Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto

Hi, I'm Kara Swisher, editor at Large of Recode. You may know me as someone who thinks the world should make Shadow Love, not Shadow War, but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Ecode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the red chair is Jim Schudo, the chief national security correspondent for CNN and co-anchor of It's Daily CNN Newsroom. He's also the author of a recently released book, The Shadow War Inside Russia and China's Secret Operations to defeat America, which is quite pertinent right now.

Jim, welcome to Recode Ecode. Thanks so much for having me. Real pleasure. Well, you know, tell me Poppy, your co-host, Poppy Harlow.

She's a great partner and I'll let you have her. You have to honk or else. I don't know what the or else part was, but I would be happy because it's a great recommendation. This is a topic that I talk about a lot.

You know, you cover national security and obviously cyber security is an important part. I spent a lot of time with Ash Carter, a bunch of other people talking about the topic. He's in the book. Exactly.

So let's talk a little bit. I want to get to the book in a second. Let's talk about your background, how you got to what you're doing, including covering national security and anchoring CNN, which is sort of in the middle of, you know, it itself has become a topic in this administration. Yes, it's a target.

It's just the other day. He did it again with the 19th. The stock went up, though. That means, uh oh.

So I started my reporting career as a foreign correspondent. I always wanted to be overseas and sort of chase the story. Why? What did you do in high school?

I'll tell you. You wanted the origin story and it's interesting because we've having just passed the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. I was a freshman in college in May, the end of my freshman year in May 1989. And I had a sister, I have three sisters, but another sister who was interested in China and she was living over there at the time and my parents and another sister went to visit her and they found themselves in Beijing in late May 1989, taking family pictures inside the pro democracy protest there.

They left the day that martial law was declared and then in the succeeding days, they of course read about and saw on television the horrible events afterwards. Very good. Have an intelligent. Absolutely.

And those images and they were heartbreaking for them because they'd met many of these young students and it was just such an exhilarating time to be there. In fact, I fished out, I found these the other day. My mom saved all these newspapers from around the region reporting the news of the events of the early morning June 4th, 1989. So I'm choosing my major and a lot of folks looking at American political history this or that and I said, you know what, I'm going to study China because there's something going on over there and I want to know about it.

That turned out to be my major and after college. I went out to Asia. So try to meaning learn Chinese or what was that? Well study Chinese history and politics and culture.

And then after college, I decided I want to go there. I did a Fulbright fellowship to me out there and I ended up staying out there as a reporter traveling around the region. This was in the early 90s and mid 90s. And it just gave me a bug on the country, the region, the culture, but also a bug for getting paid to travel the world and bring back stories.

Do you speak Chinese? I do kind of lousy when I'm not in the country, but when I return recently, I did a stint in government. I built right back into it. I was decent.

I was pretty decent. So you wanted to be a foreign person. You didn't want to go into diplomacy. I wanted to be in the state of our country.

Did you? Well, no, I went to foreign service school at Georgetown. You did. Well, you.

Okay. So when I was in a spy, Jim, we all want to sort of be. No, I wanted to be a spy. I wanted to be Robert Reverd in three days of the country.

I wanted to be an analyst at Analyze Scenario Building. I could see you do it. I'll tell you what I do now. In college.

You don't have a spy right now. The longest con in history. I would believe it. When I was in college, I did think about foreign service, but I felt I looked at the folks who took this example.

I couldn't pull it off. I just didn't feel like I knew enough. I was intimidated by it. Later in my career, the only other path I considered pursuing was the government in some way.

That would come up years later when I was offered this job as Chief of Staff of the Ambassador of China. This is just in 2011. I took that job. I explored that for a couple of years.

I'm glad I did. I learned a lot, but I still think my nature is a journalist. I came back to the fold. So you're doing a foreign correspondorship.

What got you into national security? So I went over to London for ABC, after 9-11 basically. 9-11 happened. I went to cover the attacks at the Pentagon.

I was based in Washington at the time. Immediately afterwards, I raised my hand. I said, I want to cover the aftermath. I want to go to Afghanistan.

I want to cover the region. I did. I went there in early 2002 and ended up staying in London, but staying in the region for a decade. I went to Iraq a dozen times.

I went to Afghanistan a dozen times. Iran a dozen times. All over there. Israel, Palestine, you name it.

That covering the wars, covering the intelligence behind the wars, covering the terror attacks that followed and efforts to prevent terror attacks, that got me into the national security space. I never gave it up. It was just interesting to me. And substantive and a little bit exciting.

And so you were brought you to the CNN, you were at the major networks. And then of course there was more than a decade with ABC principally overseas. Came back to Washington, in 2010, 11 was really bored to be back at home. I didn't have that excitement of hopping on a plane every couple of weeks to go somewhere new or exotic.

I went to the White House Correspondence Center in 2011. That was back when they still told jokes. I was a little too close. And a little too many celebrities do that.

They got down there. But I went there and I was lucky because sitting next to me was the new ambassador to China, Gary Locke. Just appointed him was about to be sent over. And we got to talk about China.

We talked about China. And then I followed with lunch and another dinner. And he came to offer me a job as a chief of staff. He said, listen, I've been looking for someone, not a typical candidate for this job.

Someone a little outside the box who can kind of give me just a different perspective of these things. How would you like to go? And the first question I asked was to my wife. We had two young kids.

And she said, I'm gay. And she's a journalist as well. She still works for ABC News. So she was excited by it.

And the prospect of taking our kids over the air to absorb the place and learn something. So once I had her approval, I said, yes, I'll take a risk and dive in. And how was that? So on the good side, I learned a lot.

I was right in the middle of this country and this relationship with this country that I'd studied for a number of years. I had a high level security clearance. So reading the intelligence. I was in the room for many tense, high level meetings.

And in the midst of difficult decisions between the US and China, I was literally a fly on the wall. So how was that different being journalists? How bad are we at doing our job? Well, it's funny.

I think that we have the impression that the folks on the inside know everything. I mean, have, well, or that they have access to knowing so much. They have access to the intelligence and surveillance satellites and intercepted communications and all this kind of stuff. Well, well, I've been on the inside of internet companies.

Fair enough. You know, I used to do it the same in government. And I learned that lesson. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you realize just like in companies, it's imperfect people with imperfect information, making imperfect decisions, often doing their darndest.

But there is no all knowing anyone in these circumstances. So I certainly learned that. And I'm not questioning motivations, because I met a lot of dedicated Americans who really love their country and are fighting hard to do the best they can. But they make mistakes, too, and a lot of them.

The other frustration was that journalism, as you know, is a very self-driving business. You take the initiative. It's your product. You're developing a product every day.

And government is a top-down kind of structure. It's like a military organization, chain of command. And that's slow and frustrating and a little good finding. So I did it for a couple of years, learned a lot, and said, you know what?

I'm a journalist. I'm going back. Right. And so you go back to CNN.

And how did that happen? Like, kept relationships while I was there. But oftentimes. The anchor.

That's a big job. Well, first they took me back as a national security anchor. Well, thank you so much. There's a lot of work.

You're being up to top-down. First I came back as national security correspondent at the anchoring came later. But they knew that I had the chops for it, because I'd spent a lot of time on the ground of these countries. And I think that kind of on-the-ground experience is often in Washington.

Right. Yes, you can operate under any circumstances and make it happen. But two, I had been to Iran. If we're talking about Iran and the U.S.

I've been inside the government, the plants. I've been inside the wars. I wasn't dealing with theoretical knowledge of this stuff. I was interested in knowledge.

So that helped. And I don't know if you found in your career. I do have to find in a career that your best opportunities, I don't say they come out of the blue. But I was lucky at that point that I wanted to come back that there was a position and they were looking for someone like me.

And I went, what? No, I do. I do think it's important to have on the ground of things. Some of the times everyone's like, oh, that's your opinion.

I'm like, no, I covered it for years. I really am right. I'm actually accurate. I've seen it.

You just are saying it. So it's an interesting thing. It's an interesting thing. It's really important to have operational experience, no matter what you're doing.

So you do the show every day. And it's a daily show that you have to be clever for two hours a day, essentially. Yes. You can always insult anchors.

But I'm like, you've got to be quick and facile a lot. Like it's like it must be exhausting. You do. Poppy and I, we blow up the playbook every day, because news breaks, particularly during our hour, through 9-11, you know, committee hearings, et cetera.

Some tweets, something always, always a tweet. Exactly. And I think the day when I was at ABC, and you had the old school kind of evening news broadcast, very scripted, you know what they were going to say? Cable news in this era, when you have a lot of live interviews with newsmakers, you have news breaking during your hour.

Very little of it is scripted. We do our homework, Poppy and I work hard. We know the issues before we go in. But you're reacting in the moment, and you've got to do it with some intelligence and knowledge and respect, and that could be challenging, but it's fun.

Do you, when you think about sort of the impact of the previous years, I have a study about sort of the corrosive effects of cable sometimes. And it's true. How do you look at that? I would say that the evening ones are more, you know, they're more news driven, essentially.

We are. And that means reactive, it does. But news driven versus opinion driven. Right, of course.

No, that does. There's actual news happening. There's a shooting, or there's something, you know, this week there's been like 10 things, right? So talk about that concept of what's happening now.

So you worked abroad, and this is not that. You're right. We, you know, people ask me a lot, do we have an editorial line at CNN, or am I encouraged to follow a certain editorial line? The answer is no.

We're encouraged to follow the news. And, you know, our bosses care about getting it right. We have, you know, whenever we're accused of fake news or making stuff up or making sources up, and you know, where that criticism comes from, I say, guys, you don't know how vetted our reporting is. And particularly in this era, it is more, the stories I do, particularly when it's sensitive stuff, never been more vetted than anything I've worked on in my life.

Where, you know, what are the sources? You know, multiple sources. Let's make sure the language is precise. Let's go back to them.

I want more clarity on this or that. I mean, you know, the level of vetting and editorial, not control, but editorial standards, higher than I've ever experienced in the business. So, one, we got to get it right. Two, we do our best to avoid an editorial slant.

You know, I think the bigger challenge is, and one reason I wrote a book is that you don't often get the opportunity to connect the dots and provide context. Right, right. It's the next thing, it's the next thing. It's the next thing.

It's the twitchy culture, it's Twitter, twitchy culture, really. Exactly. So, you know, that's one thing I think that we could do better. We could do better for people.

When I talk to my sort of unscientific focus group of friends and family, I think that's what people are clamoring for. I know what's happening, but I'm hearing it from 27 different angles. Tell me why I care. How this is the bigger picture.

Why is this different? How should I prioritize? And that's something that we try to do every day. Why can't that be like that on table?

It's like, this is why I do plug-ins, because it's long and substantive. Like a substantive discussion. Even our short ones are substantive. Yes, we do.

I mean, listen, we do, we try. Of course, you know, you could be doing that, and then, heck, something else happens, right? That's how we get back to the act. It is reactive.

I think that, you know, I try to look at it from my career, and just as a journalist, that you're a voice over time, right? And you just do your best to add value over time. Right, right. How do you operate under the pressure of being called thing?

You've seen it as the one that's most targeted. And this week, you just started out, you know, what do you do in those? And sometimes, like, some of your evening anchors really get a little emotional. Like, you don't.

It's really interesting. You don't have a lot of opinion. It doesn't feel like it. You don't shade it as much as where, whatever.

I mean, they shade more in Fox News, they shade a lot of them, saying it in MSNBC. Definitely shade. You know, Prime Time broadcast a little bit different. I mean, it's just not my style, right?

I try to play it as much. You still suffer from the consequences. I do. OK, so big picture.

We do our best to ignore it, because the only direction, like I said, I get from my bosses is get it right. And we're caught. And frankly, it encourages the mission of journalism. Because when you're under attack with purpose, right?

Because the fake news attacks are with purpose. Yes, absolutely. Being used for that end. So that, and Trump even said it, and the famous Leslie Stahl interview, said I attack you.

So because when you have critical information, I can then undermine the source. I mean, Trump said it in so many words. So that makes you know even more so what your role is. You know, expose wrongdoing.

Shine light on issues that don't have light shown on them. And that's on the positive side, mission affirming. So that's one thing. Two, ignore the BS.

I ignore it. Because at the end of the day, I actually think that his attacks have less impact over time. I think people are getting more numb to them, to some degree. There is the very serious side of it, is that some people do listen.

And there's a reason why we have armed guards at CNN today. There's a reason why you have guards at Trump events, you know, guarding the press pen, because some people do listen to those attacks. There's a reason why we're on the air in September, and we've seen a receipt of the bomb. You know, that guy was listening.

So it's important, but our reaction is to just put the nose down and move forward. You think generals should pull back a little bit? Some people think, no, don't. Right, not pull back on the phone.

Don't forget about it. All right, so getting into substance. And the next section we're going to talk about how you decided to do this book and what you're thinking about it. You, when did you write this book?

I wrote it on planes, trains, and in coffee shops. I didn't take time off. I wrote it between January of last year and July. 80,000 words.

And I just said I'm going to write 10,000 words. 2,500 words a week. All right, we're going to talk about it. We'll get back to it.

Here with Jim Schudo. He's the author of Shadow War, Inside Russia and Russia's In China. Secret Operations to Defeat America. We're going to take a quick break now.

We'll be back after this. We're here with Jim Schudo. The author of Shadow War, Jim is also the Chief National Security Correspondent for CNN. He's a co-anchor of CNN Newsroom in the mornings on CNN.

Talk about the book. So you were writing it, you were writing it everywhere. What was the impetus for writing it was here? What were you trying to do?

The impetus was that I spent years covering these countries, China and Russia, on multiple fronts of what I would perceive as this Shadow War. And it struck me that folks weren't connecting the dots on this. Not just members of the public, journalists, the way we write about these stories, but also our leaders weren't connecting the dots. On what, when you look at the full picture, is a strategy by both Russian and China to undermine the US on multiple fronts.

And the fact is, both of them are very explicit in that strategy. They write about it. And I wrote it. My motivation was as a concerned American, that I spent all these years in these places.

And I feel that my country is being undermined in a way that is worrisome. I want my kids to experience the world as free as the one I grew up in, or a country as prosperous as the one I grew up in. And you have two countries that are intent on undermining that. No, let's be clear.

These two countries have always been trying to undermine the United States, right? But one of the things that I find interesting is, look, Russia lost the Cold War, lost it cold, like completely lost it. China, same thing was never even make the kind of incursions that they had hoped. But they have used technology to do so.

But first talk about the history of their attempts to the non-Shadow War, because it went on and on. And largely, they lost due to our economic vitality, the freedom democracy just worked better, a lot more people, and a lot more people lived better. Well, that's going back to the Cold War. So the Cold War ends in 91, so our union collapses.

And at the same time, I'm not entirely equating Russian China, but they're a parallel. No, they didn't. They didn't develop on this. At the same time, China is liberalizing economy, economically making enormous strides.

And in both cases, the US. And meanwhile, Russia is not. It's just sort of a big, safe aboil. Well, but in the 90s, remember, we had this impression that things were different.

End of history, Russian, China, want to play by our rules now. And if we engage them and bring them into the international fold, not only are we going to make friends with them, but they're going to liberalize at home and modernize, democratize all this kind of stuff. Even in the face of years of contradictory evidence and information, that delusion persisted. And the folks I interviewed in this book, who were serving in high positions during this time, are self-critical in their analysis.

They say that we could not give up this delusion, this mirroring is a word that comes up a lot of magic. What's that mean? It means thinking that they want what we want. Thinking that they're a mirror image of our interests and our motivations, but they're not.

First of all, they have a different view. How is a difference between them too? Between Russian, China. And I will.

Russia, and again, there's some generalizing going on here, but the way folks will describe it, Russia is a zero-sum game player. They see it as an advantage any way they pull us down. Politically, election interference, militarily, et cetera. China really wants to supplant us as the dominant power in the world.

So you've got a Russia-playing spoiler, China-playing genuine competitor. You can't. They can't. They just, as folks often say, they've got to kind of be about the size of one US state.

China's got an economy that's got to surpass us at some point. So those are the spoiler and it's one. You're right. And one of the consistent themes of the book, though, is that the constant missignals, the constant misreading, and another point I make.

And again, it's not a political book, because there's a lot of blame to go around Democratic and Republican administrations. But each president comes in and says, I can get this right. So I'll be bush-lucked into Putin's eye. I see a guy can work with things go pear-shaped afterwards.

Obama, reset button, things go pear-shop. Of course, Donald Trump is still in that space. He's like, I can get this right. But it hasn't worked out so well.

I have some questions. It seems to be his strategy. So the others, I would have been fascinated by Hillary Clinton presidency. That would have been one ugly fight.

There's a reason Putin did not want to be a Republican. Of course, of course not. She had his number. Oh, women know.

Anyway, women always don't creep. So we went up the goal where we basically won the goal war. We were doing it well economically, even though China was growing, too. But in general, on still the dominant country of the world, essentially.

Talk about how each of them then started to make different than you described your book. To make different decisions. Russia discord. Russia discord, and particularly with Putin's rise, because Putin had a very adversarial relationship, a view of the US, and even paranoid to some agree that there's a fair amount of paranoia that infects his view of everything is designed to take him down.

You never noticed that. And you see the photographs with enforcers. Yeah. The topless horseback, right?

I mean, honestly, you just say that's all I need to know is that picture. But go ahead. Exactly. So Putin was a change for Russia.

And I'm not saying Yeltsin was a hero or anything, but there was definitely a change in aggressiveness at that point. I love them. Russia, by the way. That's something that people really love Putin.

It's not even a force to love him. You're right. No, and I make that point for both Russian and China that neither is close to a democracy, but they both have domestic politics. And Putin and Xi are good at appealing to those domestic politics, right?

Of now is our time. Don't let Russia, don't let America keep us under their thumb. We're pushing back. This is our time to regain our place.

Right. So Russia, this is through their thing. They use media. They use social media.

They use technology. Hacking. Multiple fronts, right? So my sense is Americans are aware of maybe one of the fronts or two fronts.

I think about it. Election interference. OK. No question.

We're talking about that. We have a national conversation. Do they know that Russia has deployed weapons in space, right? They're up there right now.

Kamikaze satellites can take out our satellites. There are directed energy weapons in space. That's what the Space Command calls them. And China has.

And they're designed to hurt our communications system. They're designed to take them out, to not just communications, surveillance satellites, nuclear early warning satellites, GPS, on which our whole host of military technologies depends. Smart bombs aren't smart. Bronze don't fly, et cetera.

I'm assuming we have the same weapons. Well, no, not deployed. And that's a decision. We have those capabilities, but we haven't deployed them to the degree that China and Russia had.

And that's a decision that has to be made. Is that the best deterrent? Or does that lead to a space arms race? That's part of the calculation that has to be made today.

Space Force? We got it. Space Force, exactly. So they do that because they know we're dependent on it.

It's classic asymmetric warfare. And in the event of war, they take that away from us. And it's also civilian technologies that are better than me, depending on space assets. GPS time stamps, keep the financial markets going.

That's space. Under the waves, you have a new submarine arms race that's been under way for years. Russia deploying faster, quieter submarines. Why does that matter?

With a submarine that's faster than choir it can pop up off our coastline in the event to war and rain down nuclear warheads without warning. And they show off that capability. You've seen stories about Russian subs popping up off the coast of Florida. US submarine commanders and I spend time on a US sub under the Arctic where they're training to track Russian subs will grant that they can't track them as well as they used to.

And that's a military change, a technology change with intent by Russia. So you got the information ops kind of stuff, election interference. You got space weapons with military intent. You've got an arms race under the waves, again, with military intent.

And as in any sort of asymmetric battlefield, these are the spaces where Russia and China too calculate that they can compete with us. They can't build 12 aircraft carriers tomorrow, but they've got very good submarines. And then you have the broader cyber issue, which I know you've covered extensively. Disinformation, but also going after critical infrastructure.

They already have the ability to go after water treatment, power grids, et cetera. So coming back to why I wrote this book, I've been covering each of these fronts. And I'm not hearing folks, certainly in the White House, but else we're talking about how those fronts fit together. And it is an explicit strategy.

And although Russian China are very different countries in a thousand different ways, they've struck on a similar strategy for undermining the US. All right, so that's Russia, China. So China, active in those same fronts, it's got space weapons. Its innovation is what US basically a man called a kidnapper satellite.

It's got a grappling arm that can snatch satellites out of orbit, moon raker style. They're up there, they're active. They're stealing them? They can.

They haven't done it yet, but in the event of war they can. And they've tested this capability right up to geostationary. So right up to 20,000 miles. To be able to do that, you've got to have fantastic maneuverability, situational awareness, et cetera.

They've demonstrated that capability. So China's in space. China's also under the waves. They don't do nuclear subs as much as these electric.

These electric is quieter. There was a Chinese sub that popped up in the midst of a US carrier group without warning a number of months ago. That scared the bejesus out of US naval commanders. It just popped up.

They didn't know it was coming. And when you can pop up in the middle of them, of course, you could have already launched the torpedoes, and they're dead. So they're there. China also does electric.

China has been known for this. Right here. And they've been known for space. They haven't known for space.

They famously blew up satellite in space about 10 years ago, but submarine warfare. China's. The accident, you mean that it blew up? Well, they shot a missile to take out a satellite space.

Right. Whenever a country does it, by the way, the US has done this more than once. We always say, well, the satellite is degrading orbit, and it threatens people in South America. It's a missile test.

Of course. I believe no, actually. Whenever there's an accident like that, it's covering something else. We're going to try to do it.

Exactly. China's missiles are designed to destroy US aircraft carriers. And they've had enormous success over here. Anti-access aerial denial.

That's a whole, they create kind of a web of fire that keeps US carriers off the coast. So China, by the way, does election interference, too. Australia has had particular experience with this. But when China is reducing soybean purchases from Iowa, right, in the midst of this trade war, that is trying to maximize pain on Iowa farmers with political effect in the US.

It's basically election interference. And China has also done probing attacks like Russia has of election systems. So they all operate. That's disinformation.

Not Russian troll farm kind of level stuff. They have the capability of doing it. They have stuff. Yeah.

Of course, the other aspect that China has enormous success in Iowa, which happened on this, is just straight up stealing state secrets. Now, security and electoral property in private sector. Intellectual property. And I tell the story of just a single hacker, not a hacker, single spy, Stephen Sue, who over the course of four years stole hundreds of gigabytes of data on the F-35, the F-22, and the C-17.

And today, Russia is flying three jets that look at heck up a lot like the F-17. Sorry, China is F-22 and the C-17, because he was so successful. Over four years. He was caught by the FBI, but only four years in.

And I interviewed the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI, Bob Anderson, who says, we're aware of about 10% of what China is doing. 10% of what they're saying. They're also, to give them credit, doing a lot of their own technology and spreading it all over the world. And so becoming just the way they're buying up mining, where there's minerals, everything else.

They're also deploying their technology in place. Spatial servants are giving them countries to try to become the dominant technology force in the world the way the US has been. Huawei is a good example of this. I mean, I think it's easy to say they steal everything.

They don't just steal anything. They're actually innovating their way. No, and I've actually been Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen and credit where credit's due. They do a good job stealing.

And that is expressly to catch up to the US. But China is ahead of the game. You know, there's better than me in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, this kind of thing. They're damn good at what they do.

Of course, it helps to cheat too along the way. Yeah, well, something we don't cheat. But it's an interesting question. Who's going to dominate the next phase?

It's something that's interesting. It's made it. And of course, Silicon Valley people are saying, let us stay large so that we can compete against China. It's never Russia.

It's never Russia. They're just irritating. It's irritating. We need to be big in order to fight China.

Which I'm all at my answer is, do we really want to get an arms race with China with a professional recognition, for example? Do we? Or will there be two? Well, there will be two internet.

There will be two systems. That's what's going to happen. There's going to be their system and our system. And then it will be a global race to compete of who dominates in other countries.

Like who it is, is it a Western democracy system? Or is it a Chinese technology dominated system? When you're back, I want to talk a little bit about more what the repercussions of this are. Because most of our technology is built in China.

And I'll be able to rush up and build in China. And should that happen? Should that be? What are some of the things we can do to push this back?

And what are some of the things the US is doing? We're not doing it back. We're here with Jim Schudo. He's the author of The Shadow War inside Russia and China's secret operations to defeat America.

We're back with Jim Schudo. He's the author of The Shadow War. It's about Russia and China's, what their efforts to hurt the United States are to dominate over the United States. What do you think?

Just on the regular phone, we make a lot of things in China. Should we be making our phones in China? I've never thought we should. Well, it's an enormous opening for bad behavior, isn't it?

Yeah. Rick Lijet, former deputy director of the NSA on this, makes the point that China has laws that require their technology companies to work with their security services. Be on the fact that, listen, there's no real firewall between the industries there. I mean, you've got the straight up state on enterprises and the other ones, but they still have a tight relationship and directors on the board, whatever.

So they got to do it. They got to do it. And that's a problem. And that's why when you look for instance, we spoke about Huawei, you understand?

It's a Detroit 5G. Yeah. You understand why US security services are concerned about it. I remember that moment during a Hill testimony when all the intelligence chiefs were there and they were asked about ZTE.

When they use a ZTE phone and they all said no, because they're concerned about a backdoor and a ZTE phone. I mean, you look at the Russia thing too. Why does no government agency use Kaspersky Labs now, right? Because they were worried about what was a good technology product.

Do you trust that? Do you screen your computer? So what do you do is it there? I don't know how much, but I've got to say, I don't think we should be using Huawei.

Yeah, Huawei's a problem. From a national security point of view. I'm not sure that's why he's doing it. But some of these things, how can we be working with them?

Because obviously China is going to be a technological leader. And so there has to be global cooperation between tech and Apple makes a lot of things in China. Obviously, Google does. Google is trying to go in there.

How do we work with them at the same time for tech or national security interests? It's a question. Just beginning with Trump's addressing this issue, credit work credit is due. He's confronting China on what is a genuine issue, not just trade misbehavior, but national security, a true national security threat.

So can you work together on these essential technologies when you have enterprises that abide by government rules and a country which is calculated that it's survival or the leadership of that country is calculated that it's survival is dependent on control of its own people. Which is a lot of the funding. I was just saying about China, it's trying to explain how much money they spend on internal. The reason there's so much of facial recognition and AI combined is because they need to control this population.

Not just the abuses, the marginalized people they're doing and the spying they're doing on different leaders. The Uighurs, friends, and stuff. The whole population's under surveillance. Absolutely.

It is a they have perfected using technology as a means of repression. They have to. Well, they've calculated it because. They have to control the country.

Well, exactly. Because they've calculated, I mean, essentially that's a bigger conversation. I guess it's a crisis of legitimacy. They've calculated that they can't keep this population of $1.4 billion in check without having that kind of control.

And that's a sad fact. We see the numbers on internal, the estimates of how much they spend on internal surveillance. It's really, that's all it says to me is it's remarkable. They're worried about descent.

They can't have descent. No. And I remember when I went to the Huawei headquarters, and this is a number of years ago, I remember walking through. I'm sure they wouldn't let us do this again.

But walking through the quarters in any door that was open, I felt like there were about 1,000 people in that had a terminal. And that's why Huawei. It's a company that makes a lot of products, that kind of thing. But Bob Anderson, again, former head of county editor, I'm going to tell the FBI in the chapter on stealing a state secret.

He talks about how China does a great job of just enlisting its intellectual and technological fire power in the service of the government. You've got the people who are expressly working for the security agencies. But they have sort of a national service program for highly capable technological students to do the work of hacking for the government. So the whole system is built on preserving that power and using the technology to do so and enlisting people in the service of the government.

And then, of course, there's AI in terms of weapons that are done this way. But they're becoming dominant in AI, again, not Russia, China. And when I ask the vote, a lot of this, again, part of the motivation for writing this book is whenever I would ask senior intelligence officials, it could be your top five threats. What keeps you up at night?

They would always have Russia in China at the top of the list. And some would put Russia ahead of China, but most of them put China ahead of Russia. But then when I say, OK, so give me the next field of battle. And of course, they'll say space, but they all say AI as well.

This is, we're already there in some respects, but that's a next field of competition. And meaning what? How about that? Meaning that, well, listen, AI is a powerful weapon, right?

And I mean, Kifu Li is written about this. Absolutely. And it's some make the argument to me that AI is already in play in some ways, because in the cyberspace, of course, the decisions are made in microseconds that human beings can't complicate. So already those tools are operating somewhat independently from human control to some degree, at least in the moment.

But just the idea that you also, when you speak of drone technology, the systems that manage those swarms of drones, that kind of thing, will have some artificial intelligence in it. Everything. I think the issue is that right now we will debate the ethics of it. We will debate the diversity in it.

And they won't at all. Well, that's true. No, that's true. And that's why we'll be hindered.

Perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps. That's the argument that we shouldn't. That argument is not debated.

Let's just go full steam ahead. Right. Which I think is wrong, because the government's got a lot of social media. So what are the biggest threats right now from each of these countries?

And what does defeat look like to them? What's their goal? So both of them speak in terms of permanent conflict. But there's no signing ceremony on the Missouri.

And this is because it's happening over time and seriously. And again, with them calculating what is our threshold that they can operate under without sparking a decisive response, right? So it just goes on forever. It's just eating away at American advantages, that kind of thing.

Well, that's so. So for China, though, the ambition is to supplant the US economically and militarily. Will we know it? I mean, you're sort of like the frog in the boiling water.

The temperature keeps going up. Will we not recognize it until, wait a second. We're no longer the world power. It's not going to happen in a day.

It'll happen over the course of many days and years. So they may achieve victory without us realizing it. And that's, again, part of the reason I write the book is that we're already in a war without realizing it, right? And certainly the public's not aware of it.

And our leaders are not speaking of those terms. We're going to be more of the election interference with you. For sure. But without realizing that at the same time, you're getting attacked on other fronts and losing ground on others.

So what is the US doing? What is the US doing? We're not sitting here. No, we're not.

I mean, first, it started with recognition. And speaking in terms of a shadow war, though they don't use that exact term, is something that US military commanders do. It's something that folks in Cyber Command do, et cetera, making piecemeal decisions of consequence, but without a clearly articulated vision. And I'll give you an example.

I mean, again, we talked about this. The Trump administration enabling some offensive cyber weapons in response to intrusive attacks by Russia and China. In other words, meet them out on the battlefield here. So you've had that happen.

The US has not made a decision exactly how to respond to threats in space, although we are starting to send satellites into space that have greater maneuverability so they could get out of the way of the bad guys. What are we going to do? Well, you could. I mean, a couple of things you're talking about.

Sending satellites up with some shielding so that they could resist the effects of directed energy weapons. The former head of space command, he talks about sending satellites up with the equivalent of carrier escorts, right? So other satellites that could help push off, even lay kind of depth charges in space term. So you're talking in those terms.

They haven't made the decision on offense, but they are making decisions on defense in space. In terms of tying it together and responding with a contiguous national strategy, it hasn't been articulated yet. And one point. Why?

In any of these situations? Is it just this? Administration is a previous. Previous administrations didn't recognize it sufficiently.

They were at least willing to identify Russia as a threat, particularly you can give this administration credit for identifying China as a greater threat, trade space, stolen states, secrets, et cetera. But you need a hold of government response, which requires focus from the very top, articulation of a strategy from the very top. In this administration, focusing on China, but still won't identify Russia as the threat that it is. You can have that.

Don't take my word for it. The subcommander is want the leadership. The space commanders want the leadership. The folks in the NSA want the leadership.

But there is only partisanship. They can't make basic decisions together. Do you imagine the political climate changing? So that happens, or is it worse?

They've created dissent and this court. You have to depoliticize this threat. And this threat has been supremely politicized by the president. Russia has and China has too.

Well, they have for sure. Jim Clapper makes a great point in comparison. He says, Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence to speak to me. And again, he's been politicized as well.

But he's served for years in intelligence and served Democrats and Republicans. He says that America does not do future threats well. He imagines a scenario where George Tenet in August of 2001 says, we're getting a lot of chatter about terrorist targeting aviation in the US. I'm going to require all Americans to take their shoes off and not carry liquids on planes and go through an extra level of screening.

And he said, Americans would have said, no way. 9-11 happens. You get woken up. The trouble is you can argue the US did have its sort of Pearl Harbor with the election interference in 2016 or should have because that was a consequential attack on our most sacred institution.

But it had been politicized by one side Trump. So that you can't identify it in a unified way and therefore respond to it. So what happens? Well, without getting together and thinking about a national strategy to respond and taking actual steps, they're going to continue to win.

I have a final chapter where I lay out what smart people say are a series of steps that need to be taken. I talk about the steps and then talk about what winning would be for them. OK, more than half a dozen. I want to know the enemy.