China v. Ukraine with Elbridge Colby; TikTok's Clock; Election Meddling Is Cool Now?

>> Sen. Chuck: At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision making process about the future of Israel at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.

>> Bill: It's Tuesday, March 19, 2024, and welcome back to GoodFellows, a Hoover institution broadcast examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns.

I'm Bill Whalen, I'm a Hoover distinguished policy fellow. I'll be your moderator today, joined by two of our three good fellows. John Cochran will not be with us today, but we are graced by the presence of the historian Neil Ferguson and former presidential national security advisor and fellow historian, HR McMaster, both Neil and HR are Hoover Institution senior fellows.

Gentlemen, two blocks we're gonna get into today, and the second block we're gonna talk about tick tock, Congress's move trying to force the Chinese company ByteDance to sell it, share and tick tock. And the question of that's good legislation. And we're gonna tie that into also a conversation about Chuck Schumer and the Senate majority leader's recent comments on Israeli domestic politics, d id he cross the line?

But first, we're gonna have a conversation about foreign policy priorities for the United States. And joining us for that is Elbridge Colby, making his debut on goodfellows. Mister Colby is a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Strategy and Forced Development. He is the co founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a policy initiative focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition.

He's also the author of the Strategy Of American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, that's published by Yale University Press, it came out in 2021. Elbridge, welcome to GoodFellows.

>> Elbridge: Great to be with you, gentlemen.

>> Bill: All right, let's get into it, cause I know you guys are gonna have some, maybe some clashing thoughts on this.

I wanna take you back, bridge, to a piece in Politico, April 2023. The headline, meet the conservative intellectual, that was you, seeking to remake GOP's foreign policy. Let me read you something that you said in this article. Quote, Ukraine should not be the focus, the best way to avoid war with China is to be manifestly prepared such that Beijing recognizes that an attack on Taiwan is likely to fail.

We need to be a hawk to get to a place where we can be a dove, it's about a balance of power. Okay, question bridge. That was six months before Hamas invaded Israel. The world has changed a little bit. The war in Ukraine continues. What are you saying here?

Are you saying that Taiwan comes first before Ukraine and Israel? Are you saying that a military buildup comes first and foremost of all? And if so, what happens in this whole equation to Ukraine and Israel? Do we still providing arms to them? Do we turn our backs on them?

Tell me what you're getting at in that article.

>> Elbridge: Sure, what I'm saying is that I would put it this way, that China is our top threat, which seems to be the conventional wisdom, but I'm actually just following the logic of that through. It's ten times the GDP of Russia and probably 30 times or more the GDP of Iran.

And Asia is the world's most important region. I think it's pretty close and will exceed 50% of global GDP. Frankly, pretty standard, classic balance of power thinking, anti hegemonic thinking, which has deep roots in the American republic, but even deeper roots in Britain and other European strategic thinking.

You don't allow even a potentially hostile power to dominate such a great fraction of the world's economic area. So I think starting with Ukraine and Taiwan is starting kind of from the wrong end. It's more that the consequences of a defeat of the United States or a collapse of our geopolitical position in Asia would be grievous.

So actually, everything I said, there is only more true now, especially now that the war has broken out in the Middle east. And the Biden administrations budget proposal is a 1% growth, which is below the rate of inflation, let alone organic cost drivers within the Department of Defense.

And just to give you one example, which is only one among dozens, probably hundreds you could pick from, I believe the administration. Well, the United States expended a year's worth of, I believe it was SM-6 missiles fighting the Houthis. So it was essentially fighting a tertiary power within a tertiary region.

And again, my view on sort of the role of military forces is, again, kind of old fashioned peace through strength. Which is, I don't find it credible or that it would be compelling to launch economic or let alone sort of moral suasion kind of sanctions to persuade China to stop at Taiwan or to be pushed off the island of Taiwan.

You need military forces. We don't have a nuclear monopoly anymore, as we did say, in 1952 or 53, vis a vis China. So it's got to be a lot of conventional forces, and it's just an objective fact that we're not prepared. And despite a lot of rhetoric, and the Rand Corporation, hardly a bunch of bomb throwers.

So to speak has said that we're on a trajectory to lose. It's pretty simple, it's basically like we should be able to deny a Chinese invasion. We're not in a position to do so. And we can't act as if the president says, and a lot of Republicans frankly say, we got to walk and shoe gun.

It's like, what? Sorry, that's not where we are. We're in a world of hard choices. The way I put it, Bill, is I think there's two layers to my argument. The second layer to my argument is that China is the most important threat and that we need to focus and we should have strategy of denial.

That one I think I'm right, but I think there's room to disagree. And for instance, I think Neil has. But the reason I have such respect for the argument is the first part, I think the first part is the critical, which is we are living in a world of hard choices and scarcity and a tough reality where we cannot cover all of our bases.

And if that is not part of the proposed strategy, I don't think it should be regarded as credible. Because for instance, and I said this at the Heritage Foundation a couple of weeks ago when they released their, their defense report. Whoever's in the seat of primary responsibility and defense, but also national security issues, you're gonna be in the seat in 2027 if you stick around, right?

I mean, nobody knows what Xi Jinping is going to do, but I think you are not going to be able to spend our way out of the problem. And there's not a lot of support in this country for spending our way out of the problem anyway, so I think that's the key message.

So everything I said six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, three years ago in my book is only more true and more point. And that actually explains kind of final thought is the increased pointedness and edge to my rhetoric is, because we are heading straight for the iceberg and we're hoping that we graze by it, which was not so successful in the original case of the Titanic.

But I'm like, let's get 100 yards at minimum away from the Titanic, and that's not what we're doing at all right now.

>> Niall: So the question that obviously arises, and you've been asked it a hundred times, but here goes, is, well, doesn't it really help China if Russia wins in Ukraine?

How do we stabilize the situation in Ukraine while addressing your, I think, well founded concerns about Taiwan. My sense is that there's a slight danger if your argument is caricatured, that it turns into ditch the Ukrainians and, well, the Israelis too, because Taiwan is so important. And it feels to me as if China would be a major winner if Russia won in Ukraine.

How do we reconcile these conflicting imperatives?

>> Elbridge: So again, I think this gets to my point about this is kind of level two of the argument where I agree with you, my position, and it is often caricatured, and that's life in the big city, but is not to.

I don't have a theological opposition. If we lived in a world without constraints, I would support very strong support for the Ukrainians, right? And my position, as I laid out, for instance, in my Time magazine article about six or nine months ago, is to provide excess articles. Especially weapons, that cannot plausibly be used in a first island chain defense, like tanks or engineering equipment of certain kinds, and F-16s, for instance.

And I do support supporting the Israelis in a similar mode, but with the prioritization, including in particular money and political capital and resources and attention of the defense industrial base. I think the key thing that I would say, the word that you use that I would push back on is stabilize.

I don't think we can hope to stabilize, and I think that's one of the main flaws, as I infer it, of the administration and Jake Sullivan kind of strategy, but it's similar among kind of the primacist wing of the republican party, is that we are expecting to stabilize these in a sense before it's not admitted as such.

But you often hear now, all the lesson is you can't ignore these regions. Well, I mean, sometimes you have to actually take a lot of damage, in a secondary or tertiary theater. Now, I take your point. What I would say, Neil, is that I am not in favor of abandoning the Ukrainians, my strategy is to get the Europeans, it is entirely within the capacity of the Europeans.

In fact, they are now doing it, I think, frankly, the realities that I've been pointing to and the strategy that I've been pointing to, is now looming much more on the horizon, much more visibly. I wish they had started doing that two, five, six years ago, I've been making this certain, not that that's that important to be self referential or anything, but that has been clear, I think, to us for a number of years.

And now we are in a position, where we do not have a two war military, we don't have a one war military yet, we're not clear that we have a one. We might lose the big war, very plausibly. And of course, if the Chinese beat us over Taiwan, that is not the end of the story because they're building a military to go beyond that and of course, as you've written eloquently, they have the trappings of a great power.

I'm not saying they're Attila the Hun or out of Hitler, but I don't know, Britain, America, they are a rising superpower and will act accordingly. So the situation will be far worse in Europe and the Middle east, if we screw it up in the Pacific. But being clear about this point and not saying we can walk into Chicago is actually critical, to getting our allies to act in a different way.

I think there's a new bargain which is actually, and I've been saying this a little bit recently, like on Twitter, I think we should move back from the caricatured a little bit like the Tory and Nuland kind of approach to Europe, where we are the dominant and we decide where everything goes.

In a sense if the Europeans want to work for instance, through the Weimar format, okay? We will support, but they have to take a leading responsibility and people like Boris Pistorius, are saying 3.5% might be necessary to recapitalize the Bundeswehr and, of course, the polls are doing a good job.

So I think it's a world of bad choices. I'm not saying, hey, don't worry about Europe. Also, we know, the Chinese are backing the Russians. If the fate, the common tagline that, say, vice president Pence, others will use, if the fate or Governor Haley, if the fate of Taiwan is going to be settled in Ukraine, the Chinese would rationally intervene directly, which is not what they're doing.

That would be the rational course of action. Instead, they're supporting the Russians enough to exhaust our resources, our political will, our money, our weapons, while tying us down in Europe without triggering the opposition from the Europeans, that they may be prepared to do in a fight over Taiwan, but not now.

I mean, if there's a better way of managing all these things, I will move off my position, I just haven't heard it that grapples with these trade offs.

>> Niall: Before HR jumps in and I know he's itching, too. I think that concerns me is the timeframe. The Europeans are not gonna be ready for prime time in much less than ten years, because there's been such an erosion of their military industrial base.

And while it's great to hear German defense ministers, talking about a significantly higher spend before that turns into military capability, a lot has to happen. And so there's a kind of timing issue, isn't there, bridge? The Chinese, as far as Bill Burns, the director of central intelligence, is concerned, could be aiming for 2027.

But we definitely need to avoid Ukraine's collapse before then, I would say, I don't think we can just leave the Europeans to it and expect that to turn out well. But before we go on, talk a bit about your expectation of the timing, because I'm not convinced that Xi Jinping will be ready to invade Taiwan in 2027, or even for that matter, in 2037, because that's such a difficult thing to do.

Give us a sense of what you think the timetable is? And do the Chinese have an easier option than invasion of Taiwan, like blockading?

>> Elbridge: No, I disagree with you there, I think, from what I understand you're writing, I think blockade fails, or it risks failure because it relies on a cost imposition, imposition strategy.

Our own experience and that of others has been, there's no real example I believe maybe there are, but there's no major examples of blockades, achieving the goal of compelling a country to give up its autonomy or independence. Blockades have been features, the Anaconda strategy or the blockades during the first and second World War, but they were always secondary to direct military confrontation.

The problem with the blockade for China, is that it's very questionable whether it would succeed on its own, in fact, I think the main problem is it fails poorly, right? Because if they impose a blockade that's of sufficient severity, for it to plausibly get the Taiwanese to give up, that's obviously an act of war, and they're gonna have to put themselves in a position where they would fire on the Americans, who would flag vessels to challenge the blockade.

If we do that, which I think we would have to, because the blockade in a sense would imply that they don't have confidence in the invasion option, we would be read. And they would have forfeited this element of surprise or position, et cetera, which is really valuable for a successful invasion.

Now, to get back to your point, if that's correct, their behavior is now very consistent with preparing for that kind of scenario. Now, they could do a low level blockade to kind, shape the political narrative and maybe try things out. I think we're in the window, I mean, a couple points.

First of all, I am skeptical of the assessments of the intelligence community about what will or won't happen, not because they're not good people, there are plenty of great people in there. But because it's a very difficult target, it's inherently subjective, stochastic, et cetera. We don't know we've overestimated.

For instance, the US intelligence committee predicted the Ukrainians would fall apart. They got the fact that the Russians were going to invade correct, but we thought the Afghans were gonna hold that for much longer than they actually did. So when you're dealing with something as subjective as this, I think it's very I'm skeptical.

And when you see a real hands get up there and say, Xi Jinping doesn't want a war. I mean, it's being reported in the Wall Street Journal that we don't have good sources within the Chinese leadership. Frankly, I wouldn't even believe it if we've said that we did, because Xi Jinping strikes me as a paranoid Leninist, who probably doesn't trust his wife, right?

So there's, deception is part and parcel of this. Moreover, readiness is a relative point. I mean, my favorite example is the German high command, opposed going to war in 1939 because they said well, we're not ready. And Hitler said well, we're readier than they are and it will not get better, it'll get worse.

And that's the problem is that I think there's a peaking window problem. Later in this decade, so even if they're saying, well we're 81% ready, if in five years you're gonna be only relatively speaking 72%, that gives you a strong incentive. And so that leads me to think there's a very world danger.

Paparo, who's the Indo Pacom, I think he's been confirmed now. Essentially they could go without warning at this point. And if you look at the open assessments, I think the CSIS assessments, the public assessments, were relatively sanguine by their own admission I'm just pointing to what they said.

They said classified wargaming is much more pessimistic, right? And that's a big problem and of course RAND, led by people like Dave Akmanik have also been pessimistic. That together leads me to think we are in real trouble. My point about the Russians is, yes, I don't want to abandon the Ukrainians.

Frankly we've been warning the Europeans about this not as, not as clearly as we should have. But the Russians are not gonna head to the Channel or the Rhine. They are fighting out in the eastern extremity of what is traditionally composed Europe. I don't mean to be heartless about the Ukrainians, but from a strategic point of view there's enormous buffering.

I mean the Poles alone are very formidable military for the Russians to get through, I mean General McMaster would know more about that than I. But meanwhile, if the Chinese break out of the first island chain, I mean they are a central power, they are right there. And if you're in Manila, I mean Manila the Philippines 100 miles from Taiwan.

I mean things could really fall, I mean I'm not a domino theory guy, but credibility does matter, especially in this context. So again, I'm not saying that we have an easy choice. I'm saying where I wanna mitigate, especially that we're so far behind is in the principal theater where they're at the Rhine effectively already.

 

>> H.R.: Yeah, hey, first of all, I agree on Bridge's main two points. First of all that China's the most dangerous threat, the most significant threat from a military and economic standpoint, certainly. And then secondly that we're way far behind, way far behind in defense capabilities and especially defense capacity.

And that includes not only the fielded forces and our joint force organizations and capabilities, but also in our defense industrial base and the resilience of our supply chains. So what do we do about it? I think what's important to do is to invest significantly more in defense. I mean the president's budget is paltry and insufficient, especially to deal with really the bow wave of deferred modernization that is affecting the force.

That goes back to the Obama eight years of defense cuts while we were still fighting wars, and we were expending most of that budget that would have gone to procurement and so forth to operational costs. And we've never really made that up, and we have an issue of incapacity because of fundamentally flawed assumptions about the nature of future war.

We thought that we could guarantee our security by investing in higher and higher technology, more sophisticated exquisite technologies manifested in fewer and fewer platforms. When in fact the Chinese, the PLA, has been fielding countermeasures to those exquisite capabilities that now put, I think, a greater primacy on capacity.

And Chris Burrows, others have written about this in terms of the kinds of capabilities we need. There's a project replicator in Department of Defense that begins to work on this. But where I differ with Bridge is that I think I would emphasize the interconnected nature of the challenges that we're facing in Ukraine because of Russian aggression, and across the Middle East.

Because really the actions of the axis of aggressors, including Iran and Russia, and the reason why these are connected is for the reason Bridge mentioned in terms of really, how credible are we? It's weakness that's provocative, and I think if you look at the decision making by the axis of aggressors, and I would include North Korea in the latest provocations here, it's really the perception of weakness, weakness in our resolve that encourages our adversaries.

I would say that it was the unenforced red line in Syria, and the announcement of the Obama administration's pivot out of the Middle East, and the withdrawal from Iraq and the lack of resolve associated with that that encouraged the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. I think there's a direct line between the humiliating surrender to the Taliban and withdrawal from Afghanistan and the reinvasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.

And I think that there is a connection between our inability to sustain support for Ukraine because of the razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives and the several neoisolationist members who are holding up a vote in the House, and October 7th. And I believe that the supreme leader in Tehran said hey, if they can't sustain their support for Ukraine after pledging to do so, now's maybe the time for me to go.

And there are other factors as well in terms of perception of Israeli government weakness, and maybe the fraught relationship between the Biden administration and Israel, and so forth. And I think that also applies to the actions of the PLA and the CCP. If Xi Jinping, really, if he identifies weakness, I think like he did when he began to build and weaponize islands in the South China Sea, and began really massive campaigns of cyber espionage against the United States unchecked during the Obama administration, I think he'll be emboldened to take action against Taiwan.

And of course in terms of the walking and chew gum metaphor, I think there are some misunderstandings about the nature of the support for Ukraine. The support for Ukraine is not the same as the support that's necessary for, for example, Taiwan arms sales. The weapon systems are quite different, and it's been quite a bargain, actually, for about the equivalent of 4% of our defense budget the Ukrainians have wrecked the Russian conventional army.

I think it's been a wake-up call, certainly to us, in terms of lack of capacity for munitions and weapons production which we're just beginning to rectify, but not with any degree of sense of urgency or the kind of investments that are required. So I see it as a false dilemma.

I don't think we have to essentially leave the rest of the world to compete with China, because actually the competition with China is playing out in these other theaters as well. The partnership between Russia and China is tighter than ever. China is enabling Russia's offensive, continued onslaught against Ukraine with hardware and equipment that's necessary to sustain its war-making machine, and especially the purchases of Russian oil and gas to feed Putin's ATM that he requires to continue the war effort.

The Iranians are providing Shahed drones and I believe missiles as well, they've already agreed to export the missile drone complex. And so these are connected theaters, and I think that we can do more than one thing at a time. If you think about really what it would take, it would take far less from an investment perspective than the value of the checks that we sent to Americans during COVID for example.

I mean the issue with the budget is not the defense budget, and that's what we require I think, significantly more investment. But overall I agree China is the number one threat, and we have this massive bow wave of deferred investment in defense from a capacity perspective. But also from integrating new technologies that are essentially countermeasures to the countermeasures that the PLA have fielded in recent years.

 

>> Elbridge: Well if I could respond, I agree with a lot of what you say, actually, I mean certainly the first parts. But I'd like to stress the fact of the parlous state of our armed forces. And you would obviously be far more expert on this than I in terms of readiness, but also in terms of the platforms and the bow wave as the Reagan era force goes out.

But I'd like to compare that point about having an inadequate force, like we don't have even a one war force, let alone a two war force. And the second part of what you're saying that we don't have to choose. And I guess the point that I would stress at this point, frankly, in time and in history is whoever is in the position that you honorably served in or other, whether it's secretary of defense or the undersecretary for policy.

They are not going to be able, even if there's that money made available through deficit spending and borrowing, to solve the problems in the defense industrial base that you just rightly pointing to. The analogy to me is we are deep in a hole, and do we stop digging in or try to work our way out a little bit.

We are not gonna get to the place where we need to by the time. This goes back to Neil, your point about 2027 and 2037, I think the fact is that nobody knows, but we have to. This is correct what Paparo but I think others like Dave Berger have said this.

I think CQ Brown says this, we have to be ready today, tomorrow, and in five years. I think that's the five or ten years ago. I think, and I've kind of come closer to your view on capacity versus technology over the years and happy to go into that, but I mean, I used to be closer to at least where Bob Work was six, seven, eight years ago on the third offset.

I think numbers and attrition matter, especially if both sides have high technology. But if that's the case, we are not where we need to be, I mean, we have 20B2s. If Russia attacks NATO and the US takes down elements of the Russian integrated air defense, some of those are gonna get shot down.

A lot of those munitions are gonna go down. And I don't think it's accurate, honestly, to say that there's no trade off. First of all, the money, I mean, money is scarce. I mean, you look at the American people, they are not jonesing to do a Reagan buildup whether we want it or not.

I think it would make our lives a lot easier in a lot of ways but they're not. I mean, even the Republicans are not in favor of increases in defense spending. I mean, that 1% Biden thing is not just Democrats, it's also the Republicans with budget ceilings. And there might be a marginal increase but is that gonna stay ahead of cost, inflation, personnel costs, health care, etc, maintenance?

I don't think that's true at all or we can rely on it all, but we need air defense. I think we have to assume the Chinese would get ashore in force. In fact, the gaming that we have available publicly, like the CSIS stuff, assumes heavy Chinese forces on the island, I think that's only prudent.

I mean, what I would say is, and if you get called back into service or any number of the other people. I mean, I think those who are saying that we have not spent enough, that our military is not what we need it to be, it's all the more reason that we should actually be really worried right now.

Because in a sense, if we could walk and chew gum, then that actually, to me, that actually justifies the Biden policy, which I don't think is justified. I think he's bluffing, I worry he's bluffing on Taiwan, I worry he's bluffing on Korea. I worry he is bluffing on other things, too, in the Middle east because he doesn't have the capability and this is a real point.

I agree with your point in part on resolve, HR, but where I think is key is we need to get back into the kind of cold war mindset where military power in particular, is at a deficit. We don't have enough stuff, as I think you were rightly saying.

And if you don't have enough stuff, you get a task force Smith kind of problem and you get lots of people getting killed. And that makes it harder to generate the political resolve. Whereas if the american people say, hey, it's gonna be desert storm again, HR McMaster, heroically plinky guys and not plinky, I shouldn't say that.

But tank battles that are completely dominated by our incredibly well trained people from reforger and so forth. That's a different level of resolve than, my God, we're gonna have 30,000 Americans killed in the first few weeks and and we're gonna get smoked. I think it's gonna be harder to generate that resolve.

And this gets at another point, which is I fear, and Neil, this gets at your point, and I hear this from people, that in a sense, we're investing that scarce political capital and national support in Europe and the Middle east. I think a lot of people are honestly not just on the new right, but actually across the spectrum would say, I'm sorry, what timeout.

You wanna get into war with China over Taiwan, are you nuts? That's what I worry, especially when they see the bill in lives and money. And what I'm saying is we need to have as much power stored up to deal with that situation to make it as plausible as possible to them.

 

>> Niall: Ridge, can I ask a question of a kind of practical nature? What would you prioritize right now to make Taiwan more defensible? I think what we're all talking about here is deterrence. I see the Biden administration as a kind of opera of failed deterrence in Act 1, the Taliban Act 2, Putin Act 3, Iran And we're sitting wondering if Act 4 is gonna happen to Taiwan.

But if you wanted to deter China quickly in the next years, what would precisely you do? Cuz I think our listeners would really like to get a sense of what can we do to avoid this war so we don't have to fight cuz we deter China successfully.

>> Elbridge: Well, I think you would stockpile as many munitions as possible relative into the fight obviously, anti ship but also attack and air defense munitions, C4ISR capabilities.

I think Admiralino has spoken about this in open testimony. Posture investments, I mean, just a lot of stuff up because I think actually exactly to HR`s point there's no magic bullet and this is a really critical point about why prioritization is necessary. And I made this argument in a proceedings piece, if you'll forgive me.

I know army man here, but basically saying we need multiple layers. And for instance, I think the role of the army in the Pacific led by a fantastic commander out there, Charlie Flynn. I think it's really important because yeah, you want the Yamato or the Musashi or whatever, pick your japanese battleship.

But you also want dug in capabilities on the ground, Okinawa style to make it really, really hard to eject or occupy an island. And I think actually building up the capabilities of the Taiwanese is probably the biggest poll in the tent in terms of payoff in the near term.

Now that has to be metered because we are on the window, it has to be where we actually do risk provoking a Chinese attack. But I think I've written about this in greater detail. But I think at the end of the day, if it were up to me, the way I talked to Mike Morrell a few years ago about this.

He said that the logic I was giving was similar to the way Panetta when he came in as DCIA prioritized and revitalized the hunt for Osama Laden is, if I were king for the day or if I were advising the king, I would say clean the agenda, clean the SDOBs and all the things.

And I wanna say what do we need not only just for presence but actually to be ready, as ready as possible, attack submarines, bombers, air defense, satellite orbits, UAVs posture, etc. And that's where I'm gonna put my scarce political capital. And I think even then it's gonna be a close run thing to quote one of your countries.

 

>> Bill: But there's a challenge here, Bridge, you mentioned attack submarines. You can't build an attack submarine in two or three years in the United States.

>> Elbridge: Precisely.

>> Bill: Carriers take a decade, Neil is getting at is if we look at 2027 as the model. What should we be doing in the next three years?

 

>> Elbridge: That's my point, though, right? Exactly, so everything you have, and this is the argument why the triple bank shot argument about Ukraine fails, is because we're expending these things. And by the way, even if they were to be reserved for Taiwan, which they're not necessarily, they're gonna take five, six years to build.

So everything we have, we should be husbanding. We should be buying from the South Koreans to give to the Taiwanese, right? Because we're not gnna be able to do that by again. I mean, I saw there was an article the other day about how the Ukrainians are reassembling boneyarded artillery pieces.

We're not gonna be able to scrape a lot of those barrels now and we try over the long term. The analogy I use is acute heart disease. Yeah, you can change your diet and exercise more, but first you got to unblock that stent. That's the main thing you got to take care of.

 

>> Niall: Quick question about Japan. It feels to me like any strategy of denial really hinges on, on Japan's early engagement in any conflict. How confident are you that would be there if the crunch came?

>> Elbridge: I'm not confident, I mean, I'm hopeful. My book just came out in Japanese, not that bad.

So, I'm trying to make the argument. I engage with the Japanese a lot, but the Germans. As we all know, actually had a very formidable military during the Cold War. The Japanese were much more pacified. Obviously, the self defense forces had some role, but I think Japanese society was really demilitarized.

And now we need them to be militarized, like West Germany of the Cold War, and they're not. And Abe was better. Kushida, I mean, Kushida is giving patriots to the United States to give to Ukraine. That shocked me, because it's like that whole archipelago is under intense missile threat from China.

I mean, for repeatedly for weeks and weeks, and they're giving away this super scarce military asset. And they're patting themselves in the back and Rahm Emanuel's patting them on the back for getting to 2% allegedly. It's actually 2% of the 2022 budget I believe. By 2027, which is the year, this was, the year that Xi Jinping knows we think they're coming, which presumably, being a Leninist and a smart guy, he's not going to actually do it exactly.

Then if he does it, I don't know what he's gonna do, but he's acting in every material away. He's conventional military buildup, military forces that assume Taiwan's taken over, nuclear buildup, economic sanctions. Sorry, preparing for economic sanctions in the context of huge economic headwinds when his incentive is to open up again, right?

Telling me these are very costly signals that he is in earnest. And by the way, even more, Neil, and I've been very influenced by your thinking on this. I think they have rational reasons. They think, and we talked about this, they think we are strangling them. Xi Jinping has repeatedly said, he said it to Biden.

I'm using your analogy from the 1941. I mean, we are strangling them, at least in their perception, from position of military weakness. That is the worst possible. It's the worst possible, but it's a bad strategy. My own view closer to yours is actually to pull back on some of the economic and ideological stuff and focus our efforts on the military stuff to give them the sense that they can achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation peacefully.

What he's communicating is that he doesn't seem to believe that's the case. Or at least I think we should be very concerned about that.

>> Bill: We're running out of time in the segment, guys, let me ask the exit question to all three of you. We've discussed American involvement and American interest in three regions, two of them with hot wars, Eastern Europe in the Middle east, and Cold War II, as Neil Ferguson trademarked it in East Asia.

Her is the question of those three areas, and let's look toward 2027, which one is most appropriate for increased American presence? And by that I mean boots on the ground, deploying ships, deploying aircraft. Would you send them to eastern Europe? Would you send them to Middle east? Or would you send them toward East Asia Bridge?

 

>> Elbridge: Well, East Asia for sure. I mean, the forces don't necessarily need there because the threat from Chinese missiles and capability is so great within the first and even the second island chain. That actually forces, forward deployed forces are very important, but they are under a lot of threat.

But it's more essential that those forces be allocated and ready. Kind of analogy, I think of as top gun, 1986 style for that fight. That's what we want.

>> Niall: It's very hard to imagine deployment of US troops to eastern Europe or the Middle east under present circumstances, whether it's a Trump administration next year or a Biden administration.

So I think by default, if the US is gonna make any serious military commitments, it has to be in the Far east. And I agree with the fundamental prioritization that bridges is proposing here. My question is a little bit different for HR. Can I just add a variant?

If you had to update the national security strategy, a pivotal document which I've also been getting my students to read in London, how would you update it? Cuz it feels as if a lot has happened since 2017, and particularly on the issue that we're discussing today. So what would the update be?

 

>> H.R.: I'll tell you, Neil, I wouldn't update it at all, I think we saw it pretty clearly, honestly. I mean, if you go back to that document and take a look at it, what would you change? I think part of the problem has been an implementation. I think that we demonstrated a profound lack of resolve in Afghanistan, a humiliating lack of resolve in Afghanistan that emboldened Putin.

We did have Russia as a significant threat. I mean, the thing that one of the counters that I would make to bridge this characterization of the Russians is there are two ways to fight asymmetrically and stupidly. And you hope that your adversaries pick stupidly and fight you asymmetrically.

Russia, I think, with the exception of the massive invasion in February of 2022, had been doing pretty well with Russian new generation warfare, trying to accomplish objectives below the threshold of what might elicit a concerted response. And, of course, Iran has become very good at using proxies and expending as many Arab lives as it takes to accomplish its objectives in the Middle east.

So I think whereas we all may want to fight, be prepared to fight China, and that should be our top priority in terms of all the problems that we've mentioned here, from the defense industrial base to the lack of capacity. And deferred modernization, wars pick you oftentimes, other than the other way around, and we've never been good.

Actually, our record's perfect. And predicting the next conflict, it's actually 0%. So I think we have to be prepared for a range of contingencies and not be optimized for only one theater. But, I mean, I would say that capabilities that bridges is highlighting and we've talked about here are relevant across all three of those theaters.

What's missing, I think, is really the delay in fielding a lot of these capabilities. And as we've been talking about the capacity, both in the size of the joint force, its ability to respond effectively to one contingency, let alone multiple contingencies. And then in the defense industrial base, the one thing I'd highlight, Rich, if there's one thing I think we could do to address the issue of defense capacity, it would be multi year predictable defense contracting.

Because that would then incentivize our defense industry to make the investments that are necessary to ramp up production capacity.

>> Bill: All right, gentlemen, let's leave it there. Bridge Colby, thanks for joining us, great conversation.

>> Elbridge: Thank you, pleasure to be with you all.

>> Bill: Onto the beat block and, gentlemen, we're trying to do two topics in a very short period of time.

First is the question of TikTok, what the future holds for that app. Since we looked at our last show, something rather remarkable happened on Capitol Hill. A bill introduced in the House, two force ByteDance, that's a Chinese app developer which owns TikTok. The bill would compel TikTok to sell off, to compel ByteDance to sell off TikTok within six months after the bill becomes law.

Otherwise, TikTok is removed from app stores. TikTok, by the way, is used by about 150 to 170 million Americans. Eight days after the bill was introduced, it was passed by the House. It's now sitting in the Senate, which seems to turn to slow walk it. Neil, very simple question, is this a good idea?

 

>> Niall: Well, I said it was a good idea in 2020 before it was fashionable. I haven't changed my view. It's pretty clear that TikTok is one of the most powerful media tools in America today, and it's foreign owned, and I wouldn't want the CCP to have ownership of any major media asset.

I think it's good policy that media assets should be owned by US nationals. They're too powerful TikTok is clearly a very influential media medium, and therefore, this is, to my mind, uncontroversial. What is bizarre are some of the arguments that one hears on the other side, like First Amendment.

Come on, these are terrible arguments, HR.

>> H.R.: Hey, I agree. I mean, and I just think in terms of reciprocity, which is a word that President Trump told me, I love that, I love that word. Well, hey, how about some porosity here, as Tristan Harris says at the Center for Humane Technology, he says, hey, the version of TikTok here in the United States is crack cocaine.

The version of TikTok in China is spinach for the young people. So I think it's a no-brainer in terms of really the risk to data, but also just the risk to perception and the ability to change the perceptions, in particular young people. But more and more people getting their news from the algorithm that is at least indirectly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

 

>> Bill: All right, Neil, if this is such a no-brainer, then why is it going nowhere in a hurry in the Senate?

>> Niall: Well, of course, you enter the realm of the donor crates. The donors include some people who invested in, you guessed it, TikTok. And I think that's part of what's going on here.

I think the Senate likes to go slowly just on principle. And this has moved pretty fast in the house. So there's a kind of shouldn't we be dragging our feet mentality. But of course, the big surprises is Donald Trump's position on this. You'd have thought this was a very straightforward one for him, but he turned around and decided that, in fact, he was in favor of TikTok, because if you banned it, then Facebook and, quote, Zuckerschmuck will double their business.

And one can only really interpret this as the action of a man who needs all the donors he can get, a given that he's got a campaign and a multitude of lawsuits to pay for.

>> Bill: Well, let's don't overlook one thing, Neil, and HR, and that's a lot of young people use tick tock, and a lot of young people, the Democrats, wanna help vote in this election.

And so maybe Senate Democrats don't wanna move this fast because they don't make young people angry. HR, which takes us to Senator Chuck Schumer, who did something rather remarkable the other day. He gave a 44-minutes speech on the floor of the United States Senate, and he said the following, and I quote, five months into this conflict, he's referring to Israel, Hamas.

It is clear that Israelis need to take stock of the situation and ask, must we change course at this critical juncture? I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.

Let me edit here before we go on. I looked at a survey the other day, It was done by an independent nonprofit in Israel. About 62% of the Israelis right now support BB's policy for what comes after Hamas is destroyed. So HR, was Chuck Schumer in bounds or out of bounds with what he said?

 

>> H.R.: He was completely out of balance, right? It's a democracy, I mean Israeli citizens don't need Chuck Schumer to tell them what to do. And of course, Israeli politics is ugly, right? It's personalized, it's fragmented. It resulted in a really kind of strange coalition here. But that's their government, right?

And so I just think that in the midst of this war, it was exactly the wrong message. The right message might be, hey, we really need Israel, and we will help Israel take more mitigating measures to mitigate harm to civilians as they evacuate them out of Rafa and into areas that are previously cleared.

So they can conduct continue the offensive operation against Hamas, which must be completely destroyed. I mean, from an Israeli perspective, what's the alternative after October 7? There's a lot more, I think, that can be done cooperatively with the IDF and with the Israeli government to mitigate the harm to the Palestinian population.

But to try to talk him out of continuing the offensive when they're still holding about 100 hostages, it's absolutely ludicrous to me.

>> Bill: All right, Neil, this is back to my theory with TikTok. This is about the democratic base.

>> Niall: Yeah, I mean, they're looking at Michigan and they're feeling uneasy.

But to call for a change of government in Israel so explicitly in the middle of a war is just the kind of outrageous thing that Democrats used to complain about past American governments doing. Now, I used to ask myself the question, who will they fail to deter in 2024?

Going back to my earlier riff on deterrence, I didn't expect that they would fail to deter Bibi Netanyahu. Currently, they are failing to deter him from going ahead with the destruction of Hamas and Gaza. And it exposes, I think, the Biden administration's weakness in an almost unmatched way, that they can't even impose their will on Israel.

And they're reduced to these wild calls for a change of government, which, by the way, have elicited a pretty wide rejection, not only from Mister Netanyahu. But from many of his political opponents, who I think quite reasonably feel that this is an unwarranted intervention in Israel's domestic politics.

Having just been in Israel last month, I have to tell you that for all the political division, there is a fundamental sense of unity about the need to destroy Hamas and make clear that what happened on October 7 cannot be allowed to happen again. And by the way, that won't be the end of the story because there's still Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon to reckon with.

So what we see here is the weakness of the Biden administration, laid even more bare than it was before.

>> H.R.: Hey, Neil, I'd just like to ask you how about calling for a change in government in Nicaragua or Venezuela? Or Cuba

>> Niall: Getting Iran, which really could use the change in government more than any part of the region.

But it's just extraordinary. And it's gonna look so weak because it's clear that Israel's gonna go ahead and it's going to finish the job in Gaza, including in Rafa. And we'll see once again the president of the United States, not to mention Chuck Schumer, looking entirely incapable of imposing their will even on allies that have a long history of heavy reliance on the United States for support.

 

>> Bill: We have only two minutes in this segment, so I'm going to ask you a complicated question and shoehorn it into limited time. But it goes like this, what is this administration stance right now in Israel? On the one hand, they say they support Israel. On the other hand, they want Bibi Netanyahu to go on the one hand, they say they support Israel.

And then you hear the State Department spokesman today say that we stand for the degradation of Hamas, which I find to be a rather curious use of word degradation. Not destruction, but degradation. Can you two illuminate me here?

>> Niall: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that there's a domestic political problem for them here.

I mean, I think Joe Biden showed his true instincts at the beginning, in the wake of October 7. But it's only recently that it's been explained to him that there is a really profound anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian mood amongst a young Gen Z voters and B Muslim voters in states such as Michigan.

And I think it's causing a kind of schizophrenia, split personality policy, and that's why it's weak, because they don't really mean it. So they say it, but they don't really mean it. And I think the Israelis get that and I suspect also the democratic voters get it, too.

 

>> H.R.: Yeah, I think it's just completely inconsistent with what's necessary, I mean, degrade or whatever they're using. I mean, hey, how about destroy the enemy? I think that's exactly what has to happen in this case after October 7. And people really always wanna find a nifty way to fight wars to avoid the hard hand of war.

But in this kind of situation, where you have people who have been systematically sort of brainwashed into the hatred of Israel and who have committed the kinds of crimes that they proudly broadcast on October 7. There's only really two appropriate outcomes for them, and that's either killing them or capturing them and putting away forever.

 

>> Bill: Okay, ask a question, gentlemen. Israel goes into Rothdeh What does the Biden administration do?

>> Niall: Hand wringing, hand waving and then more empty speeches that don't move a single needle.

>> Bill: HR?

>> H.R.: Yeah, they have to go into Rafa and it's going to happen. But I think what they should be spending their energy on now is helping to put into place plans to provide humanitarian assistance but also as they evacuate Rafa to be able to screen the population as they come out, especially military age males who they should probably collect biometric data as they're coming out because what Hamas will try to do is try to use any kind of an evacuation to preserve some of its military and terrorist organization strength.

 

>> Bill: All right, gentlemen onto the lightning round. All right, we begin the lightning round with a viewer question actually a viewer observation and it comes to us from Haldane and Dubrovnik, who writes the following. He wants to remind us that Donald Sutherland who is HR's choice for his role in Kelly's heroes.

This is our question last week about best performance at American cinema, Hro and Donald Sutherland. I went with John Vernon in Animal House and our dear friend Heldenhood tells us they are quote, both proud Canadians as are so many distinguished contributors to American excellence. So thank you, sir, for the correction and a reminder, Folks, if you do want to send the questions to Neil, HR and John, you send them to Hoover.org/ AskGoodFellows.

So, gentlemen here we go with the lightning round questions. Question number one. It comes from Gabriel in Brazil who writes, it's been two years since I had the pleasure of welcoming you virtually to liberty Forum in Porto Alegre. Since then, we've seen two things you predicted happening: the world is geopolitically more unstable, and monetary policy is still struggling in accommodating fiscal irresponsibility.

His question, will the regular state of affairs in these times be unstable political and economic equilibria, unlike the Great Moderation of the 1990s and early two 2000s? Is American politics becoming more like Latin America, with the sequel of Biden Trump?

>> Niall: Well, I think that might be directed at me and I'll answer briefly as it's a lightning round.

Yeah, I mean the 2020s is looking quite a lot like the 1970s in terms of political instability in a cold war context and inflationary pressures that look like they persist rather longer than the central bankers. Like, what's novel is this Latin American turn that American politics has taken back in the 1970s?

You got a very different kind of politics, you got landslides, think of 1972. Here we have these very close elections which end up perhaps being decided by lawfare. And that's a very Brazilian kind of turn that American politics has taken. So, yeah, that's partly the benefit of going to Brazil.

I went to Porto Alegre, pre covid, non virtually and I remember on that trip which was before the election of Jair Bolsonaro, realizing he was going to win because of the atmosphere that I encountered on the ground there. Brazil is more and more like a kind of mirror image of America, and he needs to spend time down there to see a certain kind of resemblance.

A little bit like looking in the mirror.

>> Bill: Yeah, sure.

>> H.R.: Everything that Neil said, I mean, I think we are obviously experiencing more and more division and these razor thin sort of margins in elections. I'm hoping we can break out of that. Neil, what is your prediction about the chances of doing that?

I mean, I think what would be great is to have super close, other than the rematch we're about to have.

>> Niall: The whole thing gets decided by the courts. Then there's a rejection by the losing side of the result and it's always about somebody lands in jail. And that's the Brazilian style of politics that we've unwittingly imported.

 

>> Bill: All right, our next question. According to a new study in the past 20 years, couples meeting their partners online dwarfs every other method. Is there some sort of deeper meaning to this trend nd as older guys tell the kids in the audience how you met your wives, Hr, how do you mean?

Katie had no chance. She saw you in uniform, right?

>> H.R.: No, we met in church. No, we met in a bar, actually we met at Bobby McGee's in Long beach. And I was out here playing rugby because the army Navy game was in Pasadena. And I'll tell you, but just by like a crazy series of events, members of my rugby team had been in Greece on training and had met one of Katie's friends there, reconnected just by complete chance while we're out here playing rugby.

We had played Long Beach State that day. I was not feeling great after the game. I had a concussion and heel bruise. I was marking. The guy across from me was a tailback in the USFL. So I was like, man, this guy's not getting past me. So anyway, long story short, we meet at a bar.

I was a designated driver because I was not driving, because I was. So, I was completely sober and we just hit it off completely. And the hooker on our rugby team was there as I was exchanging addresses because we had a long letter writing campaign after that to each other and this guy our hooker on our team, Billy Coyle, said, come on, you're never going to see this woman again in your life.

 

>> Bill: Top that, Neil.

>> Niall: Well, the algorithm doesn't exist. That would have brought me and Ayan together. That had to be done the old fashioned way we met at the Union League club in New York at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in the depths of the financial crisis in early 2009.

And I think I may have said before in this show, it was the nearest to PRCs. Natasha, in war and peace that I'll ever come, come. We both, I think, immediately knew that something extraordinary was happening, but in a kind of sitcom twist that took us away from Tolstoy after the event, when I finally managed to catch her before the elevator and persuade her to have a drink with me, we were tailed.

We were followed by a very earnest German economics professor who, in the most teutonic way possible, did not realize what was going on and kept asking me questions about monetary policy. And I'll always remember the kind of comic quality of that first encounter. But, yeah, I look at these dating app data, and I'm just amazed to think of the social change that this represents.

It worries me that there's a certain worrying tendency here that makes encounters too premeditated. In both these cases that HR and I have described, there was entirely spontaneous, serendipitous random encounter or no premeditation involved. But everybody who goes on a dating app has begun a process of selection, mate selection, that, I don't know, it's appropriate for automobiles.

I don't know if it's really the right way to go about finding love. I'm sorry, kids, this isn't the way to do it.

>> Bill: Well, let me throw a hypothetical at you, Neil Ferguson. Let's say, hypothetically, there's a very nice gentleman who hypothetically, works in a right of center think tank, hypothetically, in a very hostile corner of America to said think take.

And hypothetically, that nice gentlemen, or let's say. Let's call him Bill, he hypothetically runs into eligible women who he meets, who think the moment that they find out he works at said think tank, thinks that he walks around in his apartment and dances to the horse vessel song.

They are so deranged by Donald Trump. Isn't the argument to be made, Neil, that that nice gentleman, let's call him Bill, could go on social media apps and perhaps expand his network a little bit to get out of the crazy zone he lives in?

>> Niall: If it works for you, Bill, and if you find love that way, more power to you.

That's all I can say. But personally, I would urge you to continue going to bars and parties because it worked well for us, right, Hr? And you're just not going to enough bars and enough parties. That's my theory.

>> Bill: I'm not getting enough concussions is the problem. By the way, Neil, I think there's a phrase what that german professor is doing to you.

He was Scott blocking.

>> Niall: You know, I'm sure there's an even worse word for it. But we won't say I'm Goodfellas.

>> Bill: And with that, we will say adieu to this episode of Goodfellows. We give our best to the high flying John Cochran who couldn't be with us today.

But on behalf of my colleagues, Neil Ferguson, HR McMaster, all of us here at the Hoover Institution, we hope you enjoyed the conversation. We'll be back in about two weeks with the new show. Until then, take care. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring HR McMaster, watch battlegrounds.

Also available@hoover.org