China's Domination Playbook. Robert Spalding Talks to Armstrong & Getty

Published Apr 14, 2022, 7:00 PM

War Without Rules author, US Air Force Brigadier General (ret) Robert Spalding, joins Armstrong & Getty to talk about how China has used technology, consumerism and the pandemic (and the war in Ukraine) as opportunities to protect the Chinese communist government's power.

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Of course, we've all been talking about the US and NATO VERSUS Russia, but we all know who the real long term strategic enemy is. That's China. It's extra large because four hours, simply enough, this is Armstrong and getty extra large. The US Air Force Brigadier General retired Robert Spalding, former White House National Security Council Senior Director for Strategic Planning, serving senior positions of strategy and diplomacy within the Defense and State Departments for more than twenty six years, is out with a brand new book that could not be more timely. War without Rules, China's playbook for global domination. Robert, how are you, sir? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. It's absolutely our pleasure. Uh. War without rules and without boundaries, um is China's strategy. We're so interested in this, Jack and I personally the idea that China views it's contest against the United States and the Western world to be an whole of society effort. It really is. And it's a different way of thinking about war. You know, I I trained to drop bombs from a V two. This is about, you know, influencing the perceptions, the intentions and behaviors of a population using the tools the Silicon Valley built to make themselves, you know, fabiously wealthy. So well, let's just start with the very basic. What is the goal of China. Would they take over the world if they could? Well, I mean, that's a very good question. Their goal is to stay in power. But in order to stay in power, democracies and what they represent, this idea of individual freedom, rule of law, human rights, has to go away because they fear if the if the Chinese people ever ever got you know, these um you know, uh principles, then they would overthrow them. And so in order to preserve themselves protect themselves, think about what we did after World War Two. You know, our intention was to remake the world in our image using international institutions. So we used the Marshall Plan, we built the u N We rebuilt Japan and Korea. These are the things that we did, and we did it because we wanted to protect ourselves from you know, regimes life China or the Soviet Union. The Chinese saw this, they watched it. Now, unlike the Soviet Union, they realized that the America didn't do this with weapons. They did it with economics, they did it with the supply chain. These are the things that China learned and they're they're turning them around and using them now. So when you say, do they want to take over the world, Yes, and they're doing it, and that's in order to protect the Communist Party's position and power. But can they make the same sort of argument that we made. We could make the argument to other countries, Look, you adopt our system, your lives are gonna be better, You're gonna be your people are gonna be happier, etcetera, etcetera. Can China make that argument to the world. Oh? Not only can they, they are and in fact, in emergency market economies for decades, they have thought that China's model is better because China is actually investing in them. You know, in Africa, for example, China's biggest investment is in low value added manufacturings. So they're actually bringing factories into Africa. And the reason they can do that is because they've already built the roads, the power of the rail, the water. They've created this ability to be industrialized. Then they bring industrialization, then they bring urbanization, all to create a market that's beholden to China. So in much the same way we did the Marshall Plan. China is doing that with the Belt and Road initiative. So yes, And the answer is when you look around these countries at the U N and you say, who do you look to for Who's you know? Who do you trust in the economy, Who do you trust to have be a better, you know, business partner, They're all going to say China. And I heard this at the White House. You know, people would come to us from Korea, from Japan and say, hey, don't force us to choose between you and China. We want to be your security partner, but we want to be China's business partner. If you think about the Soviet Union, it was all about weapons. We were all about business. Since the end of the Cold War, we become all about weapons and let the Chinese take over the business. So a great place to ask this question because the bulk of your career took place during that period where China was trying to convince the United States and the Western world that hey, we're not rivals and we're not enemies. We're not trying to subvert it or take over anything. We want to cooperate. We want to liberalize we want to do business with you, that sort of thing. When you know, more recent discoveries have made it clear that all along they were playing the uh, you know, the the innocent neighbor that just wants what's good for you, But indeed they were plotting, you know, something like world supremacy. When did you come to the realization that Chinese goals were not quite as benign as they were trying to pass off. Well, you know, I had m I had lived in China for two years as a young major in the Air Force. I went to university in Shanghai called it was Chomji Universities, actually built by the Germans, and I loved it, and I thought it was fantastic, and I really believed that China was a great you know, partner for the US. In fact, you know, I remember leaving in two thousand and four telling my wife, I want to come back and and do business in China. And it was when I it was in two thousand and fourteen when I got to the Pentagon and I was working for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and you know, he had me working on the China problem. And I got this presentation from a friend that had invested in China New York, and the presentation just showed how many of our companies China was going after and attacking, and it reminded me of what I did with B two is in in bombs, you know, they were doing with economics. And it was that point when I began to really recognize that we were in a competition that I didn't I was never trained to deal with as a military officer, So I know, I assume a lot of your goal is just to wake people up to the you know, the reality of what China is and what their goals are. It's inevitable, isn't it that Nike no longer is making their shoes in China and iPhones aren't mate in China. Isn't that inevitable? Well, it's not inevitable as long as they think that they can get away with it. And what you see in Washington, d C. On every single day UH is US corporations and US financial institutions making the argument to Washington DC that we need to continue to do business with China. And so were people like me that are focused on national security and the erosion of our industrial base, the erosion of our freedoms with this linkage with China and their corporations with our operations. You know, on the corporation side, they are incentivized financially to basically feed the Chinese Communist Party line in the Congress and the White House, and so you know, it's not it's counterintuitive, but unfortunately, we don't have a corporate sector or a financial sector that really has national security at heart. They have, you know, their own their financial well being. And that's how China has been able to essentially upend the US leadership around the world. Hollywood no longer listens to American values. They listened to Chinese Communist Party values because they're the ones with the wallet. I'd love to hear you expand on something you mentioned briefly, and that's how China's exploited Silicon Valley and American technology UM to do the economic war against us. What do you mean by that, Well, so, um, what Silicon Valley created was the ability to take data about you, and this is when the iPhone came out in two thousand seven, two thousand nine, we started building these four G networks, really created the opportunity for the mobile economy, and that's when if you go back to that day two thousand seven when the iPhone came out and look at the companies that were leading in the United States A T and T, J and Electric, Microsoft x on Mobile Shell and ten years later it's Face, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. And what they did, what Silicon Valley did, was take all that data that was coming off of your device and figure out how to understand your perceptions and intentions and then begin to slowly change those perceptions and intentions to make you a better consumer. And so this tool of using data that's collected about you and then changing your perceptions is exactly the tool that China sought to harness and seeks to harness now through it. In other words, they get the data from your phone and then they figure out what you like and then they start to feed you message. But they're not just about selling you things. It's also about, you know, how do we convince you that your social and political beliefs may not be what you think they are. And so that's what they do for their own population. But what we gave them, what Silicon Valley gave them, is the ability to do that on a global stage. This is unprecedented in warfare, You've never been able to go after the population because you've always had borders in the government that protected the population from outside influence. Now we can go right to the individual when you can begin to road their faith and confidence in their own governing systems, and you see that happening on a daily basis. So that's essentially when you say, what is war without rules? It's about using the Internet and globalization to undermine the international order and the domestic social cohesion of free societies around the world. Speaking of international order, what do you think she and the I mean, his party's view is of what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Are they happy about this or is it getting in their way? No? I mean so, uh. Putin came to China to get approval from She for the invasion of the Ukraine. Now, all she said is don't do it until the Olympics are over. What she wanted out of that was to watch how we the West reacted to Russia. And the reason he wanted that to happen is because he was worried about when he invades Taiwan. He wants to know how we're going to react. So now he because we've gone all In on this Russia Ukraine thing. Now China is going through the steps to make sure that everything that we did to the Russians will not be effective when it comes to their invasion of Taiwan. So they got to run a real life test simulation of what our reaction would be. And I also noticed you said when they invade Taiwan and not if yes, that's happening, it's She has already said that it's it's not. He's not going to leave it to the next generation. So what they wanted to make sure is that you know, anything that we were hiding hiding in our pockets, you know, the Russians believed, actually believed that they had you prevented themselves from being really you know, able to be attacked through the international financial system and the global economy. Well we attacked them, right, and we put them in a box. It's really strangling them. This was news to Putin, but it was also news to she, And so the good thing about she getting to watch it happen to Putin is now he has the ability to put in place the measures to ensure it won't happen him. Man, that's fascinating stuff. Yeah, and as long as we're discussing gigantic news stories that have changed depending lives, can you talk to us about your point of view on how China handled COVID from the beginning to the present day. Well, um, the so first let me say that, Um, I don't know how COVID, you know, you know, got into the wild, whether it was in the market and a lab, whether it was intentional, whether it was accidental. But what I can tell you is what the Chinese Communist Party does, and if they're faced with a crisis, they are silent. They watch what's going on, and then they think about how they take advantage of the situation for their benefits. So what they realized is that they could create enormous fear about this virus and in doing so, you know, really get other nations, other economies to shut down. Well what did that do? That enabled them to have even further control on the global economy, further control on the global supply Chaine. So how do we know that they did this? Well, the the epidemiology model that was used by the West to justify Locktan came from the Imperial College of London. Now people don't know that the Imperial College of London has been getting tens of millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party, and in fact, in two thousand and fifteen, Shi Jumping himself visited that school, and then you have the videos coming out of Wuhan, and so what you have is essentially be once they figured it out what they were gonna do, they started to hype the fear, and then bosts on social media began to you know, share that um that epidemiology model that began to share those videos, and we created an even today, that fear still resonans to resonates throughout the world. And if you think about unrestricted warfare, what they were trying to do is show, hey, create fear and then you can begin to take advantage of that fear. We adopted policies that had never been part of any pandemic um you know plans in the past. Lockdowns were never never a part of any of the CDC lands or the World Health Organization plans. All of a sudden, within weeks of China implementing lockdowns, the World Health Organization comes out and says, this is fantastic. They've stopped the virus and its tracks. And in fact, today, China still reports that they've only had forty six hundred people die a coronavirus that's been reported by the media. So this is the this is how they use a coronavirus, you know, as an advantageous way to further strengthen their hold over the global economy and global medical health policy. Do the final question, I know your time is limited. Do you feel like, whether it's the American people are in the halls of power, people have woken up that China is not our buddy, is not our benign business partner. I see it happening every single day. But as you know, um, we are a very fickle society. And unfortunately, what you see with and what you've over the last two years is we are so willing to give up our freedoms for security today that I would say that the population is un would be unrecognizable to our founding fathers. I would agree with that have lost the lust for liberty. Yeah, and uh and uh are willingness to give up all kinds of things for cheap crap, cheap shoes, cheap underwear, cheap iPhones. Yeah, amen to that. The book is We're without rules. Go ahead, Robert no absolutely. I mean we would we would easily give up our freedoms or you know, even sacrifice our own principles if we can get something for cheaper, were without rules, China's Playbook for Global domination. Robert Spaulding. Robert really enjoyed the chat. I hope we can do it again sometime, Thank you so much. Man had some interesting stuff about they funded the group that laid out the plans for shutdowns in the world. Oh yeah, Imperial College in London. I remember those, uh, those frameworks being quoted in the media constantly, and then it came out that they're a ridiculous and be the w h o uh. The c d C, every responsible organization that deals with this sort of thing had rejected the idea of shutdowns for years and years and years. They've been talking about this stuff forever, but then all of a sudden it was the go to. And the fact that they're running a real life simulation of what it looks like when the United States and NATO goes to war over a country invading another country is something that what's a focus group? It's like when a TV show puts together a focus group and plays the episode for him to see if people laugh or not. They get to do a focus group on this sort of an invasion and see how the world reacts so they can come up with their strategies to get around the reaction. And the other thing General is involved with that we didn't get a chance to chat with him about is he's the founder and current CEO of a pity that I think it's pronounced semper um, but it's the Simpered micro Data Center ensures access to data anytime, anywhere, even in catastrophic conditions, by offering high performance edge computing and diverse secure communications, including five G all in a Tampa resistant e MP hardened enclosure. And the reason I'm so interested in that is conversations I've had with various people in the military who talk about the first thing you do is disrupt your enemies communications. And given our dependence on satellite driven UH communication systems in the Internet and the rest of it, we I know, DARPA and other you know, you know, parts of the military have been working very hard. I don't know a lot about this for obvious reasons. It's highly classified. But what platform do we use and when that one goes down, which one do we move? To and then what channel and what frequency, and then what's next and what's next after that so we can continue to be in communication. And again he probably couldn't say a lot about it, but that is a field that I have a feeling is going to be uh top of mind if the Pooh ever hits the fan Wake Up extra large

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