Why Should We Care About Techno-Nationalism in the Indo-Pacific? | with Alex Capri
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Welcome once again to Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific, brought to you by our producer, IEJ Media. Our sponsor, Bauer Group Asia. We will tell them, tell them, tell you more about them in due course. I'm Ray Powell. I'm the former military officer. I am in California. My friend Jim Caruso is the former diplomat. He is in New York. And Jim...

We were just looking at the Apple podcast numbers and our subscriptions are up seven fold in a year. How do you feel about that? What's that? We have seven subscriptions now. That's not nice. Come on now. That's very good, Raymond. I'm all right. Thank you. I feel better now. And that's just an Apple. Um,

Well, today we have a friend of mine, Alex Capri. Alex Capri is an academic teaching in Singapore at the university there. He used to be a partner at the Asia practice of KPMG. And most importantly for our purposes right now, he is the author of a book called Techno-Nationalism, which talks about

Among other things, the battle for technological supremacy. And Alex, this has been going on for years, right? Countries competing for industrial advantage or whatever. So Alex Capri, welcome. And why should we care about this new form of competition called techno-nationalism?

Well, thank you, gentlemen. And thanks for having me on your podcast. Well, look, techno-nationalism is important because at the end of the day, nation states turn to it for security, basically. The bottom line is it's about defense, national security, but it's also now closely linked to economic strength and economic security. So,

The feedback loop that exists between technology, government, the defense establishment, the academic community, obviously the private sector and corporations, that feedback loop throughout history has been a virtuous cycle. You know, we can go all the way back. You know, we can go back to the founding of the nation state, the concept of the nation state, right? Hundreds of years. Right.

Technology has always been in that feedback loop, and it has always been linked to a state's, you know, those three elements that I mentioned. So let's just, let's get, start with sort of what is techno-nationalism in your definition, and what makes it different from the state that was before techno-nationalism, if that makes sense?

Well, technology has always been a power multiplier, right? So whether it's for, you know, the ruling elite in a tribal system or whether it's for the, you know, the formalized government establishment in a nation state. So, again, if you tie technological prowess to the most essential elements of power, you

then we could go back millennia to the linkage between technology and defense and strength and power. So I think if we look at present day and we look at this in the context of the great power rivalry between China and the U.S., or you could say China and the G7++,

So we're in the fourth industrial revolution now, right? So the power multipliers in the form of technology are just incredibly, incredibly potent. So when we think about the 12 key areas, right, the 12 power multiplier technologies, we're looking at.

Obviously, semiconductors as ground zero, artificial intelligence, which is a pretty broad term. So that includes everything from compute power to algorithms and software and cognitive machine learning, that type of thing. Things like quantum science, hypersonic science, biotech.

advanced materials, advanced manufacturing technologies, aerospace, obviously, to name the core ones. So in the fourth industrial revolution, with all of these emerging and foundational technologies growing exponentially in terms of power, we've never been in a more critical time in human history than

from a techno-nationalist perspective. So is this a competition between the U.S. and China, or is it beyond that? It's beyond that. So from a great power rivalry perspective, and I break down techno-nationalism into six core elements, which I can get into in a minute. But in terms of great power rivalry, yes, U.S.-China is at the center of it. But all nation-states...

have have techno nationalist agendas right all nation states have their own self-serving agendas in terms of a responding to the existential threats around them many of which are a direct result of technology and

And B, basically to promote their own social cohesion and social stability, you know, nation states need to get a grip on what's happening, for example, with deep fakes and disinformation campaigns, right?

And and hybrid warfare, basically. Right. So all nation states, whether they are top tier, you know, very, you know, the most powerful, most affluent countries in the world, whether they are middle tier countries or whether they're, you know, at the at the very bottom of the of the food chain from a technology standpoint, all nation states have techno nationalist agendas.

So it wasn't very long ago, you know, from the end of the Cold War, maybe through the 90s and even, you know, maybe a little beyond that, that we were still, I mean, really, you know, into the, at least in the mid 2000s, still in a very,

globalist mindset and maybe also a techno-globalist mindset where we thought that all of this new technology, this wonderful new technology was what was going to bring us all together. So is it essentially just the case that the rise of a rival great power with a very much different outlook on the world, on a more authoritarian model, a more spheres of influence model,

Was that essentially what flipped that on its head? Yeah, the rise of China, I think, was fundamental in the paradigm shift that we've seen occur today, primarily in the West, and what I would refer to as the great reorganization, right? So the global economy and the trade landscape

which, of course, reflects all of these supply chains and these value chains that have come into existence really over the last three plus decades. All of that is now being influenced by this paradigm shift in the West that China's rise is a great power and China's ambitions are

in the area of technology, what it wants to do, for example, with, you know, the Made in China 2025 plan and other, other strategic industries that, that it's focused on because of that. Yeah.

We are in this, again, this great reorganization period. Now, I don't think that this is a period of deglobalization. I think within this reorganization, we will see fundamental bifurcation of the tech stack in those core 12 power multiplier technologies when it comes to China's sphere of influence and the U.S. and the G7++. So, yeah.

In that regard, we're going to have to live with paradoxes.

because we will be continuing to trade on many different levels. We will see an increase in productivity gains, an increase in digital trade, an increase in the informal economy. We'll see more and more innovation around tech platforms, around digital money and payment options and all those types of things. So

So we're going through this reorganization, this bifurcation, and this hyper-fragmentation process. But we aren't necessarily going through a full deglobalization process. What strikes me is it seems to me China's been preparing for this for years to be more independent of U.S. or Western supply chains, certainly for critical components. While the U.S. seemed to feel that there was some sort of –

I don't know, tacit agreement that we'll give you semiconductors if you give us rare earth minerals to make defense items. How do you explain this split in approach?

Yeah. So, look, I think a lot's been said and written about this, but the West completely miscalculated the intentions of the Chinese Communist Party. The West did not understand how the Chinese Communist Party actually thinks, operates. There was very little regard given to their five-year plans. They weren't taken very seriously. You know, you mentioned things like critical minerals.

And critical technologies. But I mean, Deng Xiaoping had already pegged critical minerals, rare earths, you know, three decades before they actually achieved the position that they've achieved. The Chinese saw that as a really important element, right, of inserting themselves into the power structure when it came to, you know, technology and trade.

So if you go back and you look at – when I went out to China, I started going out there on business in the late 90s. And then I actually moved to Hong Kong and spent a lot of time in China from the early 2000s onwards. And it was clear and it was completely open and transparent that the Chinese Communist Party was protecting China.

critical parts of its economy, right? It wasn't letting in, it wasn't allowing the big Western companies to come in and banking in technology and what later would become social media, in telecommunications, all of these things. So this sort of preemptive decoupling on the part of the Chinese Communist Party as part of their broader long-term techno-nationalist plan has always been there.

So it seems like, I mean, okay, the Great Firewall, we call it, the Great Firewall, that basically came down somewhere around the mid-90s, I think, right? Or at least began to be constructed around that same time. It seems like that should have offered a clue to us in the West that maybe we needed to take this...

techno-nationalism more seriously then. Is it just because we were all making so much money that we didn't see it?

Yeah. You know, I, I, I think, um, that was a big part of it. Um, you know, I, I, I think the trade liberalization model, um, you know, the neoliberal economic view of the world, uh, was so deeply embedded in, uh, in the, in, if I can use the term Western, right. Um, in, in the Western, uh, uh,

uh, consciousness when it came to doing business with China. And I think that was reinforced by a couple of things. One, the U S had essentially, well, they did win the cold war with the Soviet union, right? So, uh, the Berlin wall comes down. We have, you know, in, in 91, uh, or excuse me, in 89, uh, the Soviet union dissolves basically in 91. Um, and,

The United States emerges as the sole superpower in the world. That's testimony in and of itself that our system was superior, right? We have in 2001, I think it was China joins the WTO. We have this convergence of these new technologies that are

that are vastly improving compute power and connectivity. And so we've got all these great advances in unbundling of global supply chains. It's all happening at once and it's all happening very quickly. And it's all very serendipitous, right? All of these things came together at exactly the right time. And so I think it was very easy and it was very tempting to overlook

the fundamental differences in China's, you know, statist system. And it's very, very well organized techno-nationalist policies with all of these things that had just happened. And of course, the fact that we were making a lot of money, right? I mean, it was a really, really heady, exciting time. And, you know, China was right at the heart of that.

So Ray and I were in Australia when the ban on Huawei being the supplier of 5G came down. And what really amazed us was there was no US competitor. There were Finland, South Korea, and Sweden. And obviously this is a key infrastructure component. And the US and Canada had years of

companies, the labs being critical to this important infrastructure. Was this us dropping the ball or was it a conscious decision by companies to outsource this? Well, again, if it's a great question, Jim, look, if you look at the trade liberalization model and you look at telecommunications is a good forerunner and we can certainly talk about semiconductors, at least the fabrication side of semiconductors a bit.

But under the trade liberalization model, if money and processes are seeking the most efficient, the most rationalized configurations in a supply chain perspective, then –

you know, the model made sense, right? You had Western companies, you had the, you know, the Ericsons of the world, the Nokias of the world, you had the, the, the, the, the oracles of the world, the broadcoms, et cetera, that they were doing a great job designing technology and coming up with technology, but it just economically and under the, under the trade liberalization model, under the neo-economic

It made perfect sense under a rationalized supply chain ecosystem to move everything to its most efficient location. And that meant licensing a lot of technology to companies like Huawei.

And it meant taking the money from those licensing fees and plowing it right back into more R&D, right? This idea that everybody does what they're best at. And hey, if you're not leading or you're not the most efficient at production and manufacturing physically, you outsource that. So that model was so prevalent and it worked really well for a long time until...

You know, you know, to use the term by Hemingway, you know, a man goes broke slowly and then suddenly, you know, this is what happened with sort of the Western industrial base for a lot of these critical manufacturing ecosystems. Right. They just sort of slowly, slowly drained out and then suddenly they weren't there anymore.

The banning of 5G, of Huawei in 5G, seems to have been a very significant inflection point. Why 5G? Why Huawei? What was it about that particular technology that sort of began this phase of this discussion? You know, two things. One,

The security element, the idea that any company that builds critical telecommunications infrastructure in 150 countries around the world, that's now digital technology, right?

can in fact insert spyware, can in fact put in sort of sleeper type malware. All of that is absolutely possible and absolutely doable. And in my book, I actually, I talk about the forerunner to that. And in the 60s and the 70s, late 50s, 60s and 70s,

It was the United States telephone monopolies that were building that built most of the telephone infrastructure around the world. Right. And we have a clear history of the NSA, the CIA working very closely with American telecommunication companies, which I write about in the book. Right.

And so anybody in the intelligence community or anybody in the political establishment that understood this reality knew that any other foreign company or any company anywhere with the kind of footprint that Huawei had, a footprint which, by the way, was expanded through massive economic nationalism, right? Through massive initiatives, right?

that helped the company grow, in addition to all of the technology transfer that was made available to them through licensing and other means, that was a clear red flag, right? So I think the rise of Huawei, which is one of the most

significant companies in history when you look at it, right? It is an absolute phenomenon. I'm sorry, can I continue? No, I was just going to say, Jim, so I think in 2019 when Huawei is placed on the entity list,

There was the economic side, the economic nationalism side as to how the Chinese Communist Party and the state were embellishing and were producing and underwriting and subsidizing Huawei in that respect. And then there was the national security element as well that made Huawei such an important company.

So in your book, you talk about how countries' strength and national security are intricately linked with its technological prowess, which means in the current race in AI and semiconductors to hypersonics and quantum and all that, this is really a race for not just dominance, but being relevant to the future of the world, our national security. So given that, where are we in this battle right now?

Well, you know, the U.S. is still a leader in many of these areas. Now, I'm aware that China is leading when it comes to a lot of the research, the critical research, the money that's being spent on critical research in those 12 power multiplier technologies. And they've made money.

Some pretty significant advancements in things like hypersonic. Obviously, they're right there with AI. I don't think they're quite where the US is. But across those 12 power multiplier things,

areas. They're investing massively. They are making very, very rapid progress. You know, they have companies like Huawei and DJI and others. You know, you've got you've got China expanding its digital infrastructure along the digital Belt and Road, for example, the initiative. You have China with massive scale around sustainable energies and

uh, you know, like solar and wind and, and working on other things. And, you know, if, if you combine China's, um, sustainable energy footprint and capabilities with the growth of things like data centers, right, which are, which are really, really energy, um, you know, the, the, the demand for energy is very, very high. They consume huge amounts of energy. Um, and,

China's China's making great progress and, you know, they are they are a formidable competitor as they apply all of that, that scale to their capabilities. So in the book I write about on the on the chapter on on tradecraft.

I write about the incredible accomplishments that the PLA has made through the theft of technology from the U.S. defense establishment. And I talk about the stealth, you know, the stealth technology sector and how, you know, China's basically taken four decades of American, four plus decades of American technology

trial and error and R&D in stealth. And they've managed to get their hands on a lot of that technology and replicate it very, very quickly with the assistance of AI, right? With the assistance of the latest tools that we've got in artificial intelligence.

So 5G has something in common, and Huawei, I should say, has something in common with TikTok, which is that there are people who look at these things from a national security perspective and see threats everywhere. And then there's just sort of everybody else who says, look, if I just want to buy a phone or if I just want to go look at cat videos, then why does a government carer who's

whose service I'm using. And TikTok, of course, is extremely current since we have law on the books, which is currently being, I don't know if it's, it's certainly not being ignored, but it's being sort of delayed by the current administration. And we're sort of in this, in this no man's land where we don't know whether we're feast or foul. We don't know our

or face your family. We don't know what we're going to do going forward. And meanwhile, most of Asia, for example, with the notable exception of India, has already sort of just accepted that TikTok is part of the landscape and is not really thinking very hard about this as they never really thought very hard about it with Huawei. So how does TikTok fit into this whole techno-nationalist framework that you've built?

Yeah, I think before I answer the question on TikTok specifically, I should step back and I should share with you the six core elements of techno-nationalism, right? You know, why they're basically ubiquitous and how they're playing out. And then I should also just mention just very briefly that

what I refer to as the dual use gray zone, right? So, you know, virtually every commercial technology now, including the technology used for TikTok is a dual use technology, meaning it's a commercial technology that has widespread appeal commercially amongst consumers, but it can also be applied for military purposes or for nefarious means, right? So let's park that. I'll come back to that thought regarding TikTok in a minute.

But for the six core elements of techno-nationalism, and this is really important because this is how techno-nationalism is manifesting itself all over the world across, you know, it's bleeding across all sectors. So the first element is essentially the weaponization of supply chains.

Meaning, you know, governments actively looking to prevent technology transfer from, you know, one entity to another, you know, typically using things like export controls and sanctions, but now increasingly using outbound investment, tracing regulations and accountability on end use and end user when it comes to investments, right? Yeah.

and accountability on linkages, if you will, between, for example, in an equity or in any kind of an investment, you know, accountability around transparency as to who the related parties are, all of that stuff. So,

All of this is happening around the weaponization of value chains, supply chains. The second element is decoupling or strategic decoupling, right? So where there are situations where

potential adversaries are in fact receiving goods, technology, etc., there is now an increase in efforts to strategically decouple. And this is mostly China when we talk about that. There's de-risking, which is your garden variety everyday practice of reducing supply chain risk.

avoiding single source situations, avoiding bottlenecks, that type of thing, diversifying. But strategic decoupling is a reality, right? The third is a reaction to the first two, and that is an offshoring reversal. So that's a move towards reshoring, nearshoring, friendshoring, that type of thing, ring fencing. The fourth element is about...

It's essentially innovation mercantilism, right? It's a sharp increase in government intervention and government policy, industrial policy, if you will, to promote localized technology ecosystems and to promote and protect or ring fence specific strategic technologies.

The next one, and this, Ray, I think goes to your question. We can sort of work this in when we talk about TikTok, and that is tech diplomacy, right? How do governments engage in G2G strategic alliance building, cooperation around resilient supply chains, etc.?

coming up with frameworks, rule frameworks, et cetera, around the use of technologies. And this is where we've had a breakdown, right? So if you compare the Biden administration's approach to working with allies around the so-called small yard, high fence concept and working with allies around

pursuing techno-nationalist goals. If you compare what Trump is doing now under Trump 2.0, pure transactionalism doesn't seem to be any kind of rhyme or reason. Today, it's impose

major export controls on semiconductors and access to NVIDIA semiconductors tomorrow, make a deal with G42, the, the Emirati LLM, right. That's, you know, that large white, which fall right. And, and suddenly give them complete full access to the U S AI sector. Right. Doesn't make any sense. So, so,

you know, today when, or even Trump's stance on, on Tik TOK, the final element, I think, which is, which is more of a broad based element. It's existential. And that is it's we're in a, we're in this paradoxical hybrid cold war, right? So all of this, this,

As trade is taking place, as supply chain restructuring is taking place, as all commercial activity around the world takes place with dual use technologies, at the same time, companies and businesses are more exposed than ever to cyber warfare, cyber intrusion, misinformation, all of this stuff. And all of this is linked directly or indirectly to techno-nationalism.

So you're going to link the cybersecurity to TikTok? Right. So I was going to say, now back to TikTok. So obviously, anytime you have issues around data sovereignty, where an outside party gains access to the private data and the private information of citizens, then

If you combine that now with supercomputing power, what we could eventually be looking at when we have practical quantum, you know, for any entity, state or non-state actor to have that kind of power and that kind of access to private individuals' data, that is a very, very strategic asset, right, from a national security standpoint.

You know, and from an economic standpoint as well. I mean, think about the linkages between DNA information and private individual information, right? What any kind of a major power or actor could do with that kind of information, right?

Um, not to mention, you know, with massive amounts of computing power, um, to be able to, uh, to, to analyze huge, huge chunks of data about people and, and come up with relationships who they're working for, who, you know, what kind of data are they, uh, are they working with? Uh, you know, what kind of, you know, are they in, are they in the military? Are they, are they an asset? Are they a non-asset? So,

All of these things become hyper, hyper important in a world where computing power is continuing to increase the way it is. So it becomes a very important national security element. I guess what I keep coming back to is the Chinese seem to have a very well thought out long-term plan for achieving superiority in the techno-nationalism race. As you said, they've been

preparing for a critical mineral monopoly largely for 30 years. They invested in 5G well before the U.S. did, actually the U.S. still isn't, hypersonics, cornetham, all these things. Can the U.S. truly compete across the board on its own or in cooperation with its allies and partners elsewhere?

Yeah. Look, I think the U.S. still has a super robust technology base. It's got the world's best university system. The defense establishment is obviously leading in many areas. But at the same time, when you look at something like advanced semiconductors,

You know, when you look at the race in AI, the U.S. is going to need strategic partners, right? The U.S. is going to need allies to do this. There is no country in the world that's going to be able to ring fence and, you know, do advanced semiconductor manufacturing, you know, from end to end, the whole value chain.

by itself. That's just simply not possible. But from a French roaring perspective, I think the U.S.,

has a significant advantage still if it can. Obviously, it needs to reshore. All countries need to reshore a certain part of their critical strategic supply chains. And if they can't do that, they have to nearshore it and friendshore it.

You know, without that option, it becomes very difficult for the United States to maintain its edge over China. Right. And just to follow up, this is why I can't understand cutting NIH and MSC grants and cutting funding to universities and requiring competition for onshoring steel aluminum. We have an energy shortage by and large in this country. Why would we want to take an energy intensive program

low-grade product like aluminum, threatening Taiwan, which is a leader in foundries, and saying, rather than partnering with them, I'm concerned we're losing the advantages we have. Yeah. Yeah. No, look, tech diplomacy is so critically important to national security and to economic stability. You know, when we look at things like the reshoring of critical minerals and

you know, fabrication of advanced chips to the states and other things. You know, that's a that's a decadal process. Right. That's a process that takes five, 10 years. Right. To come to fruition. You know, the U.S. at some point will, you know, will have much more self-efficiency when it comes to critical minerals. For example, the Mountain Pass mine in California is

was the world's largest processor of rare earths until it was all offshored to China under the trade liberalization model. So I think short of being upended by a major unexpected kinetic war somewhere that just really completely upends the global economy,

You know, I think that we will see the return of, you know, a certain amount of critical, critical manufacturing, right? Strategic manufacturing. I mean, if you look at the U.S. is inability to to to to build a commercial ship, basically, if you look at the complete lack of shipbuilding capabilities in the United States, you know, the U.S. needs the South Koreans, right?

basically, to try and build and bring some capacity to the United States. It needs friend shoring, right? It needs strategic partners and allies. It needs Mexico, you know, as Mexico becomes, you know, a manufacturing base for more telecommunications and for, you know, for more U.S. supply chains. It needs Canada. It needs Europe.

So without that sort of cohesive planning, you know, and somehow we have to be able to survive these four-year political cycles in our country, right? Where you have these – potentially you have these huge swings in policy and behavior, right?

When it comes to techno-nationalism and when it comes to things like public-private partnerships, you know, strategic alliances with partners. So, yeah, this is something that I'm watching very closely under Trump 2.0. All right. Well, so as a great lead into an exit question. So, Alex Capri, you are now deputized as the official techno-nationalism czar in Trump 2.0.

you have an opportunity to make one or two specific recommendations to where this administration should go. What's at the top of your list? Well, I think again, um,

Cooperation with strategic allies and partners around key public-private partnerships, you know, when it comes to the strategic power multiplier technologies. I think, you know, doubling down on a immediate long-term talent pipeline development plan in the STEM areas, you know, dealing with...

you know, coalitions of universities. We saw this happening under the Biden administration, the upwards movement where you have American universities with big companies like Micron and others making these investments in talent development. So Japanese universities with American universities, Indian universities and American universities, et cetera. So I think that the, the talent development is going to be absolutely critical and,

You know, again, from a techno-nationalist standpoint. And then I think shoring up the right kind of technology transfer and technology cooperation arrangements with defense partners. I think the nexus between defense and technology transfer and techno-nationalist cohesiveness is,

is very, very closely linked to defense partnerships. So I think this breaking off with Europe, while I agree that Europe does need to spend more on its own defense, I think it's very important that the U.S. keeps its strategic defense partnerships alive.

and functioning. All right. Our guest is Alex Capri. His book is Technonationalism, How It's Reshaping Trade, Geopolitics, and Society. Where can people keep up with your work? Where should people be following you? Well, you can follow me on my LinkedIn page. I'm now posting on TikTok and YouTube. I have a webpage. It's alex-capri.com.

And then if you want to get the book, it's on Amazon or other retail outlets. All right, Alex. Thanks so much for joining us.

And our sponsor, as always, Bauer Group Asia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific. Bauer Group applies unmatched expertise and experience to help clients navigate the world's most complex and dynamic markets. Jim Caruso is a senior advisor with Bauer Group, and you can find them at BauerGroupAsia.com. And Jim, you can tell how much time I spend in the Philippines by how many times I've mispronounced markets and said Marcos.

You have all sorts of psychological problems. I do. Well, look, I met Alex when I was living in Singapore because Alex is one of the leading experts on global supply chains. And from that, he morphed into this expert on supply chains for tech specifically. And it's so clear that we are in a global competition for superiority in the next generation of what's going to move the world. Yeah.

And I really am concerned that, you know, Biden administration is a lot wrong, but they invested heavily in things like making sure we could produce chips here and investing in STEM and working with our allies on technology.

And I'm concerned the current administration is going along on that and cutting investment. Where will that lead us? Yeah. I mean, of course, one of the most perplexing things that's happened in this new administration, among many perplexing things, it was the sort of the slowdown in the TikTok implementation. I mean, it just seemed like such a natural step forward, particularly for a

an administration that defines itself so much by its embrace of the competition with China. And really, it sort of launched this current phase of competition with China in 2017 to suddenly just sort of jump in and say, OK, but TikTok is different. Where, I mean, honestly, TikTok to me seems like it's right in the center of everything.

Well, the guests we've had on who were in the intelligence community were adamant that TikTok is a vulnerability. All right. Well, tell me your TikTok story. No, I don't need a TikTok story. I just need a story, but one that would be deliverable via a very short form TikTok video. You expect a lot of me, Ray. All right. As I mentioned to Alex, you and I were in Australia during the whole pandemic.

Australia banning Huawei situation. We were. And Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, had been communications minister and made his fortune by being one of the first IPs in Australia. So he knew the sector.

But before he banned Huawei, he called together everyone he could think of. And actually, I worked with him to bring all the US technology companies in the sector to meet with him and his technology security advisor to discuss, were there ways to ring fence the Huawei technology and keep it away so it couldn't be used for nefarious purposes? And the universal decision was no.

And so Huawei was banned. Now, this was well before the U.S. did anything. So I went with the prime minister when he paid a call in Washington on the president. And in a meeting with Vice President Pence at the White House, the prime minister explained to the vice president, well, we're banning 5G. You're doing what now? 5G.

So it wasn't that he was shocked by it, but he actually didn't know what he was talking about. He had no idea what 5G was. And so the geek in Malcolm Turnbull was, well, let me draw you a diagram of how this works. And proceeded to draw a series of concentric circles to show where the nodes were. It was...

My diplomacy failed me, Ray. Well, it sort of reminds you of a lot of these congressional hearings where we get sort of these, all of these octogenarian congressmen sitting around asking some 30-something tech startup guru all about whatever the latest technology is. So, yes. It's a good thing you and I are so hip. Hip? I'm sure all the kids are using hip now. One guy who's not using hip, I'm sure, is our...

much younger producer Ian Ellis Jones, for whom we thank repeatedly and with great enthusiasm for all of his great work on our podcast. And he's a key reason why we have seen a seven-fold increase in our subscribers in the past year on Apple Podcasts. We also, of course, his company, IEJ Media, which puts out our podcast.

We want to thank him also and recognize all of the great work that he does outside of our podcast and why he has so many followers on X at Ian Ellis Jones. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, you should go check out our other ones. One that comes to mind specifically is all the way back.

During that first month when we had, you know, seven times fewer subscribers than we do now, the one we did with Lieutenant General retired Lori Reynolds, we talked about why should we care about China's cyber aggression in episode four. So you should definitely go back and check that one out. And she actually talked specifically about TikTok in a very compelling way.

You should also check us out on social media. We're on LinkedIn. We're on X. And you can email us at our email address, IndoPacificPodcast at gmail.com. That's one word, IndoPacificPodcast at gmail.com. And of course, once again, we always want to keep thanking our very generous sponsor, Bauer Group Asia. Go visit them at BauerGroupAsia.com. And for this time, we want to say farewell. Until next time, for...

Ian, for Jim, for Jim's cat who kept interjecting, we want to say thanks and join us again next time on Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific.