Bipartisan legislation surrounding tiktok. Then we will have a conversation about theinese communist party poses to the United States and how he is leading in congress to take this complex issue head on in a way that makes some progress. Congressman kevin hern represents oklahomas first district. Can i call you kevin for a minute . My mom will give me a hard time if i do that. Kevin was born on an air force base and gained early appreciation for the sacrifices that military families make. He really has a quintessential american background. He earned an architectural drafting certificate at a Career Technology school, she used to work and pay for his engineering degree. After undergrad, kevin went on to work as an sp will internati. Kevin was out of work when it rocked the industry. He saved purchases for his Mcdonalds Restaurant by operating Small Businesses writing computer programs. In 1997 he built a farm and bought his first Mcdonalds Restaurant in North Little Rock arkansas. He purchased two Mcdonalds Restaurants. He grew that organization over the next decade owning 24 Mcdonalds Restaurants that employed thousands of people in northeastern oklahoma. Congressman hearn has worked because every aisle, serving mc. He served 13 years in the National Leadership team that represented all 3500 plus. Sfran. Eight years as the she will have to tell me because i dont have it here. And charge of franchise relations. Rebeccah in addition to mcdonalds he has been a successful entrepreneur and banking, manufacturing development, multiple Technology Companies in sports publishing. This is so our topic today because the congressman really has firsthand experiences in all of these different ways that Small Businesses operateed states having really strong and sound institutions forrospace, our abo produce and make our own food on the prosperity of the american people. Really has some really interesting and diverse backgrounds. He currently serves on the ways and means committee. He is the chairman of the republicanee were members of congress agree on basic principles and then Work Together to collaborate with initiatives for the congress. Last i checked, there are 173 members of the committee. Rep. Hern 180 now. Rebeccah 180 now. ■its incredible. Its really important conservative Principal Group within the republican covers men house of representative. What lets with talking about this tiktok because you are cosponsor. Something everyone is thinking about. Can you tell rep. Hern first of all, thanks for having me. The Hudson Institute has been around since i was born. Its great what you all have done, really smart people. We have had folks speak to rc as recently as two weeks ago. You came by and talked with us about china. Very smart in that space. As a relates to tiktok, first thing we need to disp not here. We are trying to protect america and americans from, sometimes their own selves. As we saw last year when the ceo of bytedance testified to congress, one of the most poignantwas, do you allow the sa gathering where the same techniques to be used in■o china as you do in the United States. His response was sort of stuttering and saying no, then the followup question to that is, you have the algori iplace e it on. Certainly, he did not acknowledge or deny. But we are saying with tiktok is is, china, by statute of congress in 2020, china is one of the five adversarial nations. However you want to call it, it is going to use that medium tiktok to collect data with american citizens and company. We will have a part of that and thats what tits a bipartisan. I want to give a big shout out to the former speaker. Speaker mccarthy■1 triedo this e together in 2019 and Speaker Pelosi would not do it. So when he became speaker of the house last year he put this together. Its very bipartisan, led by Mike Gallagher in the work they are doing is really good. Rebeccah just on the facts, tiktok is owned by bytedance, which is then controlled by the ccc. The legislation requires bytedance to get control from the ccp. It can go any longer as a nonadversary entity controlling the app. Rep. Hern we it wednesday percent threshold. They can own to any percent. They lose control of the company at that point in time. You are hearing from bytedance is, their w essentially you get tiktok out of the nation. If thats what you believe, you must be doing something nefarious with the gather you with the data you are gathering. Rebeccah it was passed completely unanimously 500. And then the tiktok app used through its algorithms and have autton there for young people who are using the app to put in their area code and it would give them it against this particular legislation. It really shows how this can be used not just for economic benefit for china. Imagine it where to invade taiwan and could really push out information to young people and save the United States it could misinform and calvo galvanize support for interests. Rep. Hern if you look at what they are doing as far as some of the hightech they have in the things they are doing to mine data, you look at their unbelievable growth. It came out in 2012. You look at the unbelievable growth thats compared to the domestic companies. We are try to bring parity between the platforms. But we are saying is, if you will be an adversarial nation, one part of the bill you talk about today, it is a Data Collection device, one of many that they have in our and in our electric vehicles that we are putting forth, we are going to do everything to address each one of these. Rebeccah its really an Encouraging Development to see the bipartisan support for it and really just s tiktoks efforts to lobby against it and it may have backfired and hadnt affected the increase solidified support. Really encouraging. On to the republican china bill that was just introduced. Ed how comprehensive it is. Rep. Hern 357 pages. Rebeccah its really interesting. I think not even just for the legislation itself, but as a teaching guide to go through and see where china is trying to are things you can try to unwind some of it. Congressman, i kind of went through it, i did not get all the way through , but i was trying to understand the approaches. Two things came to focus for me. And that is that it look like its trying to shore up americas own strength and you could talk about that in technology and advanced tech. Trying to protect that so we can go , and then it tries to stop what china is doing in its nefarious behaviors. Those two pillars . I think what so rep. Hern i think what so different about china versus theudson ■institute founded against the ussr, the cold war and bringing the principles forward. We looked at that more as a race or a Nuclear Arms Race then more physical blunt force troops on the ground. And then we also had spying around. Throwing a little spying here and there. Today, this is a different approach. Ive often said, in my time as rnc chair, is that china wants to destroy us economically and control us militarily. And they are moving very rapidly to do so. If we think about this, they have only been on the world stage since 2001 whenwe thoughte china. Im sure at that time we had an idea that ou their economy. Their economy is important to the United States and our producers, just as our people are important to their producers. Out downed investments in the United States and we look at the tremendous growth in certain sectors, especially when it comes to areas of technology, whether it be aerospace or chip development, all of these things, nuclear proliferation, or even in looking at our genetics in some of the stuff there. All of these things we had to look at. So what we are focusing on is, first of all, are we doing what we need to do at home. Tiktok is one example. We can talk about 80 of the cranes in our ports aredevelope. We saw cellular modems where they are tracking ships and whats happening out our ports. But then you look out pound is what were doing to report and have transparency. We have some of our largest investment firms that have funds that are■e completely focused on china technology. You can invest your money directly in a Chinese Support for the aerospace programs. When you look at a day in the paper, they document 79 that theyve had around for a few years, six or seven years that they want to basically, in their words, this slaying is delete america from all the technology. Other investments in the western world. Funding their technology platforms. They are building the steel ip from our greatest Technology Companies, and then turn around saying we are going to push you out through regulatory action, not choose you as our supplier with big mainframes or our software for our government. One of our Largest Companies in the world are from 50 down to four of 5 in five to six years. So they are moving very quickly, stealing rip, and we are finding that through our Outbound Investments. Rebeccah there was a public debate about how do we use the term thats like economically assured destruction between the u. S. China, ever since we welcome china and the w. H. O. Wpo, republicans and democrats sought rep. Hern know they own the w. H. O. Rebeccah thats a different problem we have to solve. That we enrich china. So now and did their time, and now they are healthy and thats where we see a more aggressive behavior. The challenge is, how do we unwind some of this . You actually not advocating for complete decoupling from china, second largest economy in the world, 14. 14 trillion, so now the challenge is how do we look at those specific technologies to make■o sure we are not continuing to empower the country that is trying to supply the United States. Its about rep. Hern its about bringing transparency. We talked about this interview and making people aware that we are at an economic war. I dont mean it bad, thats what we do, thats what we did■ as e rose as a nation. We were competing against europe as we grew. We did this because we wanted to create better products. We wanted to treat our people well. We wanted to have good human rights. And everything that i just mentioned, china is a bad am of us. We need to expose them. What this bill does is bring all of the topics together. What weve talked about is members of leadership legislative, creators, bring this together to point out that when you bring all this together, im sure we will talk about the border, belton road, education, all of these togethet doesnt look very good. Rebeccah i think its really important that the republicans of the committee are tracking this concept that china is really a key part of how china things about technology, Civil Military fusion. Thats why your bill goes in these different sectors. Commercial or intercommercial purposes. Its directly applicable to the military. That distinction between private and civil versus military is not there. Rep. Hern i think its important for people to understand what that means. In the United States we have a complete delineation by our constitution that our commanderinchief is a civili delineation that our military is our military. We develop products and technology for military and for civilian use. China is different. They are one in the same. Any time they develop something for civilians, its with the military in mind. For military, maybe the civilians get to use it. But a perfect example of this is, theres a lot made about how difficult it is for us to get cybersecurity people in our military. Weve had many briefings on this. In china, the other day china the everyday chinese person is recruited. To test our systems, to do hacking attempts. They get paid a penitence to do that. But they are not in the military. So, their whol society, if they want to be unified, works in unification to come after the United States of america because we are in the lead. Rebeccah great. You mentioned already and i appreciated you mentioned that hudsons role, during the cold war, the work that it wasnt me, i wasnt here yet, but i was on the scene soon after. Theyre concerned about combating ussr during the cold war. So now lets tastates now in washington. Its not necessarily the case that they are objectively seeking beginning from a pro America Perspective and doing what we can to make the United States stronger in combat our enemies. The really interesting thing is about requirements, more transparency for where you are getting your money, your influence and support. So, that is another big aspect that china has been very successful at influencing not just think tanks but retired members of congress and lobbying efforts and other educational efforts. You talked about how you all thought about that particular challenge. Rep. Hern y minute ago. After the bill passed 500 yesterday, we had people call us , call our offices that there is a conservative seen on many other issues. Conservative think tank peoples who are industry people lobbyists reach out to us. Rebeccah ■ tiktok proposing te bill . Rep. Hern absolutely. These are people that should be in would be strong americans. But because it was tiktok and because they were maybe getting compensated, and these include former members that are now lobbing for the ccp, you have alluded this, china is very smart. We have been very open about our representative republic and our freedoms around the world. People look at xi jingping and he has been very. Thats his unofficial title. His official title is of the Chinese Communist people. People need to realize theyre coming after us in this way, so we want to know who is lobbyingr behalf. One of five is china. It was irand venezuela. If they are lobbying on behalf of those nations, we want to know who they are and if they want to do this because they think china has to have representation, they can do it free of charge. Rebeccah this is another thing that is remarkable, you are leading the Senate Committee to push on this because it takes me courage to say, we will not do this anymore. You could be of Congress Make sure they are lobbying on behalf of these things were being pushed by the Chinese Communist party, so its kind of timely toy stop it. I have found that every time there is an effort, it seems like there is bipartisan support to and things like i can dj a drone cover and by the ccp. Just when you think its going to happen, theres this overwhelming lobbying effort, and then it stops and suddenly goes away for a while. That is a very good and useful aspect of the bill. Rep. Hern many of our fortune 100 companies have a massive presence in china. Its a big economy. You want them to take it vantage because the more they can grow and have more production, the demand it as a free market, but also, when i look at whats happening there, i reminded often about what china is trying to do, and they want to suck a sin. To your point, when this bill wayside, a singular bill, you dont hear from these folks anymore. I dont hate china, i just love america. So i think if we had that narrative that america is first, i know that makes some people feel uncfo but we have to look at it that way because they are looking at china first. You brought up a point thats missing in the discourse which is understanding the ideological motivation. If this was a country that shared ideas about reciprocity and trade, those are the principl that they base their ideas. They would have to continue but they are not motivated about these things. They are trying to push the United States out to be the most powerful power. That means there in that means they are infringing on america freedoms. Rep. Hern they can come in and to rescue these other formations, and they are doing just that. If we had the general speak to us a few months ago regarding the unrest in the middle east and whats happening in ukraine, you have to love the guy and the knowledge he has about seeing this firsthand. He set a mistake we should not make us that we should not make the mistake to think that iran is not the center of all of this. Furthermore, we should not make a mistake to not understand that china is the one thats bankrolling all of this. So you have a proxy in iran that is using palestinian, hamas, and the list goes on, to put the money out there. China back in russia, china is back in north korea, china is in venezuela. China is, through the economic power, creating the unrest. I could talk about rebeccah i could talk about this for an hour with you. This is how this ties together. Things are not going well on the world stage. Weve got crises that you mentioned crisis russia invasios of ukraine still ongoing. Then you have chinese provocative dangerous reckless behavior in the pacific really reatening using water canyons, etc. , against the philippines. Really dangerous behavior. They are actually not unrelated. I want to just get back just to make the final point on whats going on in the red sea with iran driving all of this. And these uranian proxies are not even going to hit. So the chinese flagship will go through the red sea and the russian flagship can go through the red sea unscathed. But the who sees will continue hitting this in the red sea. Rep. Hern think about how many days that ships have to go around Southern Africa to bring product to the United States or to bring oil, gas products coming from china. If you know that your ships will never be sunk, you have no problem with dean there. You will always have lower cost goods from anybody else moving stuff out of india, southeast asia, australia or anywhere. So there is a concern about this. And then when you