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The Day America Was Sold to China · Man in America Podcast

0:00
Seth Holehouse: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Holehouse. If you look around at America today, it's not the America that I grew up with. It's not the America that you grew up with, your parents grew up with. When I think of America, I think of the times of the the booming manufacturing cities of the forties, the fifties, the periods of time when America was this great nation, this this this this bright light standing for the whole world to see.
0:25
But now it's no longer that. It's been heavily infiltrated. It's been destroyed from within. It's been really just disassembled. We've seen ourselves gutted.
0:34
Our manufacturing sent overseas. We've seen the the streets flooded with fentanyl. Now I know there's a lot of enemies of America. There are absolutely a lot of, you enemies. Know, that's just the case.
0:44
You know, the most powerful nation in the world will have enemies around the world that wanna bring it down. But you know that I've also focused a lot on China and the Chinese Communist Party, which I do think is one of the greatest enemies. Now, of course, we have the WEF. We have the bankers. We have this other conglomerate that I think are working together, and there's factions.
1:01
That's a whole other episode. But today's episode, we'll be focusing on the Chinese Communist Party, and more specifically, the actions and what led to them being able to gut our manufacturing, to gut our society from what made it stand strong. And so joining me today are the authors of a book that was I'll pull up for you folks. The authors of embracing communist China. So it is James or Jim Fannel and Bradley Thayer.
1:25
I think the four by Steve Bannon. So this is a book that we'll be diving into, and the topic we're diving into, basically, what led to the strategic failure of saying, hey. Let's send all of our manufacturing, all of our jobs over to China, this communist nation. Maybe we'll convert them to capitalism. Was it ignorance?
1:42
Was it bribery? Was it blackmail? So we're gonna be digging into that and so much more in today's interview. So, folks, please enjoy. Jim and Brad, thank you both so much for joining me today.
1:53
It's great to have you both on the show.
1:56
Speaker 2: It's our pleasure. Thank you for having us.
1:58
Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you.
1:59
Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. So jumping right into the you know, today's topic. Both of you have recently published a book, Embracing Communist China, which I think most Americans would say is not a good thing. And your your subtitle is America's Greatest Strategic Failure. Now there's a lot to talk about with this, and I think that pre COVID and all that, a lot of people didn't see China as that much of a threat.
2:25
At least a lot of the folks in America, Middle America, I was interacting with. Whereas now, there's a lot more focus on China, what's China doing, and also understanding where we are today and how it relates to our relationship with China. So before we dive into the subject matter, can each of you just give a quick introduction of yourselves and a little bit of your background?
2:44
Speaker 2: Sure. I'm I'm Brad Thayer. I'm a founding member of the committee on present danger China. I've worked as an academic and in think tanks, and have been a visiting fellow at, Modlin College at the University of Oxford and previously at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at
3:04
Seth Holehouse: the Kennedy School at Harvard.
3:08
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I'm Jim Fanal. I'm a retired US Navy captain. I spent twenty nine years in US Naval Intelligence. I spent most of my career in The Pacific.
3:17
And I spent the last fifteen years of my career just boresided on the Chinese military and their navy with assignments aboard the air four deployed aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk as the director of intelligence, then the US seven fleet, and then the US Pacific fleet as as the director of intelligence information operations in my last assignment. I'm also a founding member of the committee on present danger of China, and I'm out here in Switzerland at the Geneva Center for Security Policy.
3:45
Seth Holehouse: Oh, okay. Wonderful. Actually, know I have I have a few questions for you specifically about China's navy because that's a a topic I think it's really important for us to understand. You know? So so, okay, jumping into into just the the book, but also just the thesis behind a lot of what you guys are discussing, What would you say when we say that, you know, embracing China has been a greatest strategic failure?
4:08
Why is that? What are some of the key components that that you would say back that up?
4:15
Speaker 2: Because our elite, caused it. It was our elite embraced communist China through the engagement school. The belief that by trading with China, increasing trade relationships and investment in China, we could reform the Chinese Communist Party. And as such, that allowed China People's Republic Of China into our economic ecosystem, particularly under Bill Clinton when, any type of safeguards or linking of the renewal of most favored nation trade status was decoupled, delinked, from human rights. As a result of it, as a result of this, China grew exponentially.
4:57
It went from, in 1990, about point 6% of world gross domestic product to 02/2019 before COVID, about 19% of world gross domestic product. So The United States caused this, but it was also the genius of Deng Xiaoping, the communist leader at the time. Your audience may recall him from Tiananmen Square in 1989 where he massacred the students there at at Tiananmen, who adopted a strategy of hide and buy, where he adopted a strategy of reaching out to American businesses to make them partners with the Chinese Communist Party to welcome American manufacturing coming from Ohio, coming from Kentucky, right, Illinois, Michigan to communist China. And as a result, that established a dependency. And Deng Xiaoping then also used the political influence that American businesses had and Wall Street had and American investors had with the the Democrats under Clinton to establish again that engagement policy.
6:05
And that yielded what we call threat deflation in in the book, and that means we consistently underestimated our the intelligence community, our the military, the American strategic community and national security community writ large consistently underestimated the danger from the rise of of communist China, and that was our greatest strategic failure. So largely, we did this to ourselves.
6:35
Seth Holehouse: And Jim, did you wanna add anything to that?
6:38
Speaker 3: No. I I I think that, you know, Brad's laid it out there. The basic thesis said that we found ourselves, you know, originally back in the in the seventies under the Nix administration, you know, focused in facing the Soviet Union, and so we did try to use the the Chinese Communist Party and if you will, China who was in the basically the underbelly of of Soviet Russia at the time to to help us gain intelligence and information about what the Soviets were doing with their nuclear ballistic missiles that could fly over the pole. And so we wanted to have an advantage there, and we wanted to do other things to try to pick at, the Soviets and weaken them. And that made sense in the seventies.
7:18
But by 1989, when we started to see that they had opened up their economy and were starting to, you know, grow and that they were starting to be repressive against our own people, we should have recognized the threat of ideologic the the ideological threat of communism and that the people that were running then China China were actually hardcore communists. And instead we got duped into believing that they were really not really hardcore communists but were more interested in making a dollar. And we kind of applied this kind of five thousand years of Chinese history of merchants and trade and said, oh, we can do business with them. And eventually, they'll understand, why the post World War two international order is beneficial to them, and they'll they'll start moderating their behavior. And then over the next thirty years, their behavior became more belligerent.
8:08
They grew more threatening. They started using what they call comprehensive national power to attack their neighbors in The United States and the economic realm and the diplomatic realm, and certainly from my vantage in the military realm to prepare themselves to be able to become what they wanna be, which is what they state, which is to be the global power. And so they're on a path right now that they're on a timeline. That's another thing that we've missed. Heard a lot of the experts over the years talk about, well, China takes a long view, and that was part of the threat deflation orthodoxy.
8:44
They take the long view, so we don't have to worry right now. It'll be another few decades before this or that become a problem. And so we didn't realize and we didn't listen to what the Chinese Communist Party was saying, which was, hey. We're on a timeline to become the world global superpower. And in order to be that power, we have to restore all the territorial, integrity that we believe is ours.
9:05
So we have to have the South China Sea. We have to have the Syngkakus. Most importantly, we have to take control of Taiwan because it's ours. And now we, you know, we have problems with India and we have problems with Mongolia. So we gotta get all those things in our in in order in house, and then we can proceed with, you know, running the world.
9:23
And we didn't follow that and understand that, and that's why we're in this position today.
9:28
Seth Holehouse: You know, I think time is an important element too because we we look at things in terms of what nowadays, you know, Amazon Prime, it's like, oh, it'll be here tomorrow morning. Right? We've become the fast food nation. Everything's instant. And even with a lot of our planning, we're looking at a year ahead or a decade ahead.
9:44
But if you look at China, you look at the history of China, which I'm fascinated with, you know, whether it was Cao Cao or some of the emperors, they're planning in multigenerational steps. You know, they're saying if I do this now in a hundred years, we can do this. And going back to Mao originally with his hundred year march or hundred year marathon of by 2049 becoming the world's dominant superpower, they've been they've been at this for a hundred years, and I think that we've we've overlooked that. And so when you say that I mean, as I'm kinda putting together what the information that you're presenting, it's basically so under Mao, as I understand it, he came close to collapsing China because of the famines and because of his, you know, state run farming and cultural revolution, the mass murder of his people. It was very poor on the verge of collapse, and, you know, you have Deng Xiaoping, you know, coming basically seeing, oh, okay.
10:34
We'll open up to the West, and we'll we'll allow this money to flow in. And the ignorant, you know, Western businessmen thinking, oh, okay. Well, here's a great opportunity to make money. And and, you know, on a plus side, let's convert them to capitalism. Let's give the communists all this money and hope that they're gonna turn into capitalists just like us and join us and have great global trade, whereas, like, the Chinese are I imagine are looking at that thinking, these idiots, now they're fueling us or funding us.
11:02
This money is going straight to our war chest because we wanna become the dominant power. We wanna be what The United States was post World War two, and that has us to where we are here. But, you know, one question that I have, and I'd be we really wanna hear, you know, your insight on this is the the mistake, the naivety that we've had, especially our leaders, like Bill Clinton as a prime example, in in opening up and giving all this money and business to China, was it actual being was it being ignorant and naive, or do you think that there were, you know, backdoor dealings or bribery or blackmail or other reasons, even infiltration into our own agencies and our own government that led to that? I mean, do you think it was just the ignorance of our leaders, or was it maybe part of a much, more sinister plan with China through, again, their whether it's bribery or blackmail or whatever it is to make that happen so that our own leaders would not just mistakenly give money to China, but actually sell out America, like, out America to China for a few bucks?
12:06
Speaker 2: I think it's a mixed bag of motives here, and none of them are good. So there was clearly American hubris. As we discussed in the book, the end of history moment, there was the belief that with the death of the Soviet Union, we'd won the Cold War. And great power competition, great power war was a thing of the past, and democracy was on the march. And so we believed that the rest of the world was trending our way.
12:37
But with respect to our political leaders, I think it was a combination of avarice, the hubris, which I mentioned, the avarice, the belief that as Bill Clinton recognized, he could extract a lot of money from China and that community to fund his campaign, his reelection campaign in 1996. And that set us on the path to really ensuring that engagement, the engagement school had The United States and Uncle Sam really in a headlock. It was very difficult to get out of. In addition to that, I think there was also, the belief that, it it it didn't matter. These were just manufacturing jobs.
13:22
These were, Americans who were remember the Internet boom, right, in the nineteen nineties, and we were all moving in that direction, and manufacturing was, aspect there. Additionally, it was the genius of Deng Xiaoping's threat deflation. Right? That China's not a threat. Again, stressing that, hey.
13:41
We're not gonna do anything for a hundred years. Right? Well, actually, like that famous the example, of course, of the duck paddling. Right? The duck or the swan on the surface looks very calm and serene, but underneath his paddling furiously.
13:56
He was doing everything he could do to ensure that the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party continued, that American manufacturing and investors established a dependency. They actually became dependent on China's growth for their returns. And then also ideology and the belief that, well, Bill Clinton and others had a view of the Chinese Communist Party that was not an accurate recognition of its tyranny, of its vicious nature. But it was just, oh, these fellows say that they're communists, but they're not really communists. Right?
14:36
A kind of a disbelief that they took their ideology seriously, which was, of course, a profound failure because they did. So upon reflection, I think those mixed motives all all come, into play, for the American, elite.
14:54
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15:55
And make sure you use promo code Seth, s e t h, to get a nice discount on your purchase. That makes a lot of sense. And I think there's also, from what I've seen, a a normalcy bias in America. Like, a lot of Americans, they don't think that a Red Dawn scenario could ever happen. They don't they don't when you say that, oh, you know, for instance, China could be an invading force on American soil, they say, oh, no.
16:19
That's not gonna happen. You know? This is the twenty first century. It's not happening anymore. But if you look out through the lens of these communist nations, they know, even look at the role of factories.
16:29
Right? It's not just about stealing jobs and collapse collapsing economies. When you go to war, those factories, when that wartime economy is switched on, that's where you you manufacture munitions, remanufacturing tanks. And so the the gutting of all of our factories, like, where are we gonna make our ammunition? Right?
16:45
Where are we gonna convert, like, back to
16:47
Speaker 3: skilled workers.
16:47
Speaker 2: Right? The skilled Exactly. Exactly. Necessary to actually do the welding to, if you will, bend the metal, if you will, as often is said, or to do the mining, to do the processing. Right?
17:00
That they took that away from us. And as we saw with COVID, right, we were dependent on them for our pharmaceuticals, our antibiotics, and our personal protective equipment. That's a disaster because they will weaponize those as as COVID demonstrated, and we should anticipate that's only going to become much, much worse.
17:20
Seth Holehouse: Yeah. If only NPR or PBS had, like, an evening show where they read through unrestricted warfare. So every American, every night, we're tuning in to the reality of how China views war versus us. So, Jim, a question for you. With with your background and and especially naval intelligence and understanding the the global threat matrix, how much of a threat is China militarily?
17:43
How much is a threat of a threat are they? Do you think that they actually would invade? Do you think that they have the capability to to, you know, threaten us with the military, or or is it just the paper tiger? Is it just that they're puffing their chest and they're they're making us think that they're really strong, but they're not actually that strong?
18:02
Speaker 3: Well, back to the last conversation that you and Brad had, I mean, we have lost our manufacturing, so that's how we can explain in the period of twenty five years, we went from having over 100 more major combatants than the PLA Navy to today, they have over 100 more than us. So in the space of a quarter of a century, they went from being a coastal water navy to now a global navy. Now they have some capabilities that we don't have in terms of the number of aircraft carriers and history of aircraft carriers, but in the space of a decade, went from no aircraft carriers to now having three and a fourth one being ready to be announced here in the next month or two, and they're operating their carriers like they did this last year, the Shandong, their second carrier, but their first one that they produced indigenously, it operated for probably as much or more at sea East Of Taiwan than the the USS Ronald Reagan did, the forward deployed carrier that we have out there. So simple answer is they're not a paper tiger. Second answer is their main threat and what they've been working on for the last quarter of a century is to be able to have the capacity to invade Taiwan.
19:15
And that order was given, we know for a fact, Hu Jintao ordered the PLA in the 02/2008, '2 thousand '9 time frame. He ordered the PLA to have that capability by 2020. I suspect that Jiang Zemin had similar orders, and we also know that Xi, since he came to power, has given similar order. You'll hear talk about 2027 now. I I think there's a little bit of that old residue of threat deflation there from the the IC and the military.
19:44
I think they're they're they're capable of it today. They would prefer not to use military force, but they have what we call a decade of I've written about this decade of concern, which is they were ordered to be capable in 2020. And then you have to ask yourself how late would they use military force or or or wait to use military force before they wanted to then be able to have this grand ceremony in Beijing on 01/2049. And obviously, they wouldn't based on especially what they've seen from Putin's event in The Ukraine and their own experience between The US or or their their response to Tiananmen and then what happened in 02/2008 at the Beijing Olympics wherein 1989, the world rejected the Chinese for what they did at Tiananmen. And by nineteen years later, the world was beating the door down to attend the the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.
20:36
So that's about a twenty year period. So what our our figure is if you back up from 2050 to 2030, that's probably the end time that we thought that the Chinese would use military power, that that the latest that they could use it. If they didn't they didn't wanna use it, they would try to use nonkinetic threats. But if those didn't work, diplomacy and economic warfare and information warfare weren't pressing the the people of Taiwan to kowtow and come up with some political solution to be under the Chinese Communist Party, that they would then have pressure building up over this decade to use it. And I used to think that it would be more towards 2030, maybe even the latest 2035.
21:14
But what I've seen over the last three years, I am with a growing chorus of people that are now very concerned that we could see an invasion here at the end of this year or even next year, earlier than the 2027. And you just had Admiral Aquilina, the commander of the Indo Pacific Command, on Wednesday testify before Congress and saying that they, the PLA, will have that capability in 2027. So there's a lot of indications that they are sharpening their sword. I'll just give you one statistic in the air arena. From 1954 to 2020, the Chinese air force crossed the center line between Mainland China and Taiwan Four times.
21:56
And now in the last years, three years, they're crossing it literally hundreds of times in a day, thousands of times in the year. So and their ships are operating around Taiwan. They're flying reconnaissance drones around Taiwan. They have the largest strategic rocket force, so they have short range, medium range, intermediate range, and now a new bevy of intercontinental ballistic range ballistic missiles. They built 300 to 350 silos out in Central And Western China over this last three years, all designed to pressurize The United States into saying, hey, you're not going to get involved with, any kind of local territorial dispute that we have with our renegade province.
22:42
And so they've built up essentially the chess pieces to be able to do what they need to do to take Taiwan, but they also have grand designs to be able to operate and have a global military presence and so you'll see things like the development of new h 20 reconnaissance or not reconnaissance refueling aircraft transport aircraft which is very similar to what we have in the US Air Force. So they're flying around the world now, flying to Russia, flying to Europe with this aircraft. They've got, you know, they've had naval ships on patrol in the Gulf Of Aden since February every day. They're sending those once they complete their two or three months of patrolling and escorting Chinese vessels. Then they go off to the Mediterranean or the Baltic or transit around Africa or Latin America.
23:34
And they're doing similar other things, expanding their military along the lines of the Belt and Road which is their economic initiative. So we see everything suggesting that they're really committed to this. It's not paper only. In fact, we we know that they're dedicated to spending on the military as their number one priority. Just this this last March here in the National People's Congress, they announced a 7.2% increase to the PLA's budget, and that's an annual increase that they had 7.2 the year before, and it's always greater than their GDP growth.
24:10
And so I think that's really the the test of time is where do they spend their money, and they prioritize the PLA. And then the other thing is they get more bang for the buck. You know, you look at every year, The United States will produce a single combatant, and for that single combatant that The US produces, China's producing four or five as many. So we are in a situation where the tables have been turned on us and we need to get back to the principles that you know Brad and I's book talk about which is power politics and and and not you know, not thinking that your enemy you can be friends with your enemy and giving him more money and giving him more ammunition to blow your head off.
24:50
Seth Holehouse: And with relation to Taiwan, I know Taiwan is key because it also gives them control over a lot of the waterways there which is is really significant, and there's been concern that Taiwan will be the first. And next, maybe would be Korea, you know, Japan potentially, to to really seize control of that entire, you know, water region there. But do you so as I understand, you know, they're building and building and building. I would guess because I've been I've I've spent a lot of time in Taiwan. I've spent time in China as well.
25:18
You know, Taiwan is is is is tiny. It's a little island. There's not this massive area. Like, I would guess they've already got more than enough capability to to seize Taiwan if they wanted to militarily. So am I right in understanding that from what you're saying is that the key is that if they take a move on Taiwan, they have to be able to militarily defend themselves from The United States, because there's a concern that if they move on Taiwan, that we're gonna then move to protect Taiwan, and that that could escalate into a more kinetic war between, you know, two of the world's largest superpowers.
25:50
Is that is that correct understanding?
25:53
Speaker 3: Yes. And the Chinese call that their counter intervention strategy. We call it anti access area denial in The US parlance, but they call it counter intervention. And so they've not just built the the ships and the the landing craft and the air transport craft and parachutes and that kind of invasion force, but they've also built these kind of missile systems that are designed to keep the US Navy, the US seven fleet from being able to get close enough to Taiwan to allow aircraft carriers which are prime power projection tools, to fly aircraft into Taiwan to help either stop an invasion or launch our own invasion. So they've developed a bevy of what they call anti ship cruise missiles that are supersonic.
26:39
That have 200 to 300 kilometer ranges, which are greater than anything that we have in our fleet. They've developed this specific thing called an anti ship ballistic missile, anti carrier ballistic missile. They've got two variants of it, a DF 21D and a DF 26 that go out about 900 miles and and 2,000 miles that range can range Guam. So they have basically from Guam all the way to the Mainland, they've got covered, saturated with anti ship cruise missiles, anti ship ballistic missiles, and now a new cadre of missiles called the hypersonic missiles, which travel faster than Mach five or five times the speed of sound. So they're introducing those as well, and these are launched the hypersonics are launched from shore bases, but the anti ship ballistic missiles and cruise missiles can be launched from aircraft, from surface ships, and the anti ship cruise missiles from submarines and from shore.
27:32
They're coming at all angles. If you're in a US aircraft carrier like I used to be, you have a very difficult threat dilemma because you have to worry about these missiles coming in from the air, from sea skimming, from underneath with submarines, the proliferation of submarines in the region that would be out there and then throwing some hypersonics and then ballistic missiles that are coming down. It's a challenging, challenging arena that they've built specifically to keep us out so that they can then invade small Taiwan, as you call it. And, you know, there's been debates in some areas over the years, and this was part of that threat deflation where over the last twenty years, people would always say, well, they don't really have the capability to do that. But over the last two or three years you've seen a series of analysis from CSIS and Rand and other organizations that are all now saying oh it's a fait accompli, China could do this and it would be devastating for China but they would still be able to do it.
28:32
And so I think we've gone from like they can't do it, they're a paper tiger, don't worry about it, to now we're on this side, it's a fait accompli and we need to just give up and accept reality. And I think that's another part of our book that we talk about in the end about what can we do not to allow this to be a fait accompli.
28:49
Seth Holehouse: And so and I wanna jump to that. Have one more question before we get to that, in terms of what we can do to undo this. But one, you know, thing that I've become particularly interested is the idea of EMPs and and grid down scenarios, especially in understanding and researching what happens when that happens. What happens if, say, for instance, you know, China has some Club K missiles off the coast. They detonate a few nukes above America.
29:13
Before we know it, all of our powers out, you know, one to two years to get the systems back up properly, right, from a lot of what I think a lot of experts are saying. So do you think that whether it would be cyber attack or an EMP of some sort, do you think that that's a a possibility, a realistic potential action? Like, let's just say, for instance, China did wanna invade Taiwan, and they knew that we would be we would fight back against that, wouldn't it make sense for them to drop an EMP, a couple EMPs over America, cripple America, and then and then move in on Taiwan because there'd be very little we could do? And is that a real threat? Hey, folks.
29:52
I've got a quick message for you. So I'm sure you've heard a lot of people, myself included, talking about the importance of buying precious metals, gold and silver. But what's really behind that? Is it just a thing of, hey. Buy this gold, buy this silver.
30:06
Right? Or is there something deeper that we should be looking at? So I recently came across some figures about house prices. So in 1930, the average family home was approximately $4,000. Fast forward to 02/2023, the average family home is just over $400,000.
30:23
So you have to ask yourself, why is that? Is it because things have just gotten more expensive? No. It's actually because the dollar has lost 99% of its value since 1930. Right?
30:33
When people talk about the collapse of the dollar or inflation, this is what it means. Now let's take a look at gold. So in 1930, if you wanted to purchase your home in gold, it would take approximately 200 gold coins. So 200 gold coins would purchase the average family home in 1930, about $4,000. Now if you instead of buying a home with that gold or cash, you set those aside.
30:58
If you set aside $4,000 in cash in 1930, it would be worth $4,000 today. What can you buy with $4,000? Can you buy a family home? No. You can't even buy a a crappy used car.
31:10
But if you set aside $4,000 worth of gold coins in 1930, which is 200 gold coins, 1 ounce coins, that would be worth approximately $400,000 today. And this is the key lesson about precious metals. It's not about getting rich. It's about putting your money into an asset that protects you against inflation and against the destruction of the currency, which is what happens to all fiat currencies, especially now. We're in the end days of the dollar.
31:41
And so that's why it's important, maybe not all of your money, but a portion of your money, a portion of what you have, I highly recommend putting it into precious metals of gold and silver, because what it's doing is it's protecting you. This is an asset that has stood the test of time, not just stood the test of time since the nineteen thirties. We're talking about the rise and fall of civilizations. Gold was used to buy houses back in ancient Rome. It's still around.
32:06
It's an asset that will forever have its value. So folks, if you want to do this and you need someone you can trust, there's no person I can recommend more than doctor Kirk Elliott. He's a very good friend of mine. He's a strong Christian patriot, and he's out to really help people to protect their savings and what you've worked for against the destruction of the dollar, not to mention also protecting it against the dangers of a central bank digital currencies. So to learn more about this, go to goldwithseth.com or call (720) 605-3900.
32:39
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32:58
Speaker 3: That's exactly a real threat. They have the capability to do that. So does North Korea, by the way, right now. But I think, you know, we think in terms of EMP and, know, the late doctor Peter Pry was somebody that was warning us about this for years to be hardening our infrastructure against that. We also now have to worry about who's coming across the southern border.
33:18
So instead of doing something that may be misinterpreted as a nuclear strike and risking a counter strike, Now you have, you know, tens of thousands or hundred thousand, not maybe a hundred thousand, but you have thousands of Chinese soft operators that are operating that could get and basically accomplish the same thing through special operations tactics in the country. That way they wouldn't have to risk and worry about a counter strike from the, you know, strategic command. And so therefore we'd still have the same impact which is taking down bridge, lack of communication, chaos, food riots, all of that.
33:55
Seth Holehouse: Which is just I mean, it's it's frightening, but you make a good point that if they can do it in a way that it'd be hard to pinpoint who did it, that would be the greatest. So, Brad, shifting to you just for the the particular question of of what we can do about this, because it seems like there's it's mixed, you know, what how politicians will stand against China. As we're seeing right now with, you know, the current, you know, shenanigans in in DC that we know that the current, you know, administration has been very, very in bed with China. So I don't expect them to do anything. I know even on I think it was day one that Biden undid the executive orders that Trump had put in place to protect our grid from foreign enemies such as China, right, and Iran.
34:37
So, Brad, what are what are the steps that need to be done at the the bigger picture level, but also as the individual level? What can we do? People that are watching and listening, what can we do about this?
34:52
Speaker 2: Well, there's so much to be done, of course, because the Biden administration has continued the engagement school, the the source of the problem, if you will. President Trump fought against it and tried to turn the rudder of the ship of state on that. When Biden came back in, certainly by last year, was clear engagement is again the dominant approach to China. So what must be done? First, presidential leadership.
35:22
We need leadership that recognizes that the PRC is America's enemy. They've declared us to be the enemy. That's innate in communism. Right? Just as you can't be a a married bachelor, you can't be a peaceful Leninist.
35:37
You can't be a peaceful communist. Right? So they're intent on destroying us. And then, of course, in 02/2019, your audience may recall that they declared people's war against us, which is a in in the communist arga, that means that they need to steel themselves, prepare ourselves, redouble their efforts to attack The United States and to prepare for conflict, with The United States. So presidential leadership that recognizes the PRC, is the enemy.
36:08
We need additionally to break the the engagement school. That is that headlock that's got Uncle Sam really trapped. And so we need to get Wall Street Investors, US Manufacturing Chamber Of Commerce to recognize the future of economic growth should be done in The US. It shouldn't be done in China. And if they have to, then in Vietnam, Indonesia, India, all our alternatives, you know, having invested that money in China, the PRC is not gonna let you take your money out.
36:43
Right? That was a donation to the PRC and the Chinese Communist Party. So you need to recognize the nature of the threat. So in the economic realm, in the diplomatic realm, we have to redouble our efforts with our allies, the Japanese, the Australians, the states in in the South Pacific. Right?
37:01
Where China in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific where China has made great inroads, with respect to them. And in Europe as well, we need to tell our adversaries that we're here for the long fight against China. Partners like India, we have to embrace more actively. And Taiwan, we need to recognize the strategic reality that Taiwan is an independent nation. Taiwan has strategic value, as you mentioned.
37:30
It also has economic value. Chip it's a dynamic economy, but chip production. Our economy is heavily dependent on the Taiwanese, essentially, chip factories and chip design. And then it also is important as a political warfare symbol. It shows that China can be a democracy.
37:49
It shows that the great Chinese people can live under democratic rule and can thrive under it, which underscores why the Chinese Communist Party wants to kill Taiwan. Right? Wants to conquer it and take it over, so it does not exist. The technological realm, likewise, we need to essentially stop trading with, the PRC and and giving our technology, to them. So we need to break engagement, and we need to embrace what our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers knew, which was power politics is defines the nature or is the ordering principle of a great power, conflict and great power tensions and security competition.
38:35
We knew that in World War two. We knew that in the Cold War. We need to return to those. No trading with your enemy. Right?
38:42
A recognition that relative power is key and America's interests have to come first. And that is absolutely necessary. At an individual level, similarly, Americans need to recognize, hey, don't trade with China. Don't buy Chinese products. Look for alternatives.
39:01
But recognize that they're the enemy of The United States. They're targeting the American homeland through the open border The spy balloon was not an accident. Right? It certainly was an intelligence collection device. If if you recall about a year ago, there was the spy balloon that the Biden administration did not shoot down, but and well, until it crossed The United States, that also was a symbol.
39:26
That was a sign, a political warfare message that the Chinese are targeting us. So they are our enemy, and we need to redouble our efforts, but also finally to recognize and to be confident in victory. That America has prodigious strengths and the American people are a great people who've dealt with adversity and have defeated adversaries before, whether those fascists or the Nazis or Japanese militarists or the tyranny of the communist party of the Soviet Union. We've did we've done this before. Our grandparents and our parents knew how to do so.
40:03
We need to return to those principles.
40:05
Seth Holehouse: It's it's also helpful to recognize that one of the greatest weaknesses from my perspective of China is that a large, large swath of their own people do not want them in in power. Twenty years ago, they wouldn't talk about it. They were so scared to even mention, you know, to talk to talk ill of the the the Communist Party that are on the dinner table because the the control was so great. But now what you see whether what you saw what you saw with the the movements in Hong Kong or even the the quit the CCP movement, the Tuaidong movement, where there's been hundreds of millions that have publicly renounced their membership to the CCP, that the the Chinese people themselves are on the side of us, which was really incredible, actually. I think we're back, you know, during around 2020, during election time, you know, you would see American flags over in the streets of Hong Kong, or you'd see large groups of Chinese over here in America carrying American flags, you know, saying we stand with America.
40:58
So the the Chinese people, I I think, also are really a powerful force that could help collapse this communist regime.
41:06
Speaker 2: So They're key. Yeah. Absolutely. The Chinese people are are are going to do it. It's not going to be somebody from the outside.
41:14
It's going to be the Chinese people working with the diasporas with the diaspora population and people of goodwill around the world who recognize the CCP is illegitimate. It's a western product. It's the last form of western colonialism. Right? It was Marx and Ingalls came up with the idea.
41:30
Lenin institutionalized it, if you will, and put his own essentially imprint on it. Stalin then turned it into something that was that Mao sought to emulate. And we need to recognize Stalin put Mao in power. Right? The the Communist International essentially created the Chinese Communist Party, nurtured it, and then ultimately put it in into power.
41:58
So it's absolutely illegitimate, and it is at variance with a traditional, Chinese with traditional Chinese civilization and their traditional political ordering. And when we recognize that, we can understand your I think, absolutely your point is only emboldened that the Chinese people don't want this, and they wanna be freed from it.
42:21
Seth Holehouse: Now, Jim, a question for you more from your background, of, you know, military service and and understanding the the, you know, war and what happens during war. Do you think that it would be healthy for a lot of Americans to say go watch Red Dawn and think this could happen? Right? Like, there there are hostile, massive, powerful communist forces that could potentially have kinetic war on American soil. And if so, how would you frame what needs to be done on an on an individual household level in terms of preparation?
42:54
How to be more aware of that? How to be more prepared? Because, again, example of Red Dawn, you can see in that film, which is I think we should go watch it, the original one, that the the households that were prepared actually had a chance. They had a chance of fending off enemies. They had, you know, food to survive.
43:09
They had backup plans of where to go. So how would you looking at as a a potential threat of war, what would your advice be to the people that are watching in terms of how they can be more prepared?
43:22
Speaker 3: Well, as somebody that served in the navy and served overseas, it's always been our you know, my strong belief that we that to help those folks back home is to make sure that we have the strongest defense forward. So there's a lot there that we need to do, and I you know, we don't have time to go into all of that, but that needs to be part of this renaissance that Brad's talking about. We must retool the US military towards a threat from the PRC. We are a maritime nation, and for the past forty years, we've been we've thought we've just had to worry about land warfare, and so we need to get back to being a maritime nation. As it relates to what people can do at home, well, obviously, the first thing you can do is stop buying things made in China.
44:06
I just saw in the news today, you know, we just saw Apple, Starbucks, and Sam's Club all announced that they're doubling and tripling and quadrupling down their investments and presence in China. So even though the Trump administration kind of arrested that thinking from Wall Street to some degree, it it's full on back to the the engagement school, and we're providing them the weapons. So that's a regular Americans that are doing that. So stop buying things at Walmart that say made in China.
44:37
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44:50
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45:09
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45:45
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't even buy you know, be suspicious of things made in Bangladesh or Vietnam, etcetera. Buy stuff that's made in America or in a place that you can confirm as a as a Western democracy. Secondly, look at your four zero one k's and where's your money being invested? Is your money being invested in your your retirement fund in some kind of hedge fund that Larry Fink controls and invests in the PRC? Because if you are, you're you're aiding and abetting not only the weapon systems I talked about, the missiles and aircraft and and and bombers, but you're also funding those people that are coming across the border that may be the ones that are in your neighborhood.
46:20
So then, obviously, in the local area, what you should be able to do is make sure that you have enough supplies to withstand the outage of electricity for some time. Make sure you have written records of your finances. Make sure that you have the kinds of self defense tools that you need to protect your family and your children from somebody that wants to, you know, come into your house and and and murder you. I mean, it it sounds a little bit paranoid, but I think that's kinda the the the thesis of the question. And I think what I just saw in the news this morning from last night down in Texas, where you just saw people rushing the Texas border guards just running past them.
47:03
And these were not children. These were not women. These were not babies. These were military fighting age men. I'm not saying they were from China.
47:10
I'm just saying the optic of watching American military types of law enforcement personnel being overwhelmed on our own border. That should cause a lot of Americans to ask themselves, what am I doing for my own home protection? Because it's going beyond just normal crime and drug use and things of that nature. We're getting into a period where it could flip just like that. And so people need to have, as we say in the Navy and on the aircraft carrier, your head on a swivel.
47:38
You need to be looking around. You need to know your neighborhood. You need to know what's going on. This doesn't mean we're, you know, we turn into a communist state, but neighborhoods and people knowing their neighbors, having relationships with your friends and and your neighborhood friends so that if you see something unusual that you can deal with it before it gets out of control. Those are all kind of basic practical things that unfortunately, you know, I hate to say it for somebody like me and the others that I serve with, we we would have never dreamed that we'd even have to talk like this.
48:08
Our job was to go out and show the flag throughout the world to make sure that America remained respected and somewhat feared, not unjustly feared, but at least that they understood that we were the guarantiers of liberty and freedom for the world, and that our people at home didn't have to live like they were in a third world state. And that's that's unfortunately where I think a lot of this is heading unless we reverse course.
48:35
Seth Holehouse: Yeah. I I share the similar concerns. That's where I see things heading unless we reverse course. I I think a lot will be shown what happens in the next year, especially as we head into the election and how that plays out as well. Brad, do you wanna give any closing thoughts as we wrap up as well?
48:52
Speaker 2: Well, certainly, the the our discussion has been has been, I think, certainly a realistic one. And it the dire notion of it and the tones of it, I think, are are more than warranted given the situation where we are. But we need to recognize we're Americans, and we believe in freedom and liberty, and that gives us tremendous advantages for sustaining our domestic politics. Right? Having a a rebirth, an understanding of what was the spirit of 1776 and what it meant, and the struggles that we've gone through in our past and that we've endured and seen through.
49:31
And that allows us to recognize, that the problems we have now are great problems, to be sure. But what we confront domestically as well as internationally can be addressed and and can be defeated. As we defeated our foes in the past, we could defeat the Chinese Communist Party because it's a giant in some respects, but it has feet of clay. And it's going through a particularly dire time now. And with the right actions from the Chinese people, the diaspora, people of goodwill, as I mentioned, around the world and and The United States also playing a role, we can eliminate this threat.
50:15
So the future of the twenty first century is one, again, where we're facing presently the battle between tyranny and freedom. Tyranny evinced by the People's Republic Of China and freedom by The United States. It's a rematch of what we face in the twentieth century, where ultimately freedom won. I think recognizing our strengths and our enemies' weaknesses, if we're wise enough, to return to the principles of power politics and of the spirit of 1776 domestically, we can once again maintain freedom and liberty in The United States and defeat our adversary in Beijing. And so, there's reason for optimism if we're able to do it.
51:00
But, I I agree certainly with your remarks. Much depends on what happens this year.
51:06
Seth Holehouse: A lot of words of wisdom there. Jim, any final thoughts from you?
51:11
Speaker 3: Yeah. I I would agree with what Brad has just said. I mean, we have an opportunity to basically save our country. And, you know, we know the history of what has occurred over time and the challenges that we've had. We can go back to the beginning, but we you know, recently as nine eleven, we had an attack on the homeland and people came together.
51:32
So it's not not that we can't do it. It's a matter of will, and it's also a matter of matter of personal virtue. We need people that are gonna be virtuous and know the difference between right and wrong are gonna be disciplined in their adherence to it. We've gotten kind of soft, complacent with our wealth and our opulence and abundance that we have as Americans. And we have to remember that if we want our children to be able to have that same kind of abundance and same kind of freedom, that there is a price to be paid, and that requires discipline right from wrong and making sure that we vote that way, make sure we select that way, make sure that we live our lives that way, and that that we don't accept the lies, whether from the Chinese Communist Party or from the American Communist Party.
52:20
We have to call out truth. We have to stand tall, and we have to shine the light wherever we're at. And if enough of us do that, we will become that that shining city on the hill.
52:31
Seth Holehouse: I couldn't agree more with both of you as you both have a very, I think, wise and important perspective that needs to be heard right now. So I'll I'll pull up the link. This is the book that you've you've both recently published, Embracing Communist China, America's Greatest Strategic Failure. I'll have the link to this in the description. I highly encourage you to this book, to buy this book, a, to support folks like you that are that are out there doing this work and dedicating yourself to this, but also education is is power.
52:59
Knowledge is power. And if if the more of us if we're more aware of the the real threats, it goes back to, you know, Sun Tzu, the art of war. Know yourself, know your enemy. Right? And to me, knowing ourself, it's going back to 1776.
53:12
Right? Bradley, just just as you pointed out, know who we are as Americans. So what was the founding of America? We also have to know our enemy and understand the threat of our enemy. So, gentlemen, thank you again for giving me your time today.
53:24
I really appreciate it. I appreciate what you're both doing. This is incredibly important work, and I hope that the folks that are watching and listening can get the book and also share this so more people can be aware of this. So thank you both very much, and have a wonderful rest of your day.
53:38
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for the opportunity. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
53:42
Speaker 3: Thank you, Seth.
53:44
Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. Folks, I have a quick message for you. Look, the twenty twenty four election is do or die for the globalist and communists that have infiltrated our country and are currently running it. And they either have to win or they're gonna destroy America so nothing is left either way. And if you're the person that's watching this show and following this information, unfortunately, you have the weight on your shoulders of making sure that your family is prepared, especially as we head in to this next year and this next election cycle because unfortunately, I think it's going to get rough.
54:15
And one of the ways I know they're going to target us is through our food supply. You can see all the food factories burned down, you can see the warnings of coming famines and food shortages and everything like that. And food is one of the number one ways totalitarian regimes have always used to control the populations destroy the food supply. So if you don't have at least two, three, four, five, six months worth of stored food, I highly recommend you take that very seriously because look, as I mentioned, if you're the person that's watching this, you're the person that carries the burden of making sure your family is prepared. I would recommend at least six months, if not a year of storable food.
54:50
So if things go haywire, whether it's grid down or terrorist attack from what's coming across the border, that your family can safely stay in place and you can feed your family. So folks today, go to heavensharvest.com and make sure you get your store will through the last for up to twenty five years. Just in case things go south, you know that you have what's gonna take to feed your family, which is so so critical for us to get through this next stage of history. So go to heavensharvest.com today, order your food that lasts up to twenty five years and use promo code Seth to save 15% on your entire order. Again, that's heavensharvest.com and use promo code Seth, s e t h, to save 15% on your entire order.