're too analogizing it. You've got to look at the factors.

So, you know, look, China is much more powerful relative to Taiwan than Russia is to Ukraine. The size difference is tremendous. Obviously, 1.4 billion people against 23 million people. If the Taiwanese are alone, they're smoked. It's over. And I mean, look, the Russians may win this war yet. I don't know. I think some people may be spiking the football a little early on this.

But I think we absolutely, not only do we need to be arming the Taiwanese, we need to be like putting intense pressure on them to arm. But even then, we're still going to have to fight if Taiwan is going to be defensible. And my point is that the more we focus, the lower the cost will be. Right. And that'll make it more likely we fight and will be more likely that we deter the Chinese. It's the same logic of the incense, I think, of the buildup of the 1980s. Right. Which is the stronger you are and they see you have a credible way of fighting that's not stupid the more likely there'll be they'll be deterred and so how do we practically how do we um increase

the price of a taiwan adventure if the chinese are kind of window shopping right now how do we put a price tag in the window that's high enough that they say you know what we would rather just sponsor a newspaper and a political party and uh hong kong eyes this this this little island which is not gonna work well well you know it's called the strategy of denial all right it's the strategy of denial which is get the military piece right against it's like cops in a neighborhood you know people say get the military piece right against. It's like cops in a neighborhood. You know, people say, oh, the military piece is only one piece. It's an economic and informational. Sorry, that is false. If the military piece is employed, nothing else matters because, as Chairman Mao said, power comes out of the barrel of a gun. So like the cops, like after Giuliani or Bloomberg, sure, people didn't think about the cops, but everybody was

thinking about the cops in New York in 1993. Right. I mean, when Dinkins was mayor. So it's like that's that's the analogy. And again, I think this is like basic conservative kind of mindset, which is like, you got to get this right. And so the way to do it is a denial strategy, which is to say, if you try to do this, you will fail and that will be bad for you. And then, you know, that's it. Right. Or not, that's it. But there are other consequences. And that's about shooting. I mean, I go into this book, it's about sinking the fleet and shooting the, uh, shooting down the aircraft and going after the troops that land and sorry to keep going after Bolton, but the Bolton is like assuming that we're there and we're not because he's not living in the real world where you actually listen to the military analysis.

What the military officials are telling us is that we're not there so it's like people like oh yeah you know one of his colleagues was saying that the asia pivot of 2014 already happened and that's no it didn't it didn't happen so that's the that's the world we're in could i ask the threshold question why does taiwan matter to us? We just lost Hong Kong. I mean, it's horrifying. My friend Jimmy Lai is in prison. This is horrible. But as a matter of American interests, so what? Ukraine, honestly, the world lived with Ukraine as a Russian satrapy during the czars. It was an oblast of the Soviet Union. So what if Russia takes it? I mean, it's horrible, but direct immediate American interest hard. So the Chinese take Taiwan. It takes two years to rebuild the chip plants in South Korea. So what? It's's 23 million people it's an island we can live without it sure and i look at this from a realist perspective i think there are arguments about chips and democracy they're basically three reasons and the third one is kind of derivative and it all gets back to what's our core interest which is denying china hegemony over the world's

largest uh economic area the only way we can do that is an anti-hegemonic coalition. It's basic balancing theory, and it's consistent with the American idea. Nobody should have too much power, separation of powers, and coalitions, right? The coalition is made up of countries that don't want to live under China's boot. But everybody in Asia, of course,

doesn't want to live under China's boot, but also doesn't want to get turned into rubble, right? They don't want to be made an example. Correct. Okay? So everybody's thinking, it's what the academics call the balancing versus bandwagon. It's just human nature. Do I make a deal or can I stand up strong?

And this is what we wrestled with with West Germany during the Cold War, as you know. So two basic reasons. One is Taiwan is really important, whether we like it or not, for what I call the differentiated credibility of the United States. So I am not a neocon in the sense that all credibility is, oh, we fail in Afghanistan or Ukraine, Taiwan. No, no, no. Where credibility matters is contextually. If you're in Tokyo, let alone Manila, Hanoi, even Canberra, Seoul, you're thinking, I'm putting myself on the line here. Are these Americans going to be there, even though it's really costly and risky?

And the only thing you can use to tell is how we behave in very like circumstances, what the it's kind of like a fact pattern or sort of went from the law. Right. And Taiwan, we are tied to whether we like it or not. I mean, TRA, the six assurances or the Taiwan Relations Act, six assurances, a long pattern of behavior. And in fact, the Biden administration has upped the rhetoric on this. So one, if we lose Taiwan, you can bet that countries like the Philippines and South Korea are going to have fundamental issues, right? And even Japan, and they've made it clear. So that's one reason. Two is the military significance of the island of Taiwan, which sits in the middle of the first island chain. And again, we've got to think in space

and time, Peter. The Chinese military is already building a power projection bridge take just a moment to explain these two island chains they come up again and again it's a relatively simple couple of go ahead and explain that we think of the pacific as this large area but it's actually most of it's uninhabited and where it's kind of concentrated is along in the western pacific and there's two basic you can think of as as along in the Western Pacific. And there's two basic, you can think of it as chains of islands. The first chain is the islands of the Japanese archipelago, Taiwan down to the Philippines. That forms one chain. And then the second chain, or a friend of mine calls it the cloud, who did excellent

illustrations, Andrew Rhodes in the book, is sort of a cloud of islands. And that's more the Pacific Islands that we think of from World War II. The first island chain is where the maritime periphery of Asia is where the wealth is concentrated. So it's both from a geopolitical sense where, you know, if we get like Yap and Trump and China gets Japan and Taiwan, that's not, that doesn't work, right? We have to work with the coalition. The coalition has got to be built of those countries in the Western Pacific. And that is why after the war, after the Second World War, we stuck in the first island chain, because that's the critical. And that also keeps us, it's an important point, as we're a democracy, we're good at high value add capital intensive military affairs.

We're not a human wave attack. That's for China and Russia, the big Eurasian land powers. So we want to be at the front of the island. This gets to my third point, which is our alternatives are worse. So if we cut Taiwan off or we let them go, if we're going to keep this anti-hegemonic coalition going, we're going to have to compensate because everyone's going to be like, well, you lost 23 million people, semiconductors, they're military. And why do I trust you? Then we might have to start making a with like vietnam or thailand which a don't really want to and b then we're in a land war in asia we wanted we wanted if we have to god forbid begin to fight we want to be at sea

okay i've got one more question and then i let i give it back to rob i can tell i'm getting the you don't know i'm well enough uh bridge but i, but I'm beginning to get the evil eye from Rob. So, here's another little country. Things are changing now, but for decades it was surrounded by bad guys who wished it ill. And that's Israel. And Israel has universal conscription, and it is dotted with military installations. It has a first-class air force, which penetrates other people's airspace every so often, just to show that it can do so.

In other words, Israel, from the very get-go, has been extremely serious about cold, hard military analysis and has the national morale and has, astonishingly, really, sustained that national morale since 1948. The national morale to support the military seriousness. Taiwan isn't like that so I mean ultimately we can do everything that you say we ought to do in your book strategy of denial but where are the Taiwanese on this they're divided not unified isn't that right well they're worse they're delinquent I mean it's totally unacceptable and I I'm actually very harsh with them rhetorically when I speak to them I mean I actually because I don't know why Americans are treating them nicely when they're not doing this because it's American lives that are at stake. So we should be pressuring them. But the point I would make to you, Peter, is what I'm saying is that it's not we're not defending Taiwan for their sake.

We're defending Taiwan for our sake. But, you know, I mean, I think basically where we are speaking of the Cold War is Taiwan. We're going to defend Taiwan whether they want it or not. Just like we were going to defend west germany whether they want it or not they can be a battlefield or they can be better defended like britain was say in 1940 and that's up to them and they should get their their tails in gear i mean but i also if i were a taiwanese i'd be like get more of this bridge colby guy he's going to defend us like because it's these loser generals they literally are loser generals they were the descendants of the guomindan who like lost the communists which is catastrophe and many of them have mainland sympathies anyway probably i don't know but they're you know reasonable minds have suggested but we're not doing it as a favor for them so what that means is we're going to do it anyway

but we should put as much pressure on them as possible so that they do their part and i i and i have to say this this is what i think our policy should be focused on after the germans did that thing same with japan i wrote an op-ed in the japanese press you should double your defense budget right now or triple it you know so because the same logic applies to japan but japan's our most important ally in the world 120 million people second third largest economy so this is the that's like a problem but that's not a reason to cut them off because we're not doing it for them we're doing it because it's an important piece of geography and an economy got it hey so bridge i i'm kind of with you on some of it and i'm kind of not with you on some of it okay here's where i'm with you i think you're absolutely right about europe i think you're um not sure i 100%

believe that we have a choice over where we pay attention. I think we pay attention. A third of it is what fire is burning at the present time. But I think you're correct that we probably need to sort of shift or outshift from our late 20th century obsession with Western European security and recognize that those are big economies and big countries and they need to defend themselves. But I'm not sure I get the domino effect that you're trying to posit with the loss of Taiwan. I don't see the Chinese wanting to expand past their Mandarin-speaking brothers, who are, I think, correctly of two minds about this. If anything is going to dissuade them to rejoin the mainland or to happily rejoin the mainland, it's going to be what's happening in Hong Kong. But that's a PR problem. The Chinese themselves, the country, the Beijing, the center, is mostly distracted, right, not distracted, but mostly obsessed with its internal unification. The separative movements to the west to the south those are southeast asians there's a strong racial animus between southeast asians and the han chinese and the chinese to the

north in dongbei who are choreo people who are naturally if not or maybe unnaturally but they are they are continually talking about reunifying with their Koryo relatives to the east. I get it. I certainly think that Japan should be paying for its own defense. It's time now. But I'm not sure I see that going to war, this is all hypothetical, right? But going to war to protect Taiwan is a war that we need to fight. I don't think that those are American lives that will be saved or lost. If the Chinese take over Taiwan tomorrow, I think that, I think everything's going to be just fine.

Before you answer, I just want you to know that if you can handle Rob Long, Xi Jinping will be no problem. I don't mean everything to be fine, meaning it's going to be fine and dandy for the people in Taiwan, but I don't know. Nobody knows. I don't know what the Chinese future behavior is. People who say they do, I don't. Who could know? Look, I'm a conservative realist, so I say at the end of the day, intentions change. But what matters is power and capability. So power, we know they would be the strongest country in the world at that point.

They're already potentially going to be the strongest economy in the world and they have immense geographic potential. More to the point, here's by far the most significant piece of evidence. They are building a military that is not what you're saying. They could have built a military that is designed specifically to unify with Taiwan. In fact, they were. That was like in the 90s, maybe early 2000s. People could make that argument. That's not what they're doing. They're building a military for what's called power projection, aircraft carrier space, nuclear attack submarines to go distance, Marine Corps, air assault forces. So all of those forces

are for this. And by the way, they're building bases, like apparently they're looking at a base on the Atlantic coast of Africa. They're going in for something, you're saying. So here's the point. They will have the power. And in fact, I think realistically, we pretty clearly can tell that they have much broader ambitions. And then here's the thing about intentions. First of all, I think Xi Jinping is basically saying that they have much broader ambitions. And then here's the thing about intentions. First of all, I think Xi Jinping is basically saying that they have much broader ambitions. I think they're probably their only annexation, desired annexation is Taiwan. But as we've demonstrated, like in Iraq, you invade countries to coerce them. That's like kind of maybe what Putin is doing. Who knows what his goals are, but it might be a public government or something. I don't know. But the point is,

and by the way, remember that military forces take a long time to build. They take a lot of planning. They're expensive. You're very deliberate about it. So that tells you a lot. And intention. So you might be right right now that Xi Jinping would think. I don't think you are, but you might be right. But Xi Jinping might change his mind, right? Hitler became more aggressive after 1939. Or a new group of leadership comes in. And my favorite example of that is Madeleine Albright, right? I mean, the Colin Powell and the Bush 41 crowd, the Powell Doctrine, Weinberg Doctrine, all that sort of stuff, built this incredible Reagan-era military. And then we're going to be very judicious about how we used it.

And then the Soviet Union collapsed and Bill Clinton came in and Madeleine Albright said that columbia what's the point of this beautiful military if we can't use it right right so that's like what intentions change and so i think we would be very ill-advised to try because you're essentially making i mean the voters in china may may vote in a new uh general secretary well i i mean i don't really have a vote i know that yeah and then and then i would just say on that on the domino theory thing i don't i mean i i mean i don't really have a vote yeah i mean right yeah and then and then i would just say on that on the domino theory thing i don't i mean i i clearly differentiate mine for the domino theory which the domino theory is kind of the neoconservative view which everything's connected and if you lose in you know kyrgyzstan you're going to lose in western europe or whatever

no it's very contextual but i uh the counterpoint is the sort of isolationist academic argument which is that credibility doesn't matter and it's like well have you has anyone applied for a mortgage i mean you might get a credit report right like obviously credibility matters in human relationships okay so i know you gotta run so so many japanese have said there that this is critical for them so what what should we be i mean what would be a sign of the next i don't know six months that things are getting better for us or Or what is a sign that things are going to get worse for us? What's the next canary in the coal mine? Sorry, you're talking particularly about China, Taiwan, or you're talking about America? I'm sort of talking about American national security in general.

Well, I think the most important thing that could happen right now, given that the Germans have done something, is the Japanese increased defense spending and the Taiwanese increased defense spending materially and spend heavily. And I mean look i i think if we could focus our defense more but those are kind of long-term polls i think the thing on the chinese is they're probably unlikely because of the value of surprise and especially in an amphibious invasion they're probably likely to try to avoid giving us signals i think one of the things they're doing with these provocations in their air defense identification zone is to dull us like the Arabs did in 1973. So we, you know, they're not stupid, and it's stupid to give us a lot of warnings. So I'm not sure we're going to get much. Could you cheer us up? Is there something reassuring? Yeah,

I can cheer you up. This is a feasible problem. We can solve this problem. We're abundantly capable of it. We're just not doing anything. This is really important. Here's what's in the back of my mind. And if it's in the back of my mind, and I mean the back of my mind, this is the reptile brain. And if it's in my reptile brain, it's probably, I know, you and Rob went to Yale, so you don't have reptile brains,

they get removed or something. But here's what it is. All brain for us. All brain for you guys. So, here's what it is. Fear. It is fear. We have 330 million people and a polarized electorate, 50-50. Almost in the Senate, it is literally 50-50. 50-50 with very different ideas about what this country should be like, let alone what our foreign policy should be like, let alone what our military budget should be, let alone whether the military should be used first for fighting and threatening to fight or first for helping to remold the country as a laboratory for various social experiments. Yeah, social experiments.

China, 1.4 billion, a dictator who doesn't have to get things through Congress, and an economy that continues to grow and grow and grow. And yes, I know, the GDP per capita is still very far below ours, but they're already spending, as best I can tell, I don't know how reliable the figures are, and I'm sure you go into this in Strategy of Denial, but as best I can tell, they're already spending, as best I can tell, I don't know how reliable the figures are, and I have to, I'm sure you go into this in Strategy of Denial, but as best I can tell, they're already spending 60, 70% as much on defense as we are. This is scary. So, can we really? You're talking about realism, realism, realism. You know what it looks like to me? It looks like to me that maybe the realistic view is that we're England at the middle of the 20th century and the game for the United States of America may be just about up. Now, no politician will say that because it will not win votes, but a lot of people in one way or another fear

that it's true. And how do you address that fear which we all know is present well look i i think there's terrible things going on in the country and i'm a conservative so i probably should share with both of you a little bit profound concerns but i will say i actually think that the concerns about our domestic discord are exaggerated because actually one of the areas of continuity across the trump and biden administration was china and in fact the defense strategy as far as i tell, at least what was supposed to be released was something like a copy of what we did four years ago. So we're building on it. So actually, and the opposition party is in favor of a harder line on China. So like, where's the evidence that

we can't get our act together? I just don't see it. And I hate so much of what's going on in our country. But that's me as a private citizen. Americans, not me as a strategist. But I think, you know, fear is the passion to be reckoned upon, as Hobbes said, and that's worked with the Germans and the Poles and the Romanians. And hopefully it'll work with the Taiwanese and the Japanese. But I think the point that I would emphasize here, Peter, is this is a solvable problem if we have a denial strategy, because I'm not talking about like I'm not talking about SDI. I'm not saying we've got to figure out a way to do something that is going to break cost curves and physics and all that. No, what I'm saying is we need to use established

principles of military force and weapons in a reasonable capacity and in a posture that people know how to do to kill the enemy in sufficient number to degrade right i mean remember what i'm talking about militarily is like you know hitler had hitler controlled the european continent couldn't invade britain napoleon controlled the european continent couldn't invade britain and yes technology's changed but sorry john bolton you still got to move people through space and time and exercise decisive force. And if we can deny China that, well, if we deny it to Taiwan, we deny it to Japan or

basically South Korea, Australia. They can't project power, get it back to that first island chain. They can't get out of the box. And then we can also work with countries like India, divide their attention. This is another Reagan era thing. You know, try to intensify their own problems internally and externally why are we giving them a free ride on like tibet or something like that which is morally thought you know sort of supportable anyway so i think this we can do this we just

need to grapple with reality and then develop and well i would say more implement the strategy i'm advocating for and it'll succeed do you think it it's going to be easier to make that argument to Japan, Taiwan, by showing them a photograph of president Xi and Vladimir Putin shaking hands on February 4th? We'll see. I, I, I haven't, um, I, I, Japan is now isolated among the major U S allies and it's, and it's low level of spending before they could point to the Germans.

Now they truly are isolated. I'm hoping. And Taiwan too. And Taiwan has been improving more. They have been. There's a lot of internal issues there. That's one of the green shoots we'll look for. The book is called The Strategy of Denial, American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. The author, Elbridge Colby.

Bridge, thank you. This is fantastic. Please come back. Thank you. It's a pleasure. You got me riled up. Maybe we should have you guys both on let's just back off the octagon that's right all right thanks very much thank you take care thank you bye-bye peter another great important topic of world interest when it comes to men's underwear tommy john's hammock pouch underwear is the full package deal when you men's underwear, Tommy John's hammock pouch underwear is the full package deal.

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see site for tales we thank Tommy John for sponsoring the ricochet podcast we do indeed our next guest is rich goldberg he's a senior advisor at the foundation for defense of democracies that seems to be the theme today he's worked on a wide range of issues relating to u.s foreign assistance including foreign military financing international security assistance and economic support funds and he is the host of a new podcast on the Ricochet Network. Okay, so write this down. This is another podcast you got to listen to. It's called Kryptonite, where he guides listeners through the intimidating world of cryptocurrency. You are going to explain what the blockchain means.

If you ever wanted to know, and I guess you should know right you should want to know um what it all means he's here to tell you uh so so so tell me um we'll start with cryptocurrency right how much do you own are you uh are you uh do you hold you hold a a basket of cryptocurrencies i i have a weighty basket it's it's gone down a little bit i was at 70 dollars uh earlier in the year 70 okay all right yeah well you know worth of bitcoin and uh and i went down to to 50 in my little robin hood wallet uh but the truth is is that i have coming into this low level of understanding on cryptocurrency, and I feel like I'm a smart person, right? And I talk to people about cryptocurrency all the time. And I was in an elevator in Washington, DC, and somebody, well, I was about to get out of the elevator and they said,

are you invested in crypto? Just out of the blue, just like making conversation with me. And I said, uh, no, I was like, Oh, I I've, I'm just a regular person. Yeah. I've made 25 grand in the last year on,

on just, that doesn't seem like it's Joe. Yeah. Joe Kennedy would say, sell, sell, sell. I was like,

what, what is going on here? And then you start seeing all these headlines of white house, thinking of regulations, SEC, regulatory regulations, blah, blah, blah. And all i remember is you know when i was on capitol hill years ago and this was i was in the senate but before when i was working in the house for for a congressman at that point we were looking at a virtual reality program called second life do

you remember this second life that's where i had first heard of bitcoin right you know was all these interesting i'll say interesting people who were on second life and they were using bitcoin back then uh to to buy things in the virtual reality world and then we started hearing oh well child molesters and and you know rapists and all and now russian oligarchs right i mean half of them are russian oligarchs and i just say mean, half of them are Russian oligarchs. And I just say, you know what? This is such a huge space. You're seeing commercials, advertising, people are getting lured in here. There are concerns on terror finance, on money laundering, on sanctions evasion. We need to be able to have one space for policymakers and investors and just regular people to understand what it's all about. So, Rich, I don't think people understand it. Rich, you're saying something really, really important, and I want to make it explicit, if I understand it correctly. Kryptonite, your new podcast, is not, although they certainly welcome to listen to it,

it's not for the 23-year-olds running around Silicon Valley where I live, who already have their portfolios and have Bitcoin down exactly and understand the difference between Bitcoin. It's for people like Rob and me who understand that we sort of ought to know something about this, but really can't understand it at all. If we subscribe to your podcast, you'll take us along and we won't feel intimidated. We'll feel educated, right? Exactly. This is a journey. I'm taking people on a journey. You can come in with very low knowledge, learn what cryptocurrency is all about, what the blockchain is all about, the pros and the cons, and then we're going to dive into every little crevice of this, because people are making

decisions. The federal government is making decisions. The Federal Reserve might make a decision. The Treasury Department, Congress is weighing legislation. They've already started to legislate. And by the way, in the absence of any federal regulation or legislation, the states are acting and local governments are acting. Miami has its own coin you know what is it all about and i think you're at home thinking okay well i use zelle or i use quick you know chase pay and and i have a bank account and i'm getting direct deposit like i don't really need this or do i want it or is it going to help me or if you're a business how is it helping you and and then you're seeing wow there's a war in Ukraine. And there's crowdsourcing of crypto going to the Ukrainian people and oligarchs are shifting into crypto.

And meanwhile, the market of crypto is up and down and people are making tons of money and then losing tons of money. And it's like, whoa, this is literally, for me, I study policy. I've done national security policy. I've done domestic policy for a governor, for a congressman, for a senator at the White House National Security Council. And this is the true Wild West of policymaking. But is it also the Wild West of a currency? I mean, part of the problem is that one of the arguments, so there's a privacy argument, blockchain, private. And then there's a sort of more libertarian monetary argument, right? This is a currency that is not subject to manipulation by the Federal Reserve, essentially.

But the U.S. dollar, which is obviously subject to that, is also expressed and paid for and has a is tested in the marketplace a trillion times a day there are a trillion transactions every day basically propping up the value of the dollar more so more than the fed could even imagine there are not those transactions with bitcoin bitcoin still seems like a wobbly, easily manipulated, highly volatile method of exchange, an incredibly illiquid method of exchange, frankly, which is one of the reasons why people now treat it like a stock or an asset they hold rather than a currency they express. If that's the case, shouldn't you just tell them, I mean, I love your podcast, I'm going to listen to your podcast, but shouldn't part of your podcast be, look, everyone just know about this.

Go to sleep. Wake me up when it's a currency. Well, I think that's a good thing to say out loud. I do say it. I mean, episode two, we had Michael Green on as a former portfolio manager for Peter Thiel. Big skeptic in crypto. And he has this great comment on the pod where he says, to be very clear, crypto is not a currency. It's a speculative asset. It's a security.

And we should govern ourselves accordingly. Exactly what you're saying, Rob. But at the same time, we have this bizarre tension going on where whether it's because it's just cool it's a fad or people see the technology behind it and what it could accomplish right the blockchain technology we have this this joke in our first episode we really talked to a professor from booth school university of chicago business school eric budish about explaining all the ins and outs of how crypto works he says you know people at cocktail parties used to say, I don't like Bitcoin, but I like the technology, right? And it's sort of like a lot of people's feeling. The blockchain has all these different applications for B2B

and for supply chains, et cetera. But what about, you know, the actual Bitcoin itself, which has a ton of illicit uses and purposes, potentials, et cetera. And I don't want to really touch it. Right. That use case is changing. People are now saying, oh, actually, I want to hold it. I want to use that. I want to I want to be able to pay my taxes in Bitcoin. I want to be able to make a contribution to a candidate in Bitcoin. And we might see cities and states start taking on bitcoin as a real use uh in daily life and here's the interesting thing and we talked about this more in one of our last episodes with

michael greenwald who's now just moved over to amazon to start running their digital assets program there because as he said cryptocurrency isn't a currency it's data it's data and think about how much data, by the way, where you store that data, you store it in the cloud, right? And so that's going to become issues about privacy issues, that's going to become a big issue. And we talked about the idea of central bank digital currencies, right? So this incredible tension that is going on inside cryptocurrency right now, as we're learning about in our journey, is that you're right, we have this libertarian sort of starting point of decentralized finance, get the government out

of it, get the middleman out of it, totally anonymous, I have full security. And then we have all these concerns popped up like, well, if you're going to have decentralized anonymity and all that, well, then terrorists are going to take advantage and money launderers and drug kingpins and the gangs and you know you name it russian oligarchs so we have to have regulation we have to know who's doing transactions we have to have compliance controls well then the central banks start stepping in saying well we like the idea of making using the technology to make a digital dollar or a digital yuan or a digital, which we kind of already have, but we can make it, you know, next generation, right? The, the, the world war, well, my web three, right. The, you know, going to the next, you know, one of the uses examples that Michael Greenwald talked about was when we went through the stimulus

payments for COVID, right, that should have been instantaneous. That should have been a very simple process. Right. If we had a central bank digital currency, he says, and people had wallets with the Federal Reserve, you could have gotten your payments very, very quickly, you know, immediately. The way we do it is very old school antiquated. And there are other countries like China looking to advance, et cetera. But this is going to cause attention, right? Because it is very old school antiquated and there are other countries like china looking to advance etc but this is going to cause attention right because it is literally the opposite of decentralized finance it's centralized finance right without anonymity right i mean all of that talk though i i have to say like i sometimes i feel like uh cryptocurrencies are scratching an itch that i don't have the idea that the the federal reserve should

be able to zap the money into my account yeah nice nice yeah i'd like them somebody to carry my groceries up to my my kitchen my apartment not not the hardest thing in the world for me to take a picture of it and deposit it that way which is how you can do it on bank of america so it seems like i keep looking for the case where I'm going to use this stuff. And I have, by the way, full disclosure, I have a Coinbase wallet. I have now, I think as of yesterday, $2,100 worth of variety of cryptocurrencies. I have a Coinbase wallet, too, which I know will astound you, Rob. I do.

I have. You have younger children. They probably have forced you to do that. So I guess what I'd say is like, okay, in this podcast, which I recommend we all subscribe to because it's fascinating, how dumb are the questions? How dumb do you get? And I'll give you my preview. My ultimate answer is you get really dumb because these are the user exactly the these are the conversations that i have with people about blockchain and i i reach my limit of knowledge very quickly the the higher

and more theoretical they go the more i think they're trying to swindle me yes so so episode one let me just say gets as dumb as you can. Good. Because I, because I, because I, I am coming at this, I think in exactly the same cynical perspective you are. And I think where most people are quite frankly, uh, at least of a certain generation, maybe you're, maybe you're 20 something and on Robin hood. And it's just like, this is a wild ride. I love this. There goes my last paycheck. Bye-bye. Uh, but, but, but I think for most people, it's like, I just don't get it. Why do I need this? Why do I want this?

And how is this going to help or hurt me? And that's where I think this podcast is proving its worth, because there are a lot of things happening in this space. And the government's going to start regulating, and people are going to start legislating. And I don't think the people legislating or regulating know much about what they're legislating or regulating they're taking their cues from the industry right right the industry is by there's a couple of news articles recently we go through headlines every episode there is so much money flooding into washington right now on lobbyists from the cryptocurrency industry

the revolving door of people who were in government who are now being sucked up as consultants right there's nobody who's taking a cynical approach here and saying okay how are you going to actually regulate to stop terror finance how are you actually going to you know prevent the gangs in chicago or elsewhere from using cryptocurrency for for nefarious purposes when we're encouraging we have states by the way legislation right now to encourage tax incentives for crypto mining right illinois has a bill georgia has a bill you're gonna explain what that is right in this podcast at some point oh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah so we go through mining

episodes i'll tell you episode i have people who are like very important people who have, who have called me saying I am shipping episode one around to everybody. I know to explain cryptocurrency. And I was like, we'll ship a ship every other episode. Yeah. All of them. And I think everyone should subscribe. This is a great,

this is kind of one of the ways we want to continue to do it with the Rick shape audio network is to have a series like this, that kind of explain and get behind and also make it fun and interesting, which, which could easily be something that is incredibly impenetrable and where I feel like I'm being cheated. Hey,

Rich, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. The podcast is kryptonite. Go find it on the ricochet audio network. It's kryptonite with a C. Yeah. I know because at just this minute, subscribe.

And let's give the full title because he's been such a lovely guest just now. The full title is Kryptonite with Rich Goldberg. That's exactly. It has a ring to it. Very good show business. Very good show business. Keep it short. Peter, thanks so much.

Thanks, Rich. Thank you, Rich. show business very good show business keep it short thanks peter thanks so much rich thank you rich and again keeping with my tradition here peter before we talk if you are going on speaking of security and crypto stuff if you're going to go online without express vpn that would be like changing while leaving your window wide open you might not have anything to hide but why give random creeps a chance to invade your privacy when you you go online without a VPN, internet service providers, ISPs, can see every single website you visit. They can legally sell this information without your consent to ad companies, tech giants, whomever, and they will then use your data to target you. But when you use ExpressVPN, your online activity is shielded from ISPs,

your identity is anonymized by a secure VPN server, and your data is also encrypted for maximum protection. I used it when I was in Europe. It made me feel a lot better. It works with all the devices you surf the web on, your phone, laptop, even the router. So everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can be protected, and it couldn't be easier to use. You just fire up the app and click one. But I'm telling you, when you travel, it's essential, absolutely essential. I'm on Wi-Fi all the time. Different people's Wi-Fi, who I don't even know sometimes. It is absolutely crucial to have ExpressVPN. You can secure your online activity too by visiting expressvpn.com slash ricochet today. That's express, E-X-P-R-E-S-S, vpn.com slash ricochet.

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the Ricochet podcast as they've done, I think for a long time, a couple of years. I mean, they've been really, really very loyal, very loyal advertisers. So, Peter, I guess the next thing we got to do is we got to get Bridge and John Bolton together. Exactly. And then where do we get one of those old-fashioned from the 1940s movies, one of those old-fashioned bells that would start a boxing match yes and in this corner because i have to say that um i mean i obviously this is go comes out of a you know a bad place but robust and uh passionate

and thoughtful and smart uh arguments or debates about about the use of American power in a tripolar world. Who's the – China, us, and – I guess Russia, I guess. I'm just throwing them in. It's a good thing. I'm glad we're having those conversations. Twenty years ago, it was all about the titanic existential struggle with the nightmare of Islamacism, Islamacists, I guess.

This feels like, I don't know, it feels a little bit more, I can wrap my arms around it, I suspect. It feels a little bit more like, i this is chess i understand oh really oh that's interesting that's interesting we may lose but i understand it yeah i had my up to shift to crypto i really i i truly while we were talking i got out my iphone and subscribed to kryptonite with rich goldberg here's the story that i, and I heard from somebody who was in the room. A young crypto entrepreneur, young guy who's founded a bank that accepts deposits only in crypto, was in a meeting with a senior United States senator. And the senator said,

are you crypto guys trying to destroy the u.s dollar and the crypto entrepreneur replied no senator the u.s government will destroy the crypt the dollar all by itself crypto will give the united states a lifeboat there is that kind of reforming zeal out here. And I want to learn more about it. That's the podcast to do it. Hey, we got to run. This podcast was brought to you by Headspace,

Tommy John and ExpressVPN. Please support them for supporting us and join Ricochet today. Please take a minute and leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That actually really does matter and your views will allow new listeners your reviews will allow new listeners to discover us and that helps us keep this show going next week next week and i have a request james will also be gone next week as i understand it opening chat next week i want to hear how you use headspace to compartmentalize your day. That actually

sounds... I could use instructions there. It totally works. It totally works. All right. Next week, Rob. Next week. I'm a kid in a candy store. I'm a bull in a china shop. I'm a tired old metaphor for everything you can afford and everything you can afford to be. I'm a public embarrassment I'm a bottle of diet poison I'm a walking advertisement

For everything I never meant And everything I never meant to I can't hear a thing Cause I'm stuck listening I'm the reason I don't go out I'm afraid I might tell me something I'm the shadow of every doubt I'm the product the song's about

And I'm the product the song's about too I can't hear a thing Cause I'm stuck listening I can't hear a thing Cause I'm stuck listening Every morning since I was born It's been hard to look in the mirror And see my face for the horse

All the fun that the law allows All the fun that would have no meaning Come on over, I'll show you how If you lived here, you'd be home by now If you still lived here, you'd be home now with me Ricochet! Join the conversation I can't hear a thing Cause I stopped listening

I can't hear a thing Cause I stopped listening Time stop listening