Ryan Reynolds here for I guess my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Anthony Cow. My guest today is Dimitri Alperovitch. Dimitri is the co-founder and executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank focused on "advancing American prosperity and global leadership in the 21st century and beyond." Before entering the policy world, Dimitri was the co-founder and CTO of CrowdStrike, one of the world's most prominent cybersecurity companies. Even if you don't work in cybersecurity, you might be familiar with CrowdStrike's work since it helped investigate major incidents like the 2016 DNC email leaks and also the 2014 North Korean hack against Sony. This April, Dimitri published World on the Brink. It's a book that argues how America is in a Cold War II with China and offers ideas on how the US can innovate, partner, and compete to win this new Cold War. We'll chat with Dimitri about how he came to write this book and the ideas within it. Now let's get to the discussion. Dimitri, welcome and great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for having me. Well let's dive into the questions. I'm really curious to talk with you about the book. And as I just mentioned in our introduction, you went from being the CTO of a multi-billion dollar tech company to heading a think tank. And that doesn't seem like the most common path. Why did you decide to get into the policy world and what was that process like? Yeah, I've always been passionate about foreign policy and international affairs. I actually studied in college along with computer science and cybersecurity and continued to do so in a sort of part-time role as an advisor to various US government agencies, the Department of Defense. I now serve on the advisory council for the Department of Homeland Security. So this has always been a passion of mine. And then after taking CrowdStrike Public in 2019, I was sort of looking at what else I wanted to do, feeling like I've accomplished a big goal of starting a great company that was worth tens of billions of dollars and was also looking at how to give back to this country. I'm an immigrant to this country. It has been incredibly good to me and a lot of my success. I owe to the opportunities that I've had here in America. And as I was looking out at the world, I was incredibly concerned by what the rise of China meant to the United States and its position in the world. I spent the last decade, both at CrowdStrike and even before that, really fighting intrusions from China into government networks, private sector networks witnessing tremendous amount of intellectual property theft by Chinese government hackers on behalf of their industry. So I wanted to look at the broader picture of the US-China competition and what we could do in the nonprofit space to try to advance American policies in order to make sure that we win what I believe is a new Cold War. Yeah. And I think those of us who maybe are familiar with the intersection of, say, China and a lot of this hacking stuff are quite familiar with the work, even before CrowdStrike at McAfee and such. And you know, getting into the nonprofit world with your think tank, so Silverado policy accelerator is named as policy accelerator. It's not like an institute, like every other think tank. What is a policy accelerator? And how do you guys differ from or do you differ from traditional think tanks? I think we do. And, you know, when we thought about starting this organization, there was a natural question of does the world need yet another think tank and how would we be different? There's certainly a lot of great people in my town in Washington, DC where I live, but elsewhere as well that are thinking deeply about a lot of these issues. And there was a big question of what do we bring that's unique to this policy arena. And I think my business background really helps because having spent a lot of time in the private sector, I'm very much focused on action. What have we done today? What have we done this week? Are we moving the ball forward? And what I find is that a lot of think tanks here in DC, they're not sort of focused as much on accomplishing things. They're focused on publishing papers and academia is in the same way, by the way, they're focused on kind of broader strategy, which we do over the next 10 years type of thing. And also having a lot of experience in with the government, you know, I also realized that making huge change in US government is very, very difficult on any given issue. You may have once in a generation chance to do something that really dramatically transforms the landscape, but micro changes happen virtually every day, right? Because policy gets implemented, policy gets set in the executive branch, legislation gets passed. And changing things at the margins or recommending changes at the margins is something that a lot of think tanks just don't play a big role in remarkably enough. And, you know, I've always thought that it's much better to make a step forward today than then run a marathon and every day than run a marathon in 10 years, and particularly in this confrontation with China, everyday matters. And that's what we really focused on is how do we sort of think about this confrontation with China that is playing out in the military space, in the economic space, trade space, technology space, and at the margins, recommend improvements and micro changes to US policy, whether it's a legislative branch or to the executive branch that moves the ball forward. And to my big surprise, there are not a lot of organizations that are focused on that. Well, I mean, as someone who's also in the tech and business roles, I can definitely appreciate the focus on impact. And I mean, from industrial policy to tech regulation itself, at least I think there's an increasing need for, you know, to tech and the government roles to learn a bit more from each other. And while not everyone might take your path to go from, you know, CTO to heading a think tank, you know, is there any advice you might give to people in tech who are maybe looking to move into the government or policy world or get more involved? So the one thing I would recommend is really learn how government functions. It is very, very different from the business world. And it frustrates a lot of business people. Now I have the benefit of living in DC. I haven't been involved with the government in one capacity or another for several decades now. But people that are living in the valley do not appreciate because in the business world, things are much simpler, right? You find the person responsible and you try to convince them to purchase your product or make a partnership decision or whatever. And it's kind of a yes or no decision and you get somewhere you don't. In the government, there are numerous stakeholders. There's no one person you talk to. It's literally being on the doors of people for months or even years, sometimes before you get anywhere. It's much more frustrating. You know, democracy is not a pretty thing. You know, when you look at how the sausage factory is operating, you get chalk sometimes. But if you have the patience, if you have the dedication to keep at it, you can really accomplish things. And even small things can matter a great deal. Again, you don't need to pass a huge omnibus legislation that dramatically transforms a particular landscape. But you can potentially, you know, piggyback on one. I'll give you one example. We do a lot of work in the semiconductor space in the chips space. And of course, we had the chips act that was passed a couple years ago. That was that transformative legislation that came together at the right moment when the US China competition was really acute in politicians minds when the semiconductor issue was really prominent in part because of the shortages related to COVID. And there was a lot of effort on both sides of the aisle to get this done, a lot of industry support. And when we came at it from the civil writers perspective, we said, well, this is going to happen anyway. And by the way, we're big supporters. We think it's important to invest in our domestic innovation and support the semiconductor industry. But what we thought we could bring to the table is a unique perspective of saying to the legislators that, look, if you're going to pass a bill that altogether is about $75 billion, 50 plus billion dollars in direct subsidies and research plans, but also tax breaks on top of that to this massive industry. And that was controversial, right? Not everyone thought that that was a good idea to give so much money to these companies that are, in many cases, very rich. But, you know, we believe that was important. But if you're going to do that, it's also the right opportunity to ask them to do something. And that's something in the context of the great competition with China is to ask them to reduce their business in China and to not have fabs in China that manufacture advanced chips. And we and a few others, you know, really pushed this idea. And it became part of the guardrails in the bill that if you're going to take money from US government, from US taxpayers, for financing your chips fabs here domestically, you're going to reduce the types of business that you're in China. Well, I mean, I'd be curious to talk more about what else besides the chip act that you want to advocate for, but I think that probably gets to some of the stuff later on in the book, which provides a good opportunity to then transition to talking more about the book. Maybe to start us off here, not everyone listening to this podcast might have read a world on the brink yet. So if you were to give a 30 second elevator pitch of the book, what might that sound like? So the book argues that we're in a new cold world with China. I can explain why I believe that that to be the case. And it really articulates the grand strategy for victory. How do we win the Cold War? And what does victory even mean? Because unlike the First Cold War, I don't think it'll end with the, you know, dismantling of China. That was a great insight that George Kennan, the architect of the strategy for the First Cold War had, is that the Soviet Union was a natural phenomena that would one day disintegrate. Well, China is not going anywhere. It's been around for 5,000 years. It'll probably be around for another 5,000 years. Even the Chinese Communist Party is not necessarily going to disappear. It would be wonderful if they did, but we can't count on that. So what does the victory mean in that context is what the book really tries to articulate. And the other thing that it really predicts is that we're very likely heading on a path to a hot conflict with China over Taiwan. I believe Xi Jinping is intent to take Taiwan in the next 48 years, which would have dramatic ramifications for US national security. And the book really argues about how we deter that from happening. And a lot of it is based on my lessons learned from the Ukraine conflict. That was one of the first geopolitical analysts to have predicted that Putin was going to invade Ukraine before the end of that winter, predicted about three months before the conflict actually took place. And it was actually the motivation for me to write this book, because the reasons that played into my getting convinced that Putin was going to launch this ruinous invasion are the same reasons that I see playing out in the Indo-Pacific and then in Taiwan straight. So you mentioned this framing of a new Cold War. Not everyone agrees with that. Joe Biden himself has tried to downplay. Xi Jinping obviously also wants a downplay. What do you say to people who maybe think that framing is not productive or potentially provocative? Why frame this as a new Cold War? Well, first of all, it's the reality, right? I'll give you a couple of reasons why it is a new Cold War. So first of all, if you look at just the Oxford dictionary of a definition of a Cold War, it is defined as a state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare. Now, I would challenge any one of your listeners that is watching the US-China competition as it's playing out in the global arena to look at that definition and say that we are not in a Cold War with China based on that definition from an Oxford dictionary. Political hostility, for sure, threats, yes, propaganda, yes, other measures short of open warfare unquestionably. So if we're in a Cold War, why do I think we're in the Cold War, Cold War II, and why the similarities between the First Cold War and the Second Cold War are so apt? Well, let me give you a few reasons there as well. First of all, I believe that just like in the First Cold War, we're in a global competition for supremacy between the United States and China that is playing out in first every single corner of the globe, right? It's playing out in certainly the region, the Indo-Pacific, it's playing out in Europe, it's playing out over the battlefield in Ukraine where China's supporting Russia, we're obviously supporting Ukraine, it's playing out in Latin America and Africa where there's a rush for resources, investments, and so forth between our countries. It is playing out in the military domain where there's unquestionably tensions in the region and a buildup of capabilities there. It is playing out in the economics sphere, we have a trade war going on with China that is now almost eight years in the making that is accelerating with new tariffs being put in place not just by even America itself, but with Europeans have recently announced it on their electric vehicles. It is playing out in the diplomatic sphere where we're confronting Chinese influence in various parts of the world. Very, very similar to the First Cold War, right? Also very similar to the First Cold War, we have an arms race, both a technological arms race, a conventional arms race with a buildup of military capabilities on both sides, but also a nuclear one with China in particular, reforming and expanding its nuclear arsenal going from about 300 warheads that they've had really since the early days of their nuclear program to now dramatically accelerating that and trying to match the number of warheads that the United States has about 1500 by the mid-2030s. We also have a space race, right? The defining characteristic perhaps of the First Cold War was the 1960s and the race to the moon trying to get there before the Soviets did. Well, guess what we're doing right now? Trying to get back to the moon before the Chinese do and then later on to Mars. We also have a competition for, and it's scramble for bases, military bases in the region. The United States for the first time in 32 years is getting access to the bases in the Philippines, facing the Taiwan Strait and Lucent and the northern parts of the Philippine Islands. It is reform its bases in Guam, expanding its bases in Japan as well. China is doing the same thing. It's expanding bases in Pakistan and Cambodia and even as far away as Djibouti, and both sides are preparing for war. China, we now know based intelligence that has been articulated by US government. President Xi has given an order for the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, just three years away. That doesn't mean necessarily that a war will take place in 2027, but it's remarkable that he's given that order. The Indo-Pacific command that's based in Hawaii of the US military is preparing for war as we speak with China and trying to deter that invasion of Taiwan. Taiwan is really that major regional flashpoint. They argue it's playing the same role that West Berlin played in the First Cold War that was for the first couple of decades of that conflict was the place where Soviet Union and America could have fought a hot conflict that could have escalated to nuclear war. We have a spy war, right? The FBI says that the espionage against this country right now is at the highest levels. It's ever been including throughout the First Cold War because of what China is doing, both in the human space, sending spies into this country but also through cyber and breaking into networks of government agencies, commercial companies and the like. So on all of those levels, and by the way, we also have an ideological struggle. Now, it's not quite the same as it was during the First Cold War. It's not communist, necessarily versus capitalism, even though I do believe that Xi Jinping is a Marxist-Leninist in a very traditional sense of the world, but he's not necessarily exporting that ideology worldwide. But he's certainly an authoritarian leader that is exporting authoritarisms around the world and doing so directly in Africa in particular where China is setting up schools to teach next generation of African leaders how to do surveillance, including, by the way, by using Chinese technology, how to do population control, and so forth, and obviously supporting dictators like Putin and others around the world. But the ideological struggle, I think, is not as acute as it was in the First Cold War. And frankly, even in the First Cold War, it was not as acute as most people tend to believe because my good friend Sergey Ratchenko, just a Cold War historian, just wrote a phenomenal book looking at the archives of the Russian Communist Party throughout the First Cold War and arguing that ideology actually did not play a big role throughout much of the Soviet Union's history. And it was much more driven by realist, great power competition concerns just as you have with China. So you have all this slew of reasons why the Second Cold War is very much similar to the First Cold War. And really, the only difference that people cite and try to argue why we're not in the new Cold War is that we have this deep economic relationship with China. And my answer to that is, well, first of all, if you've got a dozen reasons for you're in a Cold War and only one on the other side, that's not a compelling argument to say that this is not a Cold War. But even if you look at that particular argument, it really is problematic on two fronts, because first of all, most people don't appreciate how deep the economic dependence and relationship was with the Soviet Union during the First Cold War. And as I write in the book, much of the Soviet industry was built by Western industrialists. We were supplying them with weapons, not just during the World War II and then lead up to it. But even after there's this remarkable moment after World War II in 1946 and 1947, when everyone in the United States is aware of the Red Scare, we're unquestionably in a Cold War, and the British sell the Rolls-Royce engines to the Soviets that go into their MiG-15 fighters that just a few years later shoot down 139 American pilots over the skies of Korea, just a remarkable example of how we were literally arming, the Allies were arming the Soviets. But even beyond that, much of the oil and gas technology that the Soviet Union was using to produce fossil fuels that they were exporting, including to Europe, was running on Western technology that was sold to them throughout the '60s and '70s, which of course was financing the arms race and financing their regime. Wall Street was providing loans to Warsaw Pact countries throughout the '70s and '80s. So just remarkable integration, not as high as it is with China by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly the trend lines are quite similar. And even today with the economic integration with China, there's unquestionably partial decoupling and derisking that's taking place to reduce the integration in critical technologies like semiconductors, artificial intelligence, green energy, and the like. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze, relax, and think about work. You really, really wanted all to work out while you're away. Monday.com gives you and the team that peace of mind. When all work is on one platform and everyone's in sync, things just flow wherever you are. Tap the banner to go to Monday.com. Well, going from complex interdependence and cold war to some of the hot war scenarios that you talked about, you know, one thing that I appreciated about World Wanda Brink was how you challenge some of these tropes that get associated with a Taiwan invasion scenario. So, you know, in the introduction, you paint how instead of this D-Day style beach landing, which a lot of people kind of talk about and imagine, you have China quickly seizing air seaports, key sites. And you've also argued how a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, which is also kind of this thing that a lot of pundits tend to talk about, is actually quite unlikely and would fail. So, tell me about how you came to these conclusions and why you think these conclusions are important to highlight. Well, first of all, I came to these conclusions by actually going to Taiwan and not just speaking with the government leaders there, but also actually walking the terrain. And as someone who's grown up on that island, Anthony, you appreciate more than most how that island is really natural fortress. Like, I couldn't think of a worst place to invade. First of the Taiwan Strait waters are very, very rough, really impassable half of the year to anything, but huge container ships. The waters are very shallow on the western shores of Taiwan. The beaches are very small and very rocky. And the country is full of mountains, rivers, tunnels, bridges. It is not the plains of Ukraine, you know, if you're going to undertake this invasion. So, just walking the terrain, you get an appreciation that, you know, beach landing is just not a reality. And also doing a lot of historical studies. So, you know, as we're speaking right now, we're in July of 2024. And we've have just last month celebrated the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, where 150,000 Allied troops across in English Channel to land on the beaches of Normandy. But most people are not aware that it is also the 80th anniversary of another amphibious invasion, which actually never took place. And it is the so-called Operation Causeway that was developed by the American Joint Staff to invade Taiwan. That was occupied by Japan in 1944. And, you know, 150,000 troops landing on the beaches of Normandy to invade France. The Operation Causeway called for 300,000 plus troops to invade Taiwan. And even back then, in 1944, they realized that the beach landing that they had just done in Normandy was not doable in Taiwan. And it called for the taking of the ports, particularly the southern ports, because that's where most of the port facilities were. And then fighting for two months up the island to the capital, incurring enormous losses that they estimated. And ultimately, President Roosevelt and Douglas MacArthur and other military leaders looked at the plan and said, "No, this is too hard, too costly, too risky. We're not going to do this. We're going to bypass Formosa as this time when I was called at the time and go and take Okinawa." So even back then, 80 years ago, this was viewed as, you know, really, really difficult. Operation, much more difficult than D-Day and beach invasion was ruled out back then. And today, it's even harder for numerous reasons why one, you know, back then, Taiwan had 6 million people and about 100,000 Japanese troops. Now you've got 24 million people almost on Taiwan, at least ostensibly reserve forces over a million people, although there are real questions about the quality of that reserve force. But also, you've just had tremendous development in military capabilities that have given defense and enormous advantage over the last 80 years that you did not have back in World War II. But also just the reality that if you're going to land at least, and this is a very, very conservative estimate, half a million troops that you would need today to try to at least an initial invasion to conquer Taiwan, you can't do this on the beaches. You just don't have the capacity to do so. You know, in Normandy, it wasn't just landing on Omaha Beach and Utah Beach. We set up these mulberry ports, right, that would unload these massive logistics that are needed to sustain the force. You can't do that in the Strait of Taiwan. The waters are too rough. Some of your listeners may remember in the last couple of months that the U.S. military set up this floating dock in Gaza to try to supply humanitarian aid to the population there. It started working on it in early April and basically just dismantle it after having operated for five days because of the rough waters in Mediterranean. Well, the Taiwan Strait is worse than the Mediterranean. So this is really, really hard to accomplish. So you need the port facilities. And one thing that has happened in the last 80 years that the U.S. government did not have when it was thinking about invading Taiwan back then is the port of Taipei that has been built in the 1990s and expanded dramatically in the early 2010s that is facing the Taiwan Strait that leads right into the heart of Taipei that sits next to the opening of the Tom Sway River that can also be leveraged for direct assault, Marine style assault assault on key government installations in the capital. And I believe that any invasion will have to take that port to unload hundreds of thousands of troops, armored vehicles, personnel, munitions and logistics that you need to actually occupy the silent of 24 million people. So, you know, once you spend time in Taiwan, once you spend time looking at the history, once you spend time talking to military leaders both in Taiwan and here in the United States, you get an appreciation for the fact that this is really, really difficult to do. And there's only a few ways in which it can be accomplished. I mean, I've been by that port of Taipei. It's on one of the roads to the airport, actually. So I think that probably makes it even more strategic of a location. I am curious in your trip to Taiwan, you know, were there any particularly interesting or memorable conversations and like, were there any things that, you know, you were thinking before you went that your mind changed as a result of learning or talking with people on the ground? So, you know, it's interesting because, you know, I spent a last couple of years doing a lot of work with the Ukrainians and going to Kiev and I actually brought on this trip, one of the folks that works closely with the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian government. And the comment that this person made to me after we met with people really crossed the aisle. We met, obviously, with the ruling DPP governments with the Dan Vice President, our president, Lai and Joseph Wu, the Foreign Minister and Chairman of Joint Chiefs and others. But we also met with KMT, the opposition folks as well. And this person, the Ukrainian told me, "Oh my God, this is just like Ukraine before the war. These people have their head in the sand, just like we did. That invasion is not going to happen. They're divided just like we were with sort of people that were arguing that we should have peace Russia. That's the role of the KMT in Taiwan that, you know, the best way to avoid a war is to peace China. And they have not learned the lessons from Ukraine. It was a comment from this person. So that was one thing. By the way, I didn't fully answer your previous question on the blockade, which, you know, anyone that looks at the reality of Taiwan and also the history will appreciate that a blockade is just not doable. First of all, Taiwan is and can be self-sufficient in food production. It imports a lot of food, but, you know, it imports, you know, things like caviar and beef from the United States and other things that you don't need necessarily to sustain yourself. But it has a robust agricultural sector. It produces a lot of vegetables and foods. It has a lot of fish and it's surrounding waters and it's rivers. It produces a lot of rice. So it has enough food to make sure that people don't starve to death. Energy is a big problem because it doesn't pour a lot of energy and in part because it shut down a number of its nuclear reactors over the last few years and wants to shut all of them down next year. So it's highly literal line on LNG, but it's also tropical climate. So, you know, right now in key of people living six to 10 hours a day without electricity and right now in the summer, it's okay. But, you know, when it gets to winter time, that will be really big problem because it gets very, very cold in Ukraine. It doesn't get cold in Taiwan, right? So as bad as it is to be without energy, people are not going to freeze to death. They're not going to starve to death. And at the same time, because Taiwan is so crucial to the global economy, to the Chinese economy, because of its dominance and chips that micro electronics, the whole world will go into a deep depression, including China, the longer this blockade goes on. And the Taiwanese people, obviously, their economy will suffer greatly as well. But, you know, there's no historical precedent in modern times from cities, much less countries surrendering to a blockade. You can look at the siege of Leningrad in World War II, a million people starve to death, and they didn't surrender. Or in more recent times, the siege of Sarajevo, 65,000 casualties over a four year period, it did not surrender. So the idea that the Taiwanese who would not be starving, who would not be freezing, but certainly would be having a huge economic impact would surrender knowing what the outcome would be, right? The Chinese are very straightforward saying that a lot of people are going to be sent into re-education camps. And if you have any questions about what that means, just look at Xinjiang and what they're doing to the Uighurs. I don't think there's much of an appeal from anyone in Taiwan to go through that experience, the idea that they would go through that voluntarily. I just don't buy. So as you mentioned, in Taiwan itself, there's a lot of internal political division. There's not necessarily a sense of alarm about an invasion. And what would you recommend to people in Taiwan to do? And what role does Taiwan play? And what agency does it have to play in this new Cold War? And is Taiwan just, say, a pawn that's going to get tossed around between the US or China? Or is there more of a sense of agency in action that it can take on itself? Oh, it absolutely has agency. And it's a robust democracy, right? It has been a democracy now for 30 years since the fall of the dictatorial KMT regime there that was established by Chinca Shek. And like any democracy, there's debate about what to do. One thing that was very apparent to me in Taiwan is that almost no one in Taiwan is really for unification. The recent polls show about 7% of the country wants to unify with China. And it's not even clear. And by the way, that numbers down dramatically from what it was 20, 30 years ago. But even with those 7%, it's not clear to me what they mean by unification, because a lot of them, I think, are still these diehard white-haired KMT people that have always believed in unification, but by unification, they meant that they would take over the mainland, right? Not that the mainland would take over Taiwan. So quite unclear what even that 7% is interesting. But over the last 30 years, since the advent of democracy in Taiwan, the identity of the Taiwanese has really developed greatly. Of course, the indigenous population of Taiwan is not Han Chinese. It's as for Nigerians. And it's been remarkable to me to watch the resurgence of interest in that history, even though the majority of the population now, of course, is Han Chinese. But a lot of people trace their bloodlines to the indigenous population. There's interest in the native cuisines and arts, and so forth. The language, the Taiwanese language, which is an offshoot of Mandarin, but different from Mandarin that's spoken on the mainland is also reviving. So in every way, it's really getting further and further away from the mainland and this idea of unification. But certainly if the Taiwanese want to decide to unify with China, no one can stand in their way, and certainly the United States won't. I don't think that's likely or even plausible. But also, if the Taiwanese choose not to fight, should there be an invasion, then it's going to be very difficult for the United States to make the case that we should fight for Taiwan when it's not willing to stand up on its own. So the defense of Taiwan and the deterrence of Chinese invasion begins and really ends with Taiwan itself. Yes, I argue the United States should do a lot, but unless the Taiwanese reform their military, start focusing on procuring the right weapon systems that have asymmetric advantage that can sink the Chinese fleet from coming across and being able to take the port of Taipei and the airports in the city of Taipei and the international airport outside the city. You know, it's going to be very difficult for the United States even if wants to do anything for the Taiwanese. So it has to start there. And they have to have this discussion of do we want to try the peacement route? Ukraine did, and we know how that ended. Or do we want to secure our sovereignty and secure our freedom by, you know, adhering to the peace through strength argument that the best way to avoid war is to prepare for one. Well, on the note of war and victory and game plans for victory, I want to shift from Taiwan to the US where in world on the brink, you have this set of policy prescriptions as part of a game plan for victory in Cold War II. And among these are strengthening immigration and investing in partnerships with US allies and not just the Pacific, but also beyond. And that all sounds very nice on paper. But a growing number of Americans are becoming skeptical about those kinds of things. You know, what would you say to say a farmer in Iowa or a swing voter in Georgia about say why we should support immigration reform or something like an economic NATO, which is one of the proposals that you put forward? Well, so first of all, I think majority of American public are for immigration, but they're not for uncontrolled immigration. They're not for people jumping over the fence and coming in droves, you know, in a way that is not sustainable, right? And neither am I for that matter. So I think we need to look at other countries like Canada, like Australia, they have merit based immigration programs that look at, you know, what needs they have in their economy and sort of select people that they want to come into the country. And we need to do the same thing. You know, I love the quote I use it in the book from Scott Galloway, a professor at NYU that says that every single year, there's a draft for the best talent in the world. And America gets the first picks because at the end of the day, so many people from every corner of the globe want to come to this country like I did and so many others do, including from China, by the way. And we basically ignore most of these people, right? We don't let them come legal into this country. And as a result, some of them come illegally. And many others come that, you know, are just fleeing their, you know, war zones or gang violence and Latin America and elsewhere. Well, we can be much, much smarter about saying, who do we actually want? And I would argue that if you think about it from a national security perspective, and you said, we want the best people, the most educated people from Russia, from China, from Iran, to come over here, it would accomplish two things. One, it would help us by bringing great talent into this country. And two, we can them, right? Because they would lose those people and they access to the things that they could produce. So there's a national security argument to be made for immigration to weaken our adversaries and to strengthen us. So that's point number one. Point number two is that the book, despite its title, I guess the first part of the title world in the brink, which is very ominous, is actually very optimistic. And, you know, the second part of the title, how America can we be China in the race of 24 centuries, obviously, and not to that as well. But I argue in the book that we have every advantage over China, right? We have the power of ideas. We have the power of our education system that is still to be kind of the world despite, you know, some challenges we've seen in recent years. We have the immigration where no one literally wants to jump over the fence and come to China, except maybe North Koreans and even there doing so in transit to South Korea, right? And yet we have every single day, thousands of Chinese that come across our border. Again, should be more controlled, should be more selective, they should be vetted, all of that. But the fact that many of them, you know, some of them are probably infiltrations by the Chinese Communist Party and their intelligence services, but many of them are just people looking for a better life for themselves and for their kids, given the economic deterioration in China, right? We still are that beacon of opportunity to the world that we have been throughout the existence of this country. Incredible strengths. We have the world's greatest military by far. You know, there is a shifting balance of power in the Indo-Pacific where China's military buildup for that single emission of trying to take Taiwan has changed things. But if, you know, you were to fight a hypothetical battle with China, let's say in the Atlantic Ocean or in Africa or in Latin America, it wouldn't even be close, right? They don't have global power production like we do. They built their military for a single purpose, which is to take Taiwan, which is 100 miles off their shore. And we have an alliance network that is incredible, right? Not just NATO, but the alliance we have with Japan, with Australia, with the Philippines, with South Korea, et cetera. China has none of that. It has really no allies. People talk about its relationship with Russia. It's very much a transactional relationship that is in the self-interest of both countries. China is really doing very little to help Russia and its conflict with Ukraine in terms of providing it with direct military aid and even on the economic front. It's doing the bare minimum to try to avoid sanctions by the United States. So we have all those advantages. We have a technological advantage. Most of the innovation is in this country. So are we willing to use those advantages to win the Cold War, to deter conflict is really the big question that will be answered over the coming years. Well, in the conclusion to your book, you talk about how we must organize to counter China in the ways that you just described without creating this new red scare and sliding into xenophobia. To what extent do you think that's possible? And how specifically do we ensure that we can say keep attracting Chinese STEM PhDs while also countering China and keep allies like South Korea on board without, say, spooking them with xenophobic incidents or sentiments that might happen at home here? Yeah, we have to acknowledge that most Chinese that are trying to come to this country are people that are looking for better opportunities for themselves and for their children, for their families. We have to vet them. And we've done it throughout history. We didn't stop immigration from Germany throughout the 1930s before World War II, just because Hitler was in charge there. We didn't stop Russian immigration from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, right, to the extent that they were able to flee and come to this country. So we've done this before throughout history. And it has always benefited us and contributed to our success. And we can do so again. Well, I don't know if you saw the debate last week between Biden and Trump, but there are a lot more people perhaps these days who are thinking we'll end up with a second Trump term. Is this a good thing for for the game plan for victory? And are there things that Trump might do differently from Biden when it comes to China policy and say that the likelihood that parts of this game plan for victory might come to fruition? Well, look, Silverado is staunchly bipartisan organizations. I'm not going to get into the political horse race here, but I'll tell you this. If there was one issue on which both candidates in that debate agreed upon, it was China. And in fact, the policies of the Trump administration on China have largely carried over into the Biden administration. The Biden administration has further those policies and enhanced them. There's broad bipartisan agreement on China in the U.S. Congress, a place where the two parties can't agree on anything these days, but they can agree on China. So who knows, who's going to win in November? Who knows what those administrations would look like? Even if the Biden administration wins, it might not be even President Biden on the ticket potentially, as we'll find out soon. But even if he is, he'll have a new team coming in or people will get shuffled into new positions. Who knows what team Trump will bring in. But I think the direction that we're moving in is not going to change. We're not going to go back to the 2015 situation when I quote President Obama in the book saying that we welcome the rise of China. No one today in Washington is welcoming the rise of China. They see that as a threat to the United States, an assessment that I agree with. We're not going to go back to that. It's only question of how far do we move and how fast and time matters, right? I argue in the book that this conflict can happen as soon as 2028 passed. She's election in 2027. That's just four years from now. And I opened the book with a quote from Tolstoy from War and Peace that says that the two most powerful warriors are patients in time. And I do worry a great deal that we have no patients and we're running out of time. Well, that is a very poetic way in which I think we can end this episode. Dimitri, it was really fun talking with you as I had mentioned to you before we started. This is a topic I personally care a lot about and have a lot of interest and personal stake in. So I valued your take on it. Listeners, if you want to learn more about what we discuss in this episode, look out for Dimitri Alperovich's book, World on the Brink. And I'll also include links to Dimitri's socials and just where to find more information about Silverado Policy Accelerator inside of the show notes. Thank you again, Dimitri. Thanks so much, Anthony. [Music]
