Transcripts For CSPAN2 Reps. 20240704

Krishnamoorthi, the select committee on u. S. China competition talk about the relationship with china at an event hosted by harvards institute of politics. [applause] good evening. Its wonderful to see everyone here. Thank you for braving what could be a snowstorm that will keep you trapped in chaos for the next two days. For i know what will be an important discussion. I appreciate everybodys flexibility with the time so we can make sure that our members of congress get back to washington in time for their votes tomorrow. So, im relieved that youve already been introduced because youre both princeton grads serving our fourth term of congress for the 8th district of your state and im worried i might mixup the states and i know that would put me in both of your bad books almost as much as i messed up your sports teams, im glad i didnt do that. Were here tonight to talk about the china challenge and americas future and this is a very important conversation and im thrilled to be here with my friends and colleague and former director, graham allison. Its a highstakes conversation we know gathered here this is the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world and there may be disagreements how to handle the relationship, at its core, theres an agreement that the objective is ensure that a war between the United States and china is avoided. Were now almost into 80 years of a period with no great power conflict and the real challenge Going Forward for the next decade or longer is how to preserve that peace. And so the special committee that these two congressmen have been working on and are in charge of has been tasked 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, or the committee in just a moment or two. But id like to say, graham and i have had the opportunity to spend part of the day with both of them. Theyre both very distinguished thought leaders in this space. Chairman gallagher and the Ranking Committee member, Raja Krishnamoorthi and they are approaching this with the kind of deliberation and thoughtfulness that you would really want your leaders to approach such a serious problem with and theyre 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. And so, i really commend the approach that theyve taken, the way they have genuinely worked together in spite of having many differences, to try to address these tough and challenging problems. So what i thought i would do, graham and i would agree that we would kind of go back and forth and ask a few questions before opening it to our audiences, but id like to start maybe just, chairman gallagher, to ask you to just tell our audience a little bit more, actually both of you, welcome to hear your thoughts, a little bit more about your special committee and its objective and you know, where you are on the timeline of your report. Well, thank you so much for having me and flexible with the timing. We cannot get stuck in boston tomorrow. There are significant votes that are going to happen tomorrow, impeachment part two, may have heard a little about that last week. So missing that would not be a good idea, but weve had a phenomenal day hear and the collection of experts here in the eco system is incredible and for someone mo 10 years ago aspired to be an academic and sort of incorporating dr. Allisons literature in my work, is something that ive admired and thank you for your leadership, meghan. Theres a statutory language that describes what were supposed to do thats somewhat boring and ill tell you my interpretation of it and ive acted like ask forgiveness not permission rule the last year and the good news is since the House Speaker keeps changing theres no one to do oversight. Weve had two functions, one is communication function, explaining to our colleagues and the American People why this matters. Theres no costfree strategy that leads us to deterring the war in the near term and in the longterm, convincing americans that are hard and difficult and cost money and explain why you should be concerned about cpp or genocide or balance of power and cons standpoint communication why this matters is a core part of what we do, why we try to a lot of create things, like rally outside of an illegal ccp station, and farmland and the second thing is to act for both the speaker and the minority leader, to kind of act as their policy incubator and accelerator on china matters, right . We were tasked by law with coming up with a set of policy recommendations in various areas that we then submit to the committees of jurisdiction, who actually have legislative jurisdiction, we fulfilled that function and put out three major reports by the end of last year, and now, were going to were focusing our efforts on turning all of those ideas into legislative reality, kind of taking the 150 recommendations we have, winnowing them down into the 20 most essential and figuring out, no kidding, even in a divided congress where republicans and dont dont agree on much, these are the things that get done. And the reason thats important, this is where the expertise has been phenomenal and i couldnt ask for a better Ranking Member to work with. Id like to step back and think of the end of my congressional career working on two of these things now. Ive chaired the Cyber Awareness committee with angus king, and that was phenomenal and angus, weve truly become friend and thank you, raja for your partnership. And his work is in on the investigative side. Subpoena power and where we couldnt make a law, but where were investigating can change behavior in industry and wall street and other areas. Those are things weve done, and weve been criticized being too bipartisan at times. [laughter] would you like to add anything to that before we go further . Sure. Look, i think i echo mikes i almost stole your water, raja. Thats okay, bipartisan, its all good. Look, the funniest meeting, one of the funniest meetings weve had is the first meeting, mike, where we met and then Speaker Mccarthys Conference Room and his Conference Room is like ginormous like the size of this room and he sat at one of the end of the table, the members of the Committee Sat around that table and interestingly, to his left sat Hakeem Jeffries and made it a point to address us jointly as a committee and basically what then Speaker Mccarthy said was, look, this is so important i wanted hakeem to sit next to me and address you together and say weve got to get this right and we need to speak with one voice, despite all the other divisions that exist in this congress and he said, then he said, if you want to get something done, this is the committee. If you want to do politics, ive got other committees for that. And so that really sunk in on day one. I think that really sets a tone and he selected people for the committee, by the way, who i have to say are some of the, you know, real talents in congress, serious people have intellectual curiosity and are willing to theyre not even were not even really divided on partisan lines. Sometimes were just divided based on, you know, people being, you know, more sensitive to concerns of one part of the country or the other and that makes for interesting discussions. So, i would just say that that initial selection of the membership, along with the Mission Statement of the Committee Really sets the tone and under mikes leadership and mine, weve managed to kind of implement something that i think is, you know, perhaps a model for other committees as well. All right. Thank you, im going to turn to graham to ask a question, we know that graham has been a keen observer of china and its trajectories, and i have no doubt that he has tough questions. Ive got 20 questions, but let me start with one from the conversation at lunch that meghan hosted at lunch where experts and the president of harvard and mit and others, so, a very lively discussion and one of the things that i thought was most striking for both raja and mike was that you raise some questions that you said you actually didnt know the answer to. But you were very interested in trying to engage the academy or students or others in trying to think about those questions. And since thats the business that were in, this is like, you know, manna from heaven for people at the university so i think it would be interesting for the audience to hear about, if you were picking two or three questions, which if somebody wrote a good memo or that then could include a little longer paper. So in my list here of ones that i mentioned, but you just pick whichever you want, one was deterrents and if the objective is to deter world war iii, what are the instruments of American People that could be mobilized to that end and how were doing and in particular, what about the economics, mike, which us mentioned. Another question you raise that you said you were very interested in trying to get people to offer some answers to is where is this going . What is the 20 or 30year vision of, i think you said containment, con strainment, whatever. What do you think you guys whats the longer run . I mean, my goodness, youre the select committee, youre supposed to know the answer to these things, but if theyre questions which people in the university should be wrestling with. Give us the questions and then maybe some of us will stir ourselves and provide a memo. Well, i think, professor, you mentioned the two that continue to haunt me and i hope we can actually use now that weve sort of fulfilled the shortterm demands of the committee and use the next Years Committee work to look at the longer commission and were here looking at biotech and hearing from experts to figure out what are the longer Term Investments to make to put ourselves in a better position and defend ourselves. But, yeah, it strikes me that you have consensus on the nearterm goal of policies, meghan you mentioned, deter the pla determination of taiwan or the philippines or something that would ignite a conflict. We can argue the best way to do that and a subsidiary question about do economic instruments deter or where do they fit in an overall deterrence pair time. One of the things we discovered when we did a variety of war games, even as we maintain strategic ambiguity with respect to taiwan whether we would get involved. It might make sense to have clarity on our economic response and we want to work out the economic and financial escalation ladder prior to things going boom because we have a well thought out theory on the conventional theer military side and there are 20 questions contained in there. On the sort of just the longterm goal that i hope we can examine in this years work, yeah, i dont think theres any consensus on that. I think theres some on the super hawkish side of the spectrum that would argue for regime change or just would point to the inherent brittleness of the markist leninist regime and implode on its own a weight, but what is something . And do we have enough internal dynamics of the ccp, if x jinping were to leave tomorrow or it would collapse, that its better for world flourishing and stability. Do we want containment, and our mutual friend talked about containment when he talked about the committee or some who suggest that by reengaging with the party we could eventually return to a responsible stakeholder thesis, i dont know, hopefully harvard could answer that question. Could i build on that by asking, so some critics of the u. S. Approach say youre trying to weaken china, youre trying to destroy china, what would you say to that . Are we trying to weaken china . Is that the objective . Is it more about changing behavior . How would you describe, even though recognizing, as you said, theres still a lot of debate about the longterm end state, but what is the objective . I have not heard a Single Person on our Committee Talk about china, hurt china, harm china, kick them while theyre down, do something that would stunt their economic development. What we talk about constantly is 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 a committed ideolog, his hero, he wants to be a mao. So the question that im constantly asking, will he change course and what would it take to change his course . And so, what are the the combination of carrots and sticks that might alter a course of going from economic aggression to Something Different, going from technological aggression to Something Different . Going from military aggression to Something Different . And so, i think conducting high level diplomacy is essential. I think that doing what we have talked about and that got incorporated into our National Defense authorization act, which is policy to increase deterrents is essential. However, weve got to hedge our bets and what i mean by that is, you know, if some day, if some day theres a way that xi jinping decides he is going to move more aggressively than he is right now, how would we handle that . And what would we do . And how would we work with our allies and partners to deal with that . Thats kind of the big question. Its like hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Id like to add quickly, i think even i i think im appropriately viewed as a china hawk, i think our strategy is fundamentally a defensive one, right . Were trying to defend the status quo from authoritarian aggression or were trying to reduce or eliminate the worst behavior of the regime like a genocide. Theres no one who is talking about some offensive strategy designed. I actually dont think ive heard too many people talking about a regime change strategy, certainly anything involving territorial acquisition. Were trying to preserve the status quo. In my party were looking at foreign engagement and foreign commitment. A lot of that is the legacy of the iraq war we debated the nation building and democratization as a part of u. S. Strategies. When it comes to taiwan, something fundamentally different in my mind helping an existing and flourishing democracies, one of the friis freest democracies in the world. And pushing back in some area, i few it as were waking up and defending ourselves from the economic warfares that the ccp has waged against us for decades or the ideological defenses theyre launching on our social media platforms, by, by the way, is not allowed in china. And thats defending ourselves and pushing back, i dont view it as were trying to hurt china, per se. And i think the Chinese People are often hurt by the regime, particularly when we look the other way towards egregious human rights abuses. One followup and turning it back to graham afterwards. So, its not about weakening china, about changing behavior. I presume youre making a distinction between changing bain and xi jinpings view. What about the balance of changing domestic behavior versus International Behavior . I mean, this is, you know, one of the things that emerged from the lessons from iraq and afghanistan is the challenge of remaking societies, but then again, you might way were not touching domestics, but ive heard most of you talk about the uyghurs and the genocide against the uighurs. If you could share a little on that . Thats a great point, meghan. With regards to the uighurs, so Everybody Knows whats going on. 23 million uighurs in a Northwest Province in china. Theres an active genocide happening, meaning theyre 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 and two to three million in concentration camps as we speak tonight. That is kind of to me something thats that we cannot look away from and so, while generally, i dont think that we should be meddling or trying to reshape the internal affairs of different countries, i think in this instance when you have a genocide with regard to the uyghur people or a cultural genocide with the tibetans, or repression of the hong kongers, i think we have to speak up. Our tool for that, however, is the Uyghur Force Labor prevention act with regard to trying to deal with the genocide. Its not very well enforced and thats the big problem. One of the things that we found out in the course of our proceedings, so thats something that we have to fix if were serious about dealing with this, otherwise, i think with regard to other domestic affairs, i dont think weve really gotten into that. I think that obviously thats if we can talk about that further, thats, i think, certainly an issue that xi jinping is concerned about, especially economically and maybe thats something that we should be keeping in mind with regard to our own relationship and how we handle them right now, but were more concerned, i think, with regard to our relationship with the ccp and their treatment of our friends, partners and allies in the region. Thank you. So, there are so many questions here, so, let me pick us rightly disagreeing perspective here. So, yes, of course, nobody can read xi jinpings mind and they have an Intelligence Community that they know a lot about. A daughter that studied at harvard. And not somebody from outer space. He knows a lot of people who a lot of americans know. And if you ask him, what is he about, he says very explicitly, i mean, listen to what he says, as you have done. He wants to make china great again. And that was a banner he unfurled before trump did. And the great rejuvenation of the great Chinese People. He has a strategy for doing that. Hes explained what it is. Biggest economy in the world and the most important trading partner of everybody in the world, were going to then build a military thats able to fight and win, but in any case from his point of view, defend our own position, which he thinks includes taiwan as one of his provinces. So, i think i believe what he says, it looks to me like thats what hes doing and looks at the behavior and seems quite, quite understandable and again, i suspect that im in some ways harder to the right and harder to the left than both of you on these issues. I think that if i were chinese, i would sign up for that. I mean, four times as many people. Theyre hardworking and smart. Why shouldnt they be half as wealthy as americans and if they were, they would have twice the gdp and if they had twice the gdp, they would have twice the Defense Budget and intelligence operation. And the technology, and if they had that, why would they be interested in having the u. S. Navy as the arbiter of events in seas that they call the South China Sea and the East China Sea . So, it looks to me like a historical pattern. As you know, ive written about that, that ive seen forever. Now from our point of view, we believe, and i believe very strongly, that the International Order that the u. S. Created after world war ii, and as meghan mentioned to start with, as given us 78 years without a great power war. Its absolutely fantastic for americans, but even worse for chinese and for japanese and for taiwanse. Were not about the to walk away from that, and look at this in the pacific, i would say its going to be very bumpy and difficult, i cannot imagine explaining to xi jinping why he should not aspire for china to be all that it can be and i cant imagine explaining to me as an american why america being number one is not the best of the two options. So, i would say that that defines our problem. You can see recognizing that he says one thing to a foreign audience, says one thing at apec and another to the party and at dafos leo hall will say one thing to people, and then another thing back home to the audience. Would it be a stretch, and what limb and putin said together, to have a once in a Generation Opportunity to disrupt, if not destroy the u. S. Led global order. Do you think thats too much of a stretch. I would say thats a little bit of a stretch, but i think that he wants to shift he would like to have an International Order in which china is central to that order, as we would like to have an americanled International Order in which were central to that. So in that sense, i mean, if i take the worlds best china and xi watcher, when asked the question, i mean, i did a lot back and forth interviews with him about this, so question, is xi jinping serious and his colleagues about displacing the u. S. As the predominant power in asia in the foreseeable future and he had a way to look at you in a way that of course, who could imagine otherwise, how could they not aspire to number one. Could i jump in on your colloquy, this is fascinating except that i think xi jinping cares about those things, but i think the most important thing that he cares about is xi jinping. He needs to be atop the ccp and the ccp needs to be central, needs to be in charge of china and so if we talk about primacy of china and the indopacific region being one of those goals, if it comes in direct conflict potentially with xi jinping being number one, paramount leader, i know which one will win out. So we have to create the situation where the cost benefit for him is such that he recognizes that he cant have both and he should probably opt for one. And that would be the one, the peace option. 100 , number one, i need to be the leader. Number two, the communist party needs to be the vanguards leading the country. And then third, how do i achieve that and our objective is to try to create conditions in which his attempt to achieve that are consistent with our interests. And it seems like everybody agrees, even like the more dovish and hawkish people, that the regional vision is one in which they are the sun and everything orbits around them whereas we would like to sort a see a situation where theyre jupiter, very big, but not like the center of gravity and our Alliance System is center of gravity. Im persuaded thats not only the region vision, but their Global Vision they want to displace us as the dominant super power and therefore also increasingly persuaded that those of us who want to defend the existing order and those in the ccp who wants to disrupt if not destroy, sorry i didnt find a more polite way to put that the world order. And we can either embrace that very competitive high stakes dynamic and compete aggressively or let me put it more provocatively, what do i have to lose . Im leaving congress. Like actually wage cold war with the creativity and alacrity with which we waged it with the soviet union recognizing there are actually much worse things than cold war. There is hot war and theres surrender. So those two things would be much worse. So, i dont know if that makes sense. If i could j ump in here . Can i jump in. Of course, im enjoying this. [laughter] okay, mike, you and i have a no limits partnership. Thats right. Lets just make that very clear. However, we dont want a cold war. We dont want a hot war, we dont want conflict of any kind. I dont think the American People want this. And you see this in the way that my constituents react on this issue and we have looked at the polling on this, ill just share this very briefly. Recently a poll was taken of all americans, all parties, and it showed that something like, you know, better than 50 of americans believe that theres going to be a better than 5050 chance of war in the next 10 years between the u. S. And china. They view china as the number one one of the top strategic threats, biggest competitors, et cetera. But then in that same poll, 75 of americans, and this is across democrats, republicans, and independents, all said avoid war. You might be wondering who is that 25 , but 75 says avoid war. And i think what theyre saying is, look, you know, instead of preparing for conflict, work to mitigate conflict and i think that the language that we use to describe the relationship, the language that we use to describe how we should have the competition even is important and also in that poll they said, help us in our everyday lives. Reduce fentanyl. Do everything you can to reduce economic aggression and economic dumping of goods that drive our businesses out of operation. And then, do everything you can to stop the freaking cyber hacking and intellectual property theft. Thats what they said. And so, i think that we obviously have to work on deterring conflict, but i think that if we adopt the cold war mentality, im concerned that were going to trip into something else. So im going to resist the urge to quote reagan, peace through strength, it seems like an opportune moment to do that especially with representative gallagher if you want peace prepare for war. If you want peace avoid cold war. I dont know what the latin phrase is. Id like to go back we need to dissuade and affect the calculations of xi jinping or the Chinese Communist party. Lets talk a little about the tools that we have to do that and what youre thinking of when you look at the tools that you can make recommendations on, that youre suggesting employing. Weve got sanctions, weve got export controls, weve got diplomacy. Were emphasizing here that a tool is not a strategy, but a strategy is a confluence of different uses of tools. But in my mind, i think the thing that might matter the most in affecting the behavior of the Chinese Communist party is their perception of american strength. And so, when you think about your recommendations, how much are you focused on affecting american policy towards china or towards our allies, visavis china and how much are you focused on american competitiveness at home . Do you have the mandates to do both and what is your perception of the tool kit . We do. I think the bias i brought into the debate. I think that while deterrence is like highly overdetermined, the most important variable is the experience of high powered capabilities. I think that thats the thing that xi jinping is paying the most attorney attention to. And thats in the previous crisis that were talking about. So earlier, the things we must absolutely do are things like rebuild our munitions and Industrial Base and making sure theres a robust set of stock piles of long range antishipments in theater so it looks just so a military take over of taiwan looks so unpalatable,en he would likely fail in that effort. In doing the committees work ive grained a much greater respect for the technology cal, and i think theyre much more complex, maybe thats me because im a military guy so the military stuff makes more sense to me, but the fundamental dilemma we confront at least thats come out in our war game, were to use an elon musk phrase, were conjoined twins, and makes us much different than the soviet union. We didnt have to have selective decoupling because our economies didnt act. When we have the war game in new york, every lever we pull had four, five, like boomerang effects on us. The take away, painful as that, on shore, near shore, friend shore, the sooner we do it, the less painful it is. The problem does not age well and there are areas where were going to have to spend some money or create a very creative mix of sticks and carrots to reduce the coercive leverage the ccp has over us in things of advanced or active pharmaceutical ingredients. On that front we have to improve our competitiveness at home and i urge everybody to take a look at our economic report that we released in december. It was painstakingly negotiated. Like almost every word and our staff, i see our staff chuckling in the audience right now, it was. Thats the only way we could get 24 members to sign onto this particular report. And the part of the report that i like to talk about is the third part. Its called the reports are reset, present and build and i like the build part because there we talk about, for instance, fixing our free our horrible Legal Immigration system right now which is driving away the very talent that we need to prepare for any competition not just with the ccp, but anybody else in the world. And another issue is upgrading the skills of our work force, especially skills, education for technology and for the third investing in basic science, investing in applied science, in science in between, the type of stuff that we saw is what ginko works was able to capitalize on or any other number today taking basic Government Research and applying it and commerciallizing it for the world. So let me take you to a more concrete i agree if we had to choose between cold war, hot war or surrender, cold war is a good option, but i think we could probably do better than that. The army always has sayings of sorts for explaining the inexplicable. And one of them is the say do gap. Of course we say there, but there seems to be a gap about what we do. You all had on the committee, kept hammering on taiwan and you even call it an immediate vulnerability, a window of vulnerability and so forth, a message that not generally agreed to by, i think, most of the rest of the space. And then in particular if i look at what we do as compared to what we say, it would be fantastic if taiwan were ive been saying that for years. And i think that if i say what are we doing to arm taiwan, i remember what we say. And i asked myself about what we do. Now, let me give like a specific example. Sandy winfeld, i think the vice chair, says the most important thing to be done with you make taiwan more defensible against an attack would be to have shore to ship missiles like harpoons. I like here and i say, how are we doing . So, facts, we announce the major harpoon deal with high waun in with taiwan in 2020, no delivery date. Announced again 2023, most people forgotten before with no delivery date. And for that date, how about 2029 . So the word for that because some of the harpoon deals go back to 2015 and the backlog, 20 billion, things to taiwan and not delivered. If you want to understand how thats possible. Part of that is congress, and the executive branch. Because its split between different committees or Foreign Affairs committee has primary jurisdiction, and the Armed Services and creates a National Lack of accountability and oversight and then within the administration, correspondingly the state department has a great deal of authority thats often disconnected from what the military wants to do. Its a huge failure of policy and to relate to a point we talked about earlier today. Both for that and for maximizing production of critical munitions, harpoons, and containers, all the things we know we need in the pacific, the only thing thats going to make that happen, and i hate to admit this as a legislator whose view is argument the framers, the executive branch has grown more powerful now, the only thing to make that happen or convince the pentagon bureaucracy is for a secretary of defense empowered by a president to wake up every single day going to war with his own bureaucracy. Secretary gates just talked to our committee two weeks ago and if you read his memoir and the chapter, thats the lesson that comes out of that. There are areas, i concede the point where we could do things and if we could do it in two years, if we just had if we actually believed our rhetoric. Like, if we actually thought world war iii was on the horizon, we would be moving heaven and earth to prevent that. Thats the challenge. And democracies just usually arent good at that. Were good at Crisis Response because we activate thousands of flexible freethinking people, but we cant move to prevent the crisis in the first place. If you need fairbanks history of the korean war he talks about the enduring weakness of free peoples relative to dict dictatorships, which is a dilemma. Im trying to figure out am i listening to a conversation about china or climate change, we have the same problem when it comes to climate change. Id like to turn to our audience so i encourage people to stand up. You can line up, weve got four microphones in different places and i see the great david gurgen back there. There is the great david gurgen. You were phenomenally helpful to me throughout my congressional career and i thank you, sir. David has a role in helping people move into Public Service and particularly veterans to move into Public Service, really grateful to david for that. I think that everyone here knows the rules. Please introduce yourself and please ask a question. We have a relatively short time and flights to make and i want to get as much as we can in this short period. Please. Good afternoon, congressman gallagher and congressman krishnamoorthi. Thank you for the great work youre doing in this committee and my name is maximos. And id like to know different tools we can use to improve our relationship with china. How do you see Culture Exchange as a way to increase our trust and build, you know, some of that opportunities for diplomacy in the future . Thank you very much. First we want our pandas back, okay . Very important. But, no, seriously i think i think that i want to talk about that, but i want to also say one thing that our committee did at the very outset that was really important that i would like to see happen more and more with other public officials, which is we have to avoid xenophobia. We have to avoid antiasian hate. We have to avoid bigotry and prejudice of all kind towards chinese origin people and affecting the rhetoric of way too many people not only in washington d. C. , but around the country and i want to salute mike and the republicans on this committee for keeping that out of the dialog. Thats one way to sink the relationship. And so, i think to improve the relationship more and more on a people to people basis, we have to avoid that type of talk, okay . And secondly, i think we have to build the people to people ties that really help to cement the relationship and did so in the past. For instance, we talked today about reinstituting the fullbright scholarship, and donald trump ended the fullby the scholarship. It doesnt make any sense. We need our people to be able to go to china and learn about the country and be able to bring back what they learn here and also in the process form those, you know, ties that bind every time. And the last thing i would just say on that is we need to also, you know, foster the people to people relationships between our own diaspora here and over there. And so id like to see more flights instituted again between places like you know, chicago, where i represent, used to have at least two daily flights a day to china before the pandemic and now its like once every few days, once every there was a daily flight to hong kong to chicago. Things like that are important for the people to people and cultural exchanges and also, you know, the business ties as well. All the Small Business people who are going back and forth. I think things like that would make a difference. A direct flight from Green Bay Wisconsin to washington d. C. , that would improve my life dramatically, okay, so it wont shock you to learn im slightly more skeptical that such exchanges will improve the behavior of the regime, though i understand the logic. I will say that, we to win this competition, or just to have a coherent strategy at all. We need deep regional expertise like deep. Were very bad at cultivating that in the military and even in the Intelligence Community in part because i see the Intelligence Community kind of adopting the military model where people just like move from assignment to assignment every two years and its hard to hover over a target, deep language, regional and cultural expertise, we did that in the old cold war quite well so i would encourage all of you interested in the great problems of International Politics to really go deep on an area. I sort of confronted this problem when i was trying to be, like a modern day lawrence of arabia, and my was to be a generally generallyist and focusing on my career. The think tank in d. C. , theres a derth of indonesia experts and philippines experts and even india, thats the foreign policies we need to cultivate and part of is that is living in the region for long periods of time. As somebody who lived in indonesia. There we go, weve got one. Its a long time ago when i left college. Please up in the balcony. Hi, dwight hutchens, mid career 1996, interesting you say that about the region. I spent the last 10 years with 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, right . And in all the different countries, from a business standpoint, from a policy standpoint, from a diplomacy standpoint and while sitting there during the pandemic i read these two books back to back, i shouldnt have, chip war, and the next world war by the n. A. T. O. Commander and they scared me to death, right, because you know, 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 double click on ai and chips and the fact that theres nothing we can do about the chip making capabilities of taiwan and how important it is to our society and our economy . I take go ahead. No, i was going to say i didnt know theres all those people up there. Like bright lights, its like a roman amphitheater. No, i think look, im going to plug the chips act, which is a big, big deal, you know, basically its now bringing a lot of that chip production on shore in different places, although, taiwan will always remain kind of, i think, the epicenter of especially highly advanced chips, chip making, but we need to do more to bring that here. Interestingly, by the way, one of the biggest impediments to that happening in the United States is talent. Like just the other day i have we have colleagues who represent arizona and one of my colleagues was telling me, look, tsmc is investing 32 billion in arizona to stand up this humongous chip making plant along with eco system. They cant find people, cant find technicians, the talent to actually populate these plants. So now theyre actually bringing people from taiwan over here right now to kind of help to stand up these operations and that goes to, you know, what is necessary to actually have kind of that indigenous chip making. But youre absolutely right. I mean, look, taiwan is going to remain a very important source for the worlds advanced chips and legacy chips. We have to do what we can to onshore a lot of that and then also, and maybe mike will touch on this, our export controls have to be enforced with regard to the highest End Semiconductor Technology Falling into the hands of the ccp thats going to be used in ways that could harm our National Security or to perpetrate human rights abuses. A lot of our highest End Technology goes into their ai models. Im sorry, into their computing that then powers their ai models for surveillance purposes, okay . To target uighurs and tibetans and others, thats why the Biden Administration has done a great job and they need to do more and were working on that. And two quick points. Even into the optimistic viewpoint, we will still be dependent in some meaningful sense on production, for advanced chips, the singlemost important thing we can do is to build a bigger navy and antinavy, our own allied rocket force, so that taiwan isnt subsumed by china. The other thing is what you mentioned ai. I actually have a huge opportunity right now to look at the aukus frame work, the aussies and the brits. Pillar one. And pillar two, ai, hypersonics, i forgets the other three areas. A huge opportunity and thats et beating heart of the free world. Our two closest allies, but even with the aussies and the brits, we have outdated barriers to collaboration in the form of international travelling modern nation and we should think about ours as an integrated, technological Industrial Base and then start to expand the concentric circle to include other countries who have the capabilities. And i get to the third sort of hypothesis i always have in mind. As we seek to selectively decouple or derisk from china, the only way that works if you simultaneously increase your economic and technological partnerships with other parts of the world. Actually including countries that dont neatly fit into the free world, like vietnam, communist country that we happen to have a major interest in getting along well with, when it comes to china. India, countries like that, im sorry, go on. Fantastic. Yes, up in the other balcony, please. Hi there, im michael farber, student at Harvard Business school, thank you congressmen, and congressman gallagher, id like to know what your future plans are. Thats not my question, what you know about the Chinese Party and chinese economy and given struggles right now, do you think its more likely that the ccp will back off on the International Stage or lash out even further . Ill go quick. Ill go quick, teas what i say when i go for five minutes. I joked earlier my ammunition 10 years ago to be a professor, the politics were too intense, i couldnt take it. Honestly, we dont know, but i think its somewhat irresponsible for the president or members of the administration to say, as President Biden has done, that oh, because you know, china has economic problems theyre not going to make a move on taiwan. The o opposite could true. We have a way to put our western sensibilities onto them. They could do something irrational from our perspective, like calculating the economic utility of a move thats makes perfect sense if your goal is regime survival and by the way, the lesson back to the korean war the last time we did quite the ccp on the battlefield, theyre less sensitive to casualties as we are. Scholars i respect have written effectively give xi jinping the choice you can have taiwan, but cost your entire navy, he would take that choice. Thats not something we would think about doing in the United States. We have constituents that we have to answer to whose sons and daughters who fight and die in these wars, if that makes sense. So here is what i think, i think theres massive, massive problems internally and i think knows this, but the Consumer Confidence is horribly low. Theyre actually experiencing deflation, as we speak. I mean, no major economy has seen this this in a long time and then the one statistic that jumps out at me every time i see it, youth unemployment rate, 22, 23 , stopped publishing it its so high and stopped publishing it. You think about an economy one child policy, both parents and grandparents have their hopes and dreams and aspirations in one child and graduates from college and doesnt have a job, are you kidding me . How many people are ped off at the regime. I think that xi jinping is focused on how do i try to fix this situation because i think that it is, you know, in my mind one of those little seedlings of potential regime problems, right . So thats why hes, you know, going to san francisco. Hes sending this minister and that minister and you know, all of these different people to calm investors nerves inside and outside china. You know, i think hes also trying to prevent, you know, what is it, the number one export of china last year were High Net Worth individuals. You know, theyre fleeing the country and their money is 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. He could lash out and say screw it, to fix this thing, were going to go for it and play the nationalism card and im going to get over my insecurities about my own pla, which he claims has the peace time disease. He repeatedly says that. The pla has peace time disease. They havent fought since 1979 against vietnam. He doesnt know how they would actually perform in any kind of combat scenario. So we have to hedge against that, but i still think we have to give him the chance and encourage him and say, you really dont want to go to warment you really dont want to, you know, move on taiwan because that will hurt you internally more than help you. So we only have just a couple of minutes and i know its important to remain on time, particularly tonight. And i think were all deeply appreciative of the Public Service that both of you are engaged in and are doing and i cant help, but end with my own question to chairman gallagher. We, over the weekend, a flurry of texts and emails among one another, noting that you had announced you wouldnt be running for reelection come this fall and i thought you mentioned it several times today so i feel like youre inviting a question. It hasnt been told that its off the table. Is there anything that youd like to share with us or any reflection youd like to make about your time in congress . I know that youll continue to serve in other ways, you were in the marines, you were in congress and i imagine your next chapter will have some element of service, anything youd like to close with. You can watch the rest of this online at our website, cspan. Org. We are going to leave this here for oversight hearing with irs commissioner, hes testifying before the house ways and means committee. Live coverage on cspan2