China Strategy Initiative Launch Event

DOSHI: All right, well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us so early in the morning on a Monday, after a weekend. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations. I am Rush Doshi, director—as of just moments ago—of our China Strategy Initiative. (Laughter.) We’re excited to welcome you to the launch of this new endeavor. In just a moment I’ll play a short video that explains our initiative and turn it over to CFR President Mike Froman. But before I do, I’ll just offer a few quick thoughts on what we aim to do.

The China Strategy Initiative begins with the recognition that competition with China poses a challenge unlike any that the United States has faced before. CFR has a history—a one-hundred-year history—of convening Americans across the political spectrum to meet the foreign policy challenges of the moment. And we aim to do so again with this initiative. CFR’s new China Strategy Initiative will answer the core questions that go to the heart of America’s China strategy. We’ll do so by launching several new programs. They’re going to provide fresh analysis, granular policy recommendations, and convenings with experts. We’ll do so by drawing on the strength of CFR staff and its thousands of members and institutional partners. And we’ll do so, we hope, in partnership with all of you.

I’m passionate about this work. I believe it’s not just important, but urgent. I want to thank Mike Froman for giving me the opportunity to take this mission on under his leadership at CFR, and in concert with my friends and colleagues throughout this institution. We have an all-star event for you today, so I’ll take a moment now just explain the run of show. After the introductory video that you’ll see momentarily, our President Mike Froman will come up to the podium to offer some additional context on this initiative, before introducing our keynote speaker Deputy Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell. And let me just say, on a personal note, it’s really a privilege to be joined by Kurt. Over the last thirty years, as all of us in this room know, few have done more to advance American purpose in the Indo-Pacific than he has. And after Kurt’s keynote, Mike and Kurt will have a conversation on stage and they’ll take a few questions from the audience.

We’ll then move on to a panel on China strategy featuring some of the most prominent voices in the debate, including Matt Pottinger, Bridge Colby, and Bonny Lin. Stephen Wertheim, who was going to join us, is unfortunately ill today, so he couldn’t make it. Finally, we’ll have a fireside chat moderated by Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima, featuring Maher Bitar and Tarun Chhabra from the National Security Council. That panel will discuss China, AI, and national security. So there’s breakfast, as all of you know, outside the room. There will be coffee breaks in between the sessions. And we’ll have lunch at the end too. Please do stay with us throughout the morning. And without any further delay, let me ask our team to roll the launch video.

(A video presentation begins.)

FROMAN: Over the last eighty years, the United States and People’s Republic of China went from being Cold War adversaries, to parties with common interests in balancing the Soviet Union, to increasingly integrated trade and investment partners. In the decades that followed, the United States pursued a policy of engagement with China, underpinned by a belief that closer ties would gradually lead China to open up, to liberalize, and to adhere to shared international norms. Engagement produced some important progress, but China did not go as far, as fast, or as consistently in the direction that many had expected. China pursued its own course. Disagreements grew. Tensions rose. And the politics around China soured.

Today, the United States and China find themselves in a strategic competition that some say resembles a new cold war. But this kind of competition is unlike any the United States has ever faced. It increasingly cuts across most regions of the world and spans the economic, strategic, political, and technology arenas. China boasts greater technological and industrial strength than the Soviet Union ever did, and is deeply enmeshed in the global economy. It’s pursuing a rapid military buildup and expansion of its nuclear capabilities. And it’s engaged in economic policies that could have adverse consequences for the U.S. and other countries.

The stakes of the competition are high. They include the shape of the international system and the rules that underlie it, questions of war and peace in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, debates over how to advance economic prosperity for societies around the world, and whether the world’s two most powerful countries can set aside the differences that divide them to work together on transnational problems like climate change or public health, which affects us all. This is a moment of transition.

Throughout its more than 100-year history, the Council on Foreign Relations has convened Americans across geographies, industries, and political parties to reckon with the national security challenges of the moment. From the Great Depression through the Second World War, and from the Cold War to today, the Council on Foreign Relations has been at the center of the country’s foreign policy debates. And this time is no different. That’s why we’re launching an ambitious new initiative focused on U.S. strategy towards the People’s Republic of China. To tell you more about this new initiative is its program director, Rush Doshi.

DOSHI: The CFR China Strategy Initiative will launch significant new projects to answer the questions that go to the heart of U.S. strategy. First, what is China thinking? We’re launching the open-source observatory to acquire, digitize, and translate vast quantities of Chinese-language material and make it publicly available. Second, what is China doing? We’re launching a project, China 360, to better understand China’s global activities and how countries respond to them.

Third, how should the United States compete? We’re standing up a China Policy Accelerator to produce granular policy recommendations on what America should do not just abroad but at home. For example, how should America fix its defense industrial base, harness defense technology innovation, protect critical infrastructure from cyberattack, or implement industrial policies? That’s what the accelerator will seek to figure out.

Fourth, how do we manage competition, work together, and avoid war? Our new Global China Forum will launch conversations with experts from China and from countries around the world to answer that question. The China Strategy Initiative will deepen research in key areas too, from defense and diplomacy to economics and technology, and from cross strait issues and China’s domestic developments to transnational challenges and global governance.

FROMAN: Big challenges need bold initiatives, and we can’t do this alone. We’ll be convening our thousands of CFR members from across the country, as well as our partners in other institutions around the world, to grapple with the challenge together. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.

(Video presentation ends.) (Applause.)

FROMAN: Good morning, everybody. I’m Mike Froman, president of the Council. And just want to thank you all for being here and joining us this morning. We have about 300 here in the room, and another 400 online of CFR members and other guests. And we’re delighted to have you all here. First, I want to thank Rush for kicking off today’s program. He’s pulled this initiative together in about two months. It turns out that when you work 24/7 at the White House, you have a fair amount of productivity to put to use. (Laughter.) So we’re delighted to have him here at the Council.

As Rush alluded to, this is one of four cross-cutting initiatives we’re launching here at the Council. The first one, Reimagining American economic leadership, led by Matt Goodman, was launched a few months ago. It will focus on trade and investment, development, and economic security. We’ve announced just last week Varun Sivaram is joining us to lead—help us stand up our Climate Initiative. And that’ll focus on climate and the nexus of climate and migration, conflict, trade, finance, global health, food security, and a number—and a number of other issues. And, of course, today we’re launching the China initiative.

This challenge, as the video mentioned, is unlike any that we’ve seen in American foreign policy. The stakes are high, and it’s very important that we’re able to crowd in expertise from the broader foreign policy community—whether it’s other think tanks, universities, government officials—around these four questions that were laid out in the video. What is China thinking? What is China doing? What should the U.S. do? And how should we manage competition? We can’t do this alone. We look forward to all of you participating in that effort.

With that, let me introduce our first—our first speaker today, Kurt Campbell. It’s a real pleasure. I’ve known Kurt for, well, a long time. I think it goes back to 1991. I actually remember meeting Kurt on a bus in 1991. And like most of Washington, I could spend the next hour telling stories about Kurt. But I won’t do that. He’s now deputy secretary of state. And so we’re very grateful that he’s taken time out of his busy day to be with us. And before, served at the White House as deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs, where he coordinated the overall effort towards the Indo-Pacific leading to the launch of the Quad, and AUKUS, and so much other diplomacy across the region.

Previously, he was chairman and CEO of the Asia Group. He co-founded the Center for American Security. Was senior vice president at CSIS. Led the Aspen Strategy Group. Basically, he was at every think tank except the Council on Foreign Relations. (Laughter.) And so in order to pay his penance, he’s agreed to come repeatedly and participate in our events. We’re very grateful to him for doing that.

Just as a reminder, today’s discussion is on the record. Please join me in welcoming Deputy Secretary Kurt Campbell. (Applause.)

CAMPBELL: It’s just a thrill to be here today. What a wonderful opportunity and initiative. I’m thrilled to see the Council on Foreign Relations off to such a fantastic start under my friend’s strong leadership, Mike Froman. It’s remarkable. I think in the past there had been a little bit of questions about, like, what’s going to happen next at some of these think tanks. CFR has just really tackled the issues that we’re confronting on the global stage. Thrilled to see Mike off to such a fantastic start. I also appreciate the efforts of the entire CFR team to help put this event on today. If you see them outside, they’re diligent, they’re hardworking. Mike has really brought in a team that is determined to make this not only a wonderful place for people to gather, but people to work and think together.

And lastly, I just want to say a couple of words about my dear friend, Rush Doshi. It’s wonderful to see him get the due that he deserves. He and I worked together for many years. I met him up at Harvard about ten years ago, when he was finishing his Ph.D. It’s often viewed that somehow, that we mentor these people as they come. That is not the case in this set of circumstances. He has been my teacher throughout. I’ve learned probably more from him than any person I’ve ever worked for. Fantastic colleague, incredibly loyal, incredibly diligent. Worked with tremendous purpose at the White House for almost three years. And you’re going to have the benefit of his wisdom as he really launches this program going forward in the Council on Foreign Relations. So congratulations to Rush. And we look forward to supporting this initiative any way we can.

So I’m going to talk a little bit about the Indo-Pacific, and whether the increased focus on the Indo-Pacific can be sustained as we are buffeted by both domestic challenges and other challenges on the international scene. Now, many of you with us today and joining us online are yourselves leaders in the national security community, the people who have helped shape and drive much of the U.S. policy that we are discussing today. So with that backdrop, and in the spirit of this new initiative, I would like to offer a few words about a central strategic priority for President Biden, National Security Advisor Sullivan, Secretary Blinken. And that is, making U.S. strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific region long lasting and enduring.

Now, it seems like that would be a simple proposition, but it’s one that we’ve been challenged by time and time again. It’s not a new task. And, indeed, for decades, there had been a growing recognition that American foreign policy must better account for the opportunities and challenges of the Indo-Pacific region. Yet, even as strategists acknowledged this underlying imperative, multiple administrations have struggled to realize it, and especially to sustain it over the long term with resources, time, focus, and attention. That is not to say the U.S. presence in the region has been modest or that it is recent.

The United States has been an Indo-Pacific power for over two centuries. Our treaty alliances with Indo-Pacific powers—Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand—stretch back seventy years and longer. And our deep economic and people-to-people ties, still further back. But efforts to step up our ambition from this strong foundation have too often proved episodic—a platform that has bred conventional wisdom that U.S. momentum in the Indo-Pacific lasts only until the next crisis elsewhere pulls our focus away from these strong, important endeavors.

Three and a half years into the Biden administration, I would simply put to you that this time is different, and it’s different by design. Today, the structure of our Indo-Pacific engagement is durable, anchoring the United States in the region for the long haul. The best proof of that durability is very recent history. As wars rage in Central Europe and the Middle East, our commitment to the Indo-Pacific has withstood those tests of resolve and focus. And I want to describe what I think are the elements of an enduring approach. Three fundamentals ground our approach and, we believe, give it staying power over the long run.

First, the case for greater U.S. engagement in the Indo-Pacific has a clearer strategic focus than it ever did in the past, and certainly more so than a decade ago. The region is home to more than half of the world’s people, nearly two-thirds of the world’s economy, and several of the world’s rising powers. Its economies drive more than 60 percent of all global growth and are the world’s hub for trade, manufacturing, and innovation. The region also supports more than three million American jobs and has provided nearly 900 billion (dollars) in foreign direct investment in the United States—much of that relatively recently, given opportunities in technology. During the Biden administration, Indo-Pacific allies and partners once considered destinations for American offshoring have instead committed to invest more than $200 billion in an American manufacturing renaissance in fields from semiconductors to batteries.

At the same time, the region is a source of significant risk. PRC’s military buildup, which we’ve already heard about, the biggest ever undertaken in peacetime, is upsetting the regional balance. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continues its provocations. And Beijing’s military provocations in the South and East China Sea, seen starkly at Second Thomas Shoal this past week, as well as across the line of actual control with India, and especially in and around the Taiwan Strait, could spark conflicts that would devastate the global economy. The world depends on supply chains and commercial flows, such as Taiwan semiconductors, that run through the Indo-Pacific and, if interrupted, could cause a global great depression. Meanwhile, the region is critical to addressing transnational challenges like climate and disease.

The Biden administration’s assessment that China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so is widely shared. What happens in the region will affect all Americans and the people of many of our allies and partners around the world. So in the past, while there had been questions about whether the focus on the Indo-Pacific was appropriate, given pressing challenges elsewhere, I think there’s a recognition now that a large share of the history of the twenty-first century will play out in the Indo-Pacific.

Second proposition, the United States is not alone in this effort. The United States is deeply engaged with other nations within the Indo-Pacific and beyond it in stepping up our game there. Revitalizing our alliances and partnerships has been at the center of the Biden administration’s approach to foreign policy. In fact, if you ask me what would be the “Biden doctrine,” it would be stepping up partnerships with allies and friends. These partnerships are distinct from those of the past, and it is evident the structure of American engagement in the Indo-Pacific is maturing. Historically, the United States followed a model with the U.S. hub, allied and partners spokes. That approach depended on Washington’s initiative and could not easily be scaled.

Now Indo-Pacific engagements involve unique constellations, what Ambassador Emmanuel in Tokyo calls a latticework, that set the agenda on issues ranging from semiconductors, to security cooperation, to maritime domain awareness. These structures allow the United States to move faster, reduce the risk of veto players, root itself in the region, and share burdens. Through creative partnerships and effective personal diplomacy, President Biden has achieved diplomatic victories that once seemed impossible—blue sky ideas.

In his first multilateral summit as president, he brought together the Quad—Australia, Japan, India, and the United States—for the first-ever leaders meeting. Last summer, President Biden hosted Prime Minister Kishida of Japan, President Yoon of the Republic of South Korea at Camp David, where they made ambitious pledges of cooperation, despite decades of painful history between our two closest friends in Northeast Asia. The president also launched AUKUS with Australia and the U.K., the first time in seventy years that the United States has taken steps to provide an ally a nuclear-powered submarine capability. By its nature, AUKUS is a serious and long-term commitment for each of the partner countries, to one another and to the Indo-Pacific region.

And the United States and India have launched an effort to intensify defense industrial cooperation on jet engines and armored vehicles. After working on India for decades, I can tell you that it is my view that finally the U.S.-India relationship has reached escape velocity. I think we have a partnership that can be sustaining, and there is ambition in both Delhi and Washington to take important next steps. We’ve worked together on a variety of other issues between the United States and India, including announcing new initiatives where we will work together for the first time in the Indian Ocean. Not to mention greater access for bombers in Australia, a marine littoral regiment in Okinawa, access to four new strategic locations in the Philippines, and opportunities for access in Papua New Guinea. So multifaceted activities across the Indo-Pacific.

Consistent with the One China policy, the Biden administration has expanded foreign military sales to Taiwan and added novel innovations like foreign military financing and the use of presidential drawdown authority to strengthen deterrence against increasing PRC provocations in and around the strait. Five years ago, when we had challenges across the Taiwan Strait, it would often be one country that would issue a diplomatic note or would speak out publicly in support of our friends in Taiwan. Today, the Biden administration has encouraged record numbers of states to call for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait—literally dozens.

None of this would be possible without allied and partner support. All of it plays a role in deterrence. On economics and technology, I’m thrilled to hear that Mike’s going to focus on this. This is probably the most important effort that we need to focus on going forward. A critical part of the administration’s approach has been novel initiatives with allies and partners from iCET, the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies—and last week I accompanied Jake Sullivan to India for those furthering talks—to trilateral coordination with Japan and the Republic of Korea on semiconductors and batteries, to quantum computing.

This is on top of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, IPEF, with thirteen regional economies, including a first-of-its-kind IPEF Supply Chain Agreement. The United States is not only receiving greater investment from the Indo-Pacific, it also remains the largest source of foreign direct investment in the region and around the globe, outpacing the PRC.

Our engagements—we, the Indo-Pacific and European partners together—in the past we had a tendency to view these theaters as separate and at times in conflict. Increasingly, there are signs of profound integration between these two important theaters. The last time I served at the State Department, over a decade ago, the pivot was sometimes misunderstood as a sign that the United States was turning away from Europe to Asia—something that, frankly, I’ve tried to say publicly, was our mistake in the rollout. The truth is, everything that we’ve ever done of consequence on the global stage, we have done with European partners. And I expect that to continue.

And there can be no misunderstanding this time that the administration is increasingly and explicitly working with Europe on the Indo-Pacific. It was only in 2016 that the EU recognized the Indo-Pacific as a strategic priority. Now, the Biden administration holds annual consultations with Europe on the Indo-Pacific. In fact, we’ve held numerous, dozens, of Indo-Pacific dialogs with our European partners, in every part of the continent. Several European countries now have Indo-Pacific strategies of their own, and key players that are involved in Southeast Asia and the Pacific as they step up their games there as well.

European governments are also aligning their approaches on the protection of critical technology and on derisking and diversifying supply chains with the United States. European engagement not only complements American involvement, it also creates partnership and momentum that ensures the United States remains active in the Indo-Pacific. The proof of effectiveness is that the PRC and Russia view our cross-continental partnerships with growing concern. And it’s why they see the alliance and partner systems as a singular American asymmetric advantage, which we intend to continue.

Third and last, a bipartisan approach. There is largely bipartisan agreement about the essential features of the American strategy in the Indo-Pacific. You’re going to hear from my friend, Matt Pottinger, later. He’ll have his own views. But overall, the sense of common purpose between the executive and legislative branches has been unmistakable in recent years. Members of both parties are keenly aware of past episodes of strategic distraction, as well as of the region’s critical role in American prosperity and security. I think at the core of that is a belief that not only do we have to increase our own capabilities through investment in technologies, but working closely with allies and partners can help manifest them.

Congressional delegations have visited the region to great effect in recent years, including Senator Schumer’s bipartisan delegation to China which helped open space for cooperation on counter narcotics late last year. I just met with a bipartisan House delegation in India, led by HFAC Chairman McCaul and Ranking Member Meeks, along with Speaker Emeritus Pelosi, as they engaged closely with Indian friends and partners on next steps. New congressional committees, including the bipartisan Select Committee on China, are sustaining that focus, while new congressional caucuses on other Indo-Pacific states have expanded dramatically in recent years. Members of Congress have also publicly expressed bipartisan support for major administration initiatives, such as AUKUS, the Quad, the IP4, AP4, and security assistance for Taiwan.

I will also say, we try to also note that as we build these policies we build on the foundations of previous administrations, including important work of the Trump administration. The Compact of Free Association agreements, maintaining the U.S. commitments to the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia passed with bipartisan support earlier this year. I would just note that this is an environment where literally nothing passed. The only thing that went through was this agreement, that basically allowed us to continue our important relationship with these three key states in the northern Pacific. And much of the key domestic legislation Congress has passed, which is historic in nature, such as the CHIPS and Science Act, had a clear Indo-Pacific rationale as well.

So the key will be now staying the course. Over the last three years, the world has faced significant challenges outside the Indo-Pacific. But even in the immediate weeks and months after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, or Hamas’ attack on Israel, when top-level time and attention was scarce, the administration kept up its focus on the region. And this is important. At that time, in the immediate aftermath, President Biden did a number of things. He hosted the first U.S.-ASEAN Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C., traveled to Korea and Japan, and joined a Quad Leaders’ Summit to launch the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative. He hosted Australia’s prime minister for a historic state visit, convened Asia-Pacific leaders at APEC, and met PRC President Xi Jinping for a full day of meetings that unlocked cooperation on counternarcotics, restoration of military ties, military diplomacy, and an effort to stabilize bilateral relations going forward.

We are also institutionalizing an Indo-Pacific focus at the State Department. In the last eighteen months, with congressional support, Secretary Blinken stood up a new Office of China Coordination or what we call inside the State Department our “China house” to prioritize coordination with allies and partners on China across our work worldwide. The Biden administration also understands that three theaters—Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific—are increasingly intertwined. The PRC, Russia, DPRK, and Iran are increasing coordination and security cooperation.

I would say that the two countries that have done the most to support Russia’s reconstitution of its defense industrial base since its first failed steps at an invasion in Ukraine have unquestionably been China and North Korea. In return, Russia is supporting advances in the military programs of all three of these partners. Indeed, Vladimir Putin visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for the first time in twenty years last week. There are limits to these partnerships, but they cannot be ignored. Our partners in the Indo-Pacific are not ignoring them.

Skeptics sometimes call for a sharp reduction in U.S. support to Ukraine, even though this would free up no meaningful outlays—new outlays for Taiwan. And abrupt cessation of U.S. support to Ukraine would not only be a moral failure, it would be a strategic one, too. Not just in Europe, but in the Indo-Pacific. Far from a clever strategic readjustment eastward, friends and adversaries would see it as evidence that American political paralysis is eroding U.S. credibility and resolve as a security partner. It is a profound shift that our Indo-Pacific friends are standing up to support European security. I must underline this. Hugely different from a previous pattern, when Asia-Pacific partners, Indo-Pacific partners would often sit on the sidelines for major developments.

I think this was most visibly on display when Prime Minister Kishida addressed a joint session of Congress here in the United States in April. It was a critical moment in our country for security assistance to Ukraine. As you recall then, it had been months, no movement on the bill to increase—again, send American support to Ukraine. Many in Congress expressed surprise that Prime Minister Kishida’s first point was on Ukraine, and that victory for Ukraine—or avoiding defeat—is an essential prerequisite for maintaining peace and security in the Indo-Pacific. Many of those same members of Congress who were reluctant before cited the prime minister’s words as moving and decisive in restarting U.S. security assistance for Ukraine.

In closing, it is that across an interregional perspective among allies and partners that is at the core of the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, we have sustained U.S. engagement by expanding the array of stakeholders committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific. It is not just a whole-of-government project. It is a whole-of-society project, one that requires vibrant public scholarship and dialog—like this. The China Strategy Initiative will no doubt contribute much to that effort. And I just want to say that we will try to bring the resources of the State Department and the government to bear in assisting this important work take hold. I do want to just say how much I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It’s nice to be able to see two friends do so well. I’m grateful for the opportunity to play a small role in its launch day. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Do you want me to sit here? You want me to sit here? Is that—is that—you want me to sit here? OK. (Laughter.)

FROMAN: Don’t sit here, OK?

CAMPBELL: Got it.

FROMAN: Thanks very much for that, Kurt. Let’s start maybe with the—your overall thrust on the rebalancing towards Asia. Recently one of our senior fellows, Bob Blackwell, Richard Fontaine, from CNAS, published a book called The Lost Decade: U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power. They give you a lot of credit for coming up with the idea of the pivot to Asia, or the rebalancing towards Asia. But, as the title suggests, they basically think it was a failure. Do you agree with that assessment? And why did you fail? (Laughter.)

CAMPBELL: So I have seen the book. And I had a chance to participate in some of the interviews. And I would call and count Richard Fontaine as one of my closest, dearest friends. So we often talk about how important it is for Chinese strategists and friends to basically define the past, to write the history in ways that then validate certain things about the way forward. And I would just simply say that China is not unique in this. And I found parts of the book recognizable, and part of it just very different from my own experience. I think the argument is somehow made in a vacuum. I think, and so parts of the book suggest that this was the biggest strategic failure of the last fifty years, the inability to marshal all the necessary resources to fully engage and develop a fundamental strategy in the Indo-Pacific.

I think it tends to forget that some of the key challenges that we were facing at the time were the aftermaths of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and really just enormous, pressing, enduring challenges in the—in the Middle East and South Asia. Now, I would also say both of them—I think Blackwell and Richard Fontaine—terrific public servants, both deeply engaged in that endeavor. I would say that the key often with new major initiatives is that they rarely begin in a smooth fashion. They will often go through starts and stops. I do think there was important work done in previous administrations on the Indo-Pacific.

At the beginning of the Bush administration, before the swerve to the Middle East and South Asia, I think there was a recognition of the importance of the Indo-Pacific. They put people like Rich Armitage at the State Department. Lots of focus on how to see the way forward there. I think there was unquestionably a detour. And I think we are very well aware of that now, given the other pressing challenges that we’re facing. So, you know, I think it’s an important book in the sense that it, you know, offers a different perspective. But I think it has to be read in the context of sort of a larger effort of how to understand how we ended up, for twenty years, devoting a dramatic share of our of our national resources, of our time and attention in initiatives in the Middle East and South Asia that I think historically look to be not the best investments.

FROMAN: Let’s go to the here and now. We have a real risk of escalation right now in the Philippines between ourselves, the Philippines, and China. They seem—the Chinese seem to be testing us, how far they can go with their Coast Guard, their water cannons, other activity. How far they can go without triggering our reaction. If there is a loss of life, will the U.S. come to the Philippines’ defense?

CAMPBELL: So, Mike, I think our senior officials have been very clear about what circumstances we would consider that the treaty between the United States and the Philippine would come into play. And we’ve had close consultations with the Philippines about those circumstances. I do think it’s important to say, Mike, that the Philippines are very cautious at this juncture. They do not seek a crisis with China. They are seeking dialog. They’re seeking discussion. And they want the United States to be purposeful with other allies and partners about our goals to maintain peace and stability, and to send a very clear message of deterrence and reassurance. And we have done so. We’ve had very close consultations since with the Philippines. We’ve taken some private steps. I’m not going to go through everything here. We’ve also—

FROMAN: You’re among friends, right? (Laughter.)

CAMPBELL: I know. We’ve also—we’ve also significantly demarched Chinese interlocutors. So, you know, the challenge in circumstances like this, it is often the case that each player believes the other is testing them. And so I don’t think China is—I don’t think we are alone in feeling that we are being tested here. So the most important thing in this time frame is to be resolute, to be very clear publicly in our support for the Philippines, to draw very clear public and private lines of what we believe is essential for the maintenance of peace and stability, and then follow through on that. And I will just say that we are in another manifestation of the strategy that we described. Ten or fifteen years ago, this would only be a dialog between the United States and the Philippines. We’re literally in consultations with over a dozen countries about shared approaches to maintain peace and stability there.

FROMAN: As you mentioned in your remarks, the strengthening of the Quad, the launch of AUKUS, the trilateral Camp David summit with Japan and South Korea, all are directed towards really institutionalizing this focus and commitment to the Indo-Pacific. Let’s talk about the Korea piece, in particular. By the way, I understand there’s Camp David, but then there was a mini-summit at your farm with the two vice ministers from Japan and Korea. You want to talk about—

CAMPBELL: Well, that’s probably—

FROMAN: What you served, did you cook?

CAMPBELL: Yeah.

FROMAN: At Camp Campbell.

CAMPBELL: So it was—so since the Camp David meeting. just to underscore the importance of this, before that smattering of meetings trilaterally, since Camp David there have been over fifty major initiatives between the three countries in a range of areas, Mike. And we wanted to take stock of that at the vice minister level. You know, I’m close to both of the delegations. These guys work relentlessly. So we thought it would be nice to have a meeting in a place that we were outside and could then enjoy each other a little bit. So we had a wonderful session in which we reviewed all the different steps that we were taking, concern about what was happening with Russia and North Korea, how to plan ahead for what steps that we might take trilaterally. And then we were able to enjoy some good southern Virginia barbecue. And—

FROMAN: Ultimate Frisbee, or?

CAMPBELL: Not so much that. A little singing—a little uncomfortable singing, but still. (Laughter.)

FROMAN: So just to build on your comments earlier about Putin’s visit to North Korea, we certainly are a far distance from the days of the Six Party Talks, when we’re working with China and Russia to put pressure on North Korea. Do you expect as part of this defense pact Russia to provide North Korea with nuclear support for their program? How do you think China feels about that? And with South Korea now saying they may consider providing lethal aid to Ukraine, how are these two theaters converging?

CAMPBELL: Yeah. So there’s a lot of questions there, Mike. Let me try to take a couple of them, if I can. So, first, I think we have seen a dramatic step up in the relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang. And we know that North Korea has provided an enormous amount of 155, or they’re slightly different caliber, shells for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, some long-range missiles, and other capabilities. Literally train loads and other ships coming to Russia. We believe that there are discussions about what North Korea gets in exchange. And they could be associated with its nuclear or long-range missile development plans, perhaps other things in energy, and the like.

I think we’re studying the aftermath of the agreement in Washington carefully, but we are concerned. I had a call last night with the South Koreans about our next steps in terms of steps that we will take to step up deterrence more clearly. I think it is fair to say that China is somewhat anxious about what’s going on between Russia and North Korea. They have indicated so in some of our interactions, and we can see some tension associated with those things. And so, you know, it’s fascinating, Mike. Even though Russia and China are working very closely together in Ukraine—and I would argue that it is a deep strategic partnership, one which we have historically gotten wrong on both sides, and it is undeniably a defining feature in global politics today.

But there are tensions. There are tensions in the Arctic. There are tensions in the ’stans, the countries that have traditionally been closer to Russia but increasingly economically, commercially attracted to China. And now we’re seeing them on North Korea. And I think it would be fair to say that China is probably worried that North Korea will be somehow encouraged to take provocative steps that could lead to a crisis in Northeast Asia. So we’re watching carefully.

You’ve seen some movements across the DMZ that have led to, you know, kind of brief exchanges of fire. We’ve seen really provocative language on the part of North Korea that suggests a juncture in which they no longer seek unification. They are basically redefining their role in global politics. And we’ve also seen a recurring pattern of absolute, clear determination to avoid diplomacy with the United States, Japan, or South Korea, on any terms. And so, yes, this is a dangerous set of developments, and one that we’re watching and engaged on very closely.

FROMAN: Let’s talk about that relation between China and Russia. The Biden administration was quite effective in warning China that if they provided lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine, it would be subject to some significant action by the U.S., sanctions or otherwise. And as far as we know, as far as the reporting—public reporting is, China’s gone right up to the line in terms of providing components, satellite imagery, rocket fuel, other things to aid the Russians’ military-industrial complex—but not yet lethal aid. Why not move the goalposts? If that concerns us, the support that China is providing Russia, why not say if they—unless they stop providing those components, we’re going to take action and impose sanctions? Since sanctions—the threat of sanctions seems to be quite effective there.

CAMPBELL: Well, Mike, I would simply say that I think we’ve done exactly that. And if you’ve seen last week, we have taken particular steps at dozens of Chinese firms that are involved in the endeavor to support Russia’s military-industrial complex. One of the companies is quite large and has been involved in a variety of the things—some of which you’ve described, including providing precursor things for explosives and semiconductors that are used for long-range munitions. And so I think we’ve sought to take those steps.

I think what’s most important, though, Mike, is that Russia is quite attentive to what the European view of this is. And I think in some respects, they are misreading what is happening in Europe. My own belief is that in large parts of Europe, there is a dawning strategic realization of some of the strategic challenges that China poses—not just in the Indo-Pacific, but peace and stability in Europe as a whole. Let’s recall the kinds of developments that we’ve seen as Russia reconstitutes. They provide an enormous challenge in the short term to Ukraine. But no matter what happens, they will provide a long-term challenge to peace and stability in Europe.

And so countries in Europe are going to have to deal with this for decades to come. And so China is involved indirectly, and I would say intimately, in an effort to basically change the nature of territorial lines and military balances in the Indo-Pacific. That is core to our strategic purpose and also to the aspirations and strategic assessments of our partners in Europe. We tend to focus more publicly on statements that somehow suggest ambivalence on the part of Europeans to this growing reality, but I will tell you I was at the NAC three weeks ago in Brussels, in NATO, and have had deep consultations with NATO partners. This is a challenge that is now well understood and recognized.

And I think if you look at the itinerary of President Xi’s visit to Europe a couple of weeks ago, it gives you an indication that they themselves probably understand the nature of some of these debates. I mean, I don’t know, France, Hungary, and Slovakia is kind of an unusual, like, grouping of nations. But these are the three places that I think President Xi felt that he had some ability to make his case or not to be challenged. But even in private meetings in France, I think President Macron was very clear about some of the concerns that Europe as a whole is facing.

And so, you know, China’s entry into the strategic calculations of Europe is unmistakable. It is, without question, one of the more important developments in recent times. We have tried to urge and underscore to Chinese policymakers and diplomats how dangerous this is and how it risks the maintenance of stable and good relations—not just with us, but Europe as a whole.

FROMAN: You know, at the same time, the Europeans have been very reluctant just to fall in line behind the U.S. in its China policy—whether it’s the discussion of strategic autonomy by President Macron and others, or just this last weekend, I believe, a German minister calling for a differentiated approach on economic policy towards China for Europe, from the United States. It’s one thing to talk—to try and convince the Europeans that China is creating a threat to their security. You mentioned that the Indo-Pacific is now focused, like Kashida, on Ukraine. If something were to happen in Taiwan, would you expect our European allies to be with us on that?

CAMPBELL: So I’m not sure—first of all, just to go back with your proposition about countries getting in line. I think it would be fair to say that both of our strategic perspectives have been enriched by continuing deep engagement between the United States and various European partners and friends. Our views evolve in that process. And we see that happening in Europe as well. We tend—yes, we tend to focus on the one or two statements of European ministers or leaders that appear out of sync. I would also just have you take a look at some of the strategic documents coming out of NATO, some of the magnificent speeches that von der Leyen has provided about how the EU sees challenges in the Indo-Pacific, and with respect to China.

I think most of those suggests that the overall balance is in favor of an increasing alignment. I will say, though, Mike, there are increasing and existing tensions on trade and technology between the United States and Europe, just as there are between China and Europe. It’s very important for us that we work closely with partners in Europe to ease those tensions where possible, to seek where we can cooperate where necessary. And so I see the—I see the situation slightly differently, having worked on dialogs with Europe on the Indo-Pacific for decades now. They are unrecognizable today, much closer, much greater intimacy.

I think what we have seen is a large number of countries, Mike, indicate that they have a strong interest in the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Now that is meant to be a careful step to signal a desire to deter aggression and sustain the status quo. I do believe that there is a large group of European nations that align with the view that it is better to maintain peace and stability, that the status quo has served its purposes for decades, and it can continue to do so, and that they would seek to take those steps going forward. In terms of talking about scenarios and situations in the future, I think, you know, Mike, we are better off not ruminating about those things.

FROMAN: Let me open it up now for questions from the audience. Just a reminder, we’re on the record. Please stand, wait for a microphone, identify yourself, and ask a brief question in the form of a question not a statement. (Laughter.) Let’s go way in the back there, third from the—third row from the end. Is there a microphone? There we go.

Q: Good morning. Dimitri from the Financial Times.

Kurt, how close do you think we are to the Philippines or the U.S. invoking the mutual defense treaty? And if that happened, what would the significance be?

CAMPBELL: Dimitri, as you probably know, I’m not going to speculate on that here in public. I will say we have reaffirmed its significance and its relevance to these situations continually, and at the highest level. The president, secretary of defense, secretary of state. So we’ve sent a clear and unambiguous message of our determination to stand by our Philippine friends, I will say also, just that we are experiencing, in many respects—Dimitri, I think you know this, you’ve visited, you’ve seen it on the ground—a renaissance in U.S.-Philippine relations, in which the people-to-people, the diplomatic, the military—every element of our bilateral relations has increased dramatically in recent months. And we are encouraged by that more generally.

FROMAN: Great. Right here in the second row.

Q: Thank you very much. My name is Alice Zhang (sp). I’m a China/Taiwan subject matter expert for Indo-Pacific Command.

And my question is, you mentioned a lot about the European partnerships that we have with the U.S. Are there any efforts that we are putting forward to facilitate a synchronized messaging for any actions? For example, what just happened in Second Thomas Shoal, and synchronized messaging with our partners and allies in the region?

CAMPBELL: It’s a great question. And I think this is an area that we believe is fruitful for more work. In the last few years we have stepped up dramatically our cooperation in cybersecurity. Many of the countries in Europe, like in the Indo-Pacific, are subject to deep penetration and challenges that are both from nonstate actors but also from Russia and China. We have endeavored to support those efforts at sharing respective experiences and ways to harden our systems. We’ve also worked intensively on disinformation, which I think if you ask me what is the thing that concerns me the most, it is the effectiveness of disinformation in a variety of places. It is not just the case that we face it in Europe and Ukraine. We face it globally. And those narratives are dangerous, penetrating, and difficult to counter.

We are now launching a number of initiatives with European states and others to help, you know, how we address some of those issues. And, yes, you will see messaging that is purposeful and determined. I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but we’ll be hosting the NATO seventy-fifth anniversary here in Washington in less than a month. The leaders of the AP4, representatives, will be here to highlight the increasing connectivity between the Indo-Pacific and Europe, and I believe will have some things to say about our shared views and perspectives. There’s much work to be done here.

And I do think that the key here—I think the most important ingredient in the effectiveness of this strategy is working closely with allies and partners. And I would just say, this gets back to the point that Mike makes, in many respects it is not really about other countries getting in line, for instance, or getting in our—in some respects, it’s going to involve the United States changing the way that we do business. I will tell you some of the most interesting things that are happening right now, for instance, in the U.S.-Japan relationship, are Japan demanding changes in the way that we have operated for decades in the Indo-Pacific, or operated in the context of our bilateral military relationship. And they want innovations. And that challenges us bureaucratically in important ways.

I see my friend here from the Australian Embassy. We want to do these important work with Australia. Australia demands that Australia be treated like a prized ally, and that—and that certain sort of bureaucratic hurdles be eased to allow for the kind of consequential technological, military cooperation that is necessary. And so to make this partnership—these partnerships effective, it is not just countries getting behind the United States—although a little of that does make you feel good at times. (Laughs.) It is also the fact that this has to be part of a partnership in which the United States listens, is attentive to other countries’ national—legitimate national and international perspectives and concerns.

And so the hope is no matter what happens in the United States politically, is that that effort will continue. I will just say one of the things that I—that I have found interesting. I think, you know, it is clear that across the Indo-Pacific there are uncertainties about what happens next in American domestic politics. But rather than pulling back, I see most strategic partners investing more in the United States, largely because they recognize that an essential ingredient in any global effort at resilience or purposeful defense necessarily involves the United States. And creating and sustaining momentum matters in any political domestic context, in the United States or elsewhere.

FROMAN: For our next question, we’re going to go to our virtual audience.

OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Fred Hochberg,

Q: Hi, Kurt. Hi, Mike.

CAMPBELL: Hi, Fred.

Q: What can we—what can we do to pull China away from a Russian-North Korea-Iran axis? Is there some carrots that we could deploy? Because otherwise it just seems too easy, particularly with political sentiment in this country, for them to just keep moving closer and closer to those other three rogue countries.

CAMPBELL: So, Fred, first of all, thank you for the question. So I will say, there—I think there is sometimes a view among foreign policy practitioners that somehow we forced China into Russia’s arms. And I don’t think we fully recognized how much a national project this has been, on the part primarily of Xi Jinping, but also of President Putin. Since coming to power, they’ve met over fifty times, hundreds and hundreds of hours, enormous numbers of exchanges. You can find in both of their systems senior people that are ambivalent about the other, but I don’t think that’s had any impact on a dramatic alignment—strategic alignment between the two, that is driven at the leader level.

We don’t know—we know a little bit about the nature of some of those discussions, how they’re prepared. I think if you take a look at the no holds barred statement, it is remarkable. It combines elements of sort of 1950s ideology and 1930s territorial ambition. And it’s quite daunting in its breadth and ambition. I would simply say that in their private deliberations at the top levels, both leaders, Fred, and people around them take an enormous amount of time to focus on how and whether the United States and other countries will come at them to try to split them. And so they are very attentive to any efforts to try to create tension between the two countries. They see it when we try to employ it. And they try to steel themselves to it.

I think ultimately, my own view, Fred, is that this is a partnership that has enormous challenges—maybe not now. It is definitely aligned by a deep sense of antagonism towards Western interference, American perfidy, a belief that we are involved in efforts at sustained regime change globally. And that that has been a hugely strongly shared view between the two countries, and the two leaders more directly. However, the changes in the balance of power—China is much larger now, in a better strategic position. I think there will likely in the future be a resurgence of tension between Moscow and Beijing, but it’s impossible to predict what that situation looks like in decades.

Right now, that alignment is powerful. It’s sustaining. And it’s had a huge impact on the battlefields of Europe more directly. And I think, given how much China has supported Russia, there has to be—there have always been certain technologies and capabilities that Russia withheld from its partnership with China, even in periods of enormous intimacy. Given how much Russia—China has recently stepped up, one has to be concerned that certain capabilities that Russia still has advantages—in submarines—and that they’re potentially part of the barter or bargain between China and Russia.

FROMAN: Yes, the woman on the aisle there. Thank you.

Q: Thank you. Hi. Kris with the Joint Staff.

Kurt, you mentioned resumption of military relations with China in your remarks earlier. What is this administration’s vision for mil-mil relations? What have we learned from over forty years of on and off mil-mil contacts? And how does that inform what we want to achieve differently this time, or how we’re going to approach it moving forward? Thank you.

FROMAN: By the way, I’m glad we could facilitate interagency dialog between DOD and—(laughter)—the State Department here at the Council on Foreign Relations.

CAMPBELL: It’s nice to see you, Kris. It’s been many years. Nice to see you. Thank you for the question.

So, you’re right. The mil-to-mil relationship has had several periods over the course of the last thirty or forty years. And I think we’ve learned lessons in that process. I think what we think is most important now are a few high-level, discrete engagements that are designed to do a number of things. First, to just make sure that we have open lines of communication and are able to convey important messages to China. Secretary Austin met his counterpart at Shangri-la, was able to have a strong strategic engagement. We expect and look forward to Admiral Paparo engaging one of his counterparts next year at some point. I think what we seek are efforts to explore our common—our strategy, their strategy, issues associated with deployments. What are their animating beliefs in certain regional circumstances?

We also believe that it is critical to try to establish confidence-building and crisis mechanisms to deal with inadvertence and miscalculation. Which I believe in the near term is the biggest risk that we face, in which something like the—in 2001, the EP-3 crisis. I think the challenge now is that—something like that, or a ship bumping, or a ship or airplane downing—in the past, those may have been seen almost as isolated events. We are now part of a larger forward deployments. We’re at higher levels of alert. And so you could easily see circumstances where inadvertent escalation came to play. We’re seeking to avoid that, to take steps to ensure that the right—the operators and other strategic interlocutors have a chance to engage directly.

I think ultimately, we’d like to have discussions about doctrine. We have sought a strategic dialog with China for or years on nuclear matters. I think China has been reluctant to have any discussion that would in any way suggest that they’re prepared to limit a dramatic increase in their nuclear arsenal. But it’s possible they may be prepared to talk about other issues around nuclear issues. We have had an initial discussion on AI. I think both nations understand on some level some of the challenges that AI presents to military command and control, particularly in the nuclear arena. And so I think the idea here is to have careful, very well-focused dialogs. Which, frankly, we share the output and our initial objectives with key players on Capitol Hill and with our partners. And to try to use these mechanisms to improve communications and reduce misunderstanding and risk.

And I think those are prudent and effective. I’m not sure whether in a crisis they will be decisive, but we have certainly taken the steps to build some of these mechanisms as we go. And China has been participating in some of those efforts. I think in the past, and it has been well-noted, that we built some of these mechanisms before, but then in a—in moments of crisis when we’ve sought to use them, you know, phones have rung, you know, on in empty rooms without being picked up. Mechanisms that were established were not fielded. And so these have to be seen as real and having institutional viability. They can’t be seen as simply public—elements of public diplomacy which have no utility in a crisis or a challenging moment. And so our goal is to make them relevant, Kris, to do what we can. And to use these careful lines of strategic communication to advance American purposes.

FROMAN: I think we can try to squeeze one—

CAMPBELL: I think we can take a couple more? Probably take two more.

FROMAN: Two more? OK.

CAMPBELL: If we can. Then I’ll do—

FROMAN: Way in the back there, a woman with her hand up. There we are. Thank you.

Q: Enjung Cho with the Voice of America.

Senator Roger Wicker last week, in the aftermath of the Putin-Kim summit, said that U.S. needs to consider redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea. Also, Alison Hooker, former NSC senior director for Asia, said that North Korea and Russia are driving South Korea to get their own nuclear weapons. Do you think additional measures are needed at this point, other than Washington Declaration, in order to strengthen nuclear deterrence on the Korean Peninsula for South Korea?

CAMPBELL: So thank you for the question. I think that the mechanisms that we’ve put in place between the United States and South Korea—you talked about the Washington Declaration—and the strategic initiatives that have been launched to underscore the added significance of American extended deterrence, particularly in situations like Korea, I think has given us what we need to work with. Now we just have to be purposeful on following through with the specific steps in the declaration.

I do believe that in the aftermath of the Washington Declaration there was an appreciation in Korea of the American intent to stand by our allies and partners, and to make clear that that the nuclear umbrella is strong and durable over northeast Asia. I do agree with Allison, though, that the steps that Russia and North Korea are taking are causing countries in the region to rethink all of their military and other steps. And so what we’ve seen is substantial increases in military spending, a different focus in South Korea, in Japan, elsewhere across the Indo-Pacific more generally. And the United States is quite focused on underscoring the strength of our extended deterrence commitments to the countries of northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea in particular.

FROMAN: Last question there, just on the side.

Q: John Gannon, formerly of the CIA and Georgetown University.

FROMAN: It’s not working.

Q: Is the mic on? OK. Currently, we have about 300,000 Chinese students in our universities, including our—in our major research universities. They became quite controversial during the previous administration and the China Initiative, where I think some damage was done to that program. What is the current view—the State Department has a lot of influence on it and also the administration itself. What is the view in the future of that program, in terms of the way the administration wants to see it? Thank you.

CAMPBELL: Yeah. So, first of all, I do think some level of people-to-people or society-to-society engagement between the United States and China is important and necessary. Frankly, I’d like to see more American students studying in China to learn more about its culture, its politics. And so, John, you talked about the numbers from China. What we’ve seen really is a collapse of the numbers from the United States to China. That is primarily the arena where the State Department plays—(coughs)—excuse me—its largest role. And we’ve tried to encourage, carefully and responsibly, the increase in numbers accordingly.

I think there’s been careful attempts now across most American universities to support continuing higher education, but to be careful about the labs, some of the activities of Chinese students. I do think it is possible to curtail and to limit certain kinds of access. And we have seen that generally, particularly in technological programs, across the United States. It is also the case, frankly, I would like to see more Chinese students that are coming to the United States to study the humanities and social sciences, not particle physics.

I also believe fundamentally that as we look to step up the numbers of people, John, that go into STEM-related activities—and there are not enough Americans, and we’re going to need to recruit more and more people internationally to support those programs. Ultimately some have suggested the only source of that can be China. I would resist that recommendation. I believe that the largest increase that we need to see going forward would be much larger numbers of Indian students that come to study in American universities, on a range of technology and other fields more directly.

I do think, though, John—and you have a lot of wisdom and experience in this—there are going to continue to be links between the United States and China. And I think the United States has to be purposeful about how we do this. We do not want to create an environment where there are no connections between our two countries. And even though most of the focus has been on what’s happened in the United States, I would simply underscore for you that it really has been China that has made it difficult for the kinds of activities that we would like to see sustaining.

I can’t begin to tell you how many American executives, philanthropists, and others are more wary about long-term stays, worried about, you know, whether continuing activities and programs in the mainland either make strategic sense, or whether, you know, they are considered—they continue to be safe. So ultimately, I believe we have taken prudent steps. President Biden has talked very carefully about the China Initiative. And I think we’ve taken steps to send a clear message that, in a number of areas, we do support continuing engagement between the United States and China, which we believe is in our best interests.

FROMAN: I can’t think of a better way to launch the China Strategy Initiative than to have Kurt Campbell. We’re incredibly fortunate for him to spend time with us today. We’re even more fortunate that he spent so much of his life and his strategic mind and his capacity to get things done to strengthening America’s role in the world. Please join me in thanking the deputy secretary. (Applause.)

CAMPBELL: Well, can we just—also just—can I also just ask, if I can—since I would like to see it while I’m here—can we say thanks to Mike and to Rush? When we talk about sustaining American purpose in the Indo-Pacific, it is actually programs like this that play an outsized role. I’m thrilled. If you look at their program, if you look at the team that they’re assembling, this is truly exciting. And so, frankly, it is my honor to be here. Their work will far outlive anything. Let’s say thank you to Mike and Rush. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.

DOSHI: All right. Good morning, everybody. Thanks very much for sticking with us. The room is still packed and we have overflow seating so that’s good news. I’ve heard that we actually have more than 800 online in addition to 300 in the room so it’s great that we have so much attention.  

As you heard earlier this morning, a critical part of CFR’s mission is to convene Americans across geographies, industries, and political parties to answer the questions of the moment and that is what we aim to do with this great panel. We’ll consider different perspectives on U.S.-China strategy where there is disagreement but, perhaps, even more importantly where there is agreement and overlap.  

We’re thrilled to be joined by three excellent panelists who also happen to be CFR members. 

On the screen behind me we have Matt Pottinger, former deputy national security advisor in the Trump administration and the author most recently of The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan, an excellent book I highly commend to all of you. Matt is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, principal at Garnaut Global, and chair of the China program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.  

To my left we have Bridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Trump administration and the author of a very impactful book, Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, and Bridge is currently a principal at the Marathon Initiative.  

And to Bridge’s left we have Bonny Lin, senior fellow and director of the China Power Project at CSIS. She previously served three years in the office of the secretary of defense as director for Taiwan, country director for China, and senior advisor for China.  

So, finally, Stephen Wertheim, as I mentioned earlier, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, is unable to join us today due to illness. But he will be missed and he will be asked to make it up at a future CFR event. (Laughter). 

So a final disclaimer. All the folks here on the stage are speaking in a personal capacity, and with that I think we’ll get started with what I hope will be a very lively moderated discussion and then we’ll open it up in the last twenty minutes or so for audience Q&A. 

Just to set the stage, we’re going to divide the kind of moderated portion into four broad themes. I think sort of the first will be the end goals of China strategy. The second is sort of the Taiwan scenarios. Third is prioritization and tradeoffs in strategy and, finally, we’ll turn to the home front.  

So with that, I think we’ll begin with the question of end states and all the folks on this panel have written incisively about U.S.-China strategy from different perspectives. But what is the end goal of U.S. competition with China?  

Should victory be defined in terms of the relationship we want with China, as some suggest? Should it be the kind of government China has, as others suggest, or should it be defined in terms of American interests like keeping the region free from hegemony?  

So let me turn to Matt Pottinger first. 

Matt, you and Congressman Gallagher helped reframe the debate around this question, around the question of what it means to win competition and what the end state should be. So what do you think the end goal of U.S.-China policy should be and what does victory in concrete terms mean to you?  

POTTINGER: Great. Hey, Rush, it’s good to see you. Bridge, great to see you and Bonny, too. How are you guys? 

Look, I think that we need to define—first of all, pursue victory as opposed to merely managing a competition. You know, managing a competition sounds a lot like the 1970s détente policies that I think have turned out to have failed when they were pursued against the Soviet Union and we should actually be looking to win this competition.  

Winning the competition does not mean war and it doesn’t mean capitulation. It’s still something in between, but it’s very much aimed at ensuring that Beijing becomes persuaded that it cannot win either a hot war against us or our friends nor can it win a cold war which it’s already waging against us and our friends, and I think that if Beijing becomes persuaded, as the Soviets ultimately did, that they cannot win this in their—achieving their global aims, not just domestic or regional but global aims, that that in fact may end up leading to a different form of government in China.  

But that’s not what Gallagher and I were calling for—regime change—but we think it’s important to look at how the Soviet Cold War played out and learn some of the lessons from that because the similarities between the Chinese system and the Soviet system are underestimated, in our view.  

We think that if we look at what George Kennan wrote at the beginning of the Cold War, if you look at NSC-68 also early in the Cold War in the Truman administration, and you draw a line all the way through the end of the Cold War, really, with the strategy of the Reagan administration, those administrations were not seeking a stalemate.  

Those strategies did not call for a stalemate. They called for undermining the sources of Soviet aggression and we should be doing the same with respect to China.  

DOSHI: Well, thanks, Matt. 

And for the benefit of the audience, Matt and I had a chance to exchange views along with others in the pages of Foreign Affairs courtesy of our wonderful editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan, who I think is listening in.  

Maybe I’ll turn now to Bridge. I think you’d probably take a slightly different position from Matt on the question of end states. I think you have set a time that your theory of victory is something like—maybe like détente but from a position of strength.  

So I guess my question for you would be would such a détente be stable because I think implicit, Matt, in your articulation is the idea it would not be stable. And what is the content, Bridge, of that détente media? What does it look like in practice?  

COLBY: Sure. Well, thanks, Rush, and thanks for including me in this important event, and congratulations on your service and your kickoff here of this major, important initiative. And great to be on with Bonny and my good friend—all good friends, Matt, and also referring to Mike’s—his piece with Matt. 

I do have a somewhat different view, and maybe—you’re the real academic but I do believe that sort of theoretical—kind of broad theoretical constructs are illuminating at least on the right side of the spectrum.  

There was a good article I’d commend to people’s attention in City Journal magazine by a guy named Jordan McGillis that kind of laid it out sort of different tribes on the China issue on the Republican side, the kind of, I would say, a neo-Reaganite might be. You know, Reagan himself was maybe more of a realist than I think people sometimes—or at least his policy was more realistic than people often appreciate.  

That might be the way that at least I would define Mike and Matt’s piece. Obviously, he can speak for himself. My sort of view is the conservative realist, and so what I would say to you is victory is never final in the sense that what was the victory with the Soviet Union. Well, it was great that we won. I think Ronald Reagan did a great, great job and others played a very important part along the way.  

But, of course, now we have Vladimir Putin, right, which in some—is actually worse than what we faced, certainly, under Mikhail Gorbachev and at least, you know, there’s an argument that even before that, and that that basically stems from the fact that, in my view, Russia and China’s interests are generally driven by nonideological elements.  

Obviously, there’s an ideological element and you’ve written very eloquently about that, Rush. But basically if you listen to what Xi Jinping and the Chinese government are actually at least publicly saying it’s the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, a stronger position for the Chinese people. That has essentially nothing to do with Marxism. If anything, it’s actually the antithesis of at least classical Marxism and the critiques of imperialism and so forth.  

In fact, in some ways I fear that China today might be bearing out Lenin’s theory of imperialism, and we can go into that. But what that means is that what we have to be realistic about what we expect détente is not satisfying. It’s not a final solution to the problem. 

But I don’t think that’s realistic and I think it’s actually far too dangerous to pursue it because, as I understand it, the Chinese have heard some of the arguments about victory and regime change, and you mentioned Foreign Affairs. And, Dan, who I agree is fantastic, he published a piece by Bob Kaplan and me back in 2020 making the argument against this type of policy.  

It’s too dangerous. It’s not critical for American interests, which American interests, in my view, if you go back to George Kennan what George Kennan was saying at the National Defense University or Nicholas Spykman, they were saying we need to prevent a potentially hostile state from controlling one of the key industrialized regions of the world. 

Whether that state is—I’m anti-communism. I loathe communism. I hope the Chinese people become free. But, you know, just a point in that respect is that it was actually the Guomindang government of the republic of China that came up with the nine-dash line. So I don’t think we would solve all of our problems.  

So we should—we have more modest names where I disagree with someone like my friend Niall Ferguson, a fantastic thinker, a very clear-headed thinker on these things—is I think we need to—and this is where I very much agree with Matt and Mike—we need to approach détente, we need to pursue détente from a position of manifest military strength in particular, and this is where I would differ from Kurt Campbell’s—Deputy Secretary of State Campbell’s presentation earlier, which we may want to get into. 

But I think this is a very important discussion. Sometimes people say, oh, it’s sort of theoretical, et cetera, et cetera. No, but it tells you the kind of policy you should pursue, how much risk to take on, how to deal with other countries, et cetera.  

DOSHI: OK. Matt, I’m going to come back to you in a moment to weigh back in. 

But I want to turn first to Bonny, who I know also has written about this and has thoughts on the question of end state. So, Bonny, maybe you could offer your own perspective here, too.  

LIN: Sure. Rush, thank you very much. Also very delighted to be here and also being on stage with both Matt and Bridge, who I actually worked with and for in the Pentagon. 

In terms of thinking through end states for China, I think there are a couple questions that we need to think through, and to Bridge’s point we need to think about what can the United States realistically achieve given our capabilities, and here I think—I really appreciate Matt clarifying that your paper was not about regime change because I think trying to effect domestic policy change in China is probably the hardest, much harder than trying to affect how China operates internationally.  

And to that I think we’re probably all on the same page in agreeing that our priorities should be affecting China’s external behavior and to the extent we can hope for change internally within China. But that shouldn’t be our priority.  

The second point I wanted to make is when we look at what we want to achieve for in terms of an end state for competition or whatever you want to call that with China we also need to take into account what our allies and partners would be on board for, and I think both Matt and Bridge may have mentioned this.  

I don’t think our allies and partners, nor do we, want a hot war with China, and to the extent that constrains our options of how much we can push China on because I think the more we push the more, in some ways, we might be losing some of our allies and partners.  

The last thing I would—and perhaps maybe this is where I may disagree a little bit more with Bridge and align more with Matt is I do think that if we were to achieve a world where we want to maintain the existing values right now, we probably can’t just have a relationship in which China could think that when it looks at its power and it looks at its power with its own friends and allies that it’s about on par with the United States.  

I actually think we need to have a bit more of a picture in which China believes or we—and also our allies and partners understand that we have more of a significant advantage over China because to the extent that we are more on parity I believe that that would create more freedom for China to act both on its periphery but also internationally.  

DOSHI: Well, thanks.  

You know, I guess I’ll come back to you, Matt, now with just an additional question. You’ve heard perspectives from Bridge and from Bonny. I’m trying to stay out of the discussion as the moderator so I’m going to keep to that practice.  

So how do you respond to the idea that sort of there’s—you know, there’s risk inherently in pursuing something beyond managing competition and that the idea that you could manage competition while at the same time in the process of managing it take more competitive steps than you could otherwise take safely if you didn’t try to manage it at all.  

Is there a competitive advantage? You know, Bonny just mentioned the allied and partner component. But is there also competitive advantage in the bilateral component that where you actually try to explain what you’re doing, what you’re not doing, you try to have diplomacy? You use these basic, you know, tenets of interaction between the states to just make sure that your counterparty doesn’t take the worst possible view of everything you’re trying. 

Is there a value in that? I know you yourself tried that in the Trump administration, Matt, from a position of leadership. So could you speak to that in addition to maybe kind of Bonny and Matt—Bridge’s point? Then we’ll move on to the next topic. 

POTTINGER: Sure. Look, first, to your point, Rush, I mean, I’m strongly in favor of the president of the United States speaking frequently to Xi Jinping.  

Xi Jinping is the only person who can make consequential decisions in that system and the only way to reliably transmit information to him is by talking to him directly, not by relying on toadies and sycophants and frightened officials, frankly, who are, you know, is likely to get purged tomorrow as they are to, you know, make a difficult point to their boss.  

So I’m a strong believer in that aspect of managing the relationship with China, no question. What I think we have to be a little more—maybe I’d say less naive about is the idea that our sending, you know, five Cabinet officers to China as the Biden administration did last year, the idea that that was going to somehow coax China into a more cooperative relationship is historically ignorant and actually we’re even seeing that the so-called fruits of this engagement last year are not amounting to very much and actually I think have sent a signal of weakness to Beijing.  

Beijing has become more aggressive, more difficult, in the time since the Biden administration began its—what it called intensive diplomacy below the level of Xi Jinping and the president of the United States. 

Beijing tripled down on its support for Russia’s war really beginning last March, March of 2023. By Secretary Blinken’s own admission China has become overwhelmingly the number-one material supporter of the war and may have actually changed the course of the war in Russia’s favor through that support.  

And Beijing is now also hosting Hamas delegations. They’re bringing terrorists to Beijing while they’ve also been the number-one material, propaganda, and diplomatic supporter of Iran as it wages proxy war around the Middle East.  

And then you can look to Venezuela and its—Venezuela is now threatening to invade its neighbor. Beijing is signaling sympathy for that approach. So I just think it’s naïve for us to think that that we’re going to coax a Leninist totalitarian dictatorship into some kind of a cooperative relationship. 

But we should be talking to them at the leadership level. I mean, just very quickly on Bridge’s point, Bridge and I have a fundamental disagreement about the role of ideology with Beijing. I think it’s a very important point even though there’s a realpolitik sort of, you know, Machiavellian imperial streak as well.  

But the reason why ideology is important is because it gives us clues into the vulnerabilities of China’s strategy and I think we shouldn’t ignore those signals and critical vulnerabilities. 

The only last point I would make is that I don’t agree with you, Bridge, on the idea that Putin is worse than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.  

I mean, Putin’s party is, like, I don’t know, you know, 2 trillion bucks or something, you know, versus—you know, it’s a tiny fraction of the U.S. economy. In fact, I think if you take all of our allies together with the United States we’ve got, like, a $60 trillion cumulative economy versus a $2 trillion Russian pipsqueak. 

Putin can’t do anything—Putin is an aftershock sort of symptom of the end of the Cold War. He would not be able to do anything that he’s doing right now if not for the massive juggernaut in the form of Beijing and Xi Jinping and the material support that he’s providing for Putin.  

It’s not a coincidence that Putin signed his no limits pact with Xi Jinping less than three weeks before he decided to launch his full-blown invasion. So what we’re really dealing with is Beijing with Putin as the junior partner or pit bull. 

DOSHI: I agree with that, Matt. I agree with that, yeah.  

Well, this conversation could continue and you can follow it online or something—(laughter)—including on Twitter or X as it’s called and now into the pages of Foreign Affairs where there was a spirited debate.  

I’ll just say one thing because it’s my prerogative, which is—(laughter)—Matt, I think that the critique of diplomacy misunderstands its purpose. Its purpose was not to change China’s approach. It wasn’t to change China. It wasn’t necessarily to solve all the problems that we have.  

It was, in fact, to create the space for a more competitive approach by explaining that when you take those competitive steps they have a limit and logic to them. They are not designed to fundamentally cause, as Bridge mentioned earlier, regime change or to destroy the Chinese Communist Party’s economy.  

They’re basically serious competitive steps that we’re not going to apologize for but we are going to explain. So I think of that level of diplomacy including the lower level, again, not to solve problems but to convey information. And as moderator’s prerogative we will now move on. (Laughter.) 

So the next topic will be even more lively but we’re going to go up in order of liveliness. It’s going to be Taiwan, of course.  

So this is an issue where, you know, most agree the key U.S. objective is to deter a conflict that could cost the global economy—I think Bloomberg has done some research on this—at least $10 trillion. That’s a conservative estimate. More than 10 percent of global GDP.  

So that would be a number greater than as a percentage of GDP even the Great Depression. So when Kurt Campbell, the deputy secretary of state, was here saying this could cause a kind of Great Depression level event I think that’s what he was referring to.  

So I want to talk to Bonny first. We’ll start with you, Bonny. You know, you’ve written a lot about this. You’ve thought a lot about this. Your team runs tabletop exercises.  

How urgent is the risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait? How optimistic or pessimistic are you about U.S. prospects if one breaks out, based on your own exercises? And I think, second, related to this your team just concluded a very thoughtful analysis—I thought it was excellent—of quarantine scenarios, which you distinguish from blockade scenarios because they have a law enforcement component.  

But there’s a debate. You know, how likely are quarantine or blockade scenarios—Bridge and I have talked about this—versus invasion scenarios, and I want to ask you how you think about all of that.  

So with that extremely meaty start maybe over to you, Bonny, to kick us off.  

LIN: Sure. Thank you very much, Rush, and thanks for flagging our recent report which, of course, we want more folks to read. 

In terms of looking at the risk of conflict or crisis in the Taiwan Strait I would say the next ten years are going to be higher than our past ten years for at least two main reasons. One is if you look at China’s capability there’s no doubt that China’s military capability continues to increase and that capability isn’t just in terms of the People’s Liberation Army but it’s also in terms of its law enforcement, its coast guard.  

As we look forward we know that—I’m not saying that China will use force in 2027 but we do know that Xi Jinping has set that as a goal for China to have the military capability to be able to engage in a large-scale amphibious invasion of Taiwan. So that capability is one factor that China will take into account.  

The second factor is China’s intent and China’s assessment of the situation in the Taiwan Strait and here we do know that China assesses the current president of Taiwan, William Lai, in the most negative light possible.  

We’ve seen Chinese politburo member and Foreign Minister Wang Yi label William Lai as a traitor. We in the past couple of weeks have seen—actually, it was last week, right—China release new judicial guidelines on how China will punish Taiwan—what China calls die-hard Taiwan independence folks. And in particular, China intends more punishment on the leaders of Taiwan independence. And China didn’t quite name William Lai as this, but I think those who are—those of us who are following this are seeing this as being labeled and targeted against William Lai. These are measures that China did not take under President Tsai Ing-wen in the prior past eight years. So just putting together both the will and the intent—I’m sorry, the intent and the capabilities, we should expect more Chinese escalation, more Chinese coercion against Taiwan. 

In terms of what we may expect in the near term or the long term, I’m of the view that a quarantine could happen anytime because right now, to be honest, we wouldn’t have great responses from the U.S. side if China were to engage in a quarantine of Taiwan, and that—there’s various ways that China could construct that quarantine but it would not be necessarily that costly for China.  

But a quarantine differs significantly from a blockade and an invasion so I would say that it’s much more costly for China to engage in blockade and invasion and those are probably options that China would reserve at a later time, potentially, closer to 2027 or later than in the immediate future.  

DOSHI: Well, thanks, Bonny.  

And as I look out across the room I saw many people nodding—many people who have worked on this issue set, too. So hoping in Q&A some of you will jump in.  

Let me turn to you, Matt. You just finished the book The Boiling Moat. I think it’s out formally next week. Some of your co-authors are here in the room. I see Ivan Kanapathy, my former NSC colleague who you hired many years ago here as well.  

So I want to ask you, you know, how do you respond to the kind of question of the likely high end scenarios we’re going to face? How do you think about the quarantine scenario and what fundamentally—I guess this is what your book gets to—what fundamentally should the United States do, you know, to deter those situations, those scenarios, but also if those scenarios materialize what do we do after?  

So maybe, Matt, over to you to take on those questions.  

POTTINGER: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Bonny, congrats on your report. I saw a few reports about it but I promise I’m going to read it this week.  

And because my co-authors—and I’m glad Ivan’s there. Ivan and I were actually just meeting with President Lai last week in Taiwan together and with his new cabinet. We spent a lot of time in the course of writing The Boiling Moat wrestling with blockade scenarios and gray zone scenarios and these sort of things along the spectrum including a quarantine.  

Yeah, I think that some of these exercises that we’re seeing right now like the one right after President Lai’s inauguration last month I call them sort of flash blockades. They’re sort of, you know, limited duration exercises that Beijing can reverse. It can do them, you know, progressively over longer periods of times to demonstrate that it can threaten the flow of critical materials, especially energy supplies, into Taiwan.  

I think that ultimately we should be tabletop exercising for quarantine scenarios together with Japan and Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and in Europe because quarantines are very, very difficult to enforce without ultimately being pushed to move up the escalation ladder to those scenarios that, as Bonny just mentioned, would become more costly not only for Taiwan but actually for China itself.  

So we should be figuring out—you know, looking at some of the quarantines in the past. Remember when the United States imposed a quarantine in the early ’60s around Cuba to prevent missiles and nukes from traveling from the Soviet Union into Cuba that quarantine ultimately worked but it was extremely difficult to enforce. 

Had the Soviets simply continued running the quarantine it probably would have forced the United States to have to move up the escalation ladders in ways that I think made everybody queasy on, you know, both sides of the Atlantic.  

So but I’m really looking forward to reading your piece, Bonny.  

DOSHI: Well, thanks, Matt, and that takes me to Bridge.  

So we’ve just had this quarantine blockade and invasion discussion. I guess I’d like to get your sense, Bridge, of what you worry most about. I think it’s invasion.  

How do you think also about the possibility of quarantine and blockade scenarios being something the U.S. should prepare for? How would you suggest responding to them?  

And I guess a second related question, if I could, you’ve been very public about sort of the urgency of the Taiwan challenge. I think many people in this room probably share that sense of urgency.  

What would you—I think you’ve said also that we can’t really maintain as Americans our quality of life if Taiwan falls. But you’ve also been clear that the U.S. should be careful about the kinds of rhetoric it uses on Taiwan and not make incendiary political statements because it’s not in our strategic interest.  

So one question I have for you kind of going beyond the discussion we just had with Bonny and Matt is when we say that we need Taiwan to sort of be the way it is to not have the American quality of life erode do you see that as a call for essentially permanent separation or something that would be provocative politically to China as well?  

So maybe you could take on those two questions. 

COLBY: Yeah. So, no, and it—because—and that’s important, and I’ll get to it. 

DOSHI: In any order. 

COLBY: So it’s sort of—(inaudible)—to kind of develop because I think—and I think it’s very important to compare what I’m saying to what Deputy Secretary Campbell and I think in a lot of ways his speech was—I mean, if I—arguing against the kinds of arguments that I’ve been making, and I think one of—there are a couple of really key statements in his speech, most of which I found— 

DOSHI: And, Bridge, we will come to the Europe question in a moment so—OK. All right. 

COLBY: But I think it’s important, one of which is very—several of which are very important, most of which was unobjectionable and commendable, deserves to be lauded and supported, but was he said that he does not think a near-term attack on Taiwan is something that we really need to worry about. I don’t think that’s a rational judgment.  

Now, Deputy Secretary Campbell has access to far greater intelligence information than I do. But, fundamentally, based on my experience and kind of analytically I don’t think that there is intelligence that could give truly reliable confidence that we do not need to worry about it.  

Why? Well, a couple—most of what we’re going to see is going to happen in plain sight, and I’ll build on what Bonny said and I know Matt basically agrees with this. You have the intent for irredentist reasons as well as I think, you know, sort of broader ambitions to break out of the first island chain and is China actually moving to resolve the Taiwan issue in its favor. 

And I believe it’s taking a series of very costly signals to do exactly that. One is conventional military buildup, both to resolve the Taiwan issue itself but also that shows that China is assuming it has subsumed Taiwan over time—aircraft carriers, space architecture. 

If you read the defense press, they had Space Force says the Chinese are developing space capabilities to project military power much farther away than basing architecture. That is a costly signal that China thinks it has broken out reliably of the first island chain. 

The nuclear buildup, which I believe the only plausible explanation or, certainly, a big part of it has to be the potential for a large conflict with the United States. The economic resilience—China is aware of the Bloomberg analysis and the threats from people like Deputy Secretary Campbell however credible, and I question how credible they really are, that there would be punishing economic sanctions.  

Yet, China, in the midst of incredible economic headwinds, is doing delete A and trying to make the economy more resilient and politically conditioning, and this is where I agree with Matt. Let’s listen to what—and Rush—let’s listen to—and Bonny, actually—(laughter)—let’s listen to what the Chinese are actually saying, not just do something—(laughter)— 

DOSHI: You bring people together. 

COLBY: All right. I’m outnumbered here and it’s real—(laughter). 

So all of that together. And then I say, well, I mean, Kurt Campbell’s boss, Tony Blinken, who’s nobody’s idea of a super China hawk, has said the Chinese have given the instruction for 2027 and moved the calendar forward, and Bill Burns has also said that and stood by it. 

So we have all the signals and what my view—I’ve never said and, please, anybody call me out if I have—I’ve never said I know the Chinese will move. But I’m saying that we don’t know and, by the way, there’s reporting in the Wall Street Journal late last year that U.S.—that intelligence sources on China are very limited and, frankly, I think if you look at the history of the Soviet Union and so forth it’s very rare to get truly reliable information, especially from a closed Leninist system. 

Xi Jinping, I doubt, trusts anybody including probably the members of his own family. So we have to assume that we don’t know. And this is why my pinned tweet is whoever’s elected president—I hope it’s President Trump, but whoever is elected in November has to assume that it could happen.  

And so this gets to the other point which is what do we need to be worried about, and my view is quarantines are not decisive. I was listening to Matt very eloquently recount the history of the Cuban missile crisis. But there was also the impending threat of invasion of Cuba—of the U.S. invasion of Cuba. There was also the possibility for the war to escalate to the general nuclear level.  

That was, as Jim Schlesinger put, the big stick in the closet. In my view, I could see quarantine kind of situations and I think that deserves a serious analysis. 

But it’s not—I think China could only rationally—and Matt knows Lai better than I do but I met with him in April and I’ve seen what he’s said. There’s no way this guy’s going to voluntarily give it up because they’ve blocked, like, I don’t know, banana imports into Taiwan or whatever it is.  

You know, they’re not going to do that and that’s very clear. So if China’s going to solve it it’s going to go to an invasion and the problem with a blockade—and this is similar to what both Eli Ratner and Randy Schriver, who are both fantastic thinkers and deserve to be listened to and not infallible. But they’ve said a blockade is not the most rational strategy.  

I know that—I think you have a somewhat different view. But I think if I’m thinking to myself if I were sitting in Beijing and trying to solve this problem I would say, you know: If you going to—if you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna. If you’re going to—go big or go home. And you look at the failures of Putin—because Matt is right, Putin is much less capable than China—you make sure you get it right and if you’re going to do that you generate as much surprise as possible.  

Now, that has a kind of coherence that could lead you into a cul-de-sac analytically but I think what that means is that we should be prepared militarily, and I know we’ll get to the issue of tradeoffs, and that’s where I fundamentally disagree with Deputy Secretary Campbell.  

But that means that I think we have to be urgently concerned and we are now in the window where invasion could happen almost at any time. I’m not saying I think it’s going to happen tomorrow. I think it may be more likely out later into the decade to add a factor—a couple factors to Bonny’s and then I’ll stop. 

One is the military balance—I call this the Tom Shugart window, a friend of mine Matt knows as well, a retired Navy captain who testified a few years ago—pointing out that the military balance in the Western Pacific might peak, from China’s point of view—and we have Dale Rielage here. Other people know this very, very well.  

That’s one thing. If you’re going to do—you know, that’s why Hitler went in 1939. You go—multiple examples in history. And, of course, Xi Jinping’s own personal clock, right? I mean, he is, I guess, seventy-one maybe—seventy, seventy-one, something like that.  

He’s not a spring chicken. You don’t want to be eighty, right? So I’m not—again, I’m not saying that’s determinative but I’m saying we now have to act as if we’re there, and then we’ll get in the third session why military balance is key to resolving that. 

DOSHI: So I am cognizant of time. 

COLBY: OK. 

DOSHI: And I ask our panelists to be as well.  

So that’s a great answer. (Laughter.) It’s a great answer, but I— 

COLBY: You asked a lot of questions, come on. (Laughter.) 

DOSHI: I asked two. But that’s OK. (Laughter.) I think this is a good transition point to the question of tradeoffs, but before we get there I think the articulation, Bridge, that you sort of made about the urgency I do think that’s widely shared including in the administration.  

I think there may be some differences on what we will see when, and that’s where, you know, I think maybe I find Bonny’s analysis on quarantines quite interesting and useful because I think in the nearer term my own personal assessment, not using any kind of other assessment mechanisms but is my own personal assessment is that those kinds of scenarios are really concerning and in the immediate term likely and, perhaps, under theorized. So I found that paper helpful.  

Let’s move on now to the kind of—and I’ll turn back to you, Bridge, to start us off. The question of— 

COLBY. I’ll be briefer. I’ll be briefer. 

DOSHI: No, that’s OK. You’ve set it up so you can now answer directly on target.  

But strategy is about, of course, aligning ends with means and I’d like to spend some time on this in our discussion because I think this is an area of substantial disagreement.  

As we just discussed, the U.S. faces the risk of a very serious conflict in the Taiwan Strait and, as the deputy secretary mentioned, in the South China Sea as well. There’s, of course, ongoing war in Europe and the Middle East, and at the same time we’re witnessing this tightening alignment that the deputy secretary spoke about—China, Russia, DPRK, and Iran. 

So you’ve made the case, Bridge, that the U.S. might need to pull back in some places, to burden share more in places—Ukraine, possibly the Middle East—to focus surge attention, really, on Taiwan scenarios in the Indo-Pacific because we are far behind.  

I think you’ve said that some caricature your position unfairly as saying we should completely abandon Ukraine. I think I’ll give you a chance to respond to that critique.  

So I guess my question to you is if that isn’t your position what specifically do you want to see the United States and its allies and partners do in Ukraine and in the Middle East so the U.S. can focus more on the Indo-Pacific?  

COLBY: Well, I’ll just start where you ended, and it’s a caricature but the thrust of it is basically true, which is that we cannot allow our focus—and it’s sort of paradoxical to see the father of the pivot now, basically—you know, with respect—from my point of view actually arguing for the reverse, which is that everything is interconnected. I would say no. 

A couple things. If the threat is urgent and imminent what can realistically stop it, and I think to be simplistic about it but I think it’s true and here’s where I agree with Mike Gallagher very much, it’s going to be hard power in the right place at the right time.  

It ain’t going to be economic sanctions. They’re completely failing against China, and that’s another area where I think I’d be interested to hear what Deputy Secretary Campbell has to say because the administration has been saying it’s the whole policy but now he’s admitting basically that China has propped up Russia, right? Economic sanctions are not stopping Russia or China from doing the critical things.  

I do not believe that given the resolve of the Chinese leadership and the capacity of the Chinese economy and military and the, you know, sort of authoritarian political structure that we would be able to impose economic, let alone sort of soft power costs, on China that would defeat a determined attack on Taiwan.  

Now, we can argue whether it may be better as a deterrent. I’m prepared to concede a little bit of that. But I think basically it’s going to be hard military power at the right place and the right time, and the one thing that I really disagree and I think is just wrong that Campbell said is that all the money and the weapons capability that we have sent to Ukraine and Europe would not have helped in the Asia-Pacific.  

That is facially ridiculous. I’m sorry. And you see the president now has basically shifted towards prioritizing. Now, he said Taiwan is not going to be affected. Of course, the Indo-Pacific is a much bigger issue. You’ve got to have Philippines, Japan, et cetera, defended as well.  

But I think if it’s true that we need to be ready at any time we should be moving as much as possible and for anybody who follows the Biden administration’s own defense strategy recognizes we do not have a multi-war military.  

Don’t take it from me. The RAND Corporation itself has assessed we’re on the trajectory to lose over Taiwan and we—you know, multiple Navy programs are delayed. The defense industrial base is not fixed. So I find a lot of—especially from people like Kurt Campbell I find it kind of shocking that you’re saying, oh, and— 

DOSHI: Get to Ukraine.  

COLBY: —and if the theaters are interconnected—if the theaters are interconnected this actually strengthens the need to prioritize because we actually have to assume that they’re going to act collaboratively precisely to deplete us. 

What does this mean in Ukraine? Well, I’ve been saying to the Europeans for the last couple of years we need to give you clear warning about what we actually can do. I don’t have a theological opposition to supporting Ukraine if I had endless resources. 

DOSHI: Should we cut Ukraine aid in—  

COLBY: Well, I would—basically, as I wrote in my Time magazine article last year, I would allocate money—first, for something like the supplemental, I would say let’s put 61 billion (dollars) in the Indo-Pacific and, well, as Mike Gallagher said, 2 billion (dollars) for Taiwan or something like, you know, 10 billion (dollars) or whatever for Ukraine. Capabilities, as my friend Austin Dahmer and I have written about, if they manifestly are not relevant for a first island chain scenario—Abrams tanks, F-16s—I’ve supported F-16s—these kinds of things. 

But the key thing, and this is another thing where I think both the administration and a lot of Republicans have erred and have not done the Europeans any favors, is we are dealing with scarcity and the Europeans do need to step up and they need to do so urgently and that’s only going to happen if we’re clear with them, and that’s one of the things that I’ve been trying to do.  

DOSHI: OK. So yes or no then on further dollars to Ukraine? It’s basically— 

COLBY: A little smaller. Yeah, small. But, yeah. I mean, we should be basically reversing that. 

DOSHI: So the April 60 billion (dollars) should not have happened? 

COLBY: Yeah, I opposed that supplemental. I’m not saying that we should give—you could have a supplemental of that 60 billion (dollars) for the first island chain and 10 billion (dollars) for Ukraine. Isn’t that prioritizing? 

DOSHI: If it were 60 (billion dollars) and 60 (billion dollars) and you didn’t prioritize would you support that? 

COLBY: Well, the 60 (billion dollars) and 60 (billion dollars) that’s—the problem there is if the Congress is willing to do something like that, that you see— 

DOSHI: That you support it?  

COLBY: Well, no, because—I’m not saying that I would support it.  

DOSHI: OK. So then it’s not—it’s—(inaudible). 

COLBY: Well, wait. Again, hold on, Rush. (Laughter.) There are real—there are real fiscal issues. 

DOSHI: I’m just trying to get an answer. 

COLBY: There are real fiscal issues in this country, right? 

DOSHI: OK. We’ll come back to that. OK. Got it. 

COLBY: Yeah. Yeah. That’s an important— 

DOSHI: So under that kind of scarcity? 

COLBY: Under that there should be priority, yeah. Right. 

DOSHI: So I’ll come back to that question, but I want to give Matt a chance to weigh in and I think I’ll weigh in myself now. (Laughter.) But, Matt— 

COLBY: I think you already have, my friend. (Laughter.) 

DOSHI: I just ask questions. But I will weigh in.  

Matt, over to you. I know you have strong views on this as well.  

POTTINGER: Yeah. Look, let’s just zoom out for a moment again. Remember what I was saying before. The United States and its allies—its treaty allies—are a $60 trillion collective economy. OK.  

If you take the axis of chaos, which is China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, plus, I would add, you know, Venezuela and Cuba as a couple wannabes in the axis of chaos their combined economies are about one-third.  

We are three times their economies. If you remove China from it we’re, like, twenty-five times their economies. Yet, if you look at what the axis of chaos is spending on its defense it is almost equal to what the United States spent last year on defense.  

That’s my back at the envelope looking at public info plus I’m using the American Enterprise Institute’s estimate that China is probably spending around 700 billion (dollars) in actuality on its military.  

So all that adds up to about $806 billion. We spent only a little bit more than that last year. Why not actually take a deep breath, look at the fact that we have radically greater economic power—we have more innovative businesses—and actually start increasing our defense spending while also addressing the very real problems with the way our defense—it’s not just the funding level as Bridge is alluding to. It’s actually the way that we’ve allowed our defense industry to sort of, I would say, Sovietize, you know, over the course of the last twenty years.  

This is fixable, and so I agree with Bridge that hard power is really what it’s going to boil down to. I agree with him that the main theater is the Indo-Pacific. I’m not opposed to the idea of rebalancing some of the spending, certainly, more heavily towards Taiwan.  

In fact, Mike Gallagher and I wrote about a deterrence fund of $20 billion a year just for dealing with this primary problem of deterring China in the Western Pacific. But I think this is doable. We’re spending historically low levels on defense right now, 3.1 percent and shrinking. Our defense budget is shrinking. The size of our active duty military is smaller than it’s been at any point since the eve of World War II. Are you kidding me?  

I mean, this is irresponsible. We can increase that spending while also addressing some of the systemic problems that Bridge has written well about with defense.  

DOSHI: Well, thanks, Matt.  

I’m going to turn to Bonny if you want to jump in on this at all, and then I’ll make a quick intervention and, Bridge, I’ll give you the last word on this. Then we’ll move to a final topic before Q&A. 

To my colleagues on the meetings and events teams, we’re going to push this panel back maybe five to eight more minutes since we started a bit late because of the liveliness of the discussion.  

Bonny, over to you.  

LIN: Great. Thank you.  

I guess I’ll just add on to the points that both Bridge and Matt has made. 

In terms of thinking about whether—how to prioritize between theaters, China is very much observing what’s happening in Ukraine. China recognizes that Ukraine is not Taiwan but for some reason it’s taking away lessons learned from Ukraine as if Ukraine was Taiwan.  

So if Ukraine were to fall and if the conflict was to end quickly versus longer term I think that would in some ways shape how the Chinese think about how easy it may be to take Taiwan. 

And I would note that when we look at the perspective also from my Taiwan friends, Taiwan is incredibly vocal in saying the importance of supporting Ukraine because they also recognize that even though they are not Ukraine—they’re very different from Ukraine—they’re very worried about were the wrong lessons learned being taken and how Russian action in Ukraine may shape perceptions of how force could be used.  

The final thing I’ll add is to your point, Bridge, you mentioned that—I agree with both you and Matt in saying that hard power is the most determinant. But if we were to give economic—if we were to think about any way to deter China we have to add an economics part of the equation and, to Matt’s point, we have to be able to work with our European allies and partners on that.  

And the one final point I’ll add is we can’t assume if we were to really think about the defense of Taiwan that that would not—that would be a short war. It could be a very protracted war. If it is a protracted war and we assume that in the beginning of that war that China would strike and probably take out not only some of our facilities in the Indo-Pacific but also the capabilities of many of our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, we would need partners outside of Indo-Pacific and that’s where having our European allies and partners and partners outside of the region will be absolutely critical to sustain our fight there.  

DOSHI: Well, thanks, Bonny.  

Kind of building on that, I’ll just maybe offer two broad questions to Bridge and then you can react to the question—to the comments so far and we’ll have more time in Q&A, hopefully, if we can move quickly. 

I guess the question that you and I were just getting at was about tradeoffs and I think it’s a big part of CFR’s work, actually. We’re going to have a major section of work on tradeoffs across all these foreign initiatives.  

COLBY: Great. 

DOSHI: So that’s one of the reasons we wanted to spend time on this question, and Matt Goodman’s project on the economic questions has, you know, a ton of work on tradeoffs already.  

The amount that the U.S. has spent on—I think as a percentage of GDP on Ukraine is .16 percent—.16 percent. So that’s less than we spent supporting Israel in 1979 and much of that money that we’re spending on Ukraine is recapitalizing the defense industrial base anyway. Now, you could argue it could be even better spent but that’s still happening. It’s reality.  

I think the other question—the other critique you could make is that what we’re transferring to Ukraine could be valuable for Taiwan and I think if you go item by item most of what’s being transferred to Ukraine is relevant for a land war. It’s not an air defense, not necessarily relevant for Taiwan scenarios but there are some exceptions, and if you look at those exceptions—HIMARS, ATACMS, NASAMS, Harpoons—those amounts are relatively small being transferred to Ukraine. There’s still plenty of depth in U.S. stocks for all of that, which is an important fact.  

So when I look at that I think to myself is this as unsustainable as you’ve argued. Could you, for example, do and as Matt has suggested and Bonny has suggested 60 billion (dollars) to Ukraine and without breaking a sweat issue more, you know, debt, essentially, to do 60 billion (dollars) for the Indo-Pacific. Could you do both? And I guess the question is based on what I’ve just outlined in terms of the numbers the answer seems to be yes. But we can debate that.  

The second question is what signal would it send to the PRC—this is what Bonny’s question gets to—her point gets to—and to the American people if we were entrenched too hastily in Ukraine, if we, as you suggest, just cut the spending right off the bat. 

I think China does watch our politics closely, as somebody who studies the PRC. I think they watch the politics for signals of resolve and I think that the marginal decrease in capability from a few more NASAMS going to Ukraine is small compared to the marginal loss and the credibility of our resolve if they think our politics can’t get it together.  

So that’s a big tradeoff. I guess a final component of that is another audience, which is the American people, and you talk about realism and that’s an excellent way to think about things but realism is contested and Americans have different views.  

I guess if you want to mobilize Americans to focus on Taiwan and to do the things you care about that we’ve all talked about on this panel to really mobilize for the defense of Taiwan, can you do that with a clever argument saying, well, let’s cut here, here, and here. Will they still come along for the ride on Taiwan?  

So that’s kind of my fiscal concern, my resolve concern, I guess, my mobilization concern. It builds on some of what Matt and Bonny said, and I give you the last word. 

COLBY: Great. Well, thanks.  

I don’t think my strategy is particularly clever. Like, it sort of made it sort of more hedgehoggy. It’s kind of, like, simple, you know, sort of parsimonious. It’s basically, like, if this is the biggest threat and we all agree about that and hard power is the most important thing, why are we not focusing on that? 

I think the clever argument is a triple bank shot, all these theaters are interconnected, like somehow you’re going to deter China over Taiwan in the Ukraine. That’s the more sort of sophisticated; my argument in some ways is actually, I would say, more straightforward. 

On the tradeoffs, I just—I disagree on a couple of things. One, I do think that the weapons in question—Patriots, air defense—are very credible and they do trade against. And by the way, of course a Taiwan fight is going to be a ground fight, and it’s going to be an air defense fight. I mean, they are definitely going to get ashore in an invasion, right, so that has to be part of it. 

And more—throughout the defense industrial base there are huge tradeoffs given the atrophy of our defense industrial base that Matt has talked about that where there are tradeoffs and we are now reorienting with a lot of expense.  

We’ve reoriented a lot on Ukraine, right? The money is for Ukraine and there is some, you know, sort of scaling abilities but I think there are sort of advantages. But I think those scaling efficiencies from investments or the defense industrial base are way overwhelmed by the fact that we’re focusing on the war in Ukraine.  

And apropos of Matt’s comments about how Russia is a joke and we’re so much richer, well, it’s such a joke, unfortunately, it’s got the upper hand and it’s out producing us by, like, almost an order of at least several factors in artillery shells.  

So I think, look—and I mean, you know, I’ve both worked in government—I think when you look at the state of our military and people who actually deal with it, it is not in the condition—as a prominent member of Congress who I saw recently who’s a pro-defense guy, he said the readiness of our armed forces is atrocious, right? The study—the state of our defense industrial base is equivalently atrocious.  

So, you know, look, that’s why I stress the point about being theological. If you came in and you said: All right, I get what you’re saying, but, look, there’s still a lot out there—and that’s why I wrote that Time piece and why I’ve tried to be consistent about things like F-16s that are—no way they’re going to survive against Chinese integrated air defenses—but things like the attention to the defense industrial base, I mean, prominent Republican members of the Senate saying all this money is not a lot of money. Of course it’s a lot of money. And my rejoinder back to you on the tradeoffs and 60 billion (dollars) is: Well, why didn’t you do it, then? You know, if there had been 60 billion (dollars) for the Indo-Pacific and it were linked to Ukraine, well, then I would say, well, that’s great because that’s the most important thing we need, if that’s what the American people will support. 

That’s not what we’re dealing with. And now we’ve gotten to a point where I can certainly say for Republicans—I mean, I don’t speak for Republicans— 

DOSHI: But if we could get Congress to give the 60 (billion dollars) on both, would you support—would you support 60 (billion dollars) for Ukraine? 

COLBY: Well, I would—like, I would—I would prefer—I want to get 60 billion (dollars) or a lot of money for the Indo-Pacific. 

DOSHI: If we could get both, then Ukraine’s good? Yeah. 

COLBY: I actually—but, of course, I’m also supportive of Ukraine. But I’m looking at the reality of the defense industrial base and how we’re doing, and I’m saying—the other thing is, to get back to the clever point—I think this is important—is my thing is let’s be clear about where our priority is and then we can moderate that.  

If you say, OK, Bridge, that’s a little extreme—let’s go 80 percent of that—that’s a much better place than say, hey, we can do everything but actually we’re going to try to get a little margin for the first island chain. That’s not going to work.  

And I think, again, the other point is it could happen tomorrow. It could happen in five years. But that’s within the five years defense program. It takes years to field new capabilities, and Matt is right. And the point I would say to Matt is we got to live in the real world. We ain’t going to double defense spending. Our defense industrial base is not going to be overhauled from one day to the next. In fact, in some ways it’s getting worse. We got to live in the world as it is and that is the world in which China can move.  

DOSHI: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations. (Laughter.) We convene the real debates.  

All right. Well, thanks. There’s a lot more to say here. I know Matt would want to get back in and, hopefully, there will be a chance in Q&A with the audience. I want to give them a chance, too. 

What you ended on with the defense industrial base brings me to the, like, final part of this discussion, which is the home front, and there’s a lot to talk about here in not a lot of time. But I think this is an area where there might be actually more agreement and where some of the problems are structural and actually where the China strategy initiative, as you saw, will be very focused.  

So let me begin with this question of capacity building in the United States and maybe, Matt, I’ll quickly start with you since you’ve written about this most recently in Foreign Affairs. In my response to you I actually agreed with most if not all of the things that you suggested that we do on the home front with some modest disagreement on whether or not they’re being undertaken by the Biden administration.  

So maybe I’ll turn to you. I think I’ll just put one little wrapper on this before I kind of kick off this portion, which is that a lot of the discussion of foreign policy questions is really about what happens abroad and that’s appropriate because it is foreign policy.  

But everything we’re able to do there has a kind of domestic, you know, component that underlies it that creates the strength for it, whether that’s, as we talked about, Bridge, just now the defense industrial base, our economy, our technological leadership, our political cohesion as a society which, you know, we are very divided.  

So, Matt, over to you, perhaps, to give us some sense of what you think are the most important steps to do at home in domestic policy to be more effective abroad in China competition.  

POTTINGER: Yeah. So one quick thing, just going back to— 

DOSHI: Sure. Sure. Of course, yeah. 

POTTINGER: No, no, no. It’s just the following. If we think of this—and this is related to your question, too, Rush—President Biden has added—has initiated $4.6 trillion in new spending while he’s been president, 4.6 trillion (dollars) in new spending above—(laughs)—you know, this is discretional—discretionary spending that—none of—none of which is going into defense. A big chunk of that went into pandemic response. I don’t think that was necessary that late in the pandemic, but we can argue about that. It’s been for infrastructure projects. He wants to do hundreds of billions of dollars in student, you know, loan amnesty.  

I mean, $4.6 trillion is almost six times our entire defense budget. I mean, how—even if we’re not going to double our defense spending, to your point, Bridge, Mike Gallagher and I called for going from 3.1 percent to 4 percent or even 5 percent which would still be significantly lower than our defense spending was as a percentage of GDP during the Cold War.  

It was about 6.8 percent at its peak during the Reagan years. Reagan didn’t get us into any new wars excluding Grenada and actually brought the Cold War to a peaceful ending.  

So I think that this is a big part of it. Look, I’ll give you a crazy idea, Rush, which is— 

DOSHI: OK. 

POTTINGER: —what about finding powerful new ways to incentivize military service and other forms of public service? You know, no one that I served with in the military—people who had memories of the Vietnam War, the generals that I knew when I was a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps—no one wants to go back to the Vietnam War era model. But you could have a model where people have the option in doing national service, of serving in the military.  

They could decide whether they want to be in combat arms or not so you’re not pushing kids who don’t want to be there to the front in wars. But there’s an enormous amount of work that could be done more cheaply by bringing more Americans—young Americans—into mandatory or at least heavily incentivized military service and other forms of national service. 

I’ll throw that one out there on your home front question. 

DOSHI: OK. All right. That’s a great suggestion. Not one you put in the Foreign Affairs piece but an interesting one.  

Bonny, maybe over to you. Anything you want to jump in on? 

LIN: No. 

DOSHI: OK. Bridge, over to you on the home— 

COLBY: Just really briefly— 

DOSHI: And actually if I could ask— 

COLBY: Yeah. 

DOSHI: And, Matt, if you want to come back in later. Not just the military side but also economic and technology.  

COLBY: Yeah. So I’ll be very brief.  

I mean, I think one of the kind of the kind of fundamentals of my approach is you kind of have to meet the American people, largely, where they are. You can move them but I think particularly on the Republican side there’s a lot of rhetoric that says, hey, we can just convince them if Reagan is rebooted and we bring him out from Madame Tussauds or something we’ll convince the American people to go to 10 percent defense spending.  

And as people point out, we’re about—you know, we’re heading on over a hundred percent debt to GDP. The American people are war weary and actually a lot of the people who served in the military are quite skeptical or even cynical about it and so forth.  

So I’m in the mode of kind of husbanding the asks and so in that respect I do think some defense spending increases are going to be necessary and if the American people support it, great. That would make our problems easier on this front.  

But I think the number-one thing that I would really focus on, and this gets to your question, is national mobilization of our defense industrial base as part of a larger reindustrialization. I think this would be a great initiative, I hope, for President Trump if he’s elected but even for Democrats to say you can buy off not only hardhat Republicans and Democrats, people who are national security hawks, but it can’t be seen—and one of the things I’ve seen with the supplemental arguments, for instance, is people are very cynical now where they say, well, why am I—you know, we’re spending money and giving it to Lockheed shareholders or Raytheon or whatever. 

If it’s part of a broader reindustrialization, which people want and which would be beneficial anyway in things like chips and so forth depending on how you conceive it, that would allow us to get back to a defense industry where we don’t have to have these terrible tradeoff issues, where we can say, here you go, Israel—here you go, Ukraine—here you go, Taiwan—here you go, Korea. No problem. But that’s not the world we’re in right now.  

DOSHI: So I have one final question. Then we’ll move to Q&A. We’re going to go over by ten minutes. I know that’s going to cut into our break but we—people can take a five-minute break and then we’ll have the next panel start a little bit later. It’ll be just fine.  

So I guess what I would offer is the question of U.S. competition with China isn’t just a military question, although that’s the one we have focused a lot on this panel, and we ask about the $4 trillion in spending. I think you could probably criticize elements of it but I think the ultimate intention was to catalyze a recovery which has, you know, produced massive amounts of growth and employment in the way that most of Europe was not able to achieve because of their greater restraint on the fiscal stimulus side.  

But the other part of it, if you take the infrastructure legislation, which was bipartisan—the Inflation Reduction Act—as well as CHIPS and Science, which was bipartisan, and then, you know, and the pandemic recovery assistance, all of it together has focused on an economic and technology bet which is that if we’re going to win the future as Americans we have to not just recapitalize the defense industrial base but to do that well we have to recapitalize the larger defense—rather, larger industrial base of the country because those things transfer across each other.  

We have to be able to make semiconductors again. We have to be able to design semiconductors at the leading edge for the foreseeable future. We have to be able to fix our critical infrastructure and defend it from cyberattack.  

There’s many, many other things in addition to the kind of nuts and bolts of sort of military questions and, in fact, all those things reinforce. 

So that would be kind of my quick answer, and when I turn to what CFR will be doing in this space we are standing up a China policy—(inaudible)—with the idea to—actually probably the first project we’ll take on will be the defense industrial base.  

But the questions beyond it are how do you do industrial policy the right way in legacy semiconductors and electric vehicles? It’s to solve those technology problems which we didn’t have a chance to get to today.  

I have a final question for our group and I’d like you to keep your answers to maybe just a few sentences, if you could. It’s a tough question. Here’s the wind up.  

It’s about the American people, which we’ve talked a lot about and we’ve spoken in their name, but here’s what they actually think.  

In April Pew surveyed Americans for their foreign policy priorities in the U.S.—long-term priorities. First was preventing terrorist attacks. Second was stopping the flow of drugs. Third was preventing the spread of WMD. Fourth was maintaining military primacy so that kind of dovetails what we’re talking about. Fifth was reducing infectious disease spread. Sixth was countering Russian power and influence and only seventh was countering Chinese power and influence.  

Now, that is up seventeen points on China from 2018 but it still comes in seventh. So my question to all of you, and I’ll start maybe with you, Bonny, if you’d like to—well maybe or not, it’s up to you. Bonny, if I can put you on the spot I’ll start with you.  

My question is are the American people right to put America—rather, countering China as number seven, and what argument would you make to them and—you’ve written about this in your work on Taiwan and other issues—why should they care about China policy? What’s the argument you’d make to them?  

LIN: That’s a really tough question, Rush. 

I guess I can’t say whether the American people are right or not. Everyone has their own decision and can make their own decisions. I do think—I do find it very odd the assessment that the China threat is less than the Russian threat.  

I think what we probably need is a better education of the American people of the general threat that China poses not only in terms of the military threats, which people may believe are much more far, much more distant, but the extent to which China’s economic competition, China’s unfair trade, and other economic practices are harming American businesses and how that’s also impacting jobs in America.  

So I think if we better educate the American public I think there probably may be a greater awareness. I agree, like, most people probably can’t find Taiwan on a map. But that doesn’t mean that’s the only threat and challenge that China poses to the United States.  

DOSHI: That’s an excellent point. There’s an economic component, a tech component. There’s fentanyl. There’s a lot of other issues related to China that people increasingly do pay attention to.  

So, Bridge, you talked about meeting the people—American people—where they are. What’s your sort of pitch to the American people for why they should care about China? 

COLBY: Sure. I would quibble a little bit with the wording and, obviously, with different polls you can get different things. For instance, I know, for instance, 67 percent of Republicans see China as the top threat. I think the way I pose it is China is the one country, and actually the Biden administration, I’m sure he plays an important hand in this—is the only state that can, you know, sort of reform and dominate the future world. I can’t remember exactly what it is. 

But basically that is the prospect and so countering Chinese influence sounds kind of vague to me. I’m not sure I would put that that high, and that’s where maybe I differ from some of the more expansive versions of the competition with China.  

Mine is relatively narrow and it gets back to your point about the economic. It’s not that—the last thing I want is a war. I genuinely would hate to see a war for obvious reasons. But I think if we get—like in the Cold War if we get the military balance right the rest of the things will become more material.  

I analogize it to, you know, police in a neighborhood. If you have a safe neighborhood you can worry about commercial development and the state of the park or your schools, et cetera. If there’s bad crime that’s the number-one thing you worry about and I think—I actually think the American people get that.  

I think where the debate, at least more on the Republican and sort of center right side that, you know, I may be more attuned to, is on where do we draw that line and how prepared are people to go into what could be World War III over Taiwan and—God forbid, and I really don’t want that to happen.  

And that’s another point, just to kind of maybe finish, is why I’m so focused on the tradeoffs is because I think, given how distant it is and most people don’t know or care about Taiwan necessarily and for reasonable, you know, reasons is to make sure that we can win that fight within reason. Achieve denial at a relatively low cost, rather than something where we’re going to have to blow up the American economy to save Taiwan.  

I’m very skeptical the American people are going to go for that.  

DOSHI: OK. Matt, the last word on this question and then we’ll take three audience questions to kind of wrap us out. So back to you. 

POTTINGER: Sure. Yeah, I mean, I don’t have much except to say that, you know, that American polls—I know that Pew last year had a poll that said half of Americans view China as the greatest threat while only about 17 percent view Russia as the greatest threat.  

I think the American people are—get it. They understand this, because Russia would not be a threat if not for Xi Jinping having Vladimir Putin’s back and being the main diplomatic, propaganda, and material supporter of the biggest war in Europe since World War II.  

I think Americans already get it. I have a poll that I just pulled up that—this is also Pew—81 percent of Americans—and this is overall. It crosses every demographic. Have a negative view of China and over half the public believes that, quote, “limiting the power and influence of China” should be a top priority for U.S. foreign policy.  

So I think the American people don’t need much more convincing. They’ve seen the face of—you know, the true face of this regime in Beijing under its current leader.  

DOSHI: Well, thanks, Matt. I hope you and Bridge are right, although this was asking sort of how you rank different goals over—you know, so they may say, all right, China’s the—you know, we’re very concerned about this. Eighty percent are, you know, disapproving. But when they ranked them this is where they came out. 

That being said, to Bridge’s excellent point, polls—you know, the wording can be quibbled with. I think Bonny’s suggestion, which is more education on this issue, is always useful—more discussion and debate. I think that’s where we come out.  

I’d like to take three questions from the audience. Those will be our final three. You’ll each have a chance to pick and choose your answers to which ones you want to take on, and then we will go to our break.  

So let’s start here in the front and then to Ali in the back.  

Q: Hi. I’m Jim Mann, author, based at SAIS.  

So if we’re talking about tradeoffs would you—can we afford to let the Trump tax cuts expire?  

DOSHI: All right, Jim. Thank you for asking that question—(laughter)—so I didn’t have to. 

All right. We’ve got Ali Wyne next.  

Q: Thanks. Good morning, Ali Wyne with the International Crisis Group. 

Rush, congratulations on the launch of the initiative.  

We’ve heard a lot this morning about the competitive strides that China’s made in recent years. We’ve also heard a lot about some of China’s competitive weaknesses—slowing growth, growing mobilization of advanced industrial democracies against it.  

Do you think that Xi Jinping—in light of recent trends do you think that he maintains an underlying sense of optimism about China’s capacity to achieve its objectives or has he grown more pessimistic in recent years?  

DOSHI: It’s a great question. And in the back at the aisle or right behind the aisle, I suppose. It’s hard to tell. That hand that’s still up—that one. 

Q: Yes. Eunjung Cho with the Voice of America.  

How does Putin-Kim summit impact the security situation in Northeast Asia and is that a plus or a minus in the U.S.-China competition where this could be an area that the two sides can seek more cooperation? Or does it work for China’s benefit that these countries are all aligning together? 

DOSHI: OK. So we’ll start maybe with you, Bridge, then Bonny and then, Matt, over to you. 

COLBY: Well, Jim, to your question, I’m not an economist. I’m not—I don’t claim any expertise and I certainly don’t speak for anybody but myself. 

But I think if—you know, Republicans are, obviously, more in favor of extended tax cuts. Democrats are more in favor of greater domestic spending. In any case, that just reinforces the need for prioritization and realism about how much we can really expect from increases in defense spending. I don’t think that’s very plausible and, thus, credible.  

And I don’t think even a Republican administration—you know, just even as an analyst I don’t think it’s very plausible that it would initiate enormous increases in defense spending and neither of the candidates is running on that platform.  

Ali, to your question, I mean, I’m skeptical about that. I’m prepared to believe that it may be somewhat true. You know, I just—I guess it’s my personality but I’d prefer to prepare for the downside risk that they’re actually better than we are and they have all kinds of advantages of numbers, resolve, position, initiative, et cetera. So I think, you know, there may be some truth there.  

The other problem is—and, again, I don’t know. You could kind of read it both ways. But the fact that Xi Jinping is purging the top leaders of the PLA and actually going to the PLA and saying, I need you to be ready, suggests to me that he’s serious about it.  

Like, I don’t think Jiang Zemin would have actually done that. I found that people were saying—I don’t know who was the leaker to Bloomberg about six months or a year ago, but said, oh, they have water in their ICBM and they don’t have any competence. They’ve purged their leaders. They’re never going to declare war. 

Hitler purged the high command of Germany in early 1939. So it’s, like, you know, maybe that’s because they’re serious. I don’t think that tells you one way or the other. But, again, it gets back to my epistemological approach which is I don’t think we know. But the fundamentals that we see are very worrisome.  

Eunjung, to your question, I think it’s very bad because I think it’s going to increase—contrary to what Kurt Campbell is suggesting it’s going to increase the fact we’re getting depleted and we have legacy commitments that are way bigger than our ability to substantiate them along concurrent timelines.  

And then as we’ve discussed on your important show I think it’s also going to undermine the Washington Declaration, which I don’t find credible, and the viability of American extended deterrence when what is it that Kim Jong-un probably wants from Vladimir Putin? Probably missile and nuclear technology. Exactly what they’ll give we probably won’t know but we have to assume it’s not going to be good for us.  

DOSHI: OK. Thanks, Bridge.  

Bonny, over to you. 

LIN: OK. Sure. I’ll address two of the questions.  

So, Ali, on your question about whether Xi Jinping is optimistic or pessimistic, from what I’m seeing is you’re seeing more and more rhetoric coming from China that emphasize the headwinds but it hasn’t changed any of China’s long-term goals. It hasn’t changed any major actions or activities on China’s end.  

So my sense is they understand the challenges that they face but that—it’s really hard to get into Xi Jinping’s head but I haven’t seen any indication that that is going to change any of Xi Jinping’s behaviors.  

So I would say that, largely, probably China is still optimistic in the long-term trends but probably realizes that they have short-term challenges to deal with. 

In terms of the Putin-Kim summit and implications for China, what I would say there is that I think China is put in a somewhat difficult spot because it does recognize longer term that Russia’s ambitions for the Korean Peninsula is quite different from that of China’s.  

Russia is generally more willing to tolerate a greater level of instability and, perhaps, a nuclear North Korea whereas China has traditionally in the past been more w

ary of that. But we have been seeing subtle changes in China’s position on this. So I’ll point to the 2024 Xi-Putin joint statement in which the paragraph on North Korea compared to 2023 was almost completely taking the side of North Korea against the United States.  

That was not the case in the 2023 statement, and China also downplayed the role of the need for complete denuclearization in the China-Japan-ROK joint statement which was different from four years ago. So we are seeing China being put into a more difficult position but the unfortunate reality is China is siding more and more with Russia and North Korea.  

DOSHI: Thank you, Bonny. 

And, Matt, over to you.  

POTTINGER: Yeah. This is one of the weird historical symmetries that we’re seeing right now whereas in 1950 you had Europe and Soviet Russia providing most of the armaments for a war on the Korean Peninsula. Now you have North Korea and South Korea as primary suppliers of the two sides of the war that’s playing out right now between Russia and Ukraine. 

Ali, your question is important, in a way. This idea of optimism I think is actually really important. Historians who’ve spent a lot of time looking at the causes of war over the course of the last four or five centuries have found that one of the common indicators right before aggression actually breaks out is overweening optimism on the part of an aggressor and I think that Xi Jinping—I agree with Bonny’s way that she laid it out—he seems to be very optimistic in the long term, sort of infallibility of his belief that China’s dominance is inevitable but is dealing with these headwinds right now. 

Anything that we can do to increase headwinds and to cause him to have some doubts about whether this is the right timing would be something in the service of peace. So rather than being provocative anything we do to undermine the sources of Chinese power right now would be a cause for peace, in my view. I’ll leave it at that.  

DOSHI: All right.  

Well, thank you all for joining us. This has been a very lively discussion. We’ve got three excellent panelists who were extremely insightful but, most importantly, they’re all CFR members. (Laughter.) 

So we will—just before we applaud—we will take about ten minutes, I think, break if my events and meetings colleagues don’t stop me, and we will begin the next session which will be a fireside chat with Ellen Nakashima, Maher Bitar, and Tarun Chhabra from the National Security Council on AI, China, and national security very soon. But let’s give it up for our great panelists. (Applause.) 

(END) 

This is an uncorrected transcript. 

 

NAKASHIMA: Hi, and welcome back to today’s China Strategy Initiative launch event. That was quite a lively panel we had before, and hopefully, you know, we’ll keep the liveliness quotient up with ours. This session is titled “Biden Policy on AI, National Security, and China.” And I’m joined by Maher Bitar, coordinator for intelligence and defense policy at the White House; and Tarun Chhabra, senior director for tech and national security at the White House. I am Ellen Nakashima, a national security reporter at the Washington Post. And I will be presiding over today’s conversation.

So it seems like AI burst into the public consciousness with the advent of ChatGPT about a year and a half ago. You know, we were all stunned by an app that you could, say, ask to write an L.A. pulp fiction story in Shakespeare in English in five minutes. And could it be asked to write a recipe for a bioweapon? In fact, the Biden and, indeed, Trump administrations were working on AI policies that tried to address the implications of such breakthroughs long before ChatGPT emerged. In just the last year and a half, we’ve seen the White House blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, the Department of Defense Responsible AI Strategy, voluntary commitments to develop trustworthy AI from seven leading tech firms, and then last October, the White House issued an executive order on safe and ethical uses of AI. So these efforts take on more resonance in the context of strategic competition with China.

Let’s open the discussion. Maybe you, Tarun, with your articulation of the stakes as they relate to that competition. Are we aiming to win the race with China in AI? What happens if the United States falls behind? And if we’re aiming to win, what is your strategy to win?

CHHABRA: Well, thanks, Ellen, for moderating this discussion. And congratulations to Rush for launching the China Initiative today. It’s really great to see this.

So I’m glad you’ve started, Ellen, with the framing of kind of public attention being focused now on AI after ChatGPT was announced, now other companies launching similar, you know, at this stage, copilot tools. I think it’s an important framing, in part because you’re right, there was an early focus on AI policy, certainly during this administration. And, to credit the previous administration, there had been work particularly in OSTP on AI policy as well. But I think it speaks to the fact that we really do need to keep our eye on where the technology is going in a few years. And so while we’ll continue to have a healthy debate now about, you know, what the capabilities are today, where they will be next year and the year after. And there should always be healthy skepticism about, you know, scaling laws and certain predictions.

I think we do need to prepare for a future in which the capabilities that are unlocked in the next two or three years are really world historic, potentially, the—we talk now about benchmarking capabilities that align with, you know, Ph.D.-level expertise in certain scientific fields, for example. And the question now is, are you the mean Ph.D.? Are you at the ninetieth percentile? That’s kind of where the debate is right now. And so I think we really need to get our hands around—our heads around what that means for our economies and for national security, really, to your point. And that really covers a range of operations.

When we’re talking about military affairs, it’s—yes, we’ve talked a lot about designing, modeling for nuclear weapons and for hypersonics. But it also goes to just kind of logistics, all of the things that make our militaries hum and make our intelligence operations work as well, including cyber operations, so.

NAKASHIMA: What are the stakes for us, though, with respect to China? What is the national security—

CHHABRA: Well, so, look, I think, you know, we sometimes, in bureaucracies talk about AI as a—as a force multiplier. I think that really understates what it is. It’d be like saying—there are many analogies here, and we can argue over them, but in the late 19^th century that electricity was a force multiplier, or the internal combustion engine was a force multiplier as well. That doesn’t really get to what it could be. So the stakes are tremendous. And it’s why we took the decision to do a few things in the course—in the early days of the administration.

One is to develop, obviously, investments in domestic hardware production, in chip production in the United States, so we have a more resilient supply of chips, as everyone in this room knows, and many people online know what our dependencies look like right now. And, second, we developed an export control policy focused on the most advanced chips that are necessary for AI applications, because we think that the stakes for national security are absolutely critical.

NAKASHIMA: Can I just ask you, Maher, are we seeking to win the competition with China in AI? And what happens if we don’t, in your words, or if we fall behind—with respect to China in particular?

BITAR: Sure. And also, let me also just congratulate Rush as well for pulling this off. And thanks for having us. I will say, though, at the outset, that my—when I first started working in the administration, I did not expect to do as much technology policy as it relates to national security. But over the course of these four years, working closely with Tarun as well, it’s clear how the intersection has really kind of cemented in a way where we have to have our eye on the ball with regard to how these advances are going to affect both the way in which our national security apparatus operates, but then also the way our adversaries and others abroad are looking to operate. So in this case, I think what we are trying to do is maintaining advantage for the United States in this field.

NAKASHIMA: Because we’re still ahead. China’s still way behind us, right?

BITAR: Right. And one of the—one of the charges that we have, through something that was tasked out of the executive order on AI, which you mentioned, is a national security memorandum that we’re working on at the moment. Which is intended ultimately to ensure that our departments and agencies that work on national security are maintaining that advantage and working intensively to ensure that we are adopting AI responsibly, but also ambitiously, while also ensuring that we’re using it. But we’re also preparing ourselves for how our adversaries might.

NAKASHIMA: So I want to get to the national security memorandum in a minute, but first let’s turn to export controls. In the last two years, the administration has imposed controls on shipments to China of the most advanced computer chips, or GPUs, that are needed to build large language models—those caches of information—massive caches of information on which AI systems are trained. What is the national security threat these controls are designed to address? What, for instance, is the relationship between a chip for a data center, used to run LLMs, and, say, the development of a hypersonic or nuclear weapon?

CHHABRA: So, look, Ellen, I think it’s widely known that our national labs, right, particularly those involved in the nuclear enterprise, host some of our leading supercomputers, and have for a very long time, because supercomputing is important for developing and modeling the use of advanced weapon systems. So no secret there. I think that’s definitely one piece of this. We talked a lot about that. I think from a legal perspective, there’s a WMD nexus that we established actually as a basis for some of our export controls. So that is a really important dimension of it.

But part of what we’re focused on now, and I know we’ll talk a little bit about the national security memorandum that we’re developing now, is that we’re looking now at LLMs that are approaching super intelligent capabilities. You know, we can have debates about AGI capabilities. And our concern there is the potential revolutionary impacts on a broad range of military and intelligence and general national security applications. And we know that our adversaries are actively experimenting with all of those, rapidly right now. And so we need to be doing the same thing right now. We need to be doing it consistent with responsible uses, guardrails. Many of which, you know, I think are well established but need to be adapted for this new technology.

NAKASHIMA: Well, if these chips are so sensitive, why has no other allied country imposed similar controls? After all, although U.S. companies design the leading-edge chips, almost all of those advanced chips are produced in Taiwan and packaged in other foreign countries, which gives them the jurisdictional authority to impose controls. And we talk so much about the importance of allies and partners in these efforts.

CHHABRA: Well, so I wouldn’t agree with the premise. We do have key allies that actually are implementing controls.

NAKASHIMA: In some areas.

CHHABRA: That are critical for the tooling required to manufacture some of these chips. And then in addition, we have extensive, you know, conversations with our allies who are producing some of these chips as well. And none of this would be working without close cooperation with them, either.

NAKASHIMA: So it’s often said that national security is economic security. Does this mean that there are also economic motives behind these controls? That is, are they designed to constrain China’s economy, or to help U.S. companies economically? And is constraining China’s economy good, from a global economic standpoint? Either one of you is fine.

CHHABRA: Yeah, look, we’ve been very clear and very direct with Beijing about this, that is not the design or intent of these controls. Now, let’s be—you know, we can have a forthright conversation to say, will there be potential collateral impacts? There may be, yes. But that is not the intent of them. The intent of them is to address our concern, which we believe is well founded, that if China is able to develop, accelerate the development of this technology on the frontier, it will quickly be taken up by the PLA, by intelligence services, and used against us and our allies.

NAKASHIMA: And the question arises too, that these export controls just accelerate the incentives for China to develop its own chips to use domestically, right, this dual circulation argument, as well as export to third countries, where they’d compete with U.S.-designed chips. And isn’t that what they’re doing now with the legacy chips, the more mature chips? How are you thinking about that?

CHHABRA: Well, so, look, I think the indigenization drive for China began some time ago. We could—we could discuss when exactly it happened, but we had to make a decision in the early days of this administration about whether we were going to allow China to continue on the indigenization drive while having full access to all this technology in the meantime. And our view was that they had made a judgment, whether you think was good or—for good reasons or not, that they needed to—needed to do that and press ahead.

I think I’d also add, you know, let’s look at other sectors where we just let the market dynamics play out. How did that work out for us? In solar, in telecom, in critical minerals and processing, in APIs for biopharma, where we just said, China will indigenize if we have an industrial policy or if we have export controls in general. I don’t think that’s worked out well for the United States or for our allies. And so we were committed to ensure that that didn’t happen, first, in semiconductor sector, by investing in our own production as well, but also by ensuring that those technologies are not used in ways that undermine our national security.

NAKASHIMA: You’re referring to the CHIPS Act, in part, with the $39 billion for fabs. Some of these, I understand, won’t come online until about 2030. Is that too late? I mean, after all, we’ve heard in the last panel that, you know, we could well expect China to have invaded Taiwan before then.

CHHABRA: Yeah, we’re—look, we have—I see John Neuffer from SIA is here, who can tell you that some of this capacity is going to come online sooner than that. Some of these investments actually were already underway, and what CHIPS is—CHIPS Act is doing is actually expanding the footprint, on the one hand, and also ensuring that we have leading-edge capabilities in that footprint as well. And it’s not the United States doing this alone. I think, you know, if we had wanted to do it alone, the CHIPS Act would have needed to be instead of around $52 billion closer to $400 billion, if we were aiming for autarky. That was not the design or intent of the act. So instead, we also have allies, partners, and like-minded countries that are also investing, whether it’s Japan, Korea expanding its own production, the European Union, and now India getting into the game as well.

NAKASHIMA: And so far, these controls that we’ve been talking about have been on the compute side, right, the on the chips. What about the technology and software that are needed to produce AI applications? The so-called model weights? Are you thinking about imposing controls on those? And if so, how effective would they be when, you know, some of this can just easily be shared across borders? And how willing would other allies and partners be to impose similar controls?

CHHABRA: Yeah. Well, look, I think we are keeping a close eye on the latest models as they are released, whether they’re open source, whether they’re proprietary, doesn’t matter. We want to know what are their capabilities. We’ve stood up a new safety institute at the Commerce Department under NIST, which is charged with developing evaluations to do that—do that testing as well. I think there are a few dimensions to this. The first dimension is, are we—do we have adequate cybersecurity at the firms that are developing leading-edge models? That’s an ongoing conversation that we have with the leading labs that are doing that. I think there’s a broad agreement in the government and with those firms that we need to do more in that space.

NAKASHIMA: What are you doing? Maybe, Maher, you want to talk to that, especially if it involves cyber issues—cybersecurity?

BITAR: Yeah. I think there are a number of security challenges that both the companies are very aware of, but also as a government that we’re looking to invest in—everything from physical security, human security, cyber defenses as well, and generally having counterintelligence awareness with regard to the work that they’re doing. I mean, these are companies in the United States that are making rapid advances. And they are a significant target for—both for competitive reasons, and also by foreign adversaries. So it is going to be an area of work. Well, it’s an area that we’re galvanizing already, but it’s going to be an area of work that we’re going to build into the national security memorandum as well. Which is, how can we bring the resources, the insight to bear that the U.S. government has to assist in this space to the greatest extent possible?

NAKASHIMA: All right, I wanted to—let’s move right over then now to the national security memorandum, the NSM, which is something that I guess is supposed to be rolled out any day now, very soon. I think the EO gave you 270 days, or roughly nine months, to draft. And that deadline is coming up this week, next week, soon?

BITAR: Soon. I think our lawyers told us that we can say this summer. (Laughter.)

NAKASHIMA: This summer, oh, OK. All right. OK, well, why don’t we—why don’t you open here by talking about—since you’re both at the center of this, right, just give us a little more of an understanding of who this will apply to, what potentials are you most interested—you know, what is the potential that you’re most interested in encouraging, and what applications or scenarios are you most concerned about preventing, deterring, or avoiding through the NSM? So who does this apply to?

BITAR: Sure, I’ll start and then I’ll turn it to Tarun. So just in terms of scene setting—and, Ellen, as you mentioned earlier, this national security memorandum is actually tasked by the president’s executive order. So for the most part, the president’s executive order sets aside questions of use governance with regard to what we call national security systems, as well as defense and intelligence uses by the U.S. federal government. So as a result of that, instead the executive order tasks the development of this national security memorandum to ensure that we have standardized, uniform guidance, to the extent possible, across the relevant agencies.

NAKASHIMA: So, DOD, ICE, the intelligence community?

BITAR: So this would be—this would be DOD, it would be all the relevant intelligence agencies. But it doesn’t just stop there. It includes the Department of Energy, the national labs at the Department of Energy. But it also can apply to other agencies that have a national security mission as well.

NAKASHIMA: DHS, FBI?

BITAR: So there are elements of DHS, elements of FBI and DOJ, and also smaller agencies, our State Department even. And there are other agencies that are involved in this process from across the U.S. government. A joke that we’ve had is the process that we’re running, we call it a small group, it’s the largest small group you can imagine. I mean, the number of agencies that are part of this. So we are driving very hard to get this done in time. We have every expectation that we will. But it’s a—it’s a complex task, because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to address two elements that were tasked in the executive order. One is about governance and use by the federal government. But then, secondly, also, how do we protect U.S. national security interests from foreign use and misuse of this technology? So it has those two components.

NAKASHIMA: And does it also apply to the companies that are providing some of the AI software, hardware capabilities to these agencies?

BITAR: Well, so what it is providing is direction to the agencies within what is applicable by law. So it is going to have guidance to the agencies of how they—how they should be seeking to adopt and use and experiment with AI. But they’re also going to be some limitations as a result, based on that, based on what a national security memorandum can do in terms of providing direction. This is not direction to the private sector. It’s direction to the federal government on how to adopt and use it.

NAKASHIMA: I see.

BITAR: That said, there are a wide range of issues that we’d like—we are seeking to tackle here. Everything, for example, which Tarun can talk about in more detail, talent—both talent, how do we ensure talent across the United States, kind of preserving, if you want, and building on the talent base that we have here? But also, how do you build the talent and expertise within the U.S. federal government? Because one of the issues that is different in this case is we’re very conscious that this is a technology that has not spun out, at least in its modern form, from work in the federal government. This is a frontier capability. It has been developed outside of the federal government. And we’re approaching it—

NAKASHIMA: In the private sector by firms like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI.

BITAR: In the private sector. And we’re very conscious of how do we ensure that we are folding it into the operations of these agencies in a way that is responsible, that has a degree of interoperability as well so that we don’t create silos across agencies as well in ways that may hinder use over time. And how do we galvanize experimentation as well, so that we are seeing what works and what doesn’t work?

NAKASHIMA: So what kinds of experimentation might we see within the national security agencies with respect to AI, in terms of what they’re seeking to use these applications for? And then talk about the guardrails you’re thinking of imposing on that.

BITAR: Sure. And maybe, Tarun, I don’t know if you’re best positioned, if you want to explain kind of what’s different about these frontier models and the extent to which they may make—they may be particularly effective in some contexts?

CHHABRA: Yeah. Well, honestly, Ellen, I think for people here, online, members of CFR, I mean, a lot of this is well known to all of you because all of you are experimenting in your enterprises with this technology right now. And you can see, actually right now kind of how much your business operations could change or already are changing as a result of it, depending on how quickly you’re operationalizing this. So and, you know, everything is, you know, as I said earlier, from, you know, logistics to—going forward, I think we’ll see a lot more changes to how we think about research operations and a lot of enterprises as well. So really covering the covering the waterfront.

And so what we want to—what we want to do now is, I think, acknowledge, first, that in the Defense Department or the intelligence community, we actually—many of our—many government components have been actually pioneers in developing and deploying bespoke kinds of AI for a long time, right? I mean, we have a lot of weapons systems that you could say have been using some form of autonomy for a long time. And the same thing, you know, in the intelligence community as well. I think what we want to make sure we’re doing now is to ensure that everyone who is using those applications sees what the potential is for this new paradigm of AI, and what the impacts will be.

Where it makes sense to keep doing what they’ve been doing, and that enables you to keep down costs which we have to be mindful of, then that’s what we should keep doing. But where the new paradigm meets the old paradigm, and you have a very significant shift in capabilities, then obviously we don’t want to be behind the curve from our adversaries in that context. And sometimes you just don’t have the same feedback loop that you might in the corporate sector, where you’re kind of in the scrum of day-to-day commercial competition. We may not see that as readily in the national security world between countries. And so we think it’s our duty to make sure that we’re pressing on that now. And that’s certainly kind of the direction from the national security advisor.

NAKASHIMA: Well, what do you mean by that, when you say, we might not see something within what’s going on within the private sector, and—

CHHABRA: Yeah. The situation we want to avoid is strategic surprise, where, in the context of some sort of intelligence operation or on the battlefield we see that our adversaries have both developed, adopted this technology more quickly than we have, with a significant augmentation of their capability. And that obviously would be an unacceptable scenario. And that’s something that we have to avoid by kind of pushing on the experimentation now.

BITAR: And what I would say also, Ellen, is you’re seeing kind of a rapid acceleration for now—and we should maintain healthy skepticism, as Tarun said—but rapid acceleration in these capabilities, their ability to provide value add in a number of different domains. And the question is, how do you ensure within the U.S. government, where each agency or sometimes even within agencies they have very different missions, how are they building that in, experimenting with it, seeing what works, what doesn’t work, whether their methods that they’re currently using that are—that are bespoke, but highly attuned to the work they need to do, and those should remain as they are. But there may be areas where ultimately, moving towards adopting use of these sorts of tools, and the more advanced tools that will come over time, will actually help the mission as well.

NAKASHIMA: I want to just stay focused on the red side for a little bit. How are you thinking to ascertain or prevent the strategic surprise? What sorts of steps are you thinking about that you can implement either through your own capabilities or through working with the private sector, or somehow to prevent, make sure you’re not caught strategically, you know, surprised, or off guard by what China can—or Russia can unfold on the battlefield, or in their IC?

BITAR: Yeah. So I think a couple things. I think it’s really important for our agencies, one, to have the internal expertise to understand the shifts that are happening in this domain, and have their ear to the ground, and are engaging with companies to understand what’s happening in the private sector. So I think that’s one key area where we want to make sure that there’s a lot of good work that’s done now, that that continues apace, and that is built into the way in which they’re approaching this technology as it shifts. I think the second element is ensuring that they are experimenting with this technology as well to see what sorts of use cases work and don’t work, and how effective they might be.

And the third, which I can speak less about but it is an area of focus, is in my capacity as the coordinator for intelligence and defense, is how are we postured as a government to understand what’s happening elsewhere around the world? And how are we investing in the resources to make that happen? What I will say is this national security memorandum will be, to the greatest extent possible, unclassified. We’re going to try to ensure that we are speaking to many audiences at once. But there will be a portion that will remain classified as well, which will speak to some of the other work that we’re expecting agencies to do. So it’s going to have both.

But, Tarun, I don’t know if you have more on that.

CHHABRA: No, that’s great.

NAKASHIMA: And when it comes to the sorts of restrictions, constraints, guardrails you’re thinking of imposing—be it on the agencies or on, you know, working with the companies that are really providing these capabilities—how are you thinking about that? Are you thinking about devising guardrails in terms of avoiding specific outcomes, or on norms, standards? Tell us a little bit about your thinking, what we might expect to see in this NSM in terms of guardrails?

BITAR: Yeah, I think so. I think the first thing is we are building on guardrails that have already been devised. For example, within the Department of Defense, where there have been—there’s been an intense amount of work over the last few years to ensure that we build an approach that is human-centered for a lot of the work that we’re doing. At the same time, we’re also dealing with a circumstance where we have—as I mentioned earlier, we have agencies that have very different missions across the board, and also they have sometimes different infrastructure that they need to use. And how do we create an incentive structure that is—and a flexible enough governance structure that allows them to work both in ways that are individualized for the work they need to do, that builds on the infrastructure and the bespoke models, for example, that they’ve done, but also is increasingly creating a standardized approach to how they are evaluating risk, whether there are use cases that are going to be prohibited or not.

NAKASHIMA: What are some of those use cases that might be prohibited? What are the higher stakes use cases?

BITAR: So I think what I can only speak to right now are certain activities that are already out there by the Department of Defense. So I’d point you to DOD directives and other things. But those are things that we’re building on for the work that we’re doing now. But you can imagine, we’re talking about agencies as diverse as the Department of Defense, on one end, and, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development on the other end. And they all have kind of different missions, different requirements. And we want to make sure that we’re addressing all of them in a way that’s flexible enough. And also, I think this is very important as the technology is evolving, is future-proofed to the extent possible. How do we create a structure that allows itself to adapt as the technology shifts?

NAKASHIMA: Tarun, will this NSM specifically address cyber capabilities, offensive and defensive, or defensive? How are you thinking about that?

CHHABRA: Yes. So, look, and the overall effort is to address the full range of capabilities that could be impacted by frontier AI developments. And that, of course, does include cyber operations. Again, as many folks here know, I mean, we already have a lot of—an enormous amount of experimentation in using some of these models to detect potential vulnerabilities. And you just have to expect that there’s going to be a lot of potential uses as well to then exploit those vulnerabilities also. And so we want to make sure that, to the greatest extent possible, we’re using it to maximize defense for ourselves, to make sure that we’re not—we’re not behind the eight ball in that regard. And that’s going to be, to some degree, also a big piece of our partnership with the private sector, where, obviously, many of our national security agencies are working closely with some of our leading tech companies right now, to provide cloud services, for example. And so this has got to be a major piece of that conversation.

NAKASHIMA: So there have been recent reports about the Pentagon’s use of clandestine information operations online to try to, you know, counter narratives, for instance, you know, China’s pushing narratives—fake narratives about COVID, you know, origination, and things like that. Some of these activities have been—you know, have been curtailed. But I wonder whether your NSM will require these defense agencies to comply with—you know, a lot of these activities have to take place on commercial platforms like Facebook or, you know, Twitter, now, X. And they have terms of service. Will your NSM require these firms—I mean, the agencies, to comply with the firm’s terms of service, most of which bar inauthentic behavior online. So it’s a sort of an ethical question here, but one that—

CHHABRA: Sure. And I’d distinguish between two elements.

NAKASHIMA: OK.

CHHABRA: These AI capabilities are tools to do things. And we are very conscious about the fact that this NSM is not intended to displace existing policy and legal requirements on agencies about what they do around the world. So I think that’s where there can be an active debate about what is most effective to do around the world and how the United States government should be engaging in messaging operations, messaging activity. But here, the NSM is going to make sure that it is adhering to not in any way sidelining policy requirements that are there for good reason.

And on what you mentioned, for example, you know, the information operations that occurred several years ago, we moved very quickly and very decisively to curtail operations that were of concern, which has been reported publicly including by, I think, yourself at the Washington Post.

NAKASHIMA: So I wanted to turn to geopolitics for a moment. I just also—how much time? I’m sorry, I lost track of the clock. (Laughter.) Oh, OK. So I really wanted to get into this area, which I think is rich and fascinating with respect to both AI and strategic competition with China. As most of you know, Microsoft recently signed a $1.5 billion investment deal with the AI company G42, which is headquartered in the UAE. It’s part of a broader strategic play the administration is making in the Middle East to reduce Chinese influence and presence in the region. Tarun, how well is that working? And what arrangements do you have with countries like UAE and as well as with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait?

CHHABRA: Yeah. So, look, Ellen, as a global matter, we obviously want to see trusted digital infrastructure around the world, and particularly in countries where we have a military presence or strong economic partnerships. Both to protect sensitive data, including American data, but also to protect military data. And, of course, to ensure that advanced technology is not going to competitors, where we have a clear, you know, again, policy objective there.

So in that context, in a place like the UAE, which you cited, right, where you had G42 working very closely with Huawei, for example, we have an interest in changing that picture, right? And so we see kind of the effort to work with Microsoft as an alternative to Huawei. That’s generally a positive development, and one that we want to encourage. I think at the same time, right, where you have a legacy of working with an untrusted vendor for a really long time, the associated infrastructure, personnel, all the things that come with that, it’s going to take some time to kind of fully make the transition and to build confidence that we’re not going to have the kinds of technology leadership we would worry about.

So I would say this is not unique to the UAE, necessarily. It’s going to be in any context where that transition is underway. There’ll be a lot of work that we have to do together with the relevant partners to make sure that it’s complete and we’re meeting all the policy goals.

NAKASHIMA: Well, how do you enforce the pledge—be it by G42 or any other company that might have a deal—the pledge that they are cutting Huawei or the Chinese firms from their supply chains?

CHHABRA: Yeah, look, it’s going to vary by context. In some cases, we will have direct conversations with the government about that process. In other cases, it may be a U.S. vendor that itself is going to want those assurances, because they generally want to continue working with the U.S. government, right, on those transitions globally, and be a partner to U.S. government to help make those transitions in countries where that’s willing to happen. So it’s going to be, in many cases, an all-of-the-above approach, to make sure that those commitments are seen through.

NAKASHIMA: Is there anything similar work going on in Saudi, Maher?

BITAR: I would defer to—

NAKASHIMA: Or, perhaps, with respect as well to the Saudi-Israel normalization issues?

CHHABRA: So I’ll just say, I think we’re having these conversations in many countries. There are a lot of them around in the Middle East right now. And part of the reason for that, Ellen, is that there is a very high conviction about the coming capabilities of AI in the Middle East right now. We see that in the UAE. We see it in Saudi and other countries in the region. And as part of that, countries want to know, well, how do we get access to some of this most advanced technology? And from our perspective, given that we—for all the reasons we’ve talked about earlier—want to safeguard it for national security reasons, we have to have a—we have to have a conversation about what is the digital infrastructure that it’s going to ride on, and where it’s going to be safeguarded. And so that’s definitely an ongoing discussion.

NAKASHIMA: So diversion issues aside, are you at all concerned that the UAE, Saudi, and other countries in the Middle East with poor human rights records, as well as massive amounts of money and cheap electricity, will become the center of the world’s AI ecosystem? And are you concerned that they might turn these capabilities to engage in human rights violations?

CHHABRA: Do you want to start on that one, Maher?

BITAR: That’s all right. Is that because I—

NAKASHIMA: Jump ball. (Laughter.)

BITAR: Yeah. I think—I think what I can say, just building on what Tarun said, this is a—this is a conversation we’re having with a number of countries around the—around the world. I also—I think it’s a reflection of the moment that we’re in, which is that right now the United States is home to the advanced technology, to the main companies, and to the talent base that is necessary to build this. I think this raises kind of fundamental questions for us over time, over how we want to ensure that we are maintaining the U.S. leadership role in this space, and securing U.S. leadership, but also balancing that and working with partners around the world in a way that is both effective for our national security but also true to our values.

So without answering your question directly, I think this is something that we’re wrestling with right now, with regard to a lot of countries. And it’s something that I think is going to play out actually over the next few months and years, because it’s—we’re actually at that first—if you want, the first stage of that process. Which is—which is not unique to this issue, but this is one that I think, as Tarun says, both has revolutionary potential, but also we’re starting to see governments have real conviction about wanting to play in this space.

CHHABRA: Now I’d just add, look, I think this is—this is an important question. It’s very fair to ask, like, beyond leakage, how are we going to—leakage to China—how are we going to think about this set of issues? And we will have to have a conversation with countries around the world about how they plan to use these capabilities, right? And so, you know, if you’re talking about countries that have a really robust internal surveillance apparatus, then we have to think about how exactly will they use these capabilities to supercharge that kind of surveillance, and what will that look like? How will they use, you know, very advanced, you know, analytics that may enable them to do, you know, micro prediction, right, on particular individuals who live in the country or visitors who live in the country. They have access to all that data. That is something we have to look at, I think, as part of our broader policy for it to be sustainable.

But to your—to the earlier part of your question, I mean, I have enormous confidence that we will do what we need to do in this country to maintain our leadership because, you know, we got to this place, you know, without a lot, frankly, of, you know, focused government support, really, on—you know, we had enormous investments by some of our leading companies that brought us to this place where we have this lead right now. But we did it kind of without the focus on the hardware that’s necessary to do this. We did it without, actually, a lot of focus necessarily on the power infrastructure that’s going to be needed, which you asked about earlier. But now I think there’s conviction at the top, by the president himself, right, about the need to maintain and extend our leadership in this area. And among many of our allies as well, which are going to—which will absolutely be part of doing this together, and among democratic and likeminded countries, in particular.

BITAR: And, Ellen, if I can just add one thing. So in addition to the human rights concerns that you mentioned, and that Tarun mentioned, from my perch—so I’m also responsible for counterintelligence policy for the U.S. government. I think we also have to have an eye—again, not addressing a specific country here—but as this technology develops, as it is adopted worldwide, what are the counterintelligence implications for the U.S. government? What are the risks, not just on human rights grounds, but also in terms of the security and the counterintelligence risks to our personnel around the world? So that is something that I think we have to be very mindful of. And that’s sometimes an area where both human rights concerns and counterintelligence concerns can actually merge together, because we also want to make sure that we are protecting the U.S. government and our capabilities and our people in the process.

NAKASHIMA: Will that be in the unclassified portion of the NSM? No? (Laughter.) OK.

I want to get to questions from the audience, but could I—could I—I just wanted to get to one more piece here, which is important, and because you all have hinted at it. And it’s the dialog issues—dialog both with China as well as with allies and partners, right? So the Biden administration recently held a dialog with China on AI. Interestingly, your Chinese counterpart was the Foreign Ministry’s director general for North America. Not exactly the person who runs AI policy or even, like you, Tarun, knows AI issues well. So tell me, what, if any, meaningful progress did you make? Or was this dialog for the sake of dialog? Did you make any concessions regarding the U.S.’s use of AI? Did you seek any concessions from China? Kurt Campbell earlier mentioned—that he suggested that China had particular concerns with challenges posed by AI to nuclear command and control. Did that arise? Is that an area you agreed to focus on? Tell us a little more about that dialog.

CHHABRA: So, yeah, just on the issue you last raised, like, our position has been publicly clear for a very long time. We don’t think that autonomous systems should be getting near any decision to launch a nuclear weapon. That’s long-stated U.S. policy, I think, widely agreed by our allies around the world.

NAKASHIMA: Including China?

CHHABRA: Sorry? Not agreed by China to date. Not agreed by China to date. We think any country, all countries around the world should sign up to that. We think that makes a lot of sense to do. So, but with respect to the dialog itself, I think the view is that as these systems become more powerful, we should simply have a venue to talk about risks and safety. And this was the first, you know, instantiation of that dialog right now. I think—to start with, I think there—we have to kind of work through do we come to the table with similar views about where the capability is going and what risk and safety might look like in that context? And so, you know, hopefully this will—this is simply a channel that’s going to remain open. It’s not a venue for us in any way to negotiate our technology protection measures. Those are not up for negotiation. But it is a venue for us just to exchange views on risk and safety, and then to have a channel open if and when that, you know, becomes useful and needed.

NAKASHIMA: And then you’ve done work as well with the G-7, the Trade and Technology Council, with the EU, the summits in the U.K. and Seoul, and one upcoming in Paris. So what has come of all these efforts? And are you seeing allies buying into your approach at all?

CHHABRA: Yeah. Well, what you are seeing through some of the summits, in particular, is the leading companies developing and deploying this technology signing up to certain commitments, which is positive. Some of those may then become the basis for more formal regulation or legislation, not just the United States but in other countries. I think the other dimension of it is that you’re seeing now the safety institutes, for example, here, and the U.K., and other countries now using that as a venue to come together and figure out how can they coordinate, collaborate on developing and deploying evaluations and tests along the lines that we were talking about earlier. So I think that’s all very positive.

In addition, we’ve established—we have what we’re calling a contact group of around forty countries where we talk about general AI governance issues. And that’s also been a very useful informal mechanism to coordinate on a range of AI governance topics.

NAKASHIMA: OK. So let’s open it up to the audience. If you’d raise your hand and wait for the mic come your way. Yes, second row,

Q: Thank you. My name is Alice Zhang (sp). I am a China/Taiwan subject matter expert for in the Indo-Pacific Command.

And so I think what you discussed is very interesting. And my question is, we talked a lot about how to apply AI and specifically in defense. And a concern that I have is that with cultures—or, countries with deep culture and social influence, such as the Middle East or China, specifically on their language, how can we eliminate some of the risks of using AI and generating wrong or misleading results? And how do we mitigate that risk? Thank you.

NAKASHIMA: Do you want to take that?

BITAR: Sure. Yeah. So I think, you know, especially in the intelligence sphere, I think we’re very conscious about ensuring that any adoption will have to meet the rigorous analytic tradecraft requirements and standards that exist. And here, I think that’s kind of the value of experimentation on more advanced models over time will bear fruit, is understanding the extent to which there is—it is—it can be built into current tradecraft to ensure that the results are those that are—that are not misleading and that ultimately analysts, to the extent that they are using these tools, are not relying, or using it as a crutch, if you want, for the work that they’re doing. So we think there’s ultimately—kind of, there’s a balance here. There’s a tradeoff of how do we integrate, to the extent that it makes sense into the procedures we have now, to ensure that it can help rather than ultimately hurt, both in the analytic work that’s being done, but also for other activities. Including for cyber defense, for example.

NAKASHIMA: Yes.

Q: Hi. Munish Walther-Puri, former director of cyber risk for the city of New York. I also work on supply chain and critical infrastructure issues.

So my question is about supply chain. How do you think about the supply chain of artificial intelligence that is unique and different? Not data centers, not cloud computing, but things like data labeling or model optimization. Those are a new layer, new sets of companies. So how do you think about that from a counterintelligence perspective, foreign ownership, but also their cyber posture? And, related to that, opensource that’s used in machine learning. Those aren’t companies. Those are projects maintained by interested groups of people. So would be curious to hear how you are thinking about that. Thank you.

CHHABRA: Thanks for that question. So, look, I think some of this is not necessarily so different from the way that we, the Defense Department, or the intelligence community works with other vendors, right? So they are actively working with companies that do exactly this kind of work, as you know, I’m sure. And so kind of the—a lot of the policies and rules that apply in other contexts are going to apply here as well.

I think on the open source question, you know, I think there is—you know, we—I’ll give you an example. I mean, I think sometimes we’ll hear, you know, the United States is trying to lock things down, right? Not allow the world to benefit from, you know, all the tremendous potential, right, of these developments in AI. And, look, if you look around the world and see where and how open source is being exploited, it is largely American models, right, that are—that are operative around the world. And they’re being finetuned and used for all sorts of amazing things. And so in many ways, that is a good thing for the country, and for, you know, our likeminded countries as well.

I think that it’s our job as a government, obviously, to kind of think about the capabilities of any model, right, and what the risks are overall. But, you know, whether we’re talking about, you know, just open-source software—like Linux, right, so on and so forth—this shouldn’t be such a binary debate. I think we can recognize the advantages and the tremendous opportunities of open source, and then we can also think about what the risk might be at a certain level of capability. We just have to do both.

NAKASHIMA: And if you do determine there’s a certain risk, is there any thought given to ways in which you might either ask for voluntary commitments or regulate these open-source models?

CHHABRA: So the executive order already kind of does this through a notification requirement when you hit a certain compute threshold.

NAKASHIMA: Hmm, I see.

CHHABRA: I think we could all agree that a compute threshold isn’t, you know, necessarily the most straightforward way to evaluate risk. But we do that for now, while we’re also working through the Safety Institute to develop many more specific evaluations and tests. But this is just an ongoing conversation, not just in the executive branch but also on Capitol Hill as well.

NAKASHIMA: OK. Thank you.

Sir.

Q: Ken Wasserman. I’m an attorney.

To follow up on your discussions that you say you’ve had with China, if there was a mutual expression of will, might there be any area that China and the U.S. could cooperate within AI to their mutual benefit? And if so, what might those be?

CHHABRA: Look I think, this remains an open question, in part, because the first step is to try to come to some sort of common understanding about what the leading risks are, and how we would go about evaluating those risks as well. And that’s kind of the—this is an opening bid on that conversation right now. So, you know, there are a number of people here, actually, who participated in track two conversations with the PRC on AI issues for some time. And I think all of them could tell you, if you look at kind of some of the sampling of attitudes in those groups, we actually currently don’t have necessarily a lot of overlap on what the risks are right now. And so that alone, I think, would take us—take us one step forward, if we could come to some semblance of agreement.

NAKASHIMA: How would you characterize how China views the risks? What did they see as the AI risks, beyond nuclear command and control?

CHHABRA: Well, look, I don’t want to speak to kind of private diplomatic discussions, generally. I think sometimes there is kind of a message delivered to us, which is, you know, the West can afford to be worried about risk and safety, and we’ll just focus on deployment, right? And to us, that’s not a healthy or sustainable way to think about this. We also are focused on deployment and the applications of this technology for development around the world. And that’s happening right now. But we can also be worried about risk and safety and try to come to consensus with countries about that. And our view is we just have to do both.

NAKASHIMA: OK. Thank you. We have a question from our virtual audience.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Mikki Canton. Ms. Canton, please accept the unmute now prompt. Looks like we’re experiencing technical difficulties. We’ll go back to the room.

NAKASHIMA: OK. Yes, sir.

Q: Hi. My name is Ryan Bugas. Thank you so much.

Can you talk a little bit more about how you’re thinking about the incentive structure to build and maintain tech talent in the government, and how you’re thinking about approaching that going forward?

CHHABRA: OK, I’ll start. And, Maher, you should come in too.

So, look, there are a number of things going on. One is if you look at, you know, the new director at the National Science Foundation, right, that still doesn’t have the appropriations, right, that have been authorized, but they are—there actually is a kind of much more liberal pay structure, in part to try to attract more tech talent. But I’ll tell you, like, my experience from working with, you know, colleagues over the last few years—and this is not just on AI. If you look at the—to her credit, the secretary of commerce has been able to attract really great, incredible talent to the CHIPS office, right, from many sectors, right, to execute that program. You know, I think we see really high conviction for people who want to spend, maybe not their whole career, but some years in government on work that they think is really meaningful and important for the U.S. government and for, you know, for the—for the country.

And so I think that—actually, I’ll just speak personally here. You know, I think that the biggest draw for many people who want to work on this is, is there a critical mass of people who get it? Who want to work on this issue and have high conviction about it? And if there is, there are all kinds of ways to make that work. Now, over the long term, obviously, we need to have a steady pipeline, right? And we’re doing that through, I think, more fellowships in the government now. Think there’s much more active recruiting efforts. Some of you maybe participated in the AI Expo that happened downtown a couple of months ago, which was a great recruiting opportunity, actually, for a lot of departments and agencies as well. But also creating a pipeline from places inside the government that have a lot of Tech talent already, like some of our research labs and military services or in the national labs administered by DOE, into policy roles as well.

BITAR: And I would just say, many of the challenges of bottlenecks that exist in other areas also apply here. So the speed with which someone can get a security clearance, for example. The ability to get hired by particular agencies, especially in the IC, can take a long time. Not just because of the security clearance, but for other reasons. Pay, obviously, is an issue. All those—we’re very conscious of all those issues. But I also think there is an excitement to work on AI policy that I think is also kind of attracting. The question is, how do you ensure that that is—that becomes an actual pipeline, it’s sustainable, and it’s for the long haul? And I think those are—those are going to be things that we’re going to start trying to tackle in the NSM. But it’s going to be something that’s going to take—it’s going to require a combination of, ultimately, I think, policy as well as statutory help over time.

NAKASHIMA: Mmm hmm. Way in the back there. Yeah.

Q: Thank you. Trevor Hunnicutt, Reuters.

Does the White House have a view on this proposed bill that would make it easier to impose export controls on AI models? Thank you.

CHHABRA: So I think I’m aware of the bill that you’re talking about. I think that’s a bill that we have provided technical assistance on, and we’re still continuing to work with some of the—some of the drafters on it. I think we understand the—I think the—what’s driving it right now. I think it speaks to the earlier conversation we were having, which is we need to look at the capabilities of any model, right—whether—it doesn’t matter whether it’s an open-source or proprietary model—and that should be tagged to kind of what are the specific risks that we are—we are worried about. But I think—I think that—as we understand it, that bill is really focused on providing authorities right now. But it’s one that we’re in ongoing discussion about with folks on the Hill.

NAKASHIMA: OK. I think we’re about out of time. Oh, do we have time for one more? No? OK. She’s giving me sign. (Laughter.) All right. Well, I just wanted to thank everyone here for your attention and your great questions. Thank you, Tarun. Thank you, Maher. And thanks to the Council on Foreign Relations so much. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.