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Lessons - The Silent Tech War You're Already Losing | Keith Krach - Fmr Under Secretary of State & DocuSign CEO · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how technology has become a critical battleground and global diplomacy
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  and power. Discover how private sector innovation can strengthen national security and foreign
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  policy, understand how authoritarian regimes use technology and economic competition for strategic
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  advantage, and uncover why alliances and democratic values are essential to winning the global tech race.
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  As you go through your career, you've had multiple successes taking multiple companies public.
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  The concept of tech diplomacy, which is now what you're focused on mostly, how did your career
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  in private industry, in public industry, in government? How did that inform and help you
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  understand that this was something that you wanted to take on at this point in your life? I want
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  you to also describe what tech diplomacy is because candidly, there's a lot of subjects that I
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  speak about on this podcast and tech diplomacy. I've actually never heard it before I started
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  researching for our show and trying to do the research to figure out what exactly this is and why
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  is it relevant and what does it mean for the average person? Let's understand where this passion
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  for tech diplomacy came from because it's highly relevant now and why are you working in it?
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  Sure. So, where it really came about was when I was running DocuSign and we were up to about 500
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  million unique users around the world. We had entered every major country except for China
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  and I went on a two-week listening trip. I usually would do that if we were going in a big country
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  and I've been going there since 1981. I mean, I'm a lover of Chinese history, culture,
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  the people, of course the food, but this time it was different. I could see that their
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  traditional market competition was amped up into a new form of techno-economic aggression
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  under General Secretary Xi. I had a chance to see their drone swarm technology.
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  I learned about the one belt one road initiative which is look like a military supply chain to me.
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  They were telling me to download 10 cents every 30 minutes. I met with five of the top seven
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  polar bureau members and as I was getting back on that plane, I'm like,
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  you know, the guys with the best technology went to war. These guys don't seem like good guys to me
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  and I go I wonder if the guys in Washington know about this and I really I didn't know really
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  anybody in Washington or any administration. So a week later I went out there. I made
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  my mission to do that. Next thing you know, I'm in a room and explained about China and they go,
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  have you ever thought about serving your country keys? I go, well, that's a dream I never knew I had.
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  I'd be honored. They go, can you move? I go, I can move anywhere in the world. It's the fastest
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  decision I ever made in my life. So that's when they set me to the state department to run US
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  economic diplomacy. And my mission there was to develop and operationalize a global economic security
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  strategy that drives economic growth, maximizes national security and combats economic aggression.
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  And so one of the first things that I did as always is I brought in a great team. It was kind
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  of unheard of in the state department. I brought in 12 folks from Silicon Valley,
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  results oriented execs, entrepreneurs, technologists, and we combined it with the greatest foreign
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  service officers and civil service I can imagine. And it ended up to be just a dynamite team.
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  And so tech diplomacy with that does is that combines Silicon Valley strategies with foreign
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  policy tools based on a thing called the trust principle, which was a doctrine we created
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  to defeat China's master plan to control 5G communications.
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  It's it's incredible what you did because everything that you just said that you did is something
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  that I speak about in regards to the issue with government is that they don't move quick enough.
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  They don't have outside thought coming in. So you effectively brought in some of the top
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  talent in Silicon Valley. You applied that to a to an actual administration and you brought
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  them in. And now you're actually solving problems at the speed and with the you know the
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  the lens that a Silicon Valley exec would look at a problem versus a career politician. So that's
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  something that can actually make incredible moves now. When when you go down this path where you
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  move from private you were and public and you move from that into government. What talk about the
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  current talk about the current state of China of what they what they have under their control.
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  What they're trying to do. How does that impact us? For example, even if I think about foreign
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  investment into startups in the US. What do we have to be wary of? How do we fight back against that?
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  Sure. Sure. You know, I kind of had a chance to see it my whole life because
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  you know what I could see through the years you know through my dad's company back you know in
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  Ohio and the Midwest. I could see that China's weapons of mass production had devastated the heart
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  of our economic engine. That's you know small and medium-sized manufacturers. When I was a vice
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  president general Motors I could see if you built a plant in China you were just giving them the
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  blueprints. You were given them the process engineer how to build it and also training the
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  people so they could come back and compete against. I also when I was at Arriba we had an
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  intellectual property stolen from Ali Baba and now what we see the reality we face as a nation
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  and as a free world is seemingly ceaseless intense variation of weaponized economic competition
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  because our rivals are playing the long game they're playing for keeps they're playing a
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  a four-dimensional game of military economic diplomatic and cultural chess and at the intersection
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  point and in the primary battleground is technology and worst of all these authoritarian regimes
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  have no respect whatsoever for rule of law for property of all kinds for sovereignty of nations
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  for human rights for the environment for the press and you know and we have to raise our our
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  game and there is nothing static about superpower advantage and so we and the world needs American
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  leadership so that's what you know this was all about and when when I had my Senate confirmation
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  here and I had a good fortune the rare fortune of being unanimously confirmed was I got asked by
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  Senator Coons and he said Keith what would your strategy be to combat China's economic aggression
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  and I said I would harness us as three biggest areas of competitive advantage by rallying and
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  unifying our allies and our friends by leveraging the innovation and the resources of the private
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  sector and by amplifying the moral high ground of democratic values and that turned out to be
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  an enduring model now that is used in the Biden administration to combat that aggression and it was
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  that strategy combined with that trust principle that enables to defeat that master plan for 5G we
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  also used it to create a thing called the blue dot network which is an equitable and unifying
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  alternative to what China has called the one belt one road or some Malaysian finance minister
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  called the one belt one way toll road to Beijing this is where China goes all over the world
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  and creates these debt traps with these low income nations takes advantage builder infrastructure
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  puts their you know literally devastates the environment they also really take advantage of the
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  people in that country they don't leave them with any skills and they leave them strapped for
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  cash so we also used it in strengthening US Taiwan ties so I was the highest state department
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  official of visit Taiwan in 41 years I was I was greeted with 45ers and bombers and we used that
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  trust principle put together a thing called the economic prosperity partnership and a number of
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  other things also used that to call out the human rights abuses against the weaker Muslims
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  in a western part of China called Xinjiang and on July 4th 2020 on national TV I called it
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  called out that genocide I was first government official do that and so that trust principle
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  was really the basis of everything and and why was that you know I think it's because you've dealt with
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  and observed China for so long and maybe that's the answer but why were these particular causes
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  so important to you because there's a lot of other things that threaten the US in terms of
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  their economic prowess and there's other countries obviously China is one of them and we look
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  at Russia as well and sure there's a few others that probably are trying to compete on various levels
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  but the things that you deployed in Taiwan in particular why does that tie back to the impact that
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  you know China could have on the US because I don't want in a precarious position right now
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  by rich Taiwan is a linchpin for democracy and a role model of freedom that's what they are
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  to the free world now to general secretary Xi what they are is they dispel
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  well his myth that the Chinese culture cannot live under a democracy but it has to live under
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  authoritarian rule and he wants it gone and and by the way to companies around the world
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  China US conflict would be devastated and literally catastrophic for the high tech business
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  because in Taiwan that's where they manufacture the most sophisticated semi-conductors in the
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  world which is the foundation for all you know for all technology so this is this is really a big deal
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  and if you think of China is the biggest threat to freedom and democracy around the world and
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  you know it was interesting when I was under secretary and this was in January 2020
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  I came back from Washington to my home in San Francisco I hosted 36th the top CEOs in Silicon Valley
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  you'd recognize all their names all the companies they may have been here before a safe environment
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  I asked them go around the room and tell their China horror stories and you know I can't talk about
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  the contents of that meeting but I could tell you this is that they it was cathartic it was
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  enlightening and it was frightening all at once got and at the end of it I said you know guys we
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  say out here that corporate responsibility social responsibility it's also national security it's
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  global economic security too because not only is China real and urgent threat to our democracy and
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  our freedom but they're also real and urgent threat to our businesses and so if you think of the
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  things that we are those things like respect for rule of law and property and environment human
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  rights these are things that we are and authoritarian regimes like Russia and China do not
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  and they as a matter of fact they used it against them for their strategic advantage so think
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  about this got so let's say you're a Silicon Valley CEO and I'm a Chinese company so if I could
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  steal your intellectual property if I don't have to be transparent if I can use slave labor if I
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  can use a cheap huge energy coal fired power plants if I don't have to be reciprocal with my market
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  if I either am the law or I don't have to obey the law I'm going to beat you every time
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  and so and they use co option coercion all all this stuff no respect for human life that's what we
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  call the power principle so we did is we created this doctrine called the trust principle where we
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  actually use the dark advance advantage so one jujitsu move we flipped them on their back
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  so we actually weaponize the very principles they protect our freedom thanks for tuning in if you
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  found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if
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  you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the
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  full episode see you in the next one