Transcripts For CSPAN Reps. 20240704

[applause] good evening. Its wonderful to see everyone here. Thank you for bracing what could be a snowstorm that would keep you trapped here for the next few days. For what i know will be an important discussion and i appreciate everyones flexibility with the time so we can make sure our members of congress get back to washington in time for their votes tomorrow. I am relieved that youve been introduced because you are both princeton grads serving your fourth term of congress for the eighth district of your state and i was worried that i might mix up the states and i know that what put me in your books almost as much as if id your support team so im glad that he didnt do that. We are here to have a conversation tonight about the china challenge and americas future. This is a very important conversation and im thrilled to be here with my friend and colleague and former director of development graham allison. Its a highstakes conversation because as we all know gathered here that this is the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world. There may be disagreements about how to handle the relationship but at its core a think theres a general agreement that the objective is to ensure that a war between the United States and china is avoided. We are now almost into 80 years of a period with no great power conflict and the real challenge goes forward for the next decade or longer is how to preserve that piece. And so the special committee that these two congressmen have been working on and are in charge of has been cast with trying to come up with bipartisan policy initiatives to try to achieve that objective. I will give them the opportunity to really flesh out the purpose of the commission for the committee in just a moment or two. Id like to say graham and i have had the opportunities to spend part of the day with both of them and they are both distinguished in this space. Chairman gallagher and the Ranking Committee member Raja Krishnamoorthi are approaching this with a kind of deliberations and thoughtfulness that you would really want your leaders to approach such a serious problem with. And they are doing it in a genuinely bipartisan manner which is something we all know is not as common as we would like it to be today. I really commend the approach that they have taken in the way they have generally Work Together despite having many differences, to try to address these really tough and challenging problems. What i thought i would do, graham and i have agreed that we will kind of go back and forth and ask a few questions before opening it up to our audience or the like to start with german chairman gallagher tell our audience a little more actually both of you welcome to hear your thoughts a little bit more about the special committee and its objective and where you are on the timeline. Thank you so much for having me and thank you be for being flexible with the timing. Will have significant votes that are going to happen tomorrow impeachment part two. You may have heard a little bit about that last week. We have had a phenomenal day here in just a collection of experts that you have here in the ecosystem thats incredible and for someone who 10 years ago aspired to be an academic and was with allisons work in my literature review surrounded by people whose work ive long admired so thank you for that. Theres a statutory language that describes aware supposed to do. Ill tell you my interpretation of it. I have sort of operated under the nonpermission rule over the last few years and the speaker of the house keeps changing so theres no one to really do oversight of me. We can have two core functions. One is in the communication function trying to explain to our colleagues in the American People why any of this matters because theres no cost free strategy that leads us to the terror war in the near term and winning the war. Well have two convince the American People to do things that are hard and difficult and cost money unless you explain why you should be concerned about property theft or identifying xinjiang or develop the power of the Taiwan Strait is that constant communication of why this matters and its a core part of what we do and its why we try to do a lot of Creative Things that a normal committee doesnt do like rally outside of the are going to iowa to look at homeland purchases and things like that but the second thing is to access the full vote of the speaker and the minority leader and act as their policy incubator and accelerator on chinas matters. We are tasked with coming up with a set of policy recommendations that we have submitted to the committee for jurisdiction to have legislative jurisdiction and we fulfill that motion and put out three major reports by the end of last year and now we are focusing our efforts on turning those ideas into legislative reality and taking the 150 recommendations we have whittling them down to the 20 most essential and figuring out no kidding even in divided Congress Republicans and democrats these are the things we can get done. I would add to raaches expertise has been phenomenal. And working on to these things now i chaired the Land Commission with andy king and that was just phenomenal and andy is a Great American who became a great friend and have the opportunity to work with someone across the aisle so thank you for your expertise that work comes in is on the investigation. We have investigative oversight power in a bid where we cant pass a law we found our investigation which is uncomfortable for sometimes for people investigating can change behavior of wall street and other areas. Those are the things we have done on the committee and its been incredibly rewarding. Would you like to add anything to that . Sure. I echo mics sentiment. Its bipartisan, man. Its all good, its all good. The funniest meeting, one of the funniest meetings we have had is the first meeting where we met then Speaker Mccarthys Conference Room in his Conference Room is ginormous like the size of this room. He sat at the end of the table and a number of the Committee Sat around the table and very interestingly to his left that hakeem jeffries. They made it a point to address us jointly as a committee and basically what Speaker Mccarthy said was look, this is so important i wanted hakeem to sit next to me and address you together and save we have got to get this right and we need to speak with one voice despite all the other divisions that exist in this congress. Then he said you know if you want to get this thing done this as a committee. If you want to do politics ive got other committees for that. So that really sunk in on day one. It set the tone and he selected people for the committee by the way, who i have the say are some of the real talents of congress very serious people who have intellectual curiosity and are willing to we arent really even divided on partisan lines. Sometimes we are divided based on people being you know more sensitive to the concerns of one part of the country or another. So that really makes for interesting discussions. I would just say that initial selection of the membership along with a Mission Statement of the Committee Really set the tone and under mics leadership in mine we have managed to implement something that i think is perhaps a model for other committees as well. Im going to turn to graham to ask a question. We all know graham has been a keen observer of china and its trajectory and i have no doubt he has tough questions. Let me start with one from a conversation at lunch where experts from harvard and m. I. T. And others a very enlightening discussion one of the things i thought that was the most striking was that you raise some questions that you said you didnt know the answer to but you were very interested in trying to engage the academy and students and others to think of those questions. This is like manna from heaven for people at the university. It would be interesting for the audience if you could think of two or three questions and if somebody wrote a good memo that could include a little bit longer paper, and a list of ones that i mentioned whichever you want. One is on deterrence and if the objective is to deter world war iii what are the instruments of American Power that could be mobilized in that area and how we delineate a particular the economics which mike you mentioned. Another question you raised that you said you are interested in trying to get people to offer some answers to, wheres this going . What is the 20 or 30year vision . I think he said containment, can stream it, whatever. What is the longerrun . My goodness you are the select committee and youre supposed to know the answers to that of your questions which people in the university have been wrestling with, give us the questions then maybe we will stir ourselves and provide an answer. Steak you mentioned it to and i hope we can now that we have filled the shortterm demand of the Committee Use this next year is a Committee Work to look at the longer term congressman. This is why we are hearing from experts to figure out the longer Term Investments can make to put us in the better position to defend ourselves. It strikes me that we have consensus on the nearterm goal and megan you mentioned which is deter the division of taiwan or something that would ignite a conflict. We could argue that the best way to do that in the subsidiary question about due economic instruments deterred or where they fit in the overall deterrence paradigm . One thing we discovered when we did a variety of four games is even as we maintained ambiguity with respect to taiwan whether we would withdraw it might make sense to have clarity on the nature of our economic response. When we want to work out the economic and financial ladder prior to things going boom because we have the a wealth of conventional military outside and the economic and financial side. Thats like 20 questions in there. On just a longterm goal that i hope we can examine in this work i dont think theres any consensus on that. Theres some on the super hawkish side that would argue for regime change or would point to the inherent brittleness of our regime and one day it would implode of its own weight. Do we have enough insight into the internal by nanette dynamics that if xi jinping were to leave tomorrow or the party were to collapse which is not going to, that would be less chaotic and better for world stability and do we want to containment paradigm. Our mutual friend has talked talked about constrained when he testified before the committee or is there some that would suggest by reengaging with the party we could eventually returned to her responsible stakeholder leadership . I dont know thats a lot of work that we had to continue to do and hopefully raja can answer that question ill just put my name on it and take credit for it. By asking some critics of the u. S. Approach say its trying to weaken china and you are trying to destroy china. What would you say to that . Are we trying to weaken china and is at the objective for some more more about changing behavior he described in recognizing as you said there has been a lot of debate about the longterm end state but what is the objective . I havent heard a Single Person talking about herding or harming china or doing anything that would stun their we cant get into the mind of xi jinping although xi jinping we believe based on his writings and speeches which we have become very familiar with is an ideologue. Hes someone unlike anybody we have seen in the modern era and as you know his hero is mao tsetung. He wants to be a mao. The question that i am constantly asking is will he change course . And what would it take to change his course . What are the combination of carrots and sticks that might alter the course of going to the economic aggression from technological aggression do Something Different, going for military aggression to Something Different . And so i think conducting highlevel diplomacy is essential. I think doing what we have talked about in Corporate International Defense Authorization act which is policy to increase deterrence is essential. However we have the hedge our bets. What i mean by that is you know if someday, if someday there is a way that xi jinping decides he is going to move or aggressively than he is right now how will we handle that . And what would we do and how would we work with our allies and partners to deal with that . Thats the big question. Its like over the best and prepare for the worst. And i had really quickly rethink our strategy fundamentally is we are trying to defend the status quo from authoritarian aggression and we are trying to reduce or eliminate the worst in xinjiang. We are talking about some offensive strategy. I dont think ive heard too many things about a regime change. Certainly in the territorial acquisition. We are trying to preserve the status quo in them my party we are having a debate about the nature for engagement and commitment. A lot of that is a legacy of the iraq war of nationbuilding and democratization as far as strategy. When it comes to taiwan theres something fundamentally different about helping an existing enforcing democracy with societies in the world defending itself from authoritarian aggression. I dont think thats fundamentally aggressive strategy. Even where i am promoting us pushing back in some area i view it as we are waking up and defending ourselves from the Economic Warfare or the ideological offenses they are launching under social media platforms which by the way arent allowed inside of china. Its just waking up and defending ourselves and pushing back. I dont view it as Something Like you know we are trying to hurt china per se. I think the Chinese People are often hurt by the regime and look the other way towards interactions. Turning it back to graham its not about weakening china about changing behavior. I presume youre making a distinction between changing behavior and changing xi jinpings worldviews but what about the balance of changing domestic behavior versus International Behavior . This is one of the things that emerge from the lessons from iraq and afghanistan and the challenge of making societies but you might say ive heard most of you talk about the uyghurs and the genocide happening against the uyghurs so we could share on that. Thank you. Its a great point megan and with regard to the uyghurs just so Everybody Knows in this room whats going on there 23 million uyghurs and xinjiang province which is the Northwest Province of china. Theres an act of genocide happening meaning they are trying to erase the identity of 23 million people. 70,000 women have been sterilized, forcibly sterilized, hundreds of thousands of children forcibly separated from their parents. In two to 3 million in concentration camps as we speak tonight. That is to me something that we cannot look away from and so while generally i dont think we should be meddling were trying to reshape the internal affairs of Different Countries, i think in this instance when you have the genocide with regard to the weaker people were cultural genocide with tibetans or oppression of the hong kong people we have to speak up. Our tool for that however is the weaker force labor prevention act with regards to trying to deal with the genocide in xinjiang. Its very, its not very well enforced and thats the big problem. One of the things we found out in the course of their proceedings is something we have two say we are serious about dealing with this. Otherwise with other domestic fares i dont think we have gotten into that. Obviously we can talk about that further. Certainly its an issue that xi jinping is very concerned about especially economically. Maybe thats something we should be keeping in mind with regard to our own relationships and how we handle them right now. We are more concerned i think with regard to our relationship with the cbp and their treatment of our partners and allies in the region. Thank you. Theres so many questions here. We are slightly disagreeing here. Nobody can read xi jinpings mind. Its something we know a lot about. Its not somebody from outer space. He knows a lot of people who a lot of americans know and if you asked him he says. Exclusively listen to what he says is you have been. He wants to make china great again. That was a statement he made before trump did. He has a strategy for doing that. They say we are going to be the most important trading partner and build a military thats able to fight and win from his point of view to defend our own position which includes taiwan is one of the provinces. I read what he says and it looks to me like thats what hes doing. He seems quite understandable and again i suspect its harder to the right it harder to the left, i think if i were the chinese i would sign up for that. Two times as many people and they are hardworking and smart. They would had twice the gdp and if they had placed the gdp theyd have twice the intelligence operations in the technology and if they have that why would they be interested in having a navy as the arbiter in the South China Sea and the East China Sea . It looks to me like a pattern. As you know its one ive seen forever. From our point of view we believe right believe very strongly the International Order that the u. S. Created after world war ii and his megan mentioned to start with has given seven or eight years without as a great war. Its absolutely fantastic for americans. But even more so for chinese. And for japanese and taiwanese and basically in order in which we have seen increases in peoples wellbeing. We are not about to walk away from that and in the pacific i would say it will be very difficult. I cannot imagine explaining to xi jinping where he should not aspire for china to be and i can imagine explaining to me as an american america being number one is not the best of the two options and i would say recognizing he says one thing at a peck and another to the party and so say another thing to the domestic audience. Do you think its too much of the stress to say what he and both putin and sit together and its a once in a Generation Opportunity to destroy the u. S. Do you think thats too much of a stretch . I think he wants to shift come hed like to have an International Order in which china is essential to that order as we would like to have an americanled order in which we are central to that. In that sense if i took to be the best worlds china and xi watch our i get them back and forth interviews with him and xi jinping is serious with his colleagues about displacing the u. S. As the predominant power in asia and the foreseeable future. And he had a way of that he would look at you if youd ask them a question kind of smile. Of course, why not . How could they not aspire to that . And i had a colloquy . This is really fascinating except that i think xi jinping cares about those things but the most important thing that he cares about a xi jinping. He needs to be atop the ccp and the ccp needs to be central, needs to be in charge of china. So if we talk about primacy of china and Indo Pacific Region being one of those goals if it comes into direct conflict potentially play a xi jinping being the number one paramount leader i know which one will win out. We have to create the situation where the cost benefit for him as such that he recognizes he cant have both and he should probably opt for one. That would be the one that is the peace. 100 . Number one the communist party needs to be a vanguard leading the country and third how do i achieve that . Or objective is to create a ability to achieve that is consistent with ours. I think everybody agrees even the people the regional vision is one in which they are the suns and everything orbits around them whereas we would like to see a situation which in jupiter is very big but not the center of gravity. Im increasingly persuaded that thats not only the regional vision of the Global Vision where they want to displace us as the dominant superpower and therefore persuade them that those of us who want to defend the existing order and those in the ccp who want to disrupt if not to destroy that order that these two worldviews to use a canon phrase there can be no mode of the venue between the two so we can embrace a competitive highstakes dynamic and compete aggressively or let me put it even more provocatively. Actually wage cold wars with the creativity and alacrity with which we race against assad soviet union recognizing there are much worse things than a cold war. Theres a hot war and there is surrender so those two things would be and i dont know if that makes sense. Can i jump in . Of course. Mike you and have an olympus partnership. [laughter] lets jeff that very clear. However we dont want a cold war. We dont want a hot war and we dont want conflict of any kind and i dont think the American People want this. As you see this in a way that my constituents react on this issue, and we have looked at the polling on this and ill share this very briefly. Recently a poll was taken of all americans all parties and it showed Something Like better than 50 of americans believe that there is going to be a better than 50 50 chance of war in the next 10 years between the u. S. And china. They view china as one of the top strategic threats, the biggest competitors etc. But then in that same poll 75 of americans, and this is across democrats republicans and independents also to avoid war. He might be wondering who that 25 is 75 is avoid war and i think what they are saying is look, instead of preparing for conflict to to mitigate conflict and i think the language that we use to describe their relationship and that we use to describe how we should have a conversation is important and in that poll they said help us in our every day lives. Reduce fentanyl, do everything you can to reduce economic aggression and economic dumping of business as the operation and then do everything it can to stop the cyberhacking and intellectual property theft. Thats what they said. We obviously have to work on during conflicts but i think if we adopt the cold war mentality im concerned we are going to trip into something else. Am going to resist the urge but it seems like an opportune moment to do that. If you want peace prepare for war if you want were waged a cold war. Id like to go back. We are agreeing we need to dissuade the capitulations of xi jinping or the Chinese Communist party. Lets talk about the tools that we have to do that and what you think of when you look at the tools that you can make recommendations on that you are suggesting to plan. We have sanctions and export patrol and diplomacy. The tool is not a strategy but a strategy is a confluence of different tools. In my mind the thing that might matter the most is affecting the behavior of the Chinese Communist party. Its their perception of americas strength. When you think about your recommendations how much are you focused on affecting america towards china or towards our allies in china and how much are we focused on american competitiveness at home . What is your perception of the tools . I think the bias i brought into the debate i do think while deterrence is highly overdetermined the most important variable is the specific balance of hard power and capability. The thing that xi jinping is paying the most attention to it i could be wrong, but a lease that was true in the previous three countries were talking about earlier. The things we must absolutely do are things like rebuild their Munitions Industrial base and make sure there is a robust set of longrange ship missiles and theater and military takeover of taiwan is so unpalatable that he would try. And he would likely fail in that effort but in doing the committees work again. Much greater respect for economic and technological and ideological aspects. I believe they are much more complex and maybe thats just me because im a military guy. The fundamental dilemma is we are in the elon musk phrase we are conjoined twins with china economically. So hard to disentangle thats what makes us different than our competition with the soviet union through big enough to complicate diversification are decoupling because her economy didnt interact where now every lever we poll had four or five boomerang fx on us. And ill stop here. My only take away frum that is as painful as figuring that out is and where we need to onshore nearshore french or the sooner we do it the less painful it is. The problem does not age well. There are areas where we will have to spend some money or create a sticks and carrots to reduce the course of leverage that needs to be had for active pharmaceutical ingredients. On that front we have to improve our competitiveness at home. I urge everybody to take a look at our economic report. Its painstakingly negotiated and its almost every word in our staff and i see our staff chuckling in the audience right now. It really was but that was the only way we could get 24 members to sign on to this particular report. Part of the report that i like to talk about is the third part. Its called the report is called reset, prevent and build. I like the build part because we talk about fixing our immigration system right now which is driving away the talent that we need to prepare for any competition that was with just the ccp. Anyone in the world and another issues upgrading the skills of our workforce especially skillsbased Vocational Education for technology the future and no mention of third which is invested in basic science and investing in every thing in between the type of stuff we saw with ginkgo fireworks was able to capitalize on her in a number of Tech Companies that taking basic Government Research applying it and commercializing it. Chris. Im going to take you to more concrete between cold war and surrender cold war is a better option than i think we can do better than that. The army always has sayings of sort for explaining the inexplicable and one of them they say is the say do gap. The say do gap is the course we say this. There seems to be a gap about what we do. You all have the committee hammering on taiwan and we would call it an immediate vulnerability. Its a message that is not generally agreed to in most of the rest of the space and in particular if a look at what we do is compare to what we say the fantastic. I think it would require dna transplant. What are we doing to arm taiwan, i remember what we say but not someone to doubt what we do. Let me give a specific example. The vice chair who i think has done the best that the most important thing to be done if you were trying to make taiwan somewhat more defensible against an attack would be to have shore to ship missiles like harpoons. Now i do care and i say how were we doing it . We announced a major harpoons deal with taiwan in 2020. We renounce to begin in 2023. Most people have forgotten with no delivery date. We press for that delivery date and we said how about 2029 . Some of the harpoon deals go back to 2016 the backlog is near 20 million. Its been approved but not delivered to taiwan. So if you understand how thats possible part of it is congress fall. And the executive branch because jurisdiction over foreign militaries is split where the Foreign Affairs committee has primary designation. It creates a natural lack of accountability and oversight and within the administration the state department has a great deal of authority and thats often disconnected from what the military wants to do. Its a huge failure of policy and we are talking earlier today both for that and for maximizing production of critical munitions harpooned, all these things we know we need in the pacific. The only thing thats going to make that happen and i hate to admit this is the legislature his view is that article i should be the most powerful branch of government and thats what the framers intended. The executive branch has grown more powerful now. The only thing thats going to make that happen are to convince the pentagon bureaucracy to change the way we do business is for the secretary of defense empowered by the president to wake up every single day going to war with his bureaucracy. Senator gaetz has talked to our committee two weeks ago and if you read his memoir and look at the amarah chapter thats a lesson that comes about that. There are areas and i can see the point where we could do things and if we could do it in two years if we had, if we actually believe their rhetoric. If we thought world war iii was on the horizon we would be moving heaven and earth to prevent that. Thats the challenge. We are good at Crisis Response because we activate thousands of free thinking people we cant move to prevent the crisis in the first place. If you read the quorum where he talks about this being a thin endurance of weakness of a free dictatorship. Trying to figure out and listening to the conversation about china and Climate Change which is the same problem when it comes to Climate Change for that like to turn to our audience. I encourage people to stand up and you can lineup. We have four microphones in different places. I see the great david gergen back there. He is the great david gergen. David has had incredible role in helping people move into Public Service particularly helping veterans move into Public Service overly grateful to david for that. I think everyone here knows the rules. Please introduce yourself and please ask a question. We need to have a relatively short time and i want to get as much as we can into the short period. Good afternoon. Congressman gallagher and congressman krishnamoorthi thank you for the great work you are doing. My name is Maximus Medici effect like to know the different tools we can use to improve our relationship with china. How do you see a culture change as a way to increase the trust and build opportunities for diplomacy in the region . Thank you very much. First seriously i think i want to talk about that but i want to also say one thing that her committee did at the very outset that was important that i would like to see happen more and more with other officials which is we have two avoid xenophobia. We had to avoid antiasian hate. We had to avoid a tree and of all kinds towards Chinese People and unfortunately thats affecting the rhetoric of way too many people not only in washington d. C. Around the country and i want to salute mike and the republicans on this committee for keeping that under the dialogue. Thats one way to sync the relationship. I think to improve the relationship more and more on the peopletopeople basis we have two avoid that type of talk. Secondly we had to build those peopletopeople ties that really helped cement relationships and did so in the past. For instance we talked today about reinstituting the fulbright scholarship with china. Donald trumpeted the fulbright scholarship. Doesnt make any sense. We need our people to be able to go to china and learn about the country and to be able to bring back what they learn here and in the process form those ties that bind over time. The last thing i would say on that is we need to also foster the peopletopeople relationships between our own diaspra here and over there. I would like to see more flights instituted between places you know chicago where i represent used to to have at least two daily flights a day to china before the pandemic and now its once every few days, theres a daily flight to hong kong from chicago. Just Little Things like that are really important for improving the peopletopeople and cultural exchanges and also the business ties as well. All the small businesspeople who are going back and forth. Things like that would make a difference. And a direct flight from Green Bay Wisconsin to washington d. C. It wont shock you to learn im slightly more skeptical to learn that such exchanges will behave the improvement of the regime. I will say this to win this competition will have a coherent strategy at all we need deep regional expertise. We are very bad at cultivating that in the military and even in the Intelligence Community in part because we should be adopting the military model where people move from climate to climate every two years. Hard to hover over a target. Use language and cultural expertise. We did that in the cold war quite well so id encourage all of you who are interested in politics to really go deep on the area. I looked at this problem when i was trying to be a modernday lawrence of arabia and my initial instinct was to be a journalist but i focused on the small part of the region. I think it paid dividends in my career and the think Pink Community of d. C. Theres a dearth of indonesia experts philippine experts and thats the generation of policy officials would need to to cultivate them part of that as travel and living in the region for long periods of time if that makes sense. Please up in the balcony. Im cal hutchins midcareer 1996 an interesting thing you said about the region but i the last 10 years of my Family Living in singapore and there was a palpable feeling that the u. S. Wasnt there anymore especially as china felt like it was everywhere. All Different Countries permits is business standpoint in into Public Policy and diplomacy standpoint. While sitting there during a pandemic i read these two books backtoback, ship war and the next world war 2034 by the nato commander and they scare me to death. You say we should move our supply chains to places that are friendly. Theres no other place to make computer chips in the world besides taiwan. So could you doubleclick on ai and chips and the fact theres nothing we can do about the chip making capabilities of tai wanted how important it is to our society and our economy . In the gush is going to say i didnt know there were all those people out there. Its like the roman amphitheater. Im going to plug the chips act. It was a big, big deal. Basically its no bringing a lot of that chip production onshore in different places although taiwan will always remain at the epicenter especially highly advanced chips and chip making but we need to do more to bring that here. Interestingly by the way one of the biggest impediments of that happening in the United States is talent. Just the other day we have colleagues who represent arizona and one of my colleagues was telling me tsmc is investing 32 billion in arizona to stand up this humongous chip making plant along with an ecosystem that they cant find people. They cant find the talent to populate these plans. So now they are bringing people from taiwan over here right now to kind of help to stand up these operations and that goes to what is necessary to have that indigenous chip making you are absolutely right. Taiwan is going to remain a very important source for the worlds advanced chips and legacy chips. We had to do we can onshore a lot of that and maybe mike will touch on this, our export controls have to be enforced with regards to the highest Semiconductor Technology falling into the hands of the ccp thats going to be used in ways that could harm our National Security work to perpetrate human right abuses. A lot of our Technology Goes into the ai models. Im sorry into their computing that empowers their ai models for surveillance purposes. To target uyghurs tibetans and others but thats why the biden and mr. Schneiders done a great job but they need to do more and we are working on that. Three quick points. Even the most optimistic version of the chips act implementation to your point we will still be dependent on chips and chip production. Its the single most important thing we could do is to build a bigger navy and antennae we are on allied Rocket Forces so taiwan isnt subsumed by china. The other thing that you mention about ai i actually have a huge opportunity to look at the agreement with the obvious and the brits. Pillar ii was all about collaboration in critical technological areas ai and hypersonics and the other three areas. A huge opportunity and thats the beating heart of the free world. They are two closest allies. We have outdated barriers to collaboration in the form of regulation International Arms regulation. We should totally modernize that regime and start thinking about hours has an integrated technological Industrial Base and stand the concentric circle to other countries that have those critical capabilities. This is the third hypothesis that would have in mind. As we seek to selectively decouple or derisk from china the only way that works is if you simultaneously increase your economic and technological partnerships with other parts of the world and including countries that dont uniquely fit into the free world like vietnam. The communist country that we have interest in getting along very well with when it comes to china. Countries like that. Fantastic. To the other balcony please. My name is michael farmer and im a student. Thank you for both congressmen all the work youve done. My question is knowing what you guys know about the Chinese Communist party and the chinese economy giving it struggles that you think its more likely the cpc will back off on the International Stage or lash out further . I joked earlier my impression 10 years ago was to become professor but the politics was too intense and i couldnt take it. Its somewhat irresponsible for the president or members of the administration to say oh because china has economic problems the optics could just as well be true. The opposite could be just as well true but we have a tendency to grasp our own western sensibilities with regimes that look nothing like us. Something thats from her perspective or calculating the economic utility is a move makes perfect sense because your primary goal is regime survival by the wave the last time we did fight on the battlefield the regimes are far less sensitive to casualties than we are. Even scholars who are far less to give xi zhang peng the choice of you can have taiwan but it will cost your entire maybe they would take that choice. We have constituents that we have the answer to. We have sons and daughters. Heres what i think. I think there are massive economic problems internally. The Consumer Confidence is low. We are experiencing deflation as we speak. We know the major economy has seen this in a long time and the other thing that jumps out at me every time i hear it as a youth Unemployment Rate which is 22 or 23 they stopped publishing it it was so high. If you think about a country where theres a onechild policy of parents and for grandparents have invested all their hopes dreams and aspirations and resources into one child and that child graduates from college and doesnt have a job, are you kidding me . How many people are mad at this point at that the regime. I think xi jinping is focused right now on how do i try to fix this situation as i think it is in my mind one of those little seedlings of potential regime problems. So thats why hes going to San Francisco and sending this minister in that minister and all these different people who need us to calm investors needs both inside and outside of china. I think hes also trying to prevent the number one export to china last year were high network individuals. They are fleeing the country and taking off for places like singapore. All that being said i still think we have to hedge our bets against the scenario that mike is talking about but he could lash out and he could say it i dont nod to fix this thing. We are going to go for it. We are going to play the nationalism card and im going to get over my insecurities about my own pla which he claims has the peacetime disease. He repeatedly says that the pla has peacetime disease but they havent fought since 1979 against him so they dont know how they will perform in a combat scenario. So we have to hedge against that but i still think we have to give them a chance and encourage him to say you really dont want to go to war. You really dont want to move on taiwan because that will hurt you internally more than help you. We only have just a couple of minutes and i know its important to remain on time particularly tonight. I think we are all deeply appreciative of the Public Service that both of you are engaged in and are doing and i cant help but and with my own question to chairman gallagher. We come over the weekend, a flurry of text in emails among one another noting but had announced he wouldnt be running for reelection come this fall. I thought you reference it several times today so i feel like you are inviting the questions. It has not been told across the table. Is there anything youd like to share with us or any reflection youd like to make about your time in congress . I know you will continue to serve in many ways but you were in the marines and in congress so i would imagine your next chapter will have some element of service and is there anything youd like to close with before we initially x. Its no longer relevant. You have got a lot of work to do before you go. Thats right, thats right. I actually do think thats the reason, the reality is the closer i got to it the harder it became harder to actually get to the line because you do start to feel like oh man i have this position and what will life be like and this reference is totally outdated but in the super mind movie he gives up his powers and gets beaten up in the bar but i sincerely believe in the model of citizen legislator and i think thats what the framers had in mind that ive always had in mind 12 years and going back to Something Different. Quite honestly when i came and i was single and i got married and have two little kids but its a family that is to reflect on the last eight years beyond the legislative accomplishments what im going to take away are the friendships that i built. I mentioned david and those people that have helped me. When you first one and you dont know policy and people come to help you its an amazing thing and ive developed all these genuine relationships with raja and thats fantastic that the only thing, ive come away from eight years, i think its because i have written a lot. It is a very hard into this day i do the exact same thing. Thats the only way im able to think through issues is by challenging lower myself to put on the page. Quickly it will pay dividends no matter what Regional Focus you have or, if you want to be a technical expert. Its an increasingly rare skill on the twitter age that can communicate their thoughts and written and spoken form. Maybe thats not exactly where youre going with that question i think that made a big difference for me and my ability to impact. I try to write electric but that is fantastic. Its very consistent with what we tell our students what we try to work with them on. Im real proud of them to for. I think the reason we get along as we both have a sense of humor. If you take yourself too seriously are going to fail. Take the mission but not yourself too seriously. Ive had mentors that were great at that. John mccain was a hilarious guy leave on an optimistic note given we are talking about world war iii and allison wrote a book about war are destined for war. I will just remind you the late john mccain said when as a fresh member of congress he said dont worry, mike, its always darkest before gets pitch black. Fantastic britt on that note what will it take if you become a packers fan i will run for reelection. Nonnegotiable. [laughter] i am reminded of an article in the headlines i lived in my Office Representative gallagher. Maybe accommodations could be one thing. Let me just conclude by saying represented Christian Murphy and representative gallagher for this time with us. But more importantly for what you do and also how you do it. A great model for all of us we are really proud to host you here today. And looking forward to the good works you are doing. I also like to thank of course my dear friends allison were always knowing how to stoke the flames. And thank you all