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Gen. Mark Milley · The David Rubenstein Show

0:03
Speaker 1: The most senior person in the U. S Military is
0:05
Speaker 1: always the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Person
0:09
Speaker 1: to hold that title is General Mark Milley. He was
0:11
Speaker 1: appointed by President Trump and continues to serve under President Biden.
0:15
Speaker 1: I had a chance recently at the National Archives to
0:17
Speaker 1: sit down with General Milly to discuss a wide range
0:20
Speaker 1: of civilian and military issues the Chairman now faces. So
0:24
Speaker 1: this is where our constitution, the original copy of the
0:26
Speaker 1: Constitution is stored, and it's right over there. So what
0:30
Speaker 1: does the Constitution mean to you as the Chairman of
0:32
Speaker 1: the Joint chiefs of Staff. Well, for us, and I
0:35
Speaker 1: would argue that for all of us in uniform. Uh.
0:37
Speaker 1: You know, we swear an oath um and that oath
0:40
Speaker 1: is to the Constitution, and we're sworn to protect and
0:43
Speaker 1: support and defend it against all enemies. For in a
0:46
Speaker 1: domestic we don't take an oath to an individual, a king,
0:49
Speaker 1: a queen, a tribe or religion or any of that. Will.
0:52
Speaker 1: We take an oath to an idea of the idea
0:54
Speaker 1: that's America. And that idea is expressed in the documents
0:57
Speaker 1: that you see here, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Uh.
1:00
Speaker 1: And that's a solemn oath, uh, and I and those
1:04
Speaker 1: that came before me and those that will come after me,
1:06
Speaker 1: we swear that oath that we're willing to sacrifice everything
1:09
Speaker 1: to protect and defend that document, the idea that's America. So,
1:13
Speaker 1: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to me, is
1:15
Speaker 1: one of the great titles in Washington. You're the most
1:18
Speaker 1: important military person. But what does that really mean that
1:21
Speaker 1: be the Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff. What
1:23
Speaker 1: is your real job? By law, the Chairman of the
1:26
Speaker 1: Joint chief Staff is an advisor, uh. An advisor to
1:29
Speaker 1: the President States, Secretary Defense, to the National Security Council
1:33
Speaker 1: and what used to be called the Homeland Security Council.
1:35
Speaker 1: And it's strictly an advisory role. You're not in the
1:37
Speaker 1: chain of command. The chain of command is the President
1:40
Speaker 1: to the Secretary Defense, to the combatant commanders, and or
1:43
Speaker 1: the secretaries of the military department. So uh, the job
1:46
Speaker 1: is strictly advisory. But at the same time and not
1:49
Speaker 1: in the chain of command, you are in the chain
1:50
Speaker 1: of communication. UH. So, routine communications between the President of
1:53
Speaker 1: Secretary Defense and the combatant commanders typically goes through the
1:57
Speaker 1: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Uh. So you're very much
1:59
Speaker 1: in evolved, but you have no decision authority. Uh. You
2:03
Speaker 1: don't make decisions per se. You advise the President, sect
2:07
Speaker 1: off and the others on their their decisions that they
2:10
Speaker 1: will make. But to be realistic about it, when the
2:13
Speaker 1: President United States wants to do something militarily, he relies
2:17
Speaker 1: on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You're
2:19
Speaker 1: his advisor. When he says I want to do X,
2:21
Speaker 1: Y or Z, I assume you tell other military officials.
2:25
Speaker 1: So while you're not technically in the chain of command,
2:27
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound as if people are going around you.
2:30
Speaker 1: Is that right? No, typically they don't, But I would
2:32
Speaker 1: say that I am one of the advisors. The Chairman's
2:36
Speaker 1: job is to be the chairman of a body, a
2:39
Speaker 1: group called the Joint Chiefs of Staff, consisting of the
2:42
Speaker 1: chiefs of each of the services the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines,
2:45
Speaker 1: Space Force, uh and and in the National Guard as well.
2:49
Speaker 1: And so the Joint Chiefs as a body, what I
2:52
Speaker 1: do is I represent their views to include dissenting opinions.
2:56
Speaker 1: But at any time, any one of those Joint chiefs,
2:58
Speaker 1: every one of them, by law is considered an independent
3:00
Speaker 1: advisor to the president. Any one of them can invoke
3:03
Speaker 1: their right to go and talk to the president about
3:05
Speaker 1: a certain topic. In addition to that, the combatant commanders,
3:08
Speaker 1: the field commanders, if you will, UH, they also provide
3:11
Speaker 1: their advice, their best military advice, or what some would
3:14
Speaker 1: call considered military advice UH to the president. And they
3:18
Speaker 1: should and can and do all the time. So I
3:21
Speaker 1: am one of several advisors. I'm I'm within the law,
3:23
Speaker 1: it's called the principal military advisor, but not the only
3:26
Speaker 1: military advisor. So a couple of years ago, you went
3:29
Speaker 1: to see the President United States, President Trump, and it
3:32
Speaker 1: was reported that you were probably going to become the
3:35
Speaker 1: Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, a very important position, UM.
3:40
Speaker 1: And you emerge from that meeting as the projected chairman
3:43
Speaker 1: of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where you surprised that
3:46
Speaker 1: you got that position rather than one that people thought
3:48
Speaker 1: you were gonna get. I knew when I went over
3:50
Speaker 1: there that I was interviewing to be the Chairman of
3:53
Speaker 1: the Joint chiefs UH and sack youre uh and any
3:57
Speaker 1: other position that the President deemed necessary. The US question.
4:00
Speaker 1: President Trump said to me of The first comment he
4:02
Speaker 1: said was, Uh, you're here to interview to be the
4:05
Speaker 1: chairman of the Joint Chief Staff. It was myself and uh,
4:07
Speaker 1: then White House Chief of Staff Kelly, and the President.
4:10
Speaker 1: We had about an hour long conversation and at the
4:12
Speaker 1: end of it he said thank you very much. And
4:14
Speaker 1: the following day he called me and made the offer
4:16
Speaker 1: to hav me be his chairman. Uh. And all of
4:19
Speaker 1: us serve at the pleasure of the President. So whenever
4:21
Speaker 1: year asked for any duty position as a soldier, uh,
4:25
Speaker 1: you execute the will of the president. So when you
4:28
Speaker 1: become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, does
4:30
Speaker 1: your wife call you Mr? Chairman? Your children cheat you
4:33
Speaker 1: with greater respect? How does that work? No? In fact, UH,
4:38
Speaker 1: you know, I'm very lucky to have met my wife
4:41
Speaker 1: and we were married, and she's been with me through
4:45
Speaker 1: thick and thin the entire time. She's an incredible woman
4:47
Speaker 1: to the nurse still practices as a nurse. She keeps
4:51
Speaker 1: me grounded, and both my son and daughter keep me grounded. So, Um,
4:54
Speaker 1: you've had a lot of publicity for some things you've
4:57
Speaker 1: had to deal with in your time as Chairman Joint
5:00
Speaker 1: chiefs of Staff. That go through a couple of them.
5:02
Speaker 1: One is the events in Lafayette Square. So there you've
5:07
Speaker 1: publicly addressed that. But essentially you did not expect to
5:11
Speaker 1: be seen as a kind of political role because that's
5:14
Speaker 1: not your job. Um, Is that right? Yeah? Absolutely. I
5:18
Speaker 1: found out very very quickly. As I looked forward and
5:20
Speaker 1: I saw the press being set up, I realized it
5:23
Speaker 1: was a political event, and I got out of the way.
5:25
Speaker 1: And I regret that then, and I made comments about it.
5:30
Speaker 1: You know, some people think, you know, uh, that that
5:33
Speaker 1: that's an okay thing to be walking with the president
5:35
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I don't. Walking with the President's fine.
5:39
Speaker 1: But if it's a strictly political event, and that was
5:42
Speaker 1: I is, and it's not the president, it's me. The
5:44
Speaker 1: uniform shouldn't be there. We have a long tradition going
5:48
Speaker 1: way way back of an a political military, and we
5:52
Speaker 1: in uniform must make every effort to remain a political
5:55
Speaker 1: not be involved in the actual domestic politics of the
5:59
Speaker 1: United States. And that was a moment where I realized
6:02
Speaker 1: what was happening, and I broke away. Uh. And it's
6:05
Speaker 1: important that I broke away, and it's important that I
6:07
Speaker 1: apologized publicly for it. So that those in uniform know
6:12
Speaker 1: the standard as an a political military. So let's talk
6:14
Speaker 1: about the events of January six. I assume you've thought
6:17
Speaker 1: about that affair bit in hindsight, do you think that
6:21
Speaker 1: somebody could have done a better job of protecting the
6:23
Speaker 1: capital or somebody whoever it was, could have done a
6:25
Speaker 1: better job. I'll let the January six Commission and all
6:29
Speaker 1: the various investigations, UH, do all the postmortems on it. Uh.
6:33
Speaker 1: It's obvious to me that the capital was breached. It
6:37
Speaker 1: was very significant event, one of the most significant events
6:40
Speaker 1: in recent history. But I'll let the historians and the
6:44
Speaker 1: commissions and the investigators all sort through all that. All right,
6:46
Speaker 1: You've also had Afghanistan. We've withdrawn from Afghanistan after twenty years.
6:51
Speaker 1: The exit from Afghanistan was one where we lost I
6:55
Speaker 1: think thirteen U S military in the exit process. In hindsight,
6:59
Speaker 1: could the x have been um orchestrated better? There's a
7:02
Speaker 1: few things that could have been done better. One is
7:08
Speaker 1: the intelligence piece. Um, you know, an army that was
7:14
Speaker 1: on paper three maybe a committed to fifty No one's
7:17
Speaker 1: actually sure of the number. I suppose, but an army
7:21
Speaker 1: and a police force that size and a government that collapses,
7:25
Speaker 1: literally collapses in eleven days. That was a surprise. So
7:30
Speaker 1: that's something that we need to figure out. We need
7:32
Speaker 1: to figure out how and why that happened. It almost
7:35
Speaker 1: sounds like a Malcolm Gladwell tipping point study, but it's
7:40
Speaker 1: it's something that we need to sort out. And why
7:42
Speaker 1: is it we didn't see that? I think that's really important.
7:45
Speaker 1: Another one I think is the timing of our response
7:49
Speaker 1: UH so UM we had collapsed most of our military
7:55
Speaker 1: UH and most of the NATO allies by the middle
7:59
Speaker 1: of July in the bases associated with them had been
8:02
Speaker 1: transitioned over to the Afghan military. All that went relatively smoothly,
8:06
Speaker 1: without many hiccups, And that was going on really for
8:10
Speaker 1: quite a while, probably the better part of a year,
8:13
Speaker 1: and that was going pretty well. So the NEO is
8:17
Speaker 1: the piece that you're talking about, the non combatant evacuation UH.
8:21
Speaker 1: That is UH an operation where we ran six thousand
8:25
Speaker 1: UH troops, some of which were prepositioned in the Middle
8:28
Speaker 1: East in the event of that contingency, some of which
8:31
Speaker 1: came from continental United States UH, and we deployed them
8:34
Speaker 1: very very rapidly. UH took control of an airfield, the
8:38
Speaker 1: Kabul International Airfield in a hostile environment. Uh. And we
8:42
Speaker 1: did that eight and a half time zones away. We
8:44
Speaker 1: set up twenty seven animmediate staging bases around the world,
8:48
Speaker 1: and in a very short period of time, less than
8:50
Speaker 1: three weeks, we were evacuating thousand people. The first two days,
8:54
Speaker 1: first forty eight hours of that was very dramatic. People
8:58
Speaker 1: were hanging off airplanes mass on the airfield, some of
9:01
Speaker 1: them were in the wheel wells. It was very tragic.
9:04
Speaker 1: And then at the tail end we we had um
9:09
Speaker 1: an incident where a suicide bomber went up to a
9:12
Speaker 1: patrol or or a perimeter man by Marines and killed
9:17
Speaker 1: thirteen of our levin Marines and and a soldier in
9:20
Speaker 1: a Navy corman. Um. And that was a tactical event
9:24
Speaker 1: that happened that has strategic consequence. So let's talk about
9:27
Speaker 1: your own background. Uh. It wasn't pre ordained that you
9:30
Speaker 1: would become Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff when
9:32
Speaker 1: you're growing up. I assumed so your family had been
9:36
Speaker 1: in the military. Your father was an iwajima and your
9:38
Speaker 1: mother was in the military as well. Is that right? Yeah?
9:41
Speaker 1: My dad uh and mother they were both in the Navy. Actually,
9:44
Speaker 1: my dad was a Navy corman, uh. And then when
9:47
Speaker 1: he finished the corman training, um, he went into the
9:51
Speaker 1: He was assigned to the fourth Marine Division, so he
9:53
Speaker 1: was a Navy corpman. Fourth Marine Division did the assault
9:56
Speaker 1: landings at Kwa Jilina Toll, Saipan in Ewa Jima, saw
10:01
Speaker 1: an awful lot of combat. Grew up some of Thelle Massachusetts,
10:05
Speaker 1: graduated some of the high school and then from high
10:08
Speaker 1: school and right into the Navy. B Acorman. And my
10:10
Speaker 1: mother she graduated from St. Mary's High School in Winchester, Massachusetts,
10:16
Speaker 1: and uh, she went right into the Navy as well,
10:18
Speaker 1: also into the medical Corps, and she served out of
10:21
Speaker 1: a hospital in Seattle taking care of the wounded coming
10:23
Speaker 1: back from the Pacific. Very proud of their service. Both
10:25
Speaker 1: of them passed on, but that generation was very special.
10:28
Speaker 1: So when I read about your background, I saw Boston
10:31
Speaker 1: and a very fancy high school, Belmont High School and Princeton.
10:36
Speaker 1: I figured he must be a Boston brahmin, a wealthy
10:39
Speaker 1: Boston family. Is that right? No, not at all, um, No.
10:42
Speaker 1: I mean, neither one of my parents went to college,
10:44
Speaker 1: and we grew up in a very working class neighborhood
10:48
Speaker 1: and UM and my dad never made much money at all.
10:52
Speaker 1: My mother worked steadily the entire time, which was very
10:54
Speaker 1: rare in those days. UM and they emphasized sports and education.
10:59
Speaker 1: And I was very fortunate went to a Catholic grammar
11:02
Speaker 1: school which emphasized some really good education, had some decent grades,
11:07
Speaker 1: and had an opportunity to go to the school called
11:10
Speaker 1: Belmont Hill which had a great hockey program. And I
11:14
Speaker 1: played for a great coach and uh, and I got
11:17
Speaker 1: recruited by them and played for for that high school
11:20
Speaker 1: and a really great opportunity. So you went to Princeton
11:23
Speaker 1: and you graduated from Princeton, And were you a star
11:27
Speaker 1: in the hockey? We're all at Princeton, And did you
11:30
Speaker 1: think you could go to the NHL or not? Really?
11:33
Speaker 1: I thought starting out I could go to the NHL,
11:36
Speaker 1: And I quickly learned that the competitiveness of college hockey
11:39
Speaker 1: was probably not the NHL. Probably wasn't in my future.
11:42
Speaker 1: But I was okay. I was just a steady player,
11:44
Speaker 1: and I was decent, but certainly not a star. That
11:46
Speaker 1: did you lose a lot of your teeth playing hockey
11:48
Speaker 1: and Princeton or not a Princeton. I I have lost
11:51
Speaker 1: four teeth playing hockey. Playing hockey, broke broke my jar
11:54
Speaker 1: and three different places, lost four teeth and probably got
11:59
Speaker 1: more than a hundred stitches in my face. So so
12:02
Speaker 1: I have a face for radio. Dude. When you were
12:04
Speaker 1: at Princeton, did a lot of people say I want
12:06
Speaker 1: to be in the military or most of your classmates
12:09
Speaker 1: were going into something like private equity or hedge funds
12:12
Speaker 1: or Goldman Sachs and so were you an outlier by
12:14
Speaker 1: being in the military at Princeton? Oh? Yeah, for sure.
12:18
Speaker 1: So I grew up in a neighborhood that emphasized patriotism.
12:22
Speaker 1: Uh and the opportunity that this country was an amazing
12:25
Speaker 1: country that, um, you know that you have opportunities that
12:28
Speaker 1: are not available elsewhere. So I was early on I
12:31
Speaker 1: decided that I did want to serve. I wanted to
12:33
Speaker 1: be in NHL, but I wanted to serve my country
12:35
Speaker 1: as well. Uh. So when I went to school, there
12:39
Speaker 1: was an opportunity to join OURTCU, and I did that.
12:43
Speaker 1: So I played hockey, joined ARTC and tried to study
12:46
Speaker 1: once in a while. Uh And in the RTC program,
12:49
Speaker 1: I was attracted to it again. I thought Uh. I
12:52
Speaker 1: never thought I'd make a career of the military. I
12:54
Speaker 1: thought I'd come in and do my four years. I
12:55
Speaker 1: had a scholarship. Uh, do my four years and and
12:58
Speaker 1: then get out and move on. As you say, all right,
13:00
Speaker 1: so you go into the military, and after four years
13:03
Speaker 1: you can discharge your obligation, your r OTC obligation, and
13:06
Speaker 1: then you can go into you know, whatever you want
13:08
Speaker 1: to do. But you decided to make it a career,
13:11
Speaker 1: was not right? Well, I decided to take it in
13:13
Speaker 1: small chunks. I really enjoyed the military. Um, I was
13:18
Speaker 1: in the infantry and then Special Forces and uh. And
13:21
Speaker 1: I wanted to stay through company command and then that's
13:24
Speaker 1: captain at level. Uh and see how that worked out.
13:27
Speaker 1: And then once I was captain and stay through major.
13:29
Speaker 1: It's just taking it small chunks. I never had a
13:33
Speaker 1: long range plan whatsoever. Actually for my personal career in
13:37
Speaker 1: the military. Got married along the way, had children. But
13:40
Speaker 1: I've never looked back and never had to regret because
13:42
Speaker 1: I've loved the military most see about the people that
13:44
Speaker 1: I've served with. So when you're playing hockey, you can
13:47
Speaker 1: lose your teeth, but when you're in combat, you can
13:49
Speaker 1: lose your life. So when were you first in combat
13:53
Speaker 1: and you thought I could lose my life? Well, first
13:56
Speaker 1: combat was Panama for me in nine But uh, you
14:00
Speaker 1: can lose your life a lot of ways in the military. Um,
14:04
Speaker 1: the military is a very dangerous occupation, even when you're
14:07
Speaker 1: not in combat. Uh So, whether it's in training or
14:10
Speaker 1: in combat, our soldiers and our sailors, air memoranes, Uh,
14:14
Speaker 1: they're sacrificing a lot every single day, day in and
14:16
Speaker 1: day seven to keep this country safe. Uh So, losing
14:21
Speaker 1: your life is something that I think everyone wearing a
14:24
Speaker 1: uniform has to come to grips with. It's not just combat.
14:27
Speaker 1: But for me, the first time in combat was Panama.
14:30
Speaker 1: And when that happened, did you think you could get
14:32
Speaker 1: shot and killed there? Were You're worried about that? What
14:34
Speaker 1: did your parents say? My father actually was pretty upset. Um.
14:39
Speaker 1: My mother very religious, She accepted things and sort of
14:43
Speaker 1: the Lord will be with you sort of attitude. But
14:46
Speaker 1: my dad, who had seen a lot of combat in
14:48
Speaker 1: World War Two, certainly wasn't keen on his son being
14:51
Speaker 1: in combat. Now, did your parents live to see you
14:54
Speaker 1: rise up to be a general or some senior officer. No,
14:58
Speaker 1: my mother passed away in a in the nineties. UM,
15:02
Speaker 1: so I would have been a major. I guess at
15:04
Speaker 1: the time my father did. My father lived to see
15:07
Speaker 1: me be a generalman. And my father was always proud
15:09
Speaker 1: of our service or my service. Um. And he talked
15:12
Speaker 1: to me about, you know, his experiences many many times.
15:17
Speaker 1: But look at he was a kid. He was he
15:19
Speaker 1: was eighteen nineteen one when the war ended, hit the beach,
15:23
Speaker 1: best friends killed. Uh, just saw some unbelievably intense battles. UM.
15:28
Speaker 1: And he and I talked about his experiences and my
15:31
Speaker 1: experiences frequently later in his life. But he was always
15:35
Speaker 1: very proud. He loved America, loved loved the country, and
15:38
Speaker 1: loved the loose in uniform. So as we look at
15:40
Speaker 1: the military situation United States faces today, what do you
15:43
Speaker 1: think the greatest military risk the United States faces? That
15:46
Speaker 1: from Russia, China, other places. I think it's China. Um.
15:51
Speaker 1: And I've said that publicly many times. I think as
15:54
Speaker 1: we look to the future, and I think, Um, we
15:59
Speaker 1: are living in his orcle epic actually, Uh, We're we're
16:02
Speaker 1: seeing the rise of a country that is unlike something
16:06
Speaker 1: we've seen probably ever before. Uh. And it's one of
16:09
Speaker 1: the great historical pivot points I think that we've ever witnessed,
16:13
Speaker 1: which is the rise of China, UH and from the
16:17
Speaker 1: reforms of nineteen seventy nine and dan Xiaoping up till today,
16:21
Speaker 1: which is I guess that's what two years or so,
16:23
Speaker 1: four decades. They've had an incredible economic run and with
16:26
Speaker 1: that they've developed a military that's really significant as we
16:30
Speaker 1: go forward over the next ten years, there's no question
16:35
Speaker 1: in my mind that the biggest geo strategic challenge to
16:38
Speaker 1: the United States is going to be China. That that
16:40
Speaker 1: I have no doubt at all. Russia is important, not
16:43
Speaker 1: unimportant at all. Russia has very significant military capabilities. Of
16:47
Speaker 1: North Korea Ran is still there, terrorists are gonna be
16:49
Speaker 1: around for quite a while. But I think China is
16:52
Speaker 1: clearly the most significant geo strategic threat we face as
16:55
Speaker 1: we talked today. There have recently been some reports that
16:58
Speaker 1: the Chinese have a hypersonic missile that can theoretically go
17:03
Speaker 1: into space and then come down with a nuclear bomb,
17:06
Speaker 1: escaping our ability to uh knock it down? Is that
17:10
Speaker 1: something I should be worried about, our all Americans should
17:13
Speaker 1: be worried about. Well, what you saw, and I don't
17:16
Speaker 1: want to get too much into the classification of what
17:18
Speaker 1: we saw. But what we saw was a very significant
17:21
Speaker 1: event of a test of a hypersonic UH weapons system UM,
17:27
Speaker 1: and it is very concerning. I think I saw in
17:29
Speaker 1: some of the newspapers they used the term Sputnik moment.
17:33
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's quite a spot nic moment,
17:35
Speaker 1: but I think it's very close to that. So it's
17:37
Speaker 1: a very significant technological UH event that occurred or tests
17:41
Speaker 1: that occurred by the Chinese, and it has all of
17:44
Speaker 1: our attention, UM, and we're paying it. But that's just
17:47
Speaker 1: one of that's just one weapon system. The Chinese military
17:50
Speaker 1: capabilities are much greater than that. They're expanding rapidly UH
17:55
Speaker 1: in space, UH in cyber and then in the traditional
17:58
Speaker 1: domains of land, C and A. And they have gone
18:01
Speaker 1: from a peasant based infantry army that was very very
18:04
Speaker 1: large in nineteen seventy nine UH to a very capable
18:08
Speaker 1: military that covers all the domains UH and has global ambitions.
18:12
Speaker 1: So China is very significant on our horizon. But can
18:16
Speaker 1: I presume that the United States has thought of doing
18:18
Speaker 1: a hypersonic missile as well, and that we are not
18:22
Speaker 1: caught completely flat footed in our ability to maybe produce
18:25
Speaker 1: something like that ourselves. We are clearly experimenting and testing
18:29
Speaker 1: and developing technologies to include hypersonics, artificial intelligence, robotics, and
18:35
Speaker 1: a whole wide range. Uh. Now, if you take a
18:38
Speaker 1: step back, um, what what we're in in history wise
18:43
Speaker 1: is we're in one of the most significant changes in
18:46
Speaker 1: what I call the character of war. But today, with
18:48
Speaker 1: the introduction of precision munitions, the ability to see all
18:51
Speaker 1: over the world, artificial intelligence, robotics, hypersonics, all of these
18:55
Speaker 1: things together, this is an enormous change in the character war.
18:58
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to adjust our military going forward. In Asia.
19:01
Speaker 1: Should I be worried about North Korea or not? North Korea.
19:04
Speaker 1: Were always paying attention to North Korea because that's a
19:07
Speaker 1: country that's extraordinarily well armed. They've got seventy percent of
19:10
Speaker 1: their military is arraid within striking range of the de
19:13
Speaker 1: militarized Zone. Seoul itself is only twenty seven miles from
19:17
Speaker 1: the de military zone. It's under the missile envelope of
19:20
Speaker 1: North Korea. Uh. And the regime of North Korea is
19:23
Speaker 1: a brutal, vicious, tough regime, very aggressive, and it's led
19:27
Speaker 1: by an individual. It's very difficult to figure out. They're
19:29
Speaker 1: always doing provocations over the over the course of time,
19:33
Speaker 1: whether it's missiles or other things. Uh. So, North Korea
19:37
Speaker 1: is something that we always are watching very closely. Our
19:40
Speaker 1: intent in North Korea or China or Russia, we want
19:44
Speaker 1: to maintain a military capability and a diplomatic uh level
19:47
Speaker 1: of effort to deter war. We don't want any conflict.
19:51
Speaker 1: We want to deter war. But if deterrence fails, were
19:54
Speaker 1: determined to fulfill our in the case of South Korea,
19:57
Speaker 1: our treaty obligations with South Korea. So far, since nineteen
20:01
Speaker 1: fifty three, deterrence has worked, and we're hopeful that it
20:03
Speaker 1: will continue to work. Now we've heard of cyber attacks
20:06
Speaker 1: from China, North Korea, Russia in the United States. Uh.
20:11
Speaker 1: We don't know if they come from their military, but
20:13
Speaker 1: presumption is that some of it might. Um can you
20:15
Speaker 1: make American people feel good that we have cyber capabilities
20:18
Speaker 1: that are just as good as the ones attacking us?
20:20
Speaker 1: I assume you can't tell us about all our cyber capabilities,
20:22
Speaker 1: but I assume nobody has better cyber capabilities than we do.
20:26
Speaker 1: Is that affair? I would say that we are the
20:28
Speaker 1: world's number one capability and cyberspace. But I would also
20:33
Speaker 1: tell you that China and Russia are very very good,
20:35
Speaker 1: as well as many other countries. UH. In terms of defense.
20:38
Speaker 1: What we when when the Internet and the cyber world
20:41
Speaker 1: first developed, people weren't thinking of it as a domain
20:44
Speaker 1: of war. They weren't thinking of it in terms of
20:46
Speaker 1: setting up architectures that were robust and resilient for defense. UH.
20:50
Speaker 1: Those days are gone now. So years ago we started
20:54
Speaker 1: working on that, UH, and we have a long ways
20:56
Speaker 1: to go. But we need to make our critical infrastructure,
20:59
Speaker 1: our financial systems, for example, are electrical systems, and many
21:03
Speaker 1: many other pieces of our of our national economy much
21:06
Speaker 1: more resilient to cybertech because our adversaries are very aggressive
21:10
Speaker 1: in cyberspace. So you have a four year term, you're
21:13
Speaker 1: about halfway a little bit more than halfway through it.
21:16
Speaker 1: When you ultimately reached the end of your four year term,
21:19
Speaker 1: which was all you can have, you will retire from
21:22
Speaker 1: the military. Is that right? That's great? So you know
21:25
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do afterwards, something important like private equity
21:28
Speaker 1: or anything like that. I have no idea, haven't given
21:30
Speaker 1: an announce of thought to the truth I've got a
21:33
Speaker 1: full time seven job and busy as to be every
21:36
Speaker 1: single day, so I actually haven't given announce of thought.
21:40
Speaker 1: So if someone wants a leader, is it better to
21:42
Speaker 1: find a general or an admiral? I think, as as
21:47
Speaker 1: a chairman of the joint cheese, I'll opt out of
21:49
Speaker 1: that one, David. That's like asking me to say, who
21:53
Speaker 1: do you love more? Your your son or your data.
21:54
Speaker 1: So I think leaders come in all kinds of forms,
21:57
Speaker 1: and you know, by the way, they don't even have
21:59
Speaker 1: to wear a uniform. I think you get great leaders
22:01
Speaker 1: in all walks of life, uh, and that served this
22:04
Speaker 1: country in many, many different ways, whether they're nurses and
22:06
Speaker 1: doctors or cops and firemen, no matter who they are,
22:09
Speaker 1: whether they're uh, you know, like yourself as a financier
22:13
Speaker 1: and a philanthropist. Uh, there's there's leaders that come in
22:15
Speaker 1: all all shapes and sizes and stripes throughout the throughout
22:18
Speaker 1: the country, and many of those are in uniform. And
22:20
Speaker 1: I'm very, very proud of the generals and animals that
22:22
Speaker 1: are currently serving. Thanks for listening to hear more of
22:25
Speaker 1: my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple,
22:30
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen