Is the Fight against China Real? Military Industrial Complex vs China w/ Dr. Rebecca Grant

➡ China is increasing its nuclear power, which raises concerns about regional aggression. Meanwhile, Sarah Westall discusses a weight loss peptide called retatrutide, which she claims is effective in burning fat and reducing appetite. She also discusses the dominance of China in various industries, including art and manufacturing, and the need to protect American industries. Lastly, she emphasizes the importance of having real debates about these issues in the independent media space.
➡ The text discusses the importance of maintaining respectful conversations on the author’s channel and warns against negative behavior. It then promotes a product called Masterpiece, which helps detoxify the body from harmful substances like heavy metals and microplastics. The author also introduces a conversation with Rebecca Grant, a defense expert, who discusses the importance of technological advancement in the military and the growing threat of China’s military power.
➡ The speaker discusses the importance of encouraging children to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. They express concern about the lack of STEM knowledge among politicians and journalists, and the potential impact on the country’s ability to compete globally, particularly with China. The speaker also highlights China’s aggressive technological advancements and their potential threat to the U.S. They emphasize the need for the U.S. to foster a more tech-savvy workforce to stay competitive and maintain its global position.
➡ The text discusses a product that promotes hair growth and reduces wrinkles, and then shifts to geopolitical issues. It highlights China’s territorial claims and military aggression, particularly towards the Philippines, and the U.S.’s commitment to defend the Philippines if attacked. The text also discusses China’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal, the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons, and the uncertainty surrounding China’s limits and motivations. Lastly, it debates whether China’s rise from poverty is due to communism or global trade, leaning towards the latter.
➡ China has been accused of not playing by the rules, engaging in espionage, and stealing intellectual property. They have also been involved in cyber attacks, with a significant one in 2013 exposing the information of 20 million Americans. China is also advancing in technology, particularly in AI, advanced computing, and quantum, posing a threat to the U.S. economy and national security. Despite criticisms, President Trump has been pushing for U.S. corporate investment in these areas to compete with China, with the private sector playing a crucial role in research and development.
➡ The text discusses concerns about China’s influence and control over various sectors, including the drug trade, land ownership, and manufacturing. It suggests that China holds a grudge against the U.S. due to historical events like the Opium Wars. The text also highlights the difficulty of finding American-made products, suggesting that China’s dominance in manufacturing has limited consumer choices. It ends by emphasizing the need to address these issues, possibly through tariffs and regulatory changes, to prevent China from gaining more control.
➡ The discussion emphasizes the importance of supporting American tech and manufacturing industries to compete globally, particularly against China. It highlights the need for sensible regulations that don’t hinder innovation or global sales, and the potential benefits of selling advanced military technology to allies. The conversation also touches on the influence of tech giants on culture and the need for open discussions on these topics.

There is a lot of regional aggression by China. But I want to make sure to mention the other thing about China just in case you’re wondering about their motivations. They are a nuclear power. They’ve had a small number of nuclear weapons for many decades but recently they decided that they would go from a couple hundred nuclear weapons up to 1500 or more. Just a short break from the program to share with you an amazing peptide to help you lose weight. It’s stronger than Ozempic and why it’s because it not only reduces your appetite but it also burns fat.

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It is easy and straightforward. Go to sarahwestall.com under shop or use the link below and remember to use coupon code Sarah. Welcome to business Game changers. I’m Sarah Westall. I have Rebecca Grant coming to the program. She’s a national security expert. She’s an expert on China. She was a White House senior advisor. She’s also a vice president of the Lexington Institute. But she’s going to come on and talk about China and military and all that. I wanted to ask because you there’s how much of this whole China thing is a propaganda to direct redirect money to the military industrial complex versus how much is it real? And so I wanted to discuss that.

I think it’s really important because I think a lot of the independent media questions that and so let’s talk about it, let’s get these issues out there. Why is it important and is it real that we need to protect our industry from China? And we get into this, I mean think about it. Every single industry is slowly being taken over by the lower income countries. Now a lot of that’s our fault, right? This is where the tariffs come in. But I tried to buy things for my house. I’m doing some construction work and I’m telling you, I, I use the example during the show, but you do this.

I was looking for a sculpture and I know I’m kind of an art weirdo, okay? But I wanted a sculpture for my garden and I wanted something kind of modern. And so I was looking on Etsy and it’s. I, I could not find it. Did you go to Alibaba and I look for sculptures, Whole bunch. Look for a modern. Because I wanted a modern sculpture. You can get a whole bunch for not that expensive, right? If you try to get that same thing in, you can’t. You, first of all, you can’t get it. It’s not mass produced.

So you’re going to have to hire an artist, you’re going to have to commission an artist to do it locally and you are going to be playing, paying tens of thousands of dollars. Want. Suddenly I’m like, okay, well I don’t get a sculpture or I get one from there, right? That, I mean, that’s your options. Nothing or from China. But that’s a sculpture. It’s kind of irrelevant, right? It’s kind of trivial. But then you start looking at other things. You know, when it comes to. I’m looking for doors, modern doors. They have them in LA and Chicago.

I’m telling you, they look like they’re all imported from China. I don’t know, but I bet you they do. And then you look at other things. She was talking about the dollar stores, how they’re starting to take over. Very close to taking over those industries too. We’re getting a point where so little of what we do is manufactured here. And so the, the trying to get those industries back is valid and we talk about that, but we also discuss big tech because big tech is the one industry that we dominate and it’s based out of here and they’re trying to protect that.

And, and so we talk about. Because that’s my background, I have a tech background. And so I. How realistically is it that we can protect that? And then she talks. We, we dive in. I point out a lot of stuff. These are the kind of conversations, see what’s happening with the mainstream media that’s taking a dive right there. And the problem with the mainstream media is they get people on like this and it’s, it’s a love fest. They, they push back on nothing essentially, except trivial things. When they do push back, it’s on shallow personality crap.

Right? On Kamala Harris’s laugh and how much you don’t like her because she’s not a genuine. And all this stuff that’s just, I mean, come on, in the big scheme of all the money and the power, the geopolitical stuff, we just. And I realize her not being very smart is not, could be relevant or, or is relevant that Biden couldn’t even think. Right. But the, the problem is, is all they talk about is really low level personal personality stuff or kind of nonsense stuff. When you get to the bigger things, it’s usually a love fest between the, the mainstream media and the legacy, meaning they’re all dying.

That’s why they’re dying. And the government. And then you get the independent media that are all like anti government pretty much. And for the most part, everybody is wary of government because we’ve had to deal with so much crap and so that obviously there’s some kind of middle ground with some of these things. And, and the problem is we haven’t had for decades, maybe forever and maybe since before, maybe at the beginning of our country, for the first couple hundred years, they actually had real debate about real issues. And now it’s like we, let’s have some real debate about some of these real issues and start addressing these hard questions.

Now that the mainstream media has collapsed because they won’t deal with these questions, let’s bring people into the independent media space and have those hard questions. I’m going to ask you questions because, because this is what the people are thinking and please address it. And they are, and they want to, and they want. At least for me, I’m probably not everybody. I get like a few trickles here and there that are wanting to come in and address these things. And so that’s what Rebecca Grant is actually. She’s really smart. And we’re going to talk about, you know, I’m going to ask the questions and hopefully you’ll have a lively comment section.

You guys get a chance, you know, comment, add some things. But also while you’re at it, give me a thumbs up. And also, if you’re listening to me on Audio or Spotify, you know, podcast, Apple podcasts. Give me a rating, please. And don’t do what my husband did. He thought it was a rating out of four and gave me a four and it was out of five. And so he lowers all my stuff. So I only had like three people when I first started and he was one of them. And my mom and dad, my mom and dad were smarter than him.

They gave me a five and a good rating and he gave me a four. So I thought I was out of five. So anyways, I told that story before, so I’m stuck with him bringing down my average. But if you could please give me a rating and give me a five and comment. You’re watching on Rumble. Give me a thumbs up and comment. Let’s have some lively discussions, please. I am going to. Because I have so many bots coming to my program. I’m tell. I, I don’t know. Or you get mean people who are mentally unstable and they need to beat me up because they’re just mentally unstable.

So they come and they just start beating me up and it’s. If you want to debate an issue, I have no problems. Even if you completely disagree with me on issue, I have no issue with those kind of comments. But if you’re going to come and just be mean to my guest or to me or to other people, I don’t want you here. I mean, if you have a mental disorder, don’t come to my channel to take out your grievances. Don’t do it. You don’t need to feel better by bringing me or my guests down or anybody else who’s commenting and bring them down.

Stop it. Have a good conversation. If that happens, I will delete you because I don’t want anything like that around. We want productive conversations and I am really careful about not. I don’t like to delete anybody. Right. I don’t like to censor because I’ve been censored more than anybody I know. But if you’re going to just be mean, I don’t want. And if you have a mental disorder, I don’t want you around. I don’t want a mental disorder infecting my channel. Okay? So maybe I will delete you. Okay, that being said, I want to talk about Masterpiece.

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Before we get into this, will you tell people just kind of be brief background and how you got into being in the industry that you’re in, you know, writing all these books and things. Yes, well, I am vice president for Defense programs at the Lexington Institute, which is based here in Washington D.C. and we believe in lessening the burdens of government. So, you know, hopefully we’re making a little progress here. But my background is in national security. I do come from a family that had a lot of men in the service. My dad was in the navy, et cetera, et cetera.

But I was drawn to this in graduate school and worked for a think tank. I worked for the Air Force in the Pentagon and then I went out and actually Started my own consulting firm, did a lot of work for the Air Force, for the Navy. Navy and for our big aerospace companies. And I love this field because our technological predominance in air power and in space has been so important to shaping the international environment over the last several decades. And now with China coming along, I want to see America stay ahead. And that has gotten to be a race that is tighter and tighter and tighter.

So I look at it from the perspective of technology, of the economy and also I spend quite a bit of time as well on issues like shipbuilding and stealth aircraft. So I’m looking at the whole mix here and still very excited about what our American innovation can do. But boy, do we have our work cut out for us. Well, I think that as I said, I don’t think our education system values big tech or high tech or science or any. I mean I, I still see shows that call people who get science degrees or are experts in computer science that call them nerds.

And I mean you are not going to lead in anything if you teach your culture that those who aspire to be smart are nerds. It’s just not going to happen. That’s right. And look at how many of our American heroes, you know, might be called nerds today. And hey, just because it is 2025, let’s start with Paul Revere. He of the ride to warn about the British. You know, Paul Revere was actually very technically savvy. He was a silversmith and goldsmith, very, very good at what he did. And his sons went on to found Revere Ware.

You might have some of that in your kitchen or maybe your mom had some Revere Ware pots in your kitchen. So they were scientists. They were scientists. That’s right, they were scientists. Benjamin Franklin was a scientist. That’s right. And then we can dot through the next couple centuries. Thomas Edison, Wilbur and Orville Wright are developments that led to Americans being the first on the moon. So innovation is our cultural heritage. And I think we though that we are going to see the nerd sciences, the, you know, the things becoming much more important. And I’ll tell you one thing, here’s a great example.

They’ve already became super important. It’s just the rest of culture is still dumbed down. But go ahead. Yeah, great example. The United States Space Force, the sixth military branch, it’s five years old now. You know, they’re a small force but they’re the only one that doesn’t have any trouble recruiting because they literally are turning people away from the Space Force. They get such good applicants. But yes, we do need to value our technology. Lead Americans invented the basis of the Internet. I’m sure that’s something you know a lot about. We’ve invented so much and we need to keep doing this.

Otherwise we’re gonna have China inventing the next world we live in. I don’t want to see that. I would just say space force might have been just an organization that, that was there, that became public. And because it went, it was too easy. But regardless, that’s why there wasn’t as big much fan for it fair to it. It was probably in the air force and then they just made its own thing, right? Probably space mission was in the air force. They also took some people from the army and the navy and other branches as well. Yeah, correct.

Okay, so let’s talk about China because I’m gonna the push back here. The person perfect, you know, smart conversations with legacy media that doesn’t challenge anything the government say says. Really. I mean, it’s all watered down. It’s all like dumbed down. If they’re going to challenge it, it’s on personality and trivial crap versus the big things. And then you have the independent media. If they do do it, they’re. They’re not always that savvy or they’re always negative about everything that’s going on. So I want to have some intelligent conversation around China. Okay? The, the pushback is the u.

S. Military is using China as a. As a, you know, as an illusion so that we can spend money and build up our military. How much? What do you think of that? Is that true that we’re claiming China is something different than they are? Just to build up and to create fear and to build up the military industrial complex. China has become a real, real military threat. Now, it has happened mostly in about the last 10 years. China’s had this plan for a while, but if you rolled back 25 years ago, China had a pretty big military, but it was mostly army.

And you know, China’s government are the direct descendants of Mao and his revolutionary army. So they really prioritize that stuff, as you probably know. But 25 years ago, they were not a particular threat. And then China changed. They looked at what the Americans were able to do, what we did in operation desert storm, what we did in some other military operations. And China said, okay, big armies, they’re out. What we need is high tech. We need information warfare, we need space platforms, and we need a much better air force. I remember when we thought China would never have an Aircraft carrier today Sarah.

They have three that are at sea and they will have six more short live total six by about 2030 and many many more after that time was China educate their people. Right. I mean their people are when they ask their children when a survey went out what do you value their kids? They all want to be scientists, they all want to be astronauts. Our kids want to be influencers. So that gets back to my nerd comment. They, their, their whole society is geared to build this up. Yes. Because it’s all controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

You know, China doesn’t have a social contract. It’s not democracy. They don’t have a free flow of much of the Chinese population today is from the, the one child policy. So it’s a nation of only children. The policy changed a few years ago. But still your senior military. That’s a problem for them. Well, I know, right. We’ll have grown up. My older brother and I joke that we are both only children. There’s a big age gap between us so. But they grow up with knowing that they are special and that they have to pursue the tech fields to as part of China’s big plan right now with our advantage of course is that we do have a more creative and open society and that is in the end we are scrappy.

We got to be scrappy and scientific at the same time. But we do have that gap, you know, because I come on a big tech or I come out of telecom and I have a computer science. I’m an engineer by training. Right. My whole family is. My kids are everyone and I have scientists all around me, my sisters, you know, everybody’s in some kind of STEM field and I am one of the few in media that do come out of this. And so every time I’m hearing people talk, even some of the best journalists that talk, you know that do all this research and you know, do tech coverage, they don’t really get it because they don’t have this background.

And and so I’m, I’m annoyed sorta that in Washington D.C. i mean the journalists that covered it way better than the Washington D.C. and that we are managing this country 20 years ago and we’re playing into the scientists are nerds. You know, all those people who are in Washington D.C. think scientists are nerds. That’s why they’re politicians. They don’t get it. And so that’s putting our whole culture is behind, isn’t it? Yes. Whereas what we, what we should be prioritizing is the great scientific breakthroughs that we are still capable of making. But you know, even our biggest companies really struggle to hire enough STEM graduates.

And if anybody out there has kids, you hear STEM in school, day in, day out. But we still have to put much more emphasis on it because, you know, we’re now in a world that is so interconnected and with the rise of AI, the cycles are so fast and we must have the talent to stay ahead. And we need that talent, you know, yes. Among the engineers like yourself and computer scientists, but we also need tech savvy workers building our newest ships and building aircraft. There’s a huge demand. Yes. Throughout the aerospace and maritime supply chains for smart workers.

Okay, so let’s get back to China and their culture, because that to me is just so glaring, you know, that we’re missing. And I did a conference presentation on the fact that there’s only three people in all of Congress, you know, Senate and Congress, that have computer science or electrical engineering background. Think of that. Not that they’re going to be capable of applying that to larger societal problems. That doesn’t automatically make you capable of that. And also not that other people who don’t have that background aren’t able to learn it and then apply it better. But if the point is, is they don’t, there isn’t enough people with that background.

Okay, So I, you know, that just made it glaringly obvious to everybody. And then you look at the top market cap companies in the world and they’re all, almost all of them, although it’s shifting a little bit recently, almost all of them are big tech. Okay, so now you could get to China. Why are they primed? Why are we so worried about China? Because I look at the bricks too, you know, from an economic standpoint, the Belt and Road initiative, all these things. Why is it legitimately a concern? And you brought up fifth generation warfare. They get that too, right? I mean, they are serious players in all of these.

But can you explain it and, and explain it in a way that, that it’s real and not the military industrial complex, building it up just so that we can build up our industry. Okay, I’ll make three points. First of all, China’s government hates us because of all these grievances going back to the 19th century and how China was held down, all this malarkey. Okay, but it’s very, very real to them. And you know, there’s a phrase in Chinese, I won’t get it right when I pronounce it, which means foreign devils. And that is what we are to them.

Because Chinese culture is they regard themselves as superior to everybody else. So just start from that point of view and you can see that, you know, the Chinese people may be great, but their government really hold this point of view. So they do not like us and they want to beat us. And to dominate the world as they think that America and the west have dominated the world. Again, no conception of democracy, no conception of social contract or. That’s point one. Point two is that they have made, they’ve made it very clear they want to own their side of the Pacific.

And I won’t bother you with all the, the legal ins and outs of who owns what island. Just long story short, the Chinese have a bunch of claims that nobody else in the rest of the world agrees with. I talked about their aircraft carriers. Last December, China flew not one, but two highly advanced sixth generation stealth aircraft demonstrators. One built by each of their top aircraft companies. One is a little, is a fighter bomber, very long range. Its mission is to kill American ships and planes. The other one is a smaller, we believe, carrier based fighter.

And these are advanced aircraft that use composites instead of metal. They use stealth shaping and they carry long range weapons. Better than ours. They are not better than ours, but they are way better than what China used to have. And they show a huge upswing. You know, China went from having mostly old Russian or Soviet design aircraft to having some really good ones of their own design. And now they’ve broken through and created this by themselves. So their learning curve is just absolutely huge. Isn’t there a sense of if the technology gets so advanced, we kind of create a stalemate with technology because you can’t really bomb the crap out of each other, especially if you’re each other or trading partners.

Because we’re dependent on them for pharmaceuticals and for all sorts of things. They’re dependent on us for buying from them. So how much of this military advancement do we need versus other types of advancement? Good question. I tell you though, in the history of the world, we’ve plenty of times seen trading partners go to war. I know Britain, Germany, World War I. Right. So if, if trade would keep you friendly, we wouldn’t have any militaries now would we? I mean, the history of the world, that’s just how it is. It helps, but it’s not a. We’d like it.

Yeah, you know, we, we want, we’d like to be. And I think, you know, President Trump’s policies here. We want everybody doing deals and trading and everybody getting rich. If only everybody else felt the same way. Right. But we know that China does not. And we see in their military activity around Taiwan, their repression in Hong Kong and their military activity around the Philippines, which is a treaty ally to the U.S. you know, they’re pretty serious about building a big military. The other thing you’ve got to hold on a second. What are they doing around. That’s a very important thing.

What are they doing around the Philippines? Because the Philippines have a, are in a unique situation for many reasons. Why? What are they specifically doing? Because I have some sources in the Philippines that are saying yes, there are military ships all around here. We can’t talk about it publicly if I did, you know, so it’s. I have secret sources that are telling me this, but they can’t go public. Just a short break to share with you. An amazing peptide. This one is GHK cu. This is one of the best anti aging peptides on the market, period.

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So when the Philippine coast guard goes out to resupply them, the Chinese navy and so called coast guard attack them with water cannons. They also frequently send warships down there. Hey, our U.S. navy shadows and follows them pretty frequently as well. Either with ships or with the P8 surveyors surveillance planes. But China basically has what they call the nine dash line through the Pacific that they drew and they think anything in that line is theirs. No matter if you’ve got sovereign territory. So the Philippines 10 years ago were much cozier with China, but their new president has, because of this Chinese military pressure, has really turned away from that.

And we’re back to good U. S. Philippine relations. We do have a treaty. So the treaty, just in case it ever happens, commits the US to come to the defense of the Philippines if China attacks. That decision is made by the president of the Philippines whether to invoke that or not. And there have been some awful close calls. Another country is very involved in that is Australia, where China recently sent warships down in that area as well. So there is a lot of regional aggression by China. But I want to make sure to mention the other thing about China, just in case you’re wondering about their motivations.

They are a nuclear power. They’ve had a small number of nuclear weapons for many decades, but recently they decided that they would go from a couple hundred nuclear weapons up to 1500 or more. They have built out about an additional 500. They opened three plutonium nuclear fuel processing facilities. They have built new intercontinental ballistic missile fields where they put the warheads in the silos. No reason at all for China to be expanding its nuclear arsenal except to compete with the United States and with Russia. Would they use a tactical nuke? I, you know, because I saw, I saw, I, I saw stuff from the United States and the dippies under Biden administration talking about how they can win a tactical nuclear war.

The very interesting with China, they always have had such a small arsenal that we’ve never really thought of how they would use it in a tactical sense. There’s a lot of debate, as you point out, on what we think the Russians would or would not do and what the US Would or would not do. China’s a bit of a blank slate there. And hey, there is one. I got to give you the one really piece of good news. China has no recent military experience, not like the US Military that’s fought in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. So this is good.

We want to keep it that way. But the fact that they are building out this nuclear arsenal and it’s. What’s scary is we don’t know where their limits are. We don’t know what they would do. We can’t look back and say, well, is this what they typically do so we can pay attention to this disregard? Do we know what we would do when it comes to tactical nukes? I mean, is that, I mean, I’ve read these, these documents coming from some of our nitwits. Maybe they’re not nitwits Maybe it was there to scare people. Are they serious that they would do a tactical nuclear war in your opinion, or is it just to scare off our folks? I’d say it’s, it’s a third option.

And that is that our American policy has always been, since Eisenhower, okay to say that we would use nuclear weapons if we need to. And that was a cornerstone of deterring Russia, in particular the Soviet Union back in the 1950s. But it’s remained in our military thinking. So our, the military doctrine is to have low yield nuclear weapons options available. Tactical nuclear weapons. Nukes. Tactical nukes that are smaller. In fact, some of the weapons actually have a dial, a yield. You can adjust them with the idea that you need to have a credible threat of tactical nukes to deter either Putin in Russia or potentially North Korea, possibly China, from using a single or a few small tactical nuclear weapons on their own.

The idea is the American President goes, hey, you just use a technical. You know what, I have those two and I can use them. And that will. That by having them adds to deterrence at that lower level. It’s not just, hey, we’re going to obliterate your country, it’s why, look, that you know, aircraft carrier out in the, the coast in the Pacific, we can take that out if we need to. Europe, that’s a mutual mutual destruction. I was. That’s right, mutual destruction. And that keeps it so we can focus on other things. But I mean, if one was shot, would it be Planet of the Apes? You know what I mean? Would we, would it stop? Or do you think a tactical nuke could be used and you know, it doesn’t turn into this escalating nightmare.

So what a terrible scenario. And of course we don’t want any of this to happen, but the, the thinking is that you could use a small number of tactical nuclear weapons to end a conflict rather than having it enlarged. Now what in the American side we would far, far, far prefer to do is to use conventional weapons, you know, from our B2 bomber or new B21 bombers and other everything. But I’d be very precise. We’d much, much, much rather try to take that on with a conventional weapon. But it’s thought important to have, to not have an empty locker when it comes to tactical nuclear weapons.

Gosh, it’s just incredible with this stuff. Okay, yeah. China and Russia, you know, well, you know, and why we always have to have. I guess there’s psychopaths here. We all have experienced it. They have theirs too. And so, and they’re in responsible for the head of the governments. You know, in different areas, psychopaths tend to rise, let’s be honest. And they got theirs too. So we have to deal with that. But I gotta talk about the. So many people are point to communism and they use the fact that, that so many people in China have risen out of poverty because of communism.

I’m going to push back a little bit and I want you to add to it or give your perspective. I would say that in the early 1970s, China decided to open up their economy and they started going global and started selling products and doing trade. And that’s when they started rising out of poverty. And it wasn’t because of communism, it was because of global trade that they started to embrace. What do you say to people that say it’s communism that got them out of poverty versus global trade and starting to move in a, in a. I mean they’re, they’re like this, they call them, what do they call them? Socialists, Capital or communists or something, I don’t know, Socialist capitalists.

Right. The Chinese like to call it, you know, socialism with Chinese characteristics. That’s what they call it. Really? Yeah. And so Sarah, you’re exactly right. Those Chinese characteristics are just what you said it was, opening up trade. And hey, the Chinese are great merchants. We know that for sure. They’re actually great to work with too. I’m just gonna say it’s these, some of these Chinese merchants are amazing to work with. Anyways, keep going. And, and so Xi Jinping though, as the central ruler of China, the big fear. Here’s what keeps Xi Jinping up at night is that it’s all going to break apart.

Because Chinese history until, you know, recently in the 20th century and certain periods back in the warlord times, there were always these fighting factions, constant civil wars. So on Xi Jinping’s mind is he’s got to keep all of China, all the, you know, over a billion people, all of that together. And you have to have centralized control to do that. And, and communism does that for him. But of course it’s global trade that’s raised the standard of living in China. And you know, we fell for it. We let China into the World Trade Organization starting in the year 2000.

2001. So many people though, right? I mean, at the end of the day, lifting people out of poverty is the right thing to do. It just now we have this monster we have to deal with, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. But anyways, keep going. So China then gradually gained market share. It has created more of a middle class. But the problem is that China does not play by the rules. And so we thought, well, you know, they’re growing, let’s make friends, let’s see if we can alter their behavior. Probably about five to 10 years ago, Washington woke up to the realization that that just wasn’t happening, that China was conducting espionage, stealing intellectual property and doing all the things that we now know.

And starting with the cyber attacks. You know, the first really big Chinese cyber hack was in 2013 when they hacked the government’s Office of personnel management database. 20 million Americans had their information exposed there. That should have been the great wake up call. But it came a little bit after that. Well, it’s because they don’t have enough people that understand, okay, so let’s talk about the fifth generation war. Because when you look at China, I mean, their mode of sunset, you know, the book of the art of war, that’s mind. I mean, that’s fifth generation warfare without the technology, essentially.

And then you put, get, put the technology on top and it becomes like a hyperdrive. They’re very committed to it. It’s part of their culture. They’re very committed to it. And the military piece is scary. Like we’ve talked about, they have some very potentially devastating space capabilities. I’m talking about abilities to disable and knock out our satellites. So that piece is very real. That said, China would be perfectly content to win this economic sector by economic sector. So we’ve seen them take over automotive manufacturing to now they have become the largest automotive manufacturer. We know what’s happened across American industry.

And of course, this is the gut wrenching part that’s so sad. As we’ve seen, excellent middle class jobs and the middle class that supported our democratic society. Paul Revere Middle class, right. We’ve seen so much of that migrate away. And we’re aware of that now. The new race is unfolding in technology, in AI, in advanced computing and in quantum among the three areas. Now, President Trump realized this in his first administration, put out a White House critical technologies list. The Biden administration actually carried a lot of that forward. They carried quite a bit of Trump’s China policies forward, as it turned out.

And then now we’ve seen just in the less than 120 days that President Trump has been back, he has added a number of technology initiatives like Stargate, etc. But the situation. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, well, what do you think of all the people pushing back, saying he’s a technocrat. Does that tie into Chinese Communist, you know, you know, people that ties into their, their agenda of stopping our technical advancement. I mean, we have the catch 22. We don’t want to be technocrats and control people and control our own people and take away freedom, but yet we have to progress in order to not be under the, the, you know, oppression of somebody else.

So how do you, you know, all this independent media that is accusing Trump for doing all this stuff, of being a technocrat, how do you deal with that? I mean, that’s a very political, a real political situation we have. Yes. And I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t want Chinese or authoritarian values in our tech development. And so, you know, when I look just a bit from a different angle, I see Trump really trying to stimulate the big US Corporate investment in AI in data centers, in building the energy infrastructure that we need for that, that AI competition with China.

It’s here. And, you know, when I started to do the research on, at Lexington Institute on how much this really affected our economy and our national security, you know, I was stunned. You know, I know my way through stealth aircraft pretty well, but I was amazed to find, for one thing, that it is private industry that has the cash required to invest in AI and quantum. And in moving all that forward, back in the Cold War, we relied on the government to fund bombers and ships and nuclear weapons, and they were built by private industry, but it was government funding.

Whereas today, big companies and small companies together spend more than four times what the federal government spends on research and development. They have the talent situation. I mean, they do have the talent. Those people want to go into private. Like, my dad worked in government his whole life, and he’s like, he watched the people around him, even though he did really well, he watched the people around him do better in private industry from a monetary standpoint, because there’s more money, there’s more advancement, there’s more opportunity in private sector. And so the best and the brightest, I’m sorry, they don’t go into government.

That’s right. And that affects not only your big tech companies, like, like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, you know, etc. It affects the smaller entrepreneurial companies as well. Because, you know, in Silicon Valley, you often measure your success by something called an exit. Did you either have your brilliant startup get purchased by another company, or did you manage to go to an initial public offering, some kind of exit? Well, the money that fuels that comes from the profits made by a company like Google or like Amazon that invest so heavily. They also see the huge market in web services in Quantum, in all of that.

And so naturally, as they compete with each other, they are working very hard to have the next big product there. I mean, you know, both Microsoft and Google have recently announced some big successes in Quantum, which is, is very complicated, it’s going to take a while, but they are the ones making the progress. And so my point here is that our ability to win the tech race with China depends on our big companies keeping this lead. So much of our AI breakthroughs have come from individuals who were funded by or trained by or working with a lot of our large companies.

And that’s what pulls along the small business and the medium sized businesses, our ability to scale. And you know, part of that is just because think of the amount of electricity it takes to run some of the AI large language models. It’s a lot, it’s a lot of processing. It’s brute force. It’s more, it’s more brute force than people realize. It’s just super fast because we have fast computers. And just for my audience sake, when we’re talking quantum, the majority of the the in advancement is going to. There’s two different quantum. There’s quantum energy, which is, is kind of like off the charts hard to understand for most physics, for most own, for anybody.

And then there’s the quantum that just means instead of two zeros and ones, a binary, it’s trinary or more. And that is where a lot of the realistic quantum is coming for from. Because so many people don’t understand the other quantum. It’s not, they, they’re not that advanced in that they’re getting really good at the other. I just had to throw that in so that people understand the difference because I think a lot of times that those two terms are mixed and people don’t understand that there’s two different things that they’re talking about. An excellent explanation.

And so something like Willow’s, the Google Willow Qubit chip is able to do calculations much more quickly. I mean in order of magnitude you run out of zeros to tell you how much faster. And that has implications in business processes, but also in breaking encryption. So that’s one reason that Quantum is important to the military and then back to China. We know China is putting enormous resources into Quantum. We need to do the same on the US side. And we are. Yes. Okay. And you know, the, we just need to have better, you know, cryptology because using cryptology with quantum and then having multiple parallel things that have to happen at the exact same time.

You can create cryptology and, and do it in a way that they can’t break it. But that means it has to catch up. It’s. But it’s doable. So when everybody says your hoes were screwed. No you’re not. It just come on. But the other thing is it’s just hard, right? We’re always trying to. But the other thing I want to talk about is fentanyl and our borders because you know, I’ve had border patrol agents on saying, you know, it used to be the, the drug cartels and we can, we are not innocent here. So much of the drug trade and human trafficking and everything else house is tied into criminals here.

We have criminals everywhere. We are not immune to criminals. Right. And either are they. But it’s difference of the governments being involved. And some of the governments are. We did the opium wars in China and so it really was led by the English. But I’ve had people tell me that like you were saying it tied into what you were saying. People them being angry for the history. They actually this is what I’ve been told by people saying that that head that top cops in the China in the CCP are still angry at the Opium wars. And the fentanyl part of that fentanyl thing is really to get back at us for the Opium wars.

Are they, is it really serious that they could behold a grudge that’s a hundred years old? Yes, it seems crazy, doesn’t it? And that’s the difficulty of being in a communist party controlled state where they all are sharing the same ideology and all their, you know, great grandparents did the long march with Ma and you don’t have the, the democratic give and take that would, that would put those ideas aside and move on. Right. And so as far fetched as it sounds, yes, that is one of the reasons that they hate us. Absolutely. Well and I’ve had border patrol agents say that it used to be the drug cartels, you know, controlled the highways, controlled.

Now it’s the Chinese that control it and it’s on purpose. And they also control a lot of our west coast and all the way up through the China or the Canadian west coast. And even our, the wonderful Prime Minister of Canada Trudeau did an agreement with China so that China was now patrolling the security of their own assets in Canada which was a lot of land and a lot of the west coast. And, and that just shows you here’s the real problem for us as Americans. We’re very open, we’re very trusting. We want to do business fair and square, move on, you know, go to the Grand Canyon for a vacation, go to our kids sports games.

We just. All this international stuff, you know, give me a break, right? We want to live our lives. And it’s hard for us to imagine the. The massive level of deceit and infiltration that’s come in from China. And it’s everything from fentanyl farmland purchases. 300,000 Chinese students here. And even if 90% of them are great, that’s a huge number. The Chinese illegal crossings that have slowed down a lot. A recent victory, actually, in Illinois came when China wanted to build an electric vehicle battery plant really near a military base. And the county councils were like, well, okay, it’s a factory, it’s a job, no problem.

Finally, there was, with the help of the House, House Select Committee on China, they realized that this was bad, and they’ve stopped the planning permits. But it often takes that much effort to wake everybody up. Look at the solar panel supply chain, which is 90% Chinese, and kind of put that in the context of a lot of the push to have, you know, renewable energy and to put solar panels on perfectly good farmland, which is something we see a lot in my area. It’s just hard to grasp the extent to which China wants to get after everything, and they exploit our open society for their own ends.

Yeah, but we have a, you know, Trump wanting to bring back manufacturing people that think that, you know, the tariffs are bad. You can have whatever opinion you want. But I’m doing some construction on my house, and I’m looking for an art piece, and I’m looking for doors, and I’m looking for all these things. I’ve got a pretty modern house in the Midwest. I’m having a heck of a time finding these products, and I look all over the Internet and I search, especially if you want, like, an art sculpture or something you can’t find. I mean, go to Etsy, but it’s really.

You cannot find some of these products here. We don’t manufacture so much. Like, I want to challenge people. Find an art sculpture that you can put in your garden. And I know I’m a little bit out there, so I like art, and I like things that are kind of different. I want an art sculpture, and I don’t want to spend $75,000 and hire an artist on my own and have them many, because I don’t have 75 grand. But so I’m, like, looking for an art sculpture that would go in my garden, and I go to Alibaba, I’m telling you, just people need to do this.

There’s a whole bunch of all arts. I mean there’s. You can get a nice art sculpture for your garden for like $4,000. It would, you can’t find it here for less than maybe 30 grand or something. It’s really. We don’t manufacture. Our artists can’t create things. We don’t have the same infrastructure. They have modern doors. I can get them out of like New York or la, but I’m. They probably import them up from China. We don’t produce stuff here anymore, whereas 20 years ago there would have been more choice. And, and your example is so good because it tells you that this is every aspect of our lives.

And the main point is now our choices have narrowed to nothing. Okay. To honestly China. And, and so that’s what. Oh, you know, I’m into horseback riding. A lot of those products used to be made in the U.S. you know, boots and things like that. Now guess, of course they’re made in China. So for all of us, it’s a, it’s a hit on our daily lives. But oh, you know, we have got to, to swallow this and step back and try to return to this US Manufacturing. Otherwise, we really do. Otherwise, China wins. Otherwise. And that to me is the point of the tariffs.

I’ll tell you a really scary example is the Chinese E Commerce Shine and Tamu that use that ship direct from China to your mailbox. And yeah, there’s your t shirt for 2.99 and it’s real cute. Old Navy, you get to pay 10.99. So you know you’re going to make that decision. But Old Navy owned by Gap Inc. May make the product in China, but they import it bulk to a warehouse. They pay the duties Shine and tame you. They get under the duties through something called the de minimis exception, which Trump is going to close in May.

That’s the problem. And you know where, where this really worries me is a lot of this stuff is, you know, cheap junk that, hey, I can live without another T shirt. I probably have a hundred anyway. Right? But it has also started to hit yet another sector of our economy and that is discount retail. If you live outside a major city, you probably go to Dollar Tree Dollar General, which has groceries. Yeah, yeah. And the Dow General still really dominates because of the grocery trade. But, but Dollar Tree five below all this place is really feeling the hit from Temu in particular and the Chinese direct E Commerce.

So, you know, give that another couple years if Trump hadn’t closed that door. And then suddenly there’s your Dollar General, your dollar tree out of business and you know, you complete. Yeah, I don’t want to see a world with that going on. And we’re getting awful close. We are. And people don’t realize that I had a, when I was, was manufacturing some stuff back in the day, I had a company that did some manufacturing and I had a government person I was talking to and he was saying that we, so many of the manufacturers are closing because they can literally charge people, you know, pay people nothing, like bring in workers for nothing and have them work and still not be able to produce the products at below the prices that they could import it for.

So we’re in a situation where our, we’re, we’re at risk here because when we’re at that situation where the math doesn’t work the way it is, we have some major infrastructure problems. Yes, that’s right. And so the one minute it’s custom doors for your house, but the next minute it’s wow, where the, where’s the clothing, where are the shoes? All this. And of course that’s, yeah, well, pharmaceutical work. Yeah, yeah. Then the pharmaceuticals pieces is even scarier. So that’s what the, you know, the tariff war is about. But you think they can fix it with just a terif war? Well, it also needs some regulatory attention.

But you know, what, what, what’s the other plan? We have to start somewhere. No, I, I, we let it go way too long. I mean, it’s going to be bad, but. Yeah, but we got to get rid of, we got to get rid of these, these huge expenses and costs that, you know, the waste and the fraud. That’s why the waste and the fraud is so important. We can’t be spending all this money on all this other crap when we can’t even. When I just talked about the manufacturing and our math being so wrong, we have to be able to give that back to the people because we, we can’t.

With this kind of math situation going on in regular business, we can’t afford to be sending all this money to money laundering. We can’t afford for this kind of ridiculous setup that we have. And they, you know, people, I can see why they, people have just decided they want to steal money because they can’t earn it doing anything legit. So they just get into government and figure out how to wheel and deal and steal stuff. I mean, honestly, that’s probably what happened. I want to get paid 75, 000 per time I talk and we’ll do it through this slush fund and all our friends and our Hollywood friends, everybody else will get paid all a whole crapload of money to go talk because it’s a heck of a lot easier building a manufacturing plant where we have to compete against foreign imports.

That’s right. For a long time the math made sense, but it’s taken a tremendous toll. And we just were never, we never just sat down and added it up. And to me, that’s what we’re seeing with the tariffs is that we’re adding up the cost of this and wow, it’s really ugly. Which is why shifting back to the, to the tech piece for a minute, you know, we can’t let this happen. We have the chance to save our high tech sector, our AI, our quantum, our advanced computing. There’s been a recent directive out from the Trump administration just two days ago to restore US commercial shipbuilding.

You know, we build about five ships a year. China’s order book is 1700. How do you think this stuff gets all around the world? So, yes, that’s really hard to climb back. I believe we can do it, but we need to, to, to. Big Tech is in a good place. They are very innovative, they’re well financed. And we need to make sure that we don’t try to break them up, we don’t try to over regulate them. We want controls and regulations, of course, but we don’t want to overdo it because that is one sector where we are still ahead of the Chinese and we need to make sure that stays that way.

Well, and they can’t be our enemies either by censoring free speech. That can’t happen because now all of a sudden we have Big Tech. We don’t want to break, we don’t want to overburden them, but they can’t be enemies of the people either. Well, and I think that be so strong on that because I’ve been a victim of that. Right, right. And you think of something like a search engine like Google, where’s the harm? Right. I mean, it’s a wonderful product and there is competition, of course, so we want to see competition there. The trouble has been.

Hold on a second. Where’s the harm? The harm is if they are, are propagating elite institutions ahead of the average people and changing our culture by creating a culture of elitism, which is what’s happening without people being people are unconsciously not aware of how it’s fundamentally changing our culture. And that’s not okay. Does that make sense? Oh, I certainly agree that while our phones and everything, it really, really has changed our culture. We need to be, we need to be very, very aware. But you know, one thing I’ve observed in tech, and I bet you have too, is how quickly the market forces change.

So the market of five years ago is not the same as the market of today. And you know, AI has made a huge difference there. Yeah, search and AI, that’s all kind of up for grabs again. And what I don’t like is when I see hundred year old institutions in Washington like the Federal Trade Commission thinking that they know how to regulate everything from groceries to tax, often doing it on the wrong, on the wrong basis and answering to nobody, you know, not to any, any president, Democrat, Republican, not to Congress. They just do it on their own.

And that might have been fine when that was, you know, 1920 and there were five people in that office. But at this point, you know, when you see a lot of these agencies, just imagine empowered on their own and taking on cases that just don’t make any sense. And you know, a really important area is export controls. So we see that we control our very best AI Chips cannot be sent to China, which is good, but there are other lower grade chips that are sold around the world and we need our tech companies to be able to sell in those markets, like the Middle east for example.

We don’t want the Chinese to go and build all the Saudi and UAE AI. We would rather do it ourselves. And so sometimes these, these, the regulations go too far. Whereas, you know, we know there are very specific chips, you can call them out by name. You cannot sell this particular type of chip to China and commerce departments really good at clamping down on that. But don’t then go and say, oh, you know, we wish you just wouldn’t sell very many at all. It has to allow, you know, what we have to realize that’s very different this time is we have to allow our best American companies to get out there and compete like Boeing.

We have to let Boeing sell airplanes. We have to let our tech companies sell chips. Well, how about as we close this, how about allowing our military industrial complex to sell weapons and advance military arms and capabilities to other countries in an open market framework. How, what do you think of that? Because that, that I’m like, gosh, because I’ve taught, you know, I’ve listened and read about trade, how you go to these big trade, military trade organizations overseas and people are just sitting, they’re ordering big bombers and all sorts of stuff that’s an interesting thing and nobody in the public talks about it.

Well, I’d rather have us sell than have the Chinese sell. And, and if it is a country like Canada that wants to buy the P8 surveillance plane but made by Boeing, go for it. If it’s a country like Poland, Poland gave half their tanks immediately to Ukraine three years ago. Go if they want to buy some refurbished U.S. abrams tanks because, hey, they still live in a really bad neighborhood near the Russians. Yes, they should be able to do that. We want to sell also very important air defenses. I’m not so sure if I. Yeah, I’m not so sure if I agree with you because I don’t.

I think Canada can turn on us in a moment based on everything that they’re doing. They have been anti democratic and maybe because they’re close, it’s different. But, but I don’t know. I think that’s an area that can be argued and debated. But I’m glad we’re talking about it. That’s. I’m just, I’m so glad we’re. But more people need to talk about it instead of it not being talked about. That’s right. It’s an important discussion. We need to have a lot of awareness. And don’t forget Canada and the US we are inextricably linked in air defense of North America.

That’s what the whole Greenland thing is about. Look at the globe and you’ll see why Greenland’s so important. Well, that’s, that’s interesting. That’s interesting why Trump wants to buy it. But then Canada entered into agreement with China, protecting their own stuff, and the Chinese military went in. So I don’t know about Canada. I’m on the fence on what they even really are about right now. So it’s weird. Well, I know our military cooperation with them is excellent and I’m, I’m hoping it will remain so. That’s good to hear. Okay. Well, good. Where can people find you? Lexingtoninstitute.org on the web.

Follow us at lexnuxdc on X. X. Follow me on X at Rebecca Grant DC and let’s have more conversations like this, everyone. This is great. Yeah, everybody needs to be. And I, I want you guys, the people who are coming out, to go on all these independent media channels and have them just beat the crap and with their questions and you guys address it so that we can start having these conversations. That’s what I want to see. That’s central to American democracy. And we need to talk to stay ahead in the race with China. Okay. Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it. Thank you.
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