What are your thoughts on this?

Well, Dana, I mean, my entry point into this is I'm not as young as I used to be, but some of these guys in the United States Senate really should be barred from talking about this technology, uh, much less being, uh, those that are sort of talking about where it could go and what could contain it.

After all, uh, I mean, really, this is not the stuff of the greatest generation.

This is very, very current.

And yes, there are national security issues.

There are things over which they have some responsibility.

But the last people I'm turning to are the World War II vets to solve what the frontiers of 100 years from their time of service were gonna be facing.

I mean, I, I thought it was just very interesting that he came out and just started talking about everything that we've been railing about here in the US for the past like month, at least in the right.

How are we to deal with this, do you think?

Well, unfortunately for the good people of Canada, and there are some, especially in the prairie provinces, they sure feel like Americans.

I feel very, very bad for them because they sit on top of great natural resources.

They grow things, they manufacture things, they mine things.

They actually take care of the rest of Canada.

And the sad part is when Canada is talking about having a military to military dialogue with China, what military? The Texas National Guard has a bigger military than Canada does.

And so it's one thing if they want to wax philosophic about these things and they had the wherewithal to pull it off.

What are your thoughts as we approach this 26 years on now?

I mean, can it, or is that just posturing to, as a way to maybe, uh, put the United States off of doing this if we think it's not gonna have any kind of repercussions against China?

Well, two things I think we have to remember.

You know it, and I just think the public needs to hold on to it.

Uh, autocrats, theocrats, the, the world's bad guys, whether they're Iran or in Beijing, they tend to say a lot.

They talk a big game.

And certainly the Iranians would try to throw a lot of shade our way through this whole process of how they're enduring and all that.

Life sucks for them right now, and it's gonna suck more.

Mm.

This is a situation that they're not, it's not gonna improve unless the regime is gone, correct?

So I would dice it this way.

Uh, the Revolutionary Guard is an unreformable institution.

Uh, and it is the primary source of terror for the Iranian people, and that's who ultimately we need to exercise dominant influence, that the traditional culture of Iran overtakes the theocratic regime that has held it hostage for the half, last half-century.

Uh, and, uh, we, we had a strategy in place for the first third or so of this campaign that was significantly degrading the capabilities and the actual numbers of leaders of the Revolutionary Guard.

And when we paused to give peace a chance and got back into this Lucy and the football routine on negotiations or are we bombing them back to the Stone Age, but we never quite made the Stone Age, the Revolutionary Guard is still there, and they can engage in terroristic-like activities.

And unless we have a way of allowing our allies to completely go for it or we're going to have a very long patient process of economic starvation, this is gonna be a protracted problem, where the, the, the Revolutionary Guard will continue to harass, uh, will continue to affect markets, and will continue to have a gab fest that the world will happily cover-

[laughs]

Mm

... is this was sort of the five English-speaking dominant countries that would share intelligence and sensitive military policies.

Now, that included nuclear-capable vessels coming and going.

Then New Zealand decided maybe they speak a version of English, but they don't want the nukes.

Uh, then pe- basically we ended up with Wokistan and open borders, and all of a sudden we end up with allies that don't wanna allow us to use bases or get in the way when we feel attacked and need to respond.

Uh, and so there's been a lot of collision that's happened, but this really puts a fine point on the technology part of this, uh, where a lot of Europe and a lot of our Five Eyes partners in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, they've wanted to think China's this far-away place, and because we have orange man bad in the United States, maybe we're the problem.

And they lost sight of the fact that critical dependencies are and will always be used against us by a country like China, and you can't afford to have your national security infrastructure compromised by chips, communications devices.

That's insane

So Mr. Yates, I have to ask you, where is the truth on this?

Well, uh, I think that from, at least from my point of view, I can only really give an approximation.

I'm always humble about there are times when you're in the room and you see all the intelligence and everything else, and these days I occupy more normal air, and so I'm just reading the signals, reading the room, reading the feedback from the region.

I think the administration and its partners have done an incredible thing in the early phase of this campaign in really buying time and space to really degrade the nuclear capabilities of Iran, really degrade their ability to attack, and now we're sort of reduced to the economic terrorism capabilities of the Revolutionary Guard.

They've, then, then they've gone on to another phase where we have these negotiations that's not necessarily meant to get a deal, although the president definitely talks a lot about that and people can be very understood for getting sort of a Lucy and the football rinse and repeat cycle vibe to all of that.

But that's usually largely aimed at getting allies who might be fence sitters, who h- do have skin in the game in a future management of the security to take care of this region, to sort of deal with the Iranians themselves so that the dirt that gets kicked up on us also gets kicked up on them and they're more motivated to do the right things that allow us to wind down and pull back, rebalance, maybe focus on another theater.

And then that last part, I think is where we are and why it's frustrating and why it's very, very hard.

H- what, what is the significance of their involvement and why does it seem like now they're the ones stepping up more than anybody else? Is that in our best interest? And because I think we're all just sort of scratching our heads going, "What? Is this musical chairs? What's happening now?"

What does that gobbledygook mean?

Well, the good news part of this is how lonely Brazil must be looking at its continent and its near abroad when not that long ago there would have been a whole bunch of socialist sympathetic governments throughout that whole neighborhood.

And the blessed people of the region have gone to the polls and voted in better governments in large measure.

So now Brazil looks like a bit of an outlier.

The bad news is Brazil is still really big.

And it's still governed by someone who I really intensely don't like.

My granddad taught me not to say hate, but I really intensely don't like this guy.

How accurate is this? And I mean, is it something that I mean, is it basically freak out time?

How many junior who's running the show, really?

Well, that's another one of these things where I don't understand why the alleged international community hasn't said, picture it didn't happen.

Right.

And so it's so conspicuous that there's been zero proof of life.

Now, the president has intimated, and so have some of his principals in the cabinet, that there are reasons to assume that this guy is actually alive.

To a degree, it doesn't matter, because we ultimately just need whatever position is that's making decisions to make the strategic choice to stop being a destabilizing power take the deal so that we can stop hitting you uh it's really help us stop hitting you and whoever whoever is willing and able to make the decision that's who that's who we're dealing with in name the iranians are insisting it's the ayatollah I, frankly, at this point, I'm of the view the guy's dead unless you prove otherwise.

And that we are in fact negotiating with the IRGC through cutouts.

I mean, is it can it really be a negotiation if there's not like an actual formalized leadership?

Like, for the average person who's reading this and is already wary of China, how is, uh, what does this mean? Break this down.

Well, there's, uh, technology is going in leaps and bounds, and even just how we compute things is going through a bit of a revolutionary period, uh, and may basically put it in, I think, somewhat colloquial terms.

Uh, if you think of how we programmed and computed things in my generation growing up, you ended up with a series of digits, ones or zeros, that could be either in punch cards where there's a little hole in a card or a filled space in a card.

Later, we got a little bit more sophisticated than punch cards that filled up giant rooms full of computers, and it was just data on chips that could have ones or zeros, but it's still that basic level of computing.

You either had something that was on or it was off, and huge sets of that data to compute with.

And over time, they started looking at how to apply theories of quantum physics to how we compute things, and it opened up a whole different range of ways to compute.

It made it so that we could be much, much more productive.

He's all, it's all about accelerating research and, uh, I, I guess like securing and further establishing th- th- infrastructure nationally to that point, because they see this coming.

I mean, what is happening with the British people that this is what they keep voting for and welcoming? I mean, because Farage, as you said, he's been really gaining a lot of ground.

He has.

You sort of get a sense that things are changing, but politics is a game of numbers, and it only matters who shows up when the votes are cast.

And it's definitely the case that not that long ago, Keir Starmer and his Labor Party had a huge election victory.

It's really hard to think of someone who had such a demonstration of political power squandered so quickly, and for what? But there you have it in terms of their politics.

I think the other contrast that's happening right now is I never would have thought so because I don't watch the game called soccer.

But with the World Cup allowing a lot of people to see with their own eyes what real America is and they go, holy crap, we've been told a lie.

you at all.

Is it unusual to wait this long to get details like this?

Well, Dana, I would double down on what you're saying about exercise caution.

I mean, I think that's one of the hardcore lessons of trying to track things in the era of Trump and especially Trump 2.0. Facts on the ground that really, really matter are likely going to take longer than a news cycle or two.

And we have like six news cycles per day.

So we're going to I think extreme caution on interpretation.

is warranted.

Also, I have to say that there's just been so much loosey goosey talk from people who hate the living daylights out of the president that you got to try to filter the signal from the noise in a lot of this too.

I don't mean to put you in a weird spot, but you're the best person to ask on this.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and they talk about, I mean, North Korea has a nuclear program that is still in existence and moving ahead.

China has the world's most rapidly developing nuclear infrastructure, uh, weapons and civilian, and, uh, but basically, rhetorically, they're talking about this China-Russia-North Korea kind of confab.

And people can laugh it off to a degree, little rocket man talking big and Xi Jinping coming over to talk to his one ally in the world, but they are up to a lot of no good in the world.

And they, whether it comes to missiles or other kinds of things, they're disruptive.

Uh, and I, I hope the president's watching this because, you know, there's an awful lot that was said about the summit between President Trump and, and Xi Jinping of the Communist Party of China, but China hasn't really done very much to be a problem solver in the echo of that, and I think that needs to matter more

And they're extract-

... to some of the high-tech supply chains that we all depend on for military and national security, but also our, our smart way of life.

Trump has actually got some stuff here that really is going to be of benefit to the American people and really is putting America first.

Yeah.

Well, I think the sort of Hippocratic Oath goes first.

He-- As far as I can tell, he's made no concessions, uh, so far.

There was some concern about him letting a few, uh, more of the most advanced chips go into China, but Secretary Bessent has been out vocal saying that, you know, we're leading on the AI race, and we aim to stay in that lead.

We can have a dialogue with the Chinese, but we aim to win.

That's the right approach to take.

Do we have the ability to do that with semiconductors? And if so, how long would it take, and what kind of investment will we need to see?

Yeah.

Well, it's good to know that they don't want anyone to abide by any things like this, because now I guess there's no restrictions in doing things in China.

And maybe we should be able to act with impunity within their country.

And of course, if they have opinions about what should be done in the near abroad, we should disregard those completely.

Thank you very much for setting the tone and the example, Mr.

China.

But I think that in seriousness, what they're running into is something that their scholars know because they've studied it for a very long time.

Why isn't why isn't Trump making Xi Jinping come here?

And first off, thank you for joining us, but what were your initial thoughts there?

Well, Dana, I've been there many times, not necessarily to the Correspondents' Dinner many times.

I think this is only the second time in my life, and it's nothing really I've aspired to.

I don't really like crowds, I don't like to have to wear a tuxedo and all that cool stuff.

But, uh, but then my first impression going in was, uh, they sort of had a perimeter out at the street because there's the usual crowd of dopey press protesters trying to say, "No kings before a king's coming." But then we, uh, we go in, you sort of flash a ticket, uh, but they weren't really looking at names and matching the tickets.

You go into the building.

Uh, there were some pre-game activities there in different parts of the hotel.

So is this a sign, do you think? Is this increasing tension on behalf of China and the Panama Canal a resort, a, a result of what, how it's being affected from not just Venezuela, but also, uh, the blockade that we have in the Strait of Hormuz?

Where are we going here?

Yeah.

Well, it's definitely the case that China has been practicing the blockade moves.

I think that was kind of a dopey headline by the Wall Street Journal, that for a- an outfit that has covered Asia very, in a very focused way for decades, I thought that was kind of an echo of what PRC talking points would be.

Clearly, they want to be able to have that blockade.

They've tested it.

Uh, but Japan has been reforming and revitalizing in ways we've never seen before.

Uh, I'm, I'm assuming tariffs with China, this coming trade war with China, I'm assuming they're gonna have something to do with this whole dustup, right? Surely, they're gonna play a role.

A detail, Steve. Does the Chinese listener know what the Voice of America is, or know what Doge is? Are they, are they kept up-to-date here? Because this just happened in America.

Yeah, I doubt very much that they have tracked the comings and goings of Voice of America, uh, furloughs, and the budget argument. They definitely know about Voice of America as a tool from the past. They would highlight in their propaganda that it is controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency or was somehow just a, uh, a conveyor of anti-China American propaganda. Uh, but really, I don't think they've followed very much how much these institutions really have just fallen into the domestic left in the perception of a lot of American conservatives, and certainly in the mind of the Trump Administration. Uh, and they wouldn't have any idea how much money is spent on these entities at this day and age, and where someone could ask a business question of, could this be done in the private sector, or could it be done better under a reform mission? Uh, and that's, I think, a bit removed from what the average Chinese information consumer would be sensitive to.

Voice of America, Voice of Europe, Voice of Asia, they're 20th century programs here in the 21st century. They're oddly, uh, so far behind, they're, you'd have to say you could collect them from eBay. Because what, the communication that we all use now is messaging, is WhatsApp, is video packages that come out in the evening, and to understand where we're going, it's going to become even faster, and AI will take charge of programming. So, this seems oddly out of place to worry about an information war, I understand that's what Beijing is conducting, with an antique. Or does Beijing think that the Chinese population doesn't know what an Apple iPhone is and doesn't know about baseball? Do they think they're, they're isolated from reality and only the radio signals get through? What, what is the opinion of the people of China?

Well, my perception is, John, that there's a little bit of both of those operating simultaneously. I think it's without, uh, contest that Beijing is annoyed and sensitive to the programming that come out of these entities. At the same time, there is a lot of truth to the notion that the forms of communication have migrated, the technology has advanced a lot, and opportunities have been missed by some of these entities. I would argue that the grantee organizations, like Radio Free Asia and the similar counterpart in the Middle East, have done a bit more to adapt on that than Voice of America has. But there's, I think, both of these going on at once. And I think, hopefully, there will be some change that is rejuvenating, eh, these entities themselves. Uh, I don't think they'll continue as they have, as a relic of the past. But this mission of getting other voices and censored information into these closed societies or closed media environments, that's a vital mission. The government, I think, has a role, but the private sector does too, and we don't have a modern balance in that.