The Ricochet Podcast - Chat CCP

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

For all the talk of walking and chewing gum vis-a-vis America’s looming threats to national security, have you ever asked whether China is the walking part or the chewing gum? Elbridge Colby has. He joins Rob, James and Charles to explain why the analogies to multitasking are divorced from our current defense strategy — such as it is — and why even thinking back to the Cold War can only do so much... Source

If I remember correctly, that was Dr. Sphincter. Mm-hmm. Excuse me? Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new action.

It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lyleyks, and I'm joined by Charles C.W. Cook, sitting in for Peter Robinson, and Rob Long. He's back. We talk to Bridge Colby about China, the good news and the bad. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping. Name me one.

There's a level of admiration I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime. Minnesota, joined by Charles C.W. Cook in wonderful, humid Florida. And get this, Rob Long has completed his long journey around the world, his anabasis from the coast of the Levant inward. We're going to hear all about it, I hope. I've been places and seen things no man should have to see. Actually, it was a lot of fun. It was a good, wild kind of trip, but I just added a few seen things no man should have to see. No, actually it was a lot of fun. It was like a good wild kind of trip, but I just added a few extra things to it. So is this the basic junketeering swatting around with your scarf?

Carelessly tossed? No, there was no junketeering. There was no junketeering. There was a, there was, it was all just kind of like a, a kind of a weird conflagration of things,

which we can talk about. Um, uh, I was in Madagascar, uh, for about 10 days, um, traveling around madagascar uh for about 10 days um traveling around madagascar with some friends the weirdest country on earth by the way if you're wondering what the weird one is how's the vanilla industry doing it's doing all right i mean um

they're uh it's an interesting place uh and then um and then from there i was uh uh briefly i was briefly in paris because i had to make a connection to go to Israel. So I was in Israel for about 12 days. Wow. And Jerusalem, the Holy Land. I saw a lot of stuff there. And then I went to Jordan and then got somebody to drive me across to Sinai. And then I ended up in Cairo for the past week.

So I just got back yesterday. Tire, you said? So I'm a little bit not not here if you want to know the honest truth you made it to tire but not to nineveh exactly right yeah right well i ask about the vanilla because of course vanilla prices the united states are through the roof the president has vowed that he's going to release some extract from the national vanilla reserve strategic reserves i think that was in the state of the union i don't know i didn't watch it but charles did part of it now rob you were spared because you were out i suppose i don't watch because they're just ridiculous performative theatrical nonsense but charles uh you did

watch it so if you could tell america and the world beyond uh what you thought of what you saw well i suspect you know the answer to this. And that answer is that I hated it. And in fact turned it off. And had a drink. There you go. The proper approach. Let me ask you something. Did you hate it because

it was sort of, you know, classic meretricious nonsense from a politician you don't agree with? Or is there something special about this one that you hated both so i i'm now in the slightly paradoxical position of having told everyone how little i care about the state of the union but given the spiel that i'm about to deliver on five or six different shows i hate the state of the union per se because i think it's on small r republican i think thomas jefferson had it right when he said it represents the speech from the throne

and that it is offensive to separation of powers for the president to go into the legislature and lecture them all but i thought that for 12 years, and I've thought that under many presidents. This one seemed to me particularly annoying, both because Biden really is a dishonest, narcissistic demagogue, and somehow managed in this particular context to be more of one than Trump was when he did the State of the Union.

Dan McLaughlin at National Review pointed this out. If you go back and you read Trump's State of the Unions or watch them, if you must, you will see Trump puffing himself up, as presidents do, but not really taking many shots at the other side. Biden, by contrast, didn't just lie and puff himself up. He took direct shots at the party that ran the House that had invited them. And those shots seem to me to be both wildly dishonest and also, in many cases, completely irrelevant to things that the president should be talking about if he's going to give an address to the country. We had 47 seconds or so on the many social innovations

the Democrats are obsessed with. We had nothing much on Ukraine and nothing much on China. We did have an extended spiel about ticketmaster and resort fees. And when it came to a topic that does matter a great deal, which is our impending entitlements crisis, the president's only contribution was to lie about the Republican position and shout at them. And the Republicans' response was to behave like barn animals.

And after a while, I just turned it off because i was frankly embarrassed that that's our politics at the moment i don't want to sound too saccharine or serious but i really am embarrassed that that was a representation of our politics if i had been watching that from another country i would have thought look this is a frivolous time and indeed it is well that just shows how out of touch you are with the american people charles joe biden came into office inheriting um a 47 inflation rate which he's wrestled manfully down to what it is today um and what's more when it comes to issues outside of our purview like things that go on in other countries. I mean, people don't care about that. What matters is getting hit with that towel fee when you check out of a hotel. Nobody expects actually having not been at a resort or done anything resort related to nevertheless have a

$20 charge appended to their bill for resort fees. And the very fact that Joe Biden can laser-like focus in on something of such particular interest to people i think shows that he's more in touch with what americans want than this stuff about the world which is theoretically out there i guess right i find i find that a very interesting thing for you to fixate on that's all i'm saying i i'm obsessed with the meetings though i that to me that it's the the stuff that i wanted to know about was was how many meetings did it take to get resort fees in there? And what are they, what, you know, these things are collaborative. So what was removed for resort fees to be put in? You know, there's that moment, which I read about, where he says, you know, we're going to be fossil fuel free in 10 years.

And everybody laughed. Nobody believes 10 years is even, I mean, even if you're, even if your goal is to be fossil fuel free, it's somewhere around 80 or 90 years is pretty much where it's supposed to be. Right. So at some point someone wrote the fossil fuel thing in the speech and they had a number and they got that number from the real number which would be 80 or 90 years maybe 100 years um down to 10 i just want i want to be in that room and i

just listen to the stupid as it cascades out of people not even just stupid just when it comes to date when it comes to dates like that you know that they have a proctologist on the speech reading staff then from which somebody will tell them exactly from where they can pull a number like that it's preposterous and yeah and yeah i understand the idea of i mean i understand that a democratic president um is going to talk a lot of nonsense about the environment i get that and i sort of expect him to say something really stupid about it i get that too but just how they got to the 10 and the cynicism of it and the the the the complete and utter dishonesty of it suggests to me that i think that i will vote for any candidate now i'll say who promises and

delivers i guess i should hardly know if they can deliver to never never give a state of the union speech to if required constitutionally to simply write it and then to send it in so i never have to hear another idiotic politician tell me something that he knows was is untrue and they knew was untrue when they sat together in the oval office put it together that's i guess that was my that's my uh response to it and i read it i didn't see it um and you know you when you read these things you just it's just like my god it's like a chat AI or whatever it is. But it actually would have been a better version. Well, at some point, it's entirely possible that it will be read by somebody who's using chat to GPT and feeding it through a deep fake and just manipulating the mouth and the rest of it.

It could only be an improvement. I mean, but it's about a year away or so. I mean, really, if that. Ten years away. The number of advances that are coming in cascading and I have been remarkable this year since you left, Rob. I mean, it's gone fully sentient, I think now. And these are the issues that when you look back are going to shape the country and then shape the culture. And there's nothing whatsoever coming out of any of the people in charge that seems to reflect they're all too

old and stupid can i just share a chat a chat g what is it chat gpi what is it gpt gpt um all right so uh i was when i was in jerusalem i was with a bunch of people from my church here manhattan we were sort of going to the various holy sites and uh one guy was there was a really funny guy he's in the tech business and he had his phone you know he's always on chat gpt or whatever it is and um and at some point before we were eating uh somebody said a quick blessing and uh and then he said this is i put into chat gpt write a blessing before the meal, grace, for a bunch of Episcopalians that are in

Jerusalem from New York City and going to all the holy sites who saw, I don't know what we saw that day. We saw something that day. Something before dinner. And then chat GPT and he read it. And it was actually pretty good. It was actually, I mean,

obviously all these things are sort of boilerplate anyway, but it was pretty good. I gotta say, I mean, for all the, I mean, it could be better actually, James, we might prefer, I mean, we don't have Peter Robinson on the great speech writer, but we might prefer as long as the, as long as it's three paragraphs, you know, you have a, you're, you're, I have an upper bound for the minute. It might actually get, things might actually be better.

This is what I keep hearing. And I heard this, and we had a conversation at the office the other day about we're going to do a story here at the newspaper on this and AI and the rest of it. And everybody's coming up with good examples. Well, I know somebody who's using it for this, and it works pretty well. Well, I know somebody who uses it for this. Now, of course, there are ethical red lines, which we won't cross. And there are things in which it shouldn't be used. And you just have to laugh because every one of those lines is going to be pole vaulted over. Everybody is going to, of course, use it for whatever they possibly can.

And in the end, two things happen. One, the removal of human agency and the human touch. I mean, you may have gotten a perfect little blessing there. But I would prefer one with ums and ahs and some inelegant figures of speech and a personal note that a computer can't do. And two, the very fact that everybody goes to this means that we accept as it'll do, it's okay, the answer that the machine gives us without thinking for a moment about the guardrails that were in place that guided the machine to do what it did. Somebody the other day was asking, write a poem about this person, write a poem about this person, write a poem praising Charles Murray. And it balked, of course. It can't do that. It can't

praise somebody who is ethically compromised and causes harm like Charles Murray and the rest of it. But we'll wave that away because it does give us something convenient that we can use. And it, you know, carbs are times a little shorter and the rest of it. It's not good. And there's absolutely no way I can see to stop it unless we just sort of accept that anything that comes out that's good and smart and well-written and well-spoken comes from a machine. In the future, we will only trust the stuff that's inelegant, that's broken, that has that sort of strange human touch to it.

It's, I mean, Charles, what's your take on this? Because I'm a Star Trek futuristic, yes, let's go out in the stars and use our communicators and computer, tell me this kind of guy. But everything about this gives me the creeps. It just does. Well, I am stealing the point that I'm about to make from Dominic Pino at National Review. But he convinced me 12 seconds after he said that he thinks that it will kill Google. Not Google, the company.

Google will survive with email services and hosting and what you will. But it seems that it is a more efficient way of gaining all sorts of information than Googling it and being subject to the various manipulations of SEO specialists. Now, there are, of course, manipulations involved in chat GPT, as you say. And one of the projects of the American progressive movement at the moment seems to be to make chat GPT work, to code into it all of its sensibilities. And one of the great advantages of this for them is because they change their mind every seven minutes as to what is now imperative, then they

can just update it as they go. Americans are more resistant. Not quite as resistant as I would like, but Americans are pretty resistant. If you say to Americans, by the way, by the way, every person now can be a walrus, Americans will say, ah, I'm not sure they actually can, in a metaphysical

cosmic sense, be a war us. But ChatGPT won't argue because it is in hock to its programmers. And you tell Cuckoo Cuckoo is ChatGPT's response to that. That being said, the wokeness really influences only a small part of its output, at least at the moment. And as a result, if you want to find a recipe even, but you don't want to read a thousand words that have been written purely for the purpose of getting that recipe at number one in Google, you know, how do i make pizza dough and then they say back in the roman empire and you just get the you just get the the recipe i think it's going to be far superior uh and if i were google i would either be developing my own or looking to buy it uh or looking to destroy it because it's gonna be almost as much of a right a shake-up in the way the internet works as it was when google's algorithm and i i think google agrees with you i mean google is

already trying to come up with their own there are you know manning the barricades right now they're sort of aware that this that it's a natural evolution it's surprising to me that a company like google i mean although they're slow in a lot of other ways didn't anticipate and now there's an you know we looked at you look at search results 20 years ago and they were a lot like search results today there's been no um movement on the part of those sort of that brain trust to try to make things easier or simpler or more human and chat gpt just like it's just basically you're saying tell me a story about something that I can read rather than giving me a bunch of like essentially computer code that I have to click on.

That, that is, has astonishing to the engineers and the people at Google, but it's not astonishing to anybody who's ever wanted to know something about something, you know, just, I don't want to look at a bunch of search results. Just write me three paragraphs. The danger of course, is that who's ever wanted to know something about something you know just i don't want to look at a bunch of search results just write me three paragraphs the danger of course is that who's

writing those paragraphs right who's choosing the the data that it goes into those paragraphs yeah well the joke will be when chat gpt starts to pull its information from google well we look back at the old days sometimes with nostalgia because we see people walking past these news kiosks in New York City with hundreds of magazines, with stacks and stacks of newspapers from all the different newspapers that were in the town before the strike killed them in the early 60s. And we think, well, you know, they didn't know as much as we do now. It was work to go through all those things, but there's a lot of information, a lot of potent information contained in that news kiosk. No one ever looks at that and says, boy, they would have been better off if there had simply been one guy standing there with one publication. Because that's what ChatGPT is. Right now, when you enter something into Google, yes, you do get a whole bunch of search results, and a whole lot of them have been manipulated by SEO. But I was looking for an obscure mid-19th century poet and inventor yesterday,

and Google found him and gave him to me. And I also found a ton of other stuff that sent me off in other different directions. In other words, Google gave me a bat. Who was the poet inventor? I forget his name in a second. It was, well, no, really. I mean, I do a dozen of these things a day. I'll find it by the end because it actually is a fascinating story. It started Mark Twain in his

career. But Google gave me this basket of stuff through which I could sift. And that's where anything, you get all of these results on your front page and you can look around, you can tell by the URL whether or not it's a BS grifter site or whether it's something interesting or whether it's academic or it's Library of Congress. And you can you can choose from that. That's far more illustrative of the vast amount of returns that you can get than simply chat GPT coming back with one thing and saying the one thing. And that's what it becomes. It's it's it's it's it's an affront to Google and a threat to Google because Google at this point is work.

You mean I have to click on this thing, as you pointed out, clicking on a bunch of computer code. You mean I got to go and see whether it's right or wrong. Chat GPT is easier and everything that's easier is what we adapt and it's going to be to our disadvantage to do so. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Hey, I hate to interrupt here, but we need a spot break because that's how we make money. Capitalism, right?

Raw capitalism. Anyway, that's it. We should get to a guest because he's here. Bridge Colby. Bridge Colby, L. Bridge Colby, is the co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a policy initiative focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. He's the author of Strategy of Denial, American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. Be sure to follow him on Twitter at Elbridge Colby. And of course, we'll have that information in the sidebar at Ricochet.com. Welcome to the podcast. Great to be with you, John.

Well, before you got here, we briefly discussed the state of the union because we were just all wrapped and uh fascinated by every syllable uh mentioned how they're you know the china thing didn't seem to play you know what is the china problem what is the administration's china? It doesn't really seem like we know what we're doing. Or do we? Give us a one to ten evaluation of how you think the administration is handling China and also whether or not China is the sort of strong strider of the globe that it seems to be today or is challenged by many internal problems, primarily demographic? Let me break that apart. The first thing I want to say is the right way to measure how we or the administration is doing is not relative to how administrations of the past did it, although they

may deserve credit on that front, but relative to the threat. And this is really critical because a lot of our foreign policy debate is self-referential and kind of, if you will, solipsistic. And in that context, I want to quote something from a really authoritative source, which is to say Top Gun, which is, you know, there are no points for second place. Right. So actually, in fairness, I have to give the administration pretty good marks on a lot of things. I have to give them good marks on the sanctions, on the semiconductors, on the posture announcements that have been rolled out with Japanese and the Filipinos, the Australians and others over the last year or so. And there are other things that they're doing. Their national defense strategy, like ours in the Trump administration, is focused on China. They're overhauling, you know, the military

leadership overhauling, particularly the Marine Corps and the Air Force, et cetera, I could go on. That's all the good part. And that actually compares favorably to some of the previous administration, including elements of the one in which I am proud to have served. I want to stop you right there because you mentioned something about the semiconductors. Did we not decapitate, essentially, a lot of their AI research, a lot of their ai research a lot of their semiconductor invest uh you know inventing possibilities with a with a series of requests and requirements that we made about people as regards to their citizenship we just we just made a whole bunch of people who work there

come home and take them away from china uh i don't think we decapitated them i think uh neil ferguson has a very good point that there's a 1941 dynamic here that we are risk. And this gets to the point I was about to make that we risk provoking China precisely when we're weak. The last point I'd like to say just on the on the earlier point is that we are not doing enough relative to the scale of the threat. And that gets to your third point, which is it's possible that the Peter Zai Hans or the Hal Brands and Michael Beckley's are right that China's on the verge of collapse. I don't think that's a prudent strategic assessment because we should prepare for the downside because the consequences of being wrong on that would be catastrophic if we're wrong. Personally, I'm also somewhat skeptical, but that almost doesn't matter.

And to your point about the semiconductors, I'm trying to get a good sense of that. Some people say it's quite significant. I was talking to a very well-informed person yesterday who was saying this is going to hold them back for maybe a couple of years in certain areas, so that it actually might not. And that actually is in some ways could be even relieving because it actually relieves the neil ferguson concern so i i think the way to look at what the administration is doing frankly is that they are doing a number of good things within the construct that we have current that we have been pursuing which is the walk and chew gum construct but that is woefully inadequate for the scale of the threat so what is the scale of the threat what's the best analogy you mentioned neil ferguson he talks about cold

war ii is he right is a is this uh europe in the 1930s is this napoleon what's the best analogy probably the best analogy would be great britain and imperial germany uh just in terms of scale and the nature of the kind of government that we're dealing with. But I think Neil is basically right. I mean, there was an embarrassing, I think, self-discrediting error made by Robert Kagan in his massive piece in The Wall Street Journal last weekend, in which he contended that China was less powerful relative to the U.S. economy than the Axis powers were, which is just totally incorrect. The Chinese economy in market exchange terms is probably something on the order of three quarters of the size of the American economy. But that's probably artificially inflated by the dollar and the role of service services in the American economy. But in purchasing power parity terms, the Chinese economy is potentially larger. Kagan then, I think, made the situation worse by claiming that the Soviet Union, if you added it to the Axis powers, was larger than the United States, except that proves my point because the United States allied with the Soviet Union.

So, I mean, actually, there is no historical analogy. This is the first time that we have faced as an international power, as a developed power on the world stage, an economy that is even remotely comparable, let alone potentially larger than our own. Are you worried that this war will be less cold and more hot? Are you worried about an invasion of Taiwan? Do you think we're doing enough to forestall that? What sort of time frame do you imagine this will take place in? I'm very worried. I think there's a very good chance that there could be a hot war. I don't make predictions. I don't know what's in Xi Jinping's head. I don't know the future, etc., etc. But I look at the factors, and I think there is a very real set of incentives for the Chinese to act militarily, partially because, as we can see with the Russians, economic sanctions don't actually really work. So the Chinese are not going to gain regional hegemony and global preeminence through economic sanctions alone. It's basically, to be very simple about it,

it's basically the use of direct military force. And there are reasons to think that they could succeed. And I've been very, I was very put off by a very sanguine assessment from the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Colin Call, yesterday on the internet or whatever, that was dismissive of these. You Minahan, the air mobility commander, said, predicted it's in 2025. I think those two extremes are wrong. The correct one is what General Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, says.

We don't know, but we have to be as ready as possible precisely in order to deter it. I agree with Assistant Secretary of Defense Eli Ratner, who said yesterday, it's not inevitable. We can get through this decade. I do not, I disagree with Graham Allison's The World, and this is where I disagree with Neil, that it's not futile.

We can do it, but we have to laser focus. And to answer your question, we are not doing enough because what is enough? Nobody knows. But why even get close? And that's where and we are cutting it very close. I mean, I'm not in favor of really increasing the defense budget, but like we should either be increasing the defense budget or cutting a lot of stuff in the military to focus on China. But we're not doing that. Meantime, we're supporting a proxy war in the Ukraine. And that's not a comment about the just justness of the Ukrainians cause. They are in a just cause. But the purpose of American foreign policy is not missionary work, as Kissinger said. It's to advance and protect the interests of the American people. Hey, thanks for joining us, Rob. So it's impossible, though, for me, although I agree with you that this is new and something entirely different.

It's impossible for me not to apply the Soviet Union Cold War model to this, right? It's just my brain doesn't work any other way. So I've got this example, and I know it's imperfect, but I'm still going to use it. It seemed like that was the training wheels, tinker toy version of this because we were not enmeshed economically the soviet union at all really every now and then we sent them wheat that's about all we did um and we use that wheat as lever to get concessions usually social concessions a lot of times uh you know letting soviet jews leave so union um so the question is as we disentangle

our economies with the Chinese, which are kind of doing, or at least gesturing to, with these semiconductor niches, etc., their response is going to be to one of two things. One is, let's wait and build up our own, and that delays our regional

ambitions for X number of years as we you know develop that or it could be let's strike now let's do this before before the americans inoculate their tech industry and their manufacturing industry and all the things that they need to like we need to disentangle from china in order to do that in in order to have a nice, clean playing field on which to sort of protect Taiwan or whatever we want to do. So which is it? Is it when we buy time, are we buying time for them or are we buying time for us? Well, that's a great question. And that's one that people are thinking about on both sides of the Pacific a great deal. What I would say is that's one of the reasons why the deal. What I would say is that's

one of the reasons why the Cold War analogy is imperfect. My partner, a great friend, Wes Mitchell, wrote a very good piece in the Wall Street Journal last year, kind of rebutting a sort of, I would say, a linear application of the Cold War analogy. Obviously, there's a lot of, you know, I mean, the Cold War is an example of a strategic competition, which is common in history. So this is, it's likely to be consistent. I'm a realist. I look at history. It's likely to be consistent with that. I actually think the economic stuff is dramatically overstated in its importance in the public debate and the military balance is understated. And this gets at my basic view, which is that countries are unlikely to concede to Chinese hegemony through the application of economic leverage. And we've seen that already. The

Chinese are preparing in things like dual circulation for the imposition of American sanctions. Ask yourself why they would do that. And also to generate leverage on the United States. Now, that can work on the margin, but our experience of economic sanctions, including against the Russians right now, is they don't work very well. They can erode capability on the margin, like, you know, missile production and so forth, But they don't generally get at, like, bringing countries to their knees. We've tried this repeatedly over the last hundred years, and it's been a record of woeful lack of success. What this means is the military balance is what's important. Okay, so that does remind me and does seem to sort of tickle my, you know, Reagan Cold War, Reagan Cold Warrior memories, right?

Okay. sort of tickle my uh you know reagan cold war reagan cold warrior memories right okay because he absolutely did make a commitment to rebuilding the military to being sort of bellicose to the soviet union to being extremely extreme well you know evil empire etc etc right being extremely but at least the further for there were four years of aggressive action you know he we put mx missiles into germany right or whatever we put we we did we armed you know we we also deployed mx missiles yeah exactly right so we we did that and which exactly i'm sorry that's right i got my missiles mixed up um but we know that that was the name we came up with much more much more pleasant oh the p yes right that's right exactly right

but it turned out it was it was a a cynical name and people interpreted it cynically, but it turned out it did the job, right? Well, I would say, yeah. I mean, sorry. I would just say, isn't that a good, is that an example of, you make a commitment to... I want to reclaim Reagan from the neo-Reaganites, the Bob Cagans and the Bill Crystals, because I think they play up a kind of Reagan as if he was George W. Bush in 2005 and saying, we're going to end tyranny in the world and we're going to use our military. If you look at the Reagan record and you step back and you look at it over the scope, we had withdrawn from Indochina before him and it is somewhat initiated under the Carter administration. But Reagan accelerated genuinely peace through

strength, right, which was major buildup of American military forces, pressure on the Soviet Union, you know, working with our allies, including ones that we might not, you know, that Carter didn't like to work with, like the Saudis or the Filipinos or the Philippines or some of the South American countries, et cetera, et cetera. And then press at heart, I i mean very hot rhetorical temperature but almost never employed the military granada right and lebanon which you know granada was almost like a learning experience yeah so lebanon was a disaster and then transitioned it actually is what my view is is we need to be hawks to get to be doves like reagan probably was able to do it in his own administration i think that's how we should look at it over time i want to accept all of that but yeah i accepted all of that right

yeah uh and i guess i again i return to this imperfect comparison because it's the only one i know right yeah um reagan was lucky yes he was uh great president right i mean no disrespect to reagan it's great to be lucky that's a a great virtue. Right. But he was lucky. He had Margaret Thatcher. He had Pope John Paul II. He had a difficult relationship with West Germany. But in the end, they acquiesced. He had NATO partners that believed, whether they believed it in their hearts or not, whether they were secret communists, that a strong Europe was going to deter the Soviet Union.

My question is, who's the NATO in this fight with China? Who do we, in a sort of a clockwise fashion around the globe, who's going to be the Margaret Thatcher to our, I'm going to say President Biden? He also had Mikhail Gorbachev, which was very, and he saw that. That's right, that's right, right. That's very true, that's very true, which I don't see Mikhail Gorbachev, which was very, and he saw that. That's right. That's right. Right. That's very true. That's very true. Which I don't, I don't see a Mikhail Gorbachev in the next generation of Chinese.

And they, they've learned that lesson. They're not, they're not going to repeat that experience, I think. Well, I mean, Shinzo Abe, obviously tragically assassinated, but a critical figure. Japan is increasing defense spending. Like you could think of them as West Germany. Australia is doing a lot. The new government in the Philippines, Marcos government, to some extent, the Europeans, I generally am pretty critical of particularly the Western European countries like Germany. But, you know, Poland is really doing a great job. You could say that the Israeli government, India, for sure. The Modi government is definitely very aligned. So I think, look, I mean, that's, we have an alignment of interests about fear of China, and that's coming together. Do you see that actually happening?

Oh, yeah, it's definitely happening. This is an analysis I agree with, but do you see it happening in the Biden administration? Do you see them sort of collecting the pieces they need to play this chess game? Yes, and it started under the Trump administration, it's continued under the Biden administration, and the reality is it's mostly due to Xi Jinping and the growth of Chinese power. And it's more aggressive wielding. It's not, you know, again, we tend to have our debates about about who's, you know, which administration is better and so forth. It is a material. But the fundamental factor driving, say, India's change or Japan's increase in defense spending

is not the Trump administration, the Biden administration. It's fear of China. Speaking of fear of China, how worried should I be about the balloon? Yeah, thank you. It's a little hard for me because I, you know, to me, I like marinated in this stuff. So I'm like, oh, the Chinese are flying a balloon over us. What else is new? Like what what other thing could they get? But obviously pierced the the sort of the bubble on american popular perception i think you should be afraid of the what the balloon signifies which is a chinese military chinese military that has a global reach and global ambitions and is planning on conducting attacks on the on the american heart uh homeland i think it's reasonable to surmise in the end of a conflict over over taiwan and you have a political leadership that's increasingly willing either to use it or to sign off on using it so it

is i was asked on german television the other day i said something along these lines she said well that's very scary and i was like yeah i'm scared i'm worried like really worried we should be how about the green lasers aimed at hawaii this is something that popped up on my twitter feed the other day that they blamed on china as well uh i didn't see that. I mean, they're experimenting with all different kinds of capabilities and, you know, ways of surveilling and maybe spoofing us and getting us to do things. So, you know, they have a huge space architecture they're building up. You know, the list goes on. I mean, when we talk about war with China, it seems that most people would think, well, it would just not be confined to a particular location in an exchange of, you exchange of some ships going down.

We lose a carrier group. It becomes big. It becomes intercontinental. It becomes ballistic missiles. China, I mean, big country, a lot of assets. They can lose a lot of things. But do they not consider a hypersonic missile into the Three Gorges Dam and what that would do? Or they just think the West wouldn't do that because they have a veneer of humanitarianism? I don't think we would do that partially for that, but more because we know what the Chinese could do in response. And so it's not, it's not, it's just not a sensible strategy for us to threaten to, you know, kill millions. I mean, we didn't use the, against the Red River Dykes in North Vietnam, and the Chinese can do much more damage to us

than the North Vietnamese could. So, I mean, a conflict would likely be centered in the Western Pacific, but it would very likely extend beyond it, including in the American homeland, at least. Because, look, my view is we would have to conduct attacks on the Chinese mainland in order to be able to conduct an effective defense of Taiwan

and other allies along the First Island chain. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander unfortunately were we right to shoot down the balloon or did it not matter i asked because my instinct is that you cannot allow that to go unnoticed especially once the public is aware of it and you can't hide it anymore if indeed they were trying to hide it i think it's a foreign you know military affiliated aircraft operating without permission our territorial airspace you absolutely you absolutely should have done do you think that and it should have been sooner as far as i know but it's not clear they knew about it

so that the timeline is evolving okay that's what i was going to ask were they trying to get away with not shooting it down did they not know about it i think that's what I was going to ask. Were they trying to get away with not shooting it down? Did they not know about it? I think that's a reasonable suspicion. If the facts come out that they did not know about it until it already had arrived over Montana, which I saw recently in the news. But some of their stories are changing. I mean, it's not unusual. But look, I think you don't fly military- fly military affiliated intelligence aircraft over our airspace

and if we see it coming and it's over and you know maybe you have three minutes to get out of there but after that you're down baffling with the american people um of which i'm a member because we're told uh that it was a one-off we were told that it happened during trump we were told also that it's sort of like the open skies things with the Russians, where they do this and they do that, so everybody knows what the capabilities are, and we wink, wink, nod, nod. And then we're told that we didn't see it, we didn't know it was there, until it was over

Montana and somebody eyeballed it. We were sort of taught to believe in the 80s that NORAD was so good and so twitchy that a flock of starlings would get the ICBMs all heated up, and now you're telling us this thing can float in, and nobody sees it until, you know, Yeah yeah that's part of the reason to use a balloon people joke about balloons but hey it's great loiters it's very advanced in a lot of ways and norad has atrophied over the last couple decades i mean there was the canadians are finally doing more

on their part and investing in it but yeah i mean we this is this gets this gets it like our military is amazing i didn't serve in the military, so I'm like a bit like our military is phenomenal. But we shouldn't just assume that it's like, you know, the Harlem Globetrotters against the Washington generals. What do you make of the Chinese response to our shooting at Dami? The stones on these guys to just to upbraid us for having done what we did is remarkable diplomatic posture. I mean, it's usually usually we get lies and the rest of it but that yeah what what did you glean they seem to have backed down a little bit they did they did offer a kind of an apology so they i think they've been caught out in ways

that they maybe didn't anticipate so but my view is like why should we be seeking to cooperate with them at this point which is sort of delusional anyway, since it is largely a zero sum game at this point. Instead, if they need, I think that basically they're on a charm offensive. The leopard hasn't changed its spots, but they're hurting because of the economic implications, zero COVID, you know, perceptions around the last party Congress, et cetera. So they're looking to like turn down the temperature. Well, you know, if you're in a long-term strategic rivalry that's the time to kind of push things i'm not saying that we like you know invade china obviously but what i'm saying is we should not be letting them off the hook when it's convenient for them you hinted at something earlier and if you didn't correct me i wonder what the opportunity cost is of our involvement in Ukraine.

I am strongly in favor of Ukraine, as you suggested. You are. They were invaded. I have no moral problem with them fighting back. They must. And I have no moral problem with us helping them either. But is there a real opportunity cost there financially, militarily, the public's attention span? if so what is it absolutely i think i mean i wrote a piece a year ago and got a lot of flack for it saying don't let ukraine become a distraction from taiwan and it has become one i mean look we said i mean dollar figures i

mean here's the the basic point to keep in mind we're not where we need to be and the trajectory is negative especially over the next few years coming years vis-a-vis a defense of taiwan of course taiwan is not the point taiwan is this is is about the disposition few years, coming years, vis-a-vis a defense of Taiwan. Of course, Taiwan is not the point. Taiwan is about the disposition of Asia as a whole, which is the world's primary theater. So we should be changing in the direction of China. The status quo beforehand was not tenable either. And in that context, we've given $100 billion to Ukraine, and we wouldn't even give $2 billion in grants to Taiwanwan not because i mean the taiwanese are rich but this is not about the taiwanese this is about an effective american deterrent and defense so large american numbers of americans won't die by the way the defense industrial base people are

saying oh it's great ukraine we're motivated if you watch testimony last i think yesterday the day before from like dave norquist former deputy secretary of defense he's headed the ndia the things are moving in the wrong direction. Yeah, we've woken up to the problem. But I mean, in the last month or so, there have been multiple studies and reports coming out about the inadequacy of the defense industrial base. And a lot of the weapons that are being sent to Ukraine would be relevant for Taiwan. And Taiwan is behind the curve.

Moreover, there's a lot of subcomponents when you get in the nitty gritty. For instance, there's like one company that makes the turbofan for cruise missiles. There's just scarcity in the defense industrial base is in bad shape. Moreover, the political attention of the leadership, clearly the president even mentioned Taiwan in the State of the Union. And he's talking like, you know, he thinks he's Winston Churchill about Russia and Ukraine. So it's like that tells you a lot. So this walk and chew gum idea is delusional because the way I would think about it is like, well, maybe you chew gum on the one hand, but then you wrestle a dragon or sprint a marathon on the other because that's the order of magnitude. Which is which one is China, the walking or the chewing gum? Because that doesn't make sense. Can I sorry, can I can I just elaborate? Yeah, because there have been a number of cases made by sort of fellow conservative sort of right of center people over the last few days and so forth about, you know, look, in theory, in theory, we could have done something where Russia was sort of, quote unquote, decisively defeated, went back into a corner after six months and, you know, just kind of licked its wounds for 10, 15 years.

That's not what happened and it's not what's happening. So like from what we can tell. So for instance, there's an argument that the United States gains because it's not directly involved and it's attriting the capability of the Russian military. True. But that's only a net benefit if Russian doesn't mobilize to a war footing, which is what it's doing and sustaining and sustaining its eminent. Then it's actually worse because it's doing and sustaining and sustaining its eminent then it's actually worse because it's a more hostile power and it has a roughly equivalent military power i mean we can argue but it's not clearly a net benefit another is the war is i mean no i mean clearly the administration stoltenberg others the ukrainians themselves i think are preparing for a long war putin himself

is preparing for a long war so this notion that we can like sequence it so that we like beat the beat the Russian, we the Ukrainians beat the Russians with our targeting information weapons, and then we shift to Taiwan. It's not a realistic scenario. Moreover, what I find very frustrating from hawks is it's, you know, and I consider myself more like instrumentally hawkish or dovish. I think it should be situationally independent. But it's one thing for the administration to say they can walk and chew gum at the same time, because their whole argument is you don't need to dominate. We can do less and still be safe. But hawks are the ones who've been saying for 10, 15 years that we haven't been spending enough on defense, that we need to be militarily dominant to be safe. So what is it? That doesn't even make sense, right? And that's what bothers me, is like, I'd actually really like to see a serious argument that grapples with that scarcity that they've been talking about. For instance, you know, Reagan, SDI, for 40 years, there have been a lot of people in the missile defense community who've said if we don't have an adequate missile defense, there's no way we can stand up to the Russians. Well, the reality is we don't have a missile defense today that's adequate to stand up for the Russians. And we're supporting a proxy war in Ukraine. So is that just completely wrong?

I mean, I personally support more missile defense for certain capabilities. I mean, where it makes sense. But I'm just saying, like, this argument is aspirational or sort of wishful thinking rather than, I think, grounded in the reality that we're seeing. My last question is about the American public. I was born towards the end of the Cold War. And in fact, my first memory of anything to do with it was when Ceausescu was killed. And I heard it on the radio and asked my parents what all that was about but if you look back clearly the cold war and the presence of the soviet union was a big force in our politics for years and it created a coalition on the right that republicans have found hard to put together again since 1990 i don't see the same level of interest in foreign affairs, in fear of China now. And insofar as people seem interested in China, it seems to be more to do with trade and coronavirus. Are you worried, as I am, that if China did invade Taiwan,

unless there were huge numbers of American deaths or something that was so egregious as to wake everyone up, that a majority of Americans would just say, I don't want to get involved. I'm very worried that you would put your finger on it. So I think that there is a real sense that China is a threat, but it's basically seen in the economic and sort of cultural TikTok type stuff. And the military threat seems distant and removed. And the scale of what people are talking about in terms of the costs versus what the American people are prepared to bear is not that they don't necessarily match. I mean, the example I use, and I'm not sure this is justified because China is a much larger economy than the USSR was. Now, Europe was completely destroyed in 1949 and

so forth. So it doesn't completely map. They, Europe was completely destroyed in 1949 and so forth. So it doesn't completely map. They had a massive standing force in Eastern Europe, etc. But I mean, what I think is is what I really worry about is that Americans would say, you know, I sympathize with Taiwan, but I'd rather just kind of bring home, you know, reshore industry and manufacturing and we'll live to we'll live to fight another day. I don't think that's actually a prudent strategy. But what I really worry about is that that this gets back to what we were talking about earlier. And this is a really subtle point that you brought up is. Part of the reason, what is it that we need to do to have that safe deterrent and defense vis-a-vis China? We don't just want to be on the margin where it's like, oh, hey, 50,000 people are going to die in the first two weeks, but we can do it because the American people don't have the

perception of the stakes to justify that. They're going to say, what? I don't think, including even hawkish members of Congress, I'm not sure would support that if the chips are down. So the critical thing is because it's so important, like, I think there's a mismatch between what's actually at risk and what people think is at risk. And I understand why that is. I mean, it's not Joseph Stalin. It's not the gulag. It's not the Holodomor, right? But it's actually a much more powerful force and a future that we can't control. So what we want to do is we want to have a much more confident denial denial defense forward that would bring our costs down. And this is a point I make to our allies. It's so important to bring our costs down because we're dealing.

It's not out of charity. It's because the American people are going to blink. And I think I think on the right now in the Congress and particularly in the Senate, you have a lot of kind of traditional neoconservative voices. But my impression of the voting public, particularly on the Republican side, is like, what, another war? That's why there's a skepticism about Ukraine, which we're not even directly involved in. So this really, really, really worries me. And this is one of the reasons that I'm so against the further intervention, certainly in Ukraine directly. Again, I support supporting them consistent with the prioritization of Taiwan, but certainly getting into war in the Middle East is we've already blown a lot of the political will and resolve that would be necessary for a fight. This is what makes me so angry about the Robert Cagans and the John Boltons of the world, is we have spent that

political resolve in wars that were not truly existential, you know, that were not central to our interests, and it did not go well. And now we need to be really careful and husband it so carefully. And I got to say, I mean, I don't mean to go on, but like as a Republican, the next president, and I personally hope it's Republican, is going to be president in 2027. Now, nobody knows if Xi Jinping is going to go in 2027. But you know what we do know, according to Bill Burns, the liberal Democrat appointee CIA director. I don't know what his politics are, but the administration, he says Xi Jinping, American intelligence says Xiping wants to have the ability to invade and occupy taiwan in 2027 it's kind of like uh well i mean you're not going to get too much more of a tip-off than that yeah yeah so that really really worries me that is the issue last question before we let you go and this has been just absolutely fascinating

the belton road initiative which has been going on for several years the the application of soft power the major country diplomacy effort to get all these other countries into the Chinese umbrella. Is that at odds with wolf warrior diplomacy? Is that at odds with this new aggressive posture or is it walking and chewing gum for China as well? And how is the BRI doing for them? Are they actually accumulating more resentful, sullen satraps, governments that really don't like the fact they're indebted to them now? Or are they actually hoovering up resources and precious and unique rare earths and the rest of it that will enable them to do exactly what they want to do, which is to economically, militarily, and diplomatically dominate. So my view, which I referred to earlier, is that their attempt to develop economic leverage and use it to establish a kind of soft empire, if you will, is actually not working and, in fact, is backfiring. And that's simple because people basically won't give in to economic pressure for something,

generally speaking, that's central to their political identity. For instance, it's very hard to find examples of embargoes or blockades leading to the capitulation of an enemy nation. And that's like the most effective form. By the way, there are also multiple alternative. I mean, China is a huge economy, but there are multiple alternative routes. Right. We see, for instance, I mean, literally every country in Asia and increasingly ones in Europe have basically faced China's economic coercion and responded by diversification and not giving in. Australia being the most noble example, perhaps. India, Japan over rare earths, Taiwan itself and the sunflower movement, the United States, now Canada, Philippines over bananas. I think Taiwan also over pineapples. Now in Europe, you see it,

and it's basically backfiring. And that's, you know, so if you try to use sanctions, I mean, look at our experience. It it's not very encouraging even with like really poor and relatively weak countries like north korea you know even iran it doesn't really work very well um economic sanctions or cuba i'm not saying that those causes are unjust in our favor but the strategy didn't yield the results that we wanted the The second thing is, I think the Belt and Road, they actually need to expect to make money out of. So to take a Cold War example, the Soviets would just like throw around money and then use it for political leverage. The Chinese, I think, actually are expecting to make money or other kind of economic benefits out of it, employment and so forth. And that makes it harder to turn that into political leverage.

So this is good news because it means that I don't think we need to, I don't think we need to worry about their economic leverage quite as much. I don't think we need to decouple fully. I do think we need significant selective decoupling. It also means that what happens in our societies, you know, I hate all the misinformation, disinformation stuff anyway, I'm a free speech guy, but I also think it doesn't add up strategically. Like countries aren't going to give in by being hoodwinked. I mean, look, it's a problem that people are bought off at Wall Street, and we've been hearing from some of them recently. But it's a manageable problem.

The bad news is it makes the military instrument that much more attractive for the Chinese, and they're building a military to do it. And, for instance, one of the indicators that we see, you know, going back to the Reagan stuff, 400 ICBM launchers, silos, they exceed our number of launchers. Now, that's not like the end. That's not the only indicator. It's not the end of the world. We could pettifog it, but it's a big deal. And it tells you they're the thing it tells me that they're preparing to do is fight a war under the nuclear shadow against the United States. If only I'd stopped you at the good news is we could end on a happy note. But no, you know, it is fixable. is we need urgency you keep saying that that's that's that is your i mean just that's my message that's your message that this is fixable it's fixable we can have peace but we need to act

we're like we need to act on brady on the off season we don't need mark milley saying that our military can every beat we need the attitude that tom brady let every off season he said don't take anything for granted act as if it's your first time in the NFL, whatever, you know what I'm sure, whatever he said, that pep talk is what we need. The book is Strategy of Denial, American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. The author and the guest, Elbridge Colby. It's been great. Thanks. I hope to talk to you again in the future as things change or don't and thank you for being on the ricochet podcast today great pleasure gentlemen uh okay well it's harrowing you know everyone's on this german she's like that's very scary what you're saying

yeah i'm scared that's why I'm out here, you know. All right. Thank you, sir. It is scary. Well, it is. I mean, you have a great guest. You have a great conversation, very knowledgeable, very articulate. And you just think, man, I hope his Wikipedia page in 20 years says, and here's somebody who was just wrong about everything, as opposed to a prescient voice, Cassandra and all the rest of it.

But the fact is, it is fixable if we start voice, Cassandra and all the rest of it. But the fact is it is fixable. If we start talking about it, if we start talking about it and Hey, you folks, you can talk about it at Ricochet, of course, but you can also talk about it in real life, in real life.

IRL. I ought to hand it to you, Rob, because you're the guy who was doing these meet space, meetup promos, all these, I took it over. I took your mantle. Didn't do it. That's good. I'm glad you did a good job. You're the guy who was doing these MeetSpace meetup promos, all these. I took it over. I took your mantle.

Didn't do it. That's good. I'm glad. You did a good job. You're doing a good job. Like you listened. Why don't you do it then? From now?

I mean, I thought you were going to do it. Well, I will say this. It's that, you know, the web is fine and virtual is fine and dandy and all that stuff, but nothing actually beats IRL. And that's why if you join Ricochet, you can come to, and we want you to come to the meetups. They happen, they're fun, and there's some that are coming up. You can meet the actual king of stuff, John Gabriel,

at the event he's hosting in Phoenix, which will happen mid-March. That gives you plenty of time. And then a bunch of us are going to be in New Orleans for the French Quarter Fest. I know I will be. I'm not quite sure. I don't have the dates in front of me, but they're on my calendar, so I'm going to be there. And my advice to you is to...

If you want to have a significantly... You want to have a conversation with me that I will remember, it's the... You got to come for the whole thing, because I'm not... I enjoy my time in new orleans and so i'm just telling you uh we might have to have we might have to say things twice to each other uh and then um there's a set on april 22nd um flickr has set the date april 22nd it's the date for the stillwater minnesota oh i have something in my little on my screen here

um and i there's a possible James Lilac's. No, absolutely. Appearance. What's the date on that again? April 22nd, April 22nd. I think I'm going to be around. So that would be great. That'll be good.

Unless I am in England or Bartholomew. There's nice all over the road in, in, in April. Look, if, if the dates I just mentioned are not good for you or the locations aren't good for you, there is a solution. Just join Ricochet. And have your own. And have your own. And Ricochet will come to you. We need a Ricochet karaoke contest, too, because Burt Bacharach died

in 94. And so I'm going to ask you guys to name your favorite Burt Bacharach. There's a moment in 1978, 79, I think so, Stiff Records put on a live album and it had Ian Drury, it had Reckless Eric, it had Nick Lowe, of course, but Elvis Costello came out and did a rave up song. And then Elvis Costello, who was this angry, geeky guy with National Health Service glasses and the spitting and the bad teeth and all the rest of it, comes out and says to this raucous, drunk pub crowd, this is a song by Burt Bacharach and Al David.

And Elvis Costello, prefiguring what we would all come to know as his love of the great songbooks and his appreciation for craftsmanship, saying, I just don't know what to do with myself. Not the best song for Belvis in his range at the time, but he introduced a million new wavers to Burt Bacharach, who was just a melodic genius. So I'm going to ask you guys to tell me your favorite song. Not to sing it. No. I will tell you my favorite song, and I'll also tell you some Burt Bacharach stories, right? Favorite right favorite song i think is say a little prayer although um they're all fantastic um this guy's in love with you is unbelievably beautiful don't hog them he uh he uh when i was living in l and the beach in la in santa monica he was staying i think temporarily in the place called the sea colony which on the beach around the corner and we had

a mutual friend and she's a singer and so we uh mutual friend and i would walk our dogs together in the morning and he would always sort of come out um and uh and he always looked like fantastic you know he's an older guy but like he just looked like the silver hair and the towel he would like in these incredibly cashmere sweats with like a rolled up towel around his neck he always looked like he was just sinatra he walked out of a colombo episode oh my god he looked like he looked like a movie star um and two things one i asked him about that because he just done that album with elvis costello and i asked him like what was their working relationship like because i would see you know we were sort of friendly i guess and he said oh yeah we got together a little bit mostly

that we would just send each other we would call each other up and leave bits of songs on each other's voicemails. And I said, wow, do you still have those voicemails? And he looked at me like, why would I have, no. He said, no. It's like, what's the stupid question? But the other thing he would do is, and i mean this with all due respect to the man he was um i mean you know he was at one point married to one of the most beautiful women in the world angie dickinson um he was a he liked the ladies he was a ladies he that he was that guy yeah and so i would be standing there with my friend who

she's a you know very lovely singer song. And we would be there and you could, he would you physically this man. And then, you know, I think he was married at the time and she's married at the time. It was just instinctive. He was, you could feel him slowly moving in front of me to kind of push me out of the trio. Like, this was like, he just wanted me somewhere else so he could focus on the girl and i thought that that is such hipster behavior it was very gentlemanly but i thought this guy is

he's he's blocking me here i was going to say i bring i love this i bring up an album that i heard in 1978 rob tells an anecdote that actually involves elvis gustello and being rooster blocked by the man himself physically. Right, right. It was an honor. It was an honor for that guy. Last time I asked you for something like that. Sorry, that's my Burt Bacharach story.

Charles, your Burt Bacharach story. Well, I don't have a Burt Bacharach story, but I do have a favorite song. But I also have a song that is not the best of his songs, but that I have a connection to because my dad had it on a tape when i was very little and i only learned yesterday that burt bacharach wrote it and i was astonished in fact my jaw hit the floor when i learned can i get can i guess yes oh no i'll write it down if i'm right go ahead you tell me when i learned that the song 24 hours from tulsa by gene pitney yes was written by burt backrack and hal david i had no idea often people don't know that song i have some friends from oklahoma and they live in tulsa and when i see them i always

say you know the song by gene pitney 24 hours from tulsa and they look at me and said i have seven heads but in my mind this is one of the great songs that everyone knows because we had this tape, we play it while we're having barbecue outside, 50 songs, you know, it was full of Gene Pitney and, you know, Ricky Nelson, that kind of stuff. And this song was the first thing on the second side. And I just sort of knew about it right from I can remember. And he wrote it. Are you kidding me and then you

do that when you look through his canon which is enormous and you went oh he wrote that he wrote that he wrote that he wrote that but i mean i think musically my favorite burke backtrack song is is one that everyone would choose which is raindrops keep falling on my head oh that's great right it is and i think and i was you know i was around when that came out and i was young and i made all the compilations and it was on the radio constantly wasn't it and now of course it's regarded as sort of a relic of that era bj is forgotten and right we have the sort of music video images of the butch and the sundance kid clowning around in their western ways riding on the bike riding the bike the catherine right right all of that you can

throw all that away throw the just take the lyrics away from it and just revel in the absolute gorgeousness and ingenuity of the melody itself and that's the thing about back rack is that he was writing pop songs at a time where there was still an intersection between where you could get something like that on the radio when you think of the extraordinary melodic content of that song, and it's distilled like down to a nuclear pellet, we just take it for granted the way it moves and breathes and the way it modulates and the rest of it. That fit on the radio in those days. Does that fit on the radio today with auto-tune voices and things that are programmed to be gestured for TikTok videos and the rest of it? It doesn't because we live in a far more meretricious culture. So it's a beautiful

song. Also, maybe since you called that one, I'd have to say that it's always something there to remind me is of the same ilk because it goes and it just expands and flies and goes. And it's, if you sat down to, to predict where you think that song is going to go based on the opening you you wouldn't be able to tell because you're not burt bachorek but he he talked about that go on yeah i mean he talked about that like the idea that you can't that that the the popular music is so predictable now those songs that he would write these long loopy things that would kind of end and they didn't even have any hooks. Some of them were just had these, it just was a beginning,

middle and an end. And then it was over. Right. I mean, he actually, he was sort of aware of that, how out of place he was. But,

but I mean, pop music has been for me. It was for me like 50, 60, 70 years before he came around. I mean, if you look at your, you look at the tin pan alley,

you look at the 20, the theme, the Brill brothers, the Brill stuff, you look at the twenties, it was all formula now. And then you'd get a guy who could break that and, and, and do what back rack did. And you're right. It's, it's the inspiration.

It's letting it go where it takes you as opposed to having, well, I got to turn out a hit. We're sitting here. We got to get one for the show before, you know, we go down to the, you know, Schwab's for lunch. No, he was not that he was one of a kind, even to the fact that you could take a song, like always something there to remind me and set it to the most intrusively computerized percussion beat, which a group called Naked Eyes did in 1983. They hooked up with a producer named Tony Mansfield, who was a genius of his own right

in a group called New Music. He's like a one-man band, essentially. And Naked Eyes handed to him this song and he added this these these rote synthetic drums that would be i remember that right and it's i mean it's a fascinating tune because the drums are way too young to remember this but i remember i remember listening to that sort of like uh like my freshman year in college or my senior year so so the fact the fact that his melody could survive that and add to it, and it just shows you how much power and potency there was

in what he did in the notes. He had a bit of a resurgence. I know we have to run, but he had a bit of a resurgence in sort of popularity. Not popularity. He was always popular, but a bit of like he had a secondary moment. A lot of it happened because he sort of he compiled all of his music because he felt like he wasn't getting music licenses for show business the way he expected and so he sort

of invested i mean the guy was which is hell but whatever he invested in this like i think four disc set which he sent around to a bunch of music supervisors in in in la to sort of remind them hey listen i wrote every song so you should use my songs and your stuff which kind of helped but also kind of created a little mini boom for him and there's one um celebration that he sort of put together himself um it's called one amazing night i think it is and it's a live sort of set of covers and a lot of like you know contemporary bands young younger bands doing cover versions of his songs and it's just exactly what James is saying.

It's like you realize just how solid those songs were. Well, I'm haunted now. I'm haunted by the fact that he and Elvis Costello left melodic fragments. Yeah, isn't that amazing? Because you could actually, if you took one of those and fed it to AI to sing GPT, maybe it could come up with you. That's when I mean, okay, that is the only application of artificial intelligence. All right, we found one.

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