Chinese Aggression Fuels Indo-Pacific Gray Zone Wars: Bonus Crossover Episode
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Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of At the Boundary, the podcast from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Director for GNSI and your host for At the Boundary. As this episode airs, most of America and the world is focused on the present day inauguration of President Donald Trump. However, at GNSI, we focus not just on what's happening today, but what it means for policymakers in the future.

As an example, just five months ago, a Philippines Coast Guard ship was rammed by a much larger Chinese Coast Guard ship in the South China Sea while a news crew from 60 Minutes was on board. The incident didn't garner a ton of attention at the time because it was competing with another political event, the Democratic National Convention. But it's just one example of escalating tensions in the Indo-Pacific region that the Trump administration will need to deal with over the next four years. More on that in a moment.

First, registration is open for Genocide's Tampa Summit 5, scheduled for March 4th through 5th here at USF. The Russia-Ukraine War, Lessons for Future Conflicts, will look at the strategic innovation that has characterized this conflict and will impact those to come. Drone usage, disinformation and misinformation, cyber warfare, use of social media, and medical care will be some of the lessons learned we'll explore.

Take a look at the full agenda and list of speakers on the website, which include White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby, USF Class of 1985, and General Frank McKenzie, GNSI Executive Director and former commander for U.S. Central Command. We'll drop a link in the show notes and hope you'll join us for that. So, why should the Trump administration care about what's happening in the Indo-Pacific?

Fortunately, we have with us today Ray Powell and Jim Caruso, who host the coincidentally titled podcast, Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific? Ray is a retired Air Force colonel and director of SEALIGHT, a maritime transparency initiative within the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford.

Jim was a career U.S. State Department diplomat and is senior advisor and chairman of the advisory board to the Australian chair in the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Both have extensive experience in the Indo-Pacific region. Ray and Jim, welcome to the podcast. Great to be with you.

Thanks. Good name, Jim Cardoso. Yes, exactly. And we're, our last names are like one, one syllable off. So it's, it's a beautiful thing. So let's start with terms and definitions. Most listeners, okay, they're likely familiar with the Pacific ocean and the major geographical locations in the region. However, likely less so on the details of the expansive geography and the cultural diversity of

which I perceive you seek to capture with your specific term, Indo-Pacific. Can you explain what this regional reference refers to and what your podcast focuses on? I'll start off and Ray will correct me. Basically, the question is, where does the Indian Ocean begin and where does the Pacific Ocean begin? And the Japanese figured this out quite a while ago and started referring to the region as Indo-Pacific. And I think it was Harry Harris when he was commander of Indo-Pacific

At the time, PACOM said, no, no, we go the way from Hollywood to Bollywood. We're not going to just call the Pacific. We're not just Indian. We're Indo-Pacific. So it's that big region with a lot of water and a lot of issues to cover. Ray, anything to add to that or did he nail it? No, he nailed it.

Okay, simple, direct to the points. Okay, so Ray, we'll go to you this time. So let's dig into a bit with the corollary question to your podcast title. Why should the Trump administration care about the Indo-Pacific? Ray, we'll start with you.

Well, sure. I mean, I think it comes back to China, frankly. China has been called a lot of things by the strategic community. A favorite seems to be the pacing threat, which basically means this is a threat that we need to sort of peg to in order to understand what our international security challenges are. It all starts with China. And I think that that's true. And I think that,

You know, the Indo-Pacific, the countries of the Indo-Pacific sort of live that every day in a way that we haven't until recently. So, you know, I think that that's really where that comes down to. Over to you, Jim. Why should President Trump care about the Indo-Pacific? Well, it's a huge part of global GDP, huge part of our trading partners. It is the pathway through strategic waterways like the Straits of Malacca.

It is the gateway to Australia. And if you think back to World War II, the Japanese thought it was pretty important because they were island hopping all the way south, right up to Papua New Guinea and ready to take Australia. So it's important. That's south. Then, of course, there's the whole Pacific Ocean. And that's to our doorstep, right, to Hawaii and beyond. So we have keen strategic interests in this entire region.

Your podcast, by design, both in the moment and it's the same. It's by design. It's in the moment and it looks forward as well. And you've done I think you're at 50 episodes now. You kicked off in April 2024. And before we're done here, you're going to you're going to brag a bit on your podcast or rightfully so. What Indo-Pacific areas of concern are your guests talking about?

Well, of course, China. Some of our most popular podcasts, frankly, have been very India-focused.

And we have enjoyed bringing on a number of guests who, I mean, frankly, South Asia is less of the area that Jim and I spent our government years in. And so, you know, we have enjoyed kind of unpacking the economic opportunities, the strategic challenges, all these sort of different. And it is a very different kind of way to look at the world from an India centric perspective.

which is going to become actually increasingly important going forward. As many people are maybe aware, India just surpassed China as the most populous country in the world. And its economic strength and its political strength is only growing. You know, Jim, a lot of the peace over the past decades since World War II in the region had been because the U.S. was present and so powerful, it was effective deterrence.

And what concerns me and Ray is that deterrence clearly is beginning to fail as we see China becoming more and more aggressive in places like the South China Sea, in activities around Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands of Japan, and even on the border of India and Bhutan. So is deterrence failing? Is...

Chinese activity in the so-called gray zone, which you can get into. Is that a precursor or are they so successful with the gray zone of continued salami slicing to achieve their goals? Not to not to get into politics. I'm going to try assiduously to avoid that. But you talked about effective deterrence by the U.S. Is that fair?

Is that driven by, I mean, will that be chain? Will that evolve in a Trump administration as compared to a Biden administration? Or is it something that's more baked into where America's headed right now in the year 2024? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, sure. I mean, we're a democracy and politics matters. So the way that the administration looks at the Indo-Pacific and looks at geostrategy more broadly and, of course, looks at things like economics and trade matters. And so, you know, the first Trump administration, both Jim and I were down at the embassy in Australia at the time, and we were dealing very closely internationally.

with a U.S. ally, Jim, as the charge d'affaires, and I as the defense attache. And things that the Trump administration said and did mattered a lot. And some of them actually, quite frankly, were pretty helpful. You know, redoing our national security strategy, national defense strategy was huge. Yeoman's work that needed to have been done to refocus us on

on the China threat, because frankly, our national conversation about China has been lagging the reality on the ground for years. And so that was really important.

On the other hand, you know, Donald Trump is famously verbose. He says a lot of things and not all of it is terribly helpful and not all of it means very much. And that's that's something for people who are in government to get used to, because we're used to the idea that presidential proclamations have this huge weight to them. And in a Trump administration, it's just not going to mean as much or the ones that do mean something are going to be harder to suss out than the other ones.

I'm getting back to the point of what the Trump administration is going to do about these issues in the Indo-Pacific. They keep talking about China being the real threat and that Europe should take care of Ukraine, for instance. So on the one hand, it seems...

likely that there will be no diminution of focus on China. On the other hand, I would expect, I think Ray does too, that the demand for our allies and partners in the region to up their game in terms of defense spending and perhaps in taking some other activity to counter China could be a real source of tension.

Yeah, let's tease that one out a little bit more. You know, a key feature of Indo-Pacific is the alliances and partnership. You've got AUKUS, you've got Quad, you've got others. And there is a degree of, I would say, the unknown and how these alliances and partnerships are going to thrive over the next four years, given, as we discussed, President Trump's, let's just say, dynamic rhetoric on the topic.

especially, especially in regards to trade and tariffs. What do you, if you want to expand on what you just said, Jim and Ray as well, talk about that a bit. Well, let's, let's start with the apparent demand that allies spend at least 2%, if not up to 5% of GDP on defense. So I personally am expecting that to be, can be a continued theme. Uh, secondly, yeah. Um,

During the first Trump administration, you may remember a global steel and aluminum tariff was put on, which included our allies, which included Australia. And it was done under the rubric of this was a national security issue. So our Australian partners who've been with us in every fight we've had since World War I were, we'll call it miffed.

that they were considered a national security threat because 0.02% of U.S. steel imports came from Australia. Now- You're avoiding the PG-13 terms that may be applied to this situation as well, I would think. I'm trying to, I know how sensitive you can be, Jim. I appreciate that. It's all right. You try to be gentle. But Australia was eventually exempted from the tariffs.

But who's to say this universal 10 percent tariff that Trump's talking about will again be applied, which will again be on the national security basis, apparently. So there's going to be some, you know, some Sturman drunk, I would expect, going forward. Yeah, I think, you know, this also gets to the theme of and we've seen this play out in administrations in the past several years, including the first Trump administration, where

to what extent do you confront our allies versus assure our allies? And I think you're going to see a mode shift away from some of the assurance and towards some of the confrontation. Now, you have to do both things, right? You don't want, for example, allies to sort of get used to the idea that the U.S. will do everything for them and not ask anything of them. So there has to be a balance.

Now, of course, when you're in the country, as we've both been in some of these countries,

if you fail to assure allies, if they don't believe that the U.S., for example, is going to be around for the long term, the concern then becomes, do they begin to sort of hedge in the direction of China? They start to make side deals. They start to give away some of the things that we think are really important to maintain in the name, just to make sure that they don't fall under the hairy eyeball of Beijing.

And it is a delicate balance. It's one of those things that, frankly, our allies are starting to think, I think, get used to because we have kind of whipsawed back and forth between assurance and confrontation.

But it is going to be, I think, one of the things that you'll see in this administration is you'll be you'll see a movement back in the direction of more confrontation. Just just to add to that, Ray and I in our careers in Southeast Asia were constantly told how effective Chinese propaganda is. And that propaganda is the U.S. You know, they pivot, they go back and forth.

They have different administrations. We're your neighbor Southeast Asia. We will always be here. We will always have keen interest. You will always be our priority. America is unreliable. So when you're making your decisions,

Be very clear you know that we will always be here, and America, who knows? And we will always be here is both an assurance and a threat. They're using confrontation and assurance as well to their advantage. You know, that the U.S. goes back and forth, I think a lot of people would probably agree with that. That China will always be there, I think there's a – I would say that, you know –

Ray, you talked about that India has taken over China in terms of population, and you start looking long-term at Chinese population. There's some dire predictions out there. Now, it's beyond the next four years, but is that taken into account at all by some of our partners in the Indo-Pacific region as they deal with China? Yeah.

Well, you know, most of these partners are democracies and they have to get elected in the next election. They are, you know, their horizons like ours tend to be a little shorter term. They're worried about what their population thinks now. Are they bringing them prosperity and security now? So, you know, they've got some of the same problems we have. And this gets into the all of nation effort. It can't just be a military effort.

And the problem we have is China is by far the biggest trading partner for most of these countries and increasingly important investor. So if we're going to raise trade barriers to make it even more difficult for these countries to export, make it more difficult perhaps to invest in these countries, it's going to make it very difficult for them to make the political decision to side with us.

Yeah. And, you know, you talk about the tariffs as well. I mean, I read that on as we are not as record this, but as we publish this on the 20th, I read that President Trump is going to declare the external revenue service, not the IRS, the ERS that will right away start collecting those significant tariffs that he expects. So, I mean, I guess we'll see what that looks like.

Yeah, I mean, so this goes back to things that Donald Trump says. And again, he is constantly in broadcast mode. And I had experiences and I don't know Jim had experiences where we would be confronted by our counterparts, our allies down there in Australia. And they say, what did he mean when he said this? And I would often say,

wait 48 hours. If nothing else happens, it didn't mean anything. It's a ship that passed in the night. So, you know, but, you know, if you don't want him to talk about it again, then don't remind him of it. And if you don't want anything to become of it. And I also think that to some degree, you know, this is the art of the deal, right? This is these are negotiating tactics. He wants to he wants these other countries to take him seriously when he threatens tariffs. And so, you know, the external revenue service is one way to do that.

And so what actually comes out of that? So, again, we are used to a process whereby the United States national security process, you know, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Commerce Department, they come up with these proposals. They bubble up through the National Security Council. They're presented to the president. He says, let's do that one. And then we sort of move out and we do roughly that one.

Whereas with Donald Trump, it's he thought about something. He says it. People react. He's often riffs off the reactions. And then something else happens that may or may not be that. But it may be sort of that adjacent. It's just a different way to think about how all these things happen is one of those things that as people who were in that situation.

Those institutions we are very uncomfortable with. And of course, it makes our allies and partners uncomfortable. But it's going to be the theme. Yeah, it's I'll use a military term as a civilian around here. He's preparing the battlefield. It's operational prep of the battlefield. We call it OPB. Do you think that, um.

Look, this is a second Trump term, though. Do you think that there's a little bit more recognition that even from our allies now, like you said, people that worked closely would say, OK, this is just the way it is. You wait for 48 hours. Our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, are they do you think they'll understand that better to to not freak out and just kind of see where things go after some particularly inauspicious pronouncement?

I think we're already seeing that it's a little calmer this time than last time around. Yeah, I agree. But he's not in the presidency yet. So I guess I don't know. That's what happens on January 20th.

And the second movie will not be exactly like the first, right? It's a sequel. It's going to be different. And so and there are, you know, Donald Trump himself learned things about what he wanted in his first term. And so I have a feeling there will be some things that come out that, you know, people may hope that will sort of go away that don't go away because he sort of spent enough time thinking about them. But, you know, overall, the process is going to be the same. And one of the things that will be true is that

Leaders who figure out how to do personal diplomacy with Donald Trump himself will be more successful. If you have leaders who...

worry about his mannerisms and his style and the things that he says and tweets and all of those kinds of things, those leaders might end up stumbling. Whereas kind of savvy leaders, you know, the classic example in the Indo-Pacific was Shinzo Abe, who seemed to have figured him out really from the beginning and knew how to talk to him and knew how to carry out that personal diplomacy and enjoyed a great relationship with Donald Trump.

So we have on our podcast Malcolm Turnbull, who was president when Trump was elected. And you may recall the first conversation they had was terrible. Trump told Turnbull that this was the worst conversation I've had all day. And so there was a lot of concern. How's the relationship going to go? But

They actually ended up working really well together because, as Turnbull said, you got to stand up to Trump sometimes and form the relationship. And he's actually really quick to forgive a disagreement because that's what he does. He foments disagreement. But as long as you negotiate with him sort of straightforwardly.

he can come to an agreement. Yeah, and another, Jim, another conversation I remember in this sense was our chat with H.R. McMaster, who of course was Trump's national security advisor for a year. And one of his pieces of advice I thought was really clever was, you know,

you know, people should just get over it. You know, you're not going to change him. He's not going to become a different person because you said the right thing to him. Just recognize that that's who he is and figure it out. Because, I mean, he's been 80 years in the making almost. He is who he is. Yep. It's probably just best to understand the operational environment you're working in. There's no question about that. You know, Ray, you spend, I know you spend a lot of time, and as we led up to this, about, you know, your experience

expertise and just thinking about the South China Sea. And I led off this episode talking about one specific instance of that type of tension that's going on in the South China Sea. How could, I mean, I don't see these things going away. It's only going to continue most likely. How are these tensions going to cause challenges for the administration?

Well, I think it starts by understanding that China is a fundamentally, in the way that they're looking at the world, they are an expansionist state. They believe that their status, that their history has earned them a larger sphere of influence and the...

U.S.-led world order that emerged after World War II kind of happened to China at a time when China was historically weak. But now China is historically strong, and it's time for China to expand into its natural sphere of influence. And they look at the United States with our big two oceans on either side and the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America, whatever we're calling it today, and the Monroe Doctrine and all of these things, and they say –

It's just fair. It's just right. You know, you get yours. We get ours. We're the two great powers. And so what doesn't belong here is the United States doesn't belong in China's sphere of influence. Well, China looks abroad and they see South Korea, Japan, the Philippines. They see all of these countries.

U.S. allies and partners, and they say the U.S. needs to get out of this. We call that the first island chain, that chain that goes from the Korean Peninsula all the way around to Singapore. And

China feels hemmed in by that because they look out and they see America all over the place. And so their agenda is to push us out. And the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait is where that starts. So what we often call these gray zone activities, these opaque and deniable activities that China is still to this day, to this moment, carrying out in spades, not only in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, but elsewhere,

They are the primary weapon that China is using. China, I truly believe, does not want to go to war with the United States. They want these countries, they want to some degree the United States itself and its partners and allies to yield space and in some cases completely capitulate if you're talking about Taiwan or the Philippines and the West Philippine Sea.

Short of war. So, you know, and so that is what is happening right now, even as we're talking.

Yeah, I mean, but I mean, I don't I don't think any of us here perceive that you use the word capitulate. I don't see any of us seeing the Trump administration capitulating on anything over the next four years. And it's, you know, most likely not in the U.S.'s national interest to do so. So where is. Sure. But if what if Taiwan capitulates, if the Philippines capitulates, if Japan begins to yield space, you know, if Malaysia is already kind of capitulating in some ways, you know, so if.

we can get pushed out of the South China Sea. We can get pushed out of East Asia in a lot of ways that give China a much freer hand. And by the way,

Expansionist states are never satisfied. I mean, you can go back through history. They don't get to a point where they go, I guess we've got enough now. That's true. The sun never sets on the British Empire, you know, back from those days as well. You know, Jim, when we spoke in prep for this episode, I...

erroneously used the term Indo-PACOM, as we were discussing in the title of your podcast. And you very quickly and rightfully corrected me that no, it's not Indo-PACOM, it's Indo-Pacific. Again, that emphasis on using all aspects of national strategy and national power in the Indo-Pacific and not just military. And you touched on that before. Can you talk a little bit more about that importance of that? Sure. You know, U.S. soft power, which is

sometimes debated, is still an amazing thing. Students don't particularly want to go study in China. They want to come here. Entrepreneurs don't go and set up companies in China. They come here. Our culture, with apologies to K-pop, is still pretty popular in the region. And this idea of America as a place where anything is possible is really powerful.

But if we are seen as closing those avenues off of becoming or turning our back on the world and basically indicating this is all ours and really we're not welcoming you anymore. What choice do these countries have? And not only that, but, you know, like like a spurned lover in a sense, they're going to get angry. So we need to say no.

Look, we want to work with your scientists and your businesses and your traders and your exporters and help you develop so you can become richer and more secure and better able to diversify your economy away from China. And frankly, both in the Biden administration and the previous Trump administration, by pulling out of TPP and Trans-Pacific Partnership especially and not replacing it with anything, that's a problem.

Yeah. Do you think that, I mean, do you foresee...

Again, it's one of those things that what President Trump says and what he does can be sometimes two different things. Some of the indications are exactly what you said. And, you know, there is a level of closing our backs on the world and putting up tariffs, putting up greater barriers for immigration. Is that what you perceive as maybe that's where the world will see that and hear that? Even if these things don't come fully to fruition as advertised, it'll still create a psychology by which turning to China makes more sense? Yeah.

Well, it could do. When we were in Australia, Ray and I, and I was charge, and there was the Muslim travel ban. And we had a case where a kid who was of Iranian background and had dual citizenship had been admitted to a NASA camp. And this was his dream, right? Every little kid who's into science wants to go to NASA camp. And he was prohibited. So this 14-year-old kid. And of course, what's in the news? That. Yes.

And it's hard to control a narrative that says the US is closed to aspiring young scientists because of their religion.

Are we going to see that sort of thing again? I don't know. So and, you know, I'm just respectful of time. So I know, Jim, you do have to go. But I guess I would say so. How can the Trump administration be successful across the diplomatic, informational, military, economic spectrum over the next four years? And that's a question for for both of you. What you think?

Well, I guess I would start by, I mean, so Donald Trump himself is not going to decide all these things, right? He has things that he is interested in and he has things that his people are interested in. And those are often, you know, different but complementary. And so a lot of the things we found during the first Trump administrations did not necessarily come out directly out of the Oval Office.

And again, the first Trump administration did do some things that were pretty bold and at times necessary. So, for example, the idea that the U.S. could move its – the capital – and this is not in the Indo-Pacific, but the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem –

Among many of the people who had done this for a very long time, it was believed that that was kind of impossible, that it would cause a conflagration. In the end, it was kind of a nothing burger. It just kind of happened. And so there are opportunities out there for somebody who is a different kind of thinker and surrounded by different kinds of thinkers to do new things.

I'm out with an article today in the Dispatch. One of the things that I talk about in the article is we should talk to the Philippines about exploring for natural gas at Reed Bank, which is within China's nine-dash line, but certainly within the – which is what China claims, but certainly within the Philippines' rights under international law to do. We should go and visit them at some of their –

island outposts. There will be people who will say, you know, that was too provocative, that will make other countries upset. But you know what? Sometimes you just have to kind of take the hit and do the thing that changes the narrative and says, no, America is not going away. You can't just push us out. And it's not the inevitable tide of history that's going to result in China owning all this and the U.S. retreating back to our borders. So I think that, you know, just by looking at problems a little bit differently, you

and not sort of just accepting all of the conventional wisdom, the Trump administration may have the chance to do some new things. Jim, anything to add to that? Well, you know, the mantra overseas during Trump one was America first does not mean America alone. So if we can live up to that and yeah, we can push for increased defense spending and reducing their trade deficits. But if we do it in partnership and say, let's work together on these things and do some of the things like Ray's indicated,

You know, I think they'll respect our own desires to write some imbalances as long as it's not seen as holding a gun to their heads and saying, where else? Yeah. You know, I think, like you said, the first administration, the rhetoric sounded that way, but the reality a lot of times was very different.

So I guess we'll see. You've given some, I mean, some great thoughts on how the Trump administration can be successful. But before we close out, I don't want to give you a little time to talk about you have, like we said, your own podcast, which you started in April, you're 50 episodes into it, I believe, last I checked. But go ahead and brag on yourselves a little bit on your podcast and what you're doing and what you got coming up.

Well, this has been a labor of love for Jim and I. We started this, as you said, in April. We started in part because we knew so many of these really, really interesting people who were very important practitioners in the Indo-Pacific space.

very original thinkers. And we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to see what they thought about some of the emerging problems. And we thought, by the way, the question of why should we care, which is where we sort of focus, why should we in the West and America and wherever we are, why should we care about these topics? We thought those were really important to bring out. And so it's been successful. We continue to get some more and more

impressive guests with important guests. As Jim mentioned, we have a former prime minister. We just had a sitting ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel. We have had former Trump administration officials. We expect to get some former Biden administration officials in just the next few days since we've got a transition coming on. People who we have had the privilege of being in contact with through our travels, and we look forward to talking to even more of them.

Yeah. I, I listened to a few episodes and I could tell there was a, there was a, um, a familiar familiarity with each other in that came out through the episode as well that you, you know, that wasn't the first time you were meeting them. And that was a, that really made for a, it's a good conversation and it's worth listening to. And I think, you know, from my perspective, you know, when people would you say Indo-Pakistan, they go, yeah, China. And, and you, you rightfully said China is kind of the 800 pound gorilla in, in the conversation. But, um,

Man, there's a lot of nuances there as well. And, you know, the fact that the Chinese rammed a Filipino, you know, Coast Guard vessel should have been huge news. And the Democratic National Convention sort of stole the headlines and

And so there's a lot going on there. So I think that I would tell people, you know, you should have two podcasts on your podcast player. You should have, of course, at the boundary, but right next to it, you should have, why should we care what goes on the Indo-Pacific? As we close out the podcast, I guess I'll turn it over to you gentlemen, Ray, and then Jim, any closing thoughts? Well, so again, thanks so much for doing this. This has been a tremendous conversation.

I just urge people, you know, when you're thinking about where things are going in these hot wars in the Middle East, in Europe,

realize that there is a gray zone war happening now in the Indo-Pacific and the consequences have actually been probably even more consequential in a lot of ways. We have become used to a level of aggression in the Indo-Pacific that we would not tolerate in other places. And yet we've just been conditioned to tolerate it. And that is playing directly into the aggressor's hands. So it is important to care. Thanks, Ray. Jim?

Yeah, I'm on the board of something called the Tucson Committee on Foreign Relations. And when I joined, I was pitching discussions of Indo-Pacific. And someone said to me, well, why should I care about the Indo-Pacific? And this was after COVID and supply chain disruptions and all that's going on with China in general. I couldn't believe it. The world is a small, interconnected place, a bottom line. And we're never going to get away into some sort of neo-isolationism again.

And if we're going to be a great power, which we are, we're going to have to care about the place. That's a great closing statement. That was, I echo you, Ray. This is a really enjoyable conversation. I've learned a lot out of it, as I always do from these podcast episodes. And I just want to say, Ray Powell, Jim Caruso, good luck on your podcast. I'll be listening for sure to continue to increase my knowledge about why I should care about the Indo-Pacific. And I look forward to seeing you

how the Trump administration unfolds with some of the discussions and quasi predictions that, that you gentlemen have made here. I want to thank you both for your time. Thanks Jim. I want to thank our special guests today, Ray Powell and Jim Caruso, host of the podcast. Why should we care about the Indo-Pacific? It walked us through why that region of the world should be a high priority for the new Trump administration as he moves forward into a second term.

We'll drop a link to their podcast into the episode notes and recommend you subscribe and follow them there. Next week on At The Boundary, we're bringing back Caitlin Lee from RAND Corporation and one of the world's foremost experts on drones. We're going to talk a little bit about those mystery drones over New Jersey. What are they? Are they everywhere? How concerned should we be?

Caitlin will also be a special guest at GNSI Tampa Summit 5 in March. And we'll do a little preview of her conference panel, which focuses on drones in Russia-Ukraine war and what the world has learned from that. I'm looking forward to that conversation. We hope you'll join us.

Thanks for listening today. If you like the podcast, please share with your colleagues and network. You can follow GNSI on our LinkedIn and X accounts at USF underscore GNSI. And check out our website as well at USF.edu slash GNSI, where you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

That's going to wrap up this episode of At The Boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we've found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you at the boundary.