WaPo Global Opinions Columnist Josh Rogin joins A&G to talk about the 2 COVID cover-ups and the U.S. government's new attitude towards China.
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I have been obsessed with the US versus China story for a couple of years now. I don't remember why or how it got on my radar, but man, I just I just suck up everything I can find about it. And we talked to Josh Rogan a while back. There's something about COVID and China or something. Anyway, he's got a new book out, Chaos under Heaven, Trump g in the Battle for the twenty one Century. Josh Rogan is the global opinions columnist for the Washington Post, and man, some great reviews. I just read the Wall Street Journal review on this last night. Is one of the first great books on what is going to be the story for the next century or more, the US versus China. Josh Rogan joins us. Josh, how are you sir, Hey guy, it's great to be back with you. Um. Just in general, my statement correct that this is maybe the biggest story in the world for the next century, US versus China. Yes, not only is the US uh China relationship the most important biolateral relationship of our lifetime, that's increasingly obvious. It's also the biggest story for every country in the world, because every country in the world is now suffering through a coronavirus pandemic that originated in China. So there are seven billion people who are suddenly quite aware of the fact that what happens in Beijing doesn't stay in Beijing, and that to some degree, and we can debate how much the actions and character of the Chinese Communist Party affect our lives are national security, our public health, our prosperity, and undeniable ways. So that's like an awakening that now it's not just you know, certain people in certain everybody can agree on that. Now the question is what do we do about it? Well, we know the answer to this question, But where do you stand on the issue of the origin of the coronavirus, the lab leak theory, the rest of it. You know, I gotta tell you, I was one of the first reporters in April to publish about the still unproven but very plausible theory that the outbreak was related to a mistake of of these Woohan labs. And you know, for over a year I was amazed that no one would talk about it, That people would talk about it would get insulted and and and shouted down, And it was just crazy. And now here we are eighteen months after the outbreak and there's still been no investigation. And my point is not that we know that it came from the lab. My point is we have to check it out. In other words, we can't rule it out, so we have to check it out. It seems like a pretty reasonable and obvious thing to say. It's always seemed that way to me, But now all of a sudden, the mainstream media and uh, different parts of the government, including the Bid administration, are like, wait a second, you're telling me that there are a bunch of back coronavirus is next to the outbreak that we did check out those labs that had all about coronaviruses. That's crazy. We should check it out. So I'm not saying we know it came from the lab. I'm just saying we should probably check it out. We knew a lot of media criticism, and so we've talked a lot about the you know, whether it was it was important to be anti Trump and Trump was pushing the narrative or whatever it is in the media. But inside a government, that's what's fascinating to me. What was going on to your mind inside a government? That was causing some scientists to ignore what seems like the most likely cause to actively cover it up. And that's right. They absolutely did that, and they're there. It's really important because you're right. It wasn't just the media that wanted to sort of dismiss the Lab League cary because they couldn't. They dodn't want Trump to be right about anything, you know, like even the broken clock is right quite the day. The guy was bound to be right about something, whether you like it or not, and the media just couldn't deal with that. But if that's the government, you had a couple of things going on. One, you had the scientists who were the closest to the lab and who were collaborators with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and all these other back coronavirus labs in China. Uh calling it a conspiracy srey to cover their own butts because they didn't want anyone to look into the lab because that would mean that we were looking into them. In other words, the Lab League series doesn't just implicate China, implicates all of our scientific collaboration with China, because we built those labs along with the French. We gave them this technology. We taught them how to play around with viruses, and then they built another part of the lab that they didn't tell us about, and no one was watching it. And that's why the Lablick theory is so sensitive to the scientific community in the US because it implicates us. It implicates Fauci and Collins and all these guys who were doling out the money that is going to these Chinese labs that no one was paying attention to. And that relates to what was going on inside the government because if you're the intelligence community, if you just think about it, it's the Lablick theory is true. Well that then that's that's bad for them too, because they missed it. Because we've spent eighties six billion dollars a year on intelligence stuff and zero of it was pointed at this network of risky labs doing risky research that was funded by US taxpayers. And that's pretty awful if that's true, and that's why. And then, of course, you know, the some of the intelligence guys didn't like the Trump people and they didn't want them to be right either. And you know, the media trust of the scientists and the intelligence guys trusted the same scientists. So it was like a perfect storm of bs and by the time we started to figure it out, it was all too late. Do you are you willing to call it a cover up? Absolutely well, there's several cover ups. There's a first and foremost the Chinese Communist Party cover up, which is not just about the origins, which is about everything. They covered up the scientists, They jailed the whistleblowers. Uh you know, they jailed the journalists. They kept all of the science that they had away from the Inn. They continue to to this day. They won't give us vital information that's could help us in a response to the information that they have, while our citizens are getting second dye, and not just us, people all over the world. That's the first cover up. The second cover up is the one by the American scientists who are the friends of the lab. And that's all being revealed now and all these emails that are getting released. But we kind of knew it already. In other words, the scientists went around and they wrote all these papers in scientific journals that said it's a conspiracy theory if you mentioned the lab right me all they were ready emails to each other which were like, hey, the one might be involved, we should probably check it out. So they were telling us one thing and telling themselves a completely different thing. That's the nature of the deception. That's a that's another cover up right there, You know what I mean. So there's two cover ups. Right. What is it about the nature of communist systems that gives us a chernobyl, that gives us an outbreak of the coronavirus. That's a really good question because this sort of very floorlates to the overall theme of the book, right, which is that what we're dealing with here is a party state that's has no moral compunction, that will stup to any level and do anything to protect its own political interests, which it places above everything else. So, in other words, what we have to understand is that first of all, the Chinese Comunist Party is not looking out for us for certainly right, there's also not looking out necessarily for the Chinese people or even China's nation. So looking out for the party that means protecting the party. That means they will even subject their own people to horrendous stuff ring to protect the party. That's how you get a cover up like this, That's how you can have a worldwide pandemic, and they're just like, no, what screw you, We're not gonna tell you anything. What are you gonna do about it? That's their attitude, right, which is shocking and horrible. Right. The other thing he tells you is that you know, when when they're setting up all of these engagements with us, whether it be scientific engagement or academic or political or trade, they're thinking about how to weaponize those engagements against us. So that means like Fauci and Collins and all these scientists who are like, how could these Chinese researchers do something bad? They're just trying to do research, and we're trying to say, see the world, and you know that how they wouldn't do that. But what these American sizes don't realize is that in their system and the CCP system, the scientists don't get to make those decisions. It's all controlled by the party, and the party will do anything, including let billions of people get sick and die, if they think it's in their political interests for their time being, and that's exactly what happens. The book is Chaos under having Trump. She in the Battle for the Century were talking with that Global opinions columnist for the Washington Post. So you think the big mistake was our scientists trusted the Chinese. Not only did we trust, we didn't verify. It's one thing to have a collaboration, it's another thing to let it just grow into a two million dollar network of labs that no one's watching, not the intelligence community, not the scientists, not the government. And of course they took that technology and built it another side of the lab with their military. That's what we now know. That's not a Trump administration claim alone. That's what the Biden administration confirmed. We we built up a huge virus research industry in China, and they took it and then they built another side of the lab, those sides we didn't know about with their military to do god knows what, okay. And and that's that's a perfect recipe for a disaster. And you know, yeah, I could say that, like, you know, the American scientists, maybe they truly believed that they're Chinese scientists and uh wouldn't do that to them. But then they're horrendously naive when when the pandemic hit, it was all the people who understand China, who knew who knew what the score was, and it was the national security people who really understood the nature of this ECP who looked at their actions instead of course they're lying. Of course they're hiding stuff because that's what they did in the Stars epidemic twelve years or twenty years prior. They just did it again. The problem was the first time it only killed eight thousand people. This time he killed three point five million. Accounting. When we come back with Josh Rogan, we want to talk more specifically about the Battle for the twenty one Century Chaos under Heaven Trump she In the Battle for the Century being the title of the book, and how interesting it is and notable that that that break, that pivot to open rivalry took place during the Trump administration of all time. So, Josh, if you can hang on, we were gonna get right back to it in moments. Stay with us. Are if you missed our first segment with Josh Rogan about his book Chaos under heavn Trump she In the Battle for the twenty one Century, go to the podcast at Armstrong and Getty dot com because we got in specifically to a lot of the coronavirus and the origins and the cover up not just by China but by our own damn scientists as to how this whole thing started, which is really really troubling. Josh, I don't know if you're familiar with the book Hundred Year Marathon by Pillsbury. We've we've talked about that book a lot, and his argument and he was with the Nixon administration is going back to Nixon opening China. China has been playing us this entire time, and we thought, no, no, no, this is good news. But they knew what they were doing all along. Did Trump, in his unique way, uh, did he open the eyes of people in America and to the world of what China is really up to? Do you think? I think the administration did a lot of that work, and it was really important. Of course, it wasn't all good. Some of it he did in a pretty chaotic way. That's why my book is called Asked under Heaven. But yeah, I know the book un your your Marathon, and Pillsbury is in the in my book too. And you know the bottom line is that, you know, we had this forty year, fifty year bet that if we just engaged the Chinese Communist Party as much as possible, and integrated them into our system as much as possible, that they would liberalize and become more like us, first economically and then politically, and that would solve all of our problems, that we could avoid the Cold War and all that. Uh. And whether or not you think that was a good bet or a bad bet. Pillsbury thinks it was a bad bet. Other people say that was a reasonable bit to make that time. My view is it doesn't really matter. Now. We just have to realize that the bet has failed, not because we weren't nice about it, not because we weren't good intentions, but because China decided to go another way, and especially since Hi jing Pin came to power, they're taking China in the opposite direction, and they're becoming less liberal and more repressive and more aggressive, and then they're also interfering in our free and open societies and we can't have that. And so now, whether or not you think it was good or bad bet, we have to realize that that that's over and we have to have a new strategic response that I take you, that's what you see the Biden administration actually saying very clearly, and that doesn't mean we're doing it but at least we're saying it, which is the first thing. So that pivot from front of me is too openly rivals. It was going to happen, It had to happen. Was there something about Trump and his personality that that accelerated the timetable? Absolutely? You know, the thing about the Trump administration is that they didn't care about you know, what were the sort of like the rules of Washington. And then those rules of Washington constrained US China policy for all this time because the China issue was run by the China experts, and they're the ones who got us largely into this mess in the first place. So it just opened the overton window of what was possible inside the government. And then of course there were a lot of competitions, and not everybody inside the Trump administration agreed on China. You know, people like uh, Mike Pompello and Stevenuga totally disagreed. But the point is that all new things, all of the new things were on the table, and so all of a sudden you started to seek confronting China in our schools and in our capital markets, and even in Hollywood and in the tech industry and I'm not saying it all with perfectly. I'm just saying that all of those options were now at least being explored, and now that binda mistress just trying to step through them to see which parts of the Trump China policy they want to keep and they want to discard, And they're actually keeping a lot more than you would have thought. Right, if that's that should be a signed You know that they the Biden people who are like hate all the Trump stuff on all the other countries. They hate the Trump you know, Russia approach, they hate the Trump Iran approach, but on China, they're basically continuing most of it. That means though they probably saw a lot of it in there that was pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty interesting that for all the talk in the media and you know, on the campaign trail about how awful Trump's approach was, the tariffs are still in place. A lot of the stuff still in place. Um this far into Biden's presidency, um where I just keep thinking that the break is going to come with US businesses in China. And it's inevitable too, Like Joe said, it was inevitable. We went from friend of these enemies at what point, do does the NBA, does Apple? Does everybody just have to stop doing business with China? Do you think that's coming? Yeah? No, I think the business community is still split because I think and I think the fight over this inside the Bider administration is still coming. Like they haven't appointed a lot of the people in like Treasury and these places. Those are the people who are gonna push back and say no, no, no, no, but you just gotta get rid of the tarifs and go back to business to avoid the Cold war whatever nonsense they're going to come up with. And so I think in the business community, first of all, have the companies that are corporate hostages, right, like the Apples and the NBA, and they know they've got a problem, right They're making money in China, but for how long you know, and the squeezes is on, you know what I mean. So I think we should actually help those companies not get bullied around by the CCP. Uh. Then on the other side, there's the financial services companies which are pushing for more engagement because there have a corrupt interest in getting to this cold wort thing. So if you look at the Goldman Saxes and the Bloomberg Barkleys and the MSCI and the mortgage Stanleys of the world. Uh, they're pumping money into China and taking Chinese money left, hand over fist because they're pushing back against this realization that we're in this competition. So I think that's a that's the problem, actually a problem that we have to be really clear eyed about. Oh yeah, well, I think it's gonna be like, you know, decoupling with China is gonna be like giving up meth heroin and smoking all on the same week. I mean, it's gonna be an enormous disruption. Yeah. And you know, you have so many American elites on both sides, i'le who are thoroughly compromised, who are corrupted, who are making money on both ends, and have an interest in telling us that their national security threat is fake and that it's all just you know, Mike Pompeios, Donald Trump cold war nonsense. But you know, uh, to them, I would say, well, then you have to accuse the Biden administration being part of that too, because they're saying that the threat is real. They're saying that we have to have some limited decoupling, not total decoupling. But some limited the coupling to protect ourselves, so that you know, the next time the Chinese Communist Party gets mad about a tweet, the entire NBA doesn't suffer. Or the next time that there's a pandemic that they don't have all their masks, all the masks in the world that they hang over our heads. That tell us to shut up about the origin of the coronavirus, which is exactly what happened. Josh, I want to jam in one more question. Your book is Chaos Underhoving Trump she in the Battle for the twenty one century? This is short. Is it inevitable that China China took Hong Kong? Are they going to take take Taiwan? Nothing inevitable, but nothing is inevitable, but the thread is rising and not. What I say is that the best way to ensure their aggression is to do nothing, and that their appetite grows with the eating. And we've seen that appeasement doesn't work. So if we don't, if we want to avoid them taking Taiwan, then we have to stand up for Taiwan. Now. We have to do that. Now. I have to support Taiwan war now and I hope to find administration will do that. Josh, thanks for your time. The great book Chaos under Heaving Trump. She in the Battle for the twenty one century. We hope to have it on again. That's good stuff right there. Thanks Si Milion, great conversation Armstrong and Getty