Greg Lukianoff on Protecting Free Speech Culture
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Fantastic program for you today. Two guests I'm very excited to talk to. The first one on the line with us already, Greg Lukianoff. Greg is an attorney, New York Times bestselling author, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

And he has written some fantastic books about some of the censorship, other things that are happening in this country. Really encourage you to check him out. Greg, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Now, tell us a little bit, because not all our listeners are going to know about FIRE, what you guys do. Tell us a little bit about the organization.

Sure. No, happy to. So FIRE was founded back in 99 by a left-leaning libertarian, Harvey Silverglate, and a more conservative-leaning libertarian, Alan Charles Kors. So we've always tried to make a genuinely nonpartisan, bipartisan organization. And the goal of FIRE was to defend free speech, academic freedom, and due process on America's college campuses.

I joined in 2001, I was the legal director and then I became president in 2005. And we've had great successes winning individual cases on campus or pointing out how bad things have gotten on campus. You don't really run into people these days who claim there's nothing wrong, or at least nobody pays any attention.

But on June 6th, we just announced that we are finally deciding after years of people begging us to, we're going to expand beyond campus. So we went from being the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

And that ties – I mean quite frankly, I grew up as a civil libertarian. My father was a Democrat leader for a long time and then became heavily involved in the libertarian movement. So that's really kind of the background I was steeped in also. This ties a lot to your background at the ACLU before the ACLU became what it is today, which is hard to say it's much more than just a left advocacy anymore. Yeah.

It really doesn't fulfill the mission it was created to, to defend the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. And that's kind of the direction you guys seem to be heading at FIRE.

Well, you know, like I worked at the ACLU back in 99 when I was a law student. I don't everybody wants to make this, you know, us against them. And I'm always trying to keep people focused on what we're trying to do and what we're trying to do. And what we're trying to do that's right. And one of the things that we have is one, the ACLU has 19 project areas.

as we spent our cap it's are only a goal is going to be to protect free speech and free speech culture on that and that last part of another part of what makes it because we're not just arguing it you know i'm getting roasted right now on social media for saying that by the

By the way, canceling Dave Chappelle's show in Minneapolis earlier this week is not a victory for freedom of expression. And watching people all go, but legally they could cancel. I'm like, yeah, but is it a good thing for artistic expression when comedians are having shows canceled on them because some people on staff don't like it? No, I mean, that's a ridiculous example. I think it was a letter signed by like 200 people. 125. 125. I mean, they...

How people are using that as justification to shut down free speech, it's incredible. It's beyond me. And it's a terrifying, in a way, terrifying shift in American culture.

Well, you always want to change the fact scenario. It's kind of like, OK, so this was a venue that Prince, the artistic musical genius Prince, used to play. And Prince's stuff from Purple Rain and parts of Purple Rain, by the way, filmed at this very place. You know, there were there are some racy stuff. And that led to the, you know, parental music, the Chipper Gore thing. Yeah.

And I can't imagine that these same people would look at that scenario. And like if, for example, they pulled a print show because Tipper Gore didn't like didn't like Darling Mickey and saying, oh, great victory for freedom of expression that Tipper Gore got to win on the. Oh, good grief. So let's talk about Dave Chappelle. That brings up an interesting topic.

Judge Learned Hand in 1944 had this great quote where he said, liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. Is free speech really more of a cultural issue than free speech law? Because right now it seems like we have the law, but a lot of people just aren't into free speech anymore.

Yeah, no, no. And man, that learned at hand speech 1944. We have an audio version of it. Everybody should go check it out at the fire.org. It's so beautiful. It's such beautiful poetry and nice and short, too.

But currently, you know, like I think I'm 47 and I was lucky enough to grow up at a time when free speech culture was strong and when free speech law was getting stronger. And sometime in the last 20 years or so, we've seen those two curves kind of split. And this was partially because higher education, where we always focus, was changing its opinion on freedom of speech. Turns out that when you get very powerful, there's a tendency to start seeing freedom of speech more as a burden or a problem.

So it's not exactly like unexpected. But right now we have an interesting situation where the state of free speech law is very strong. But free speech culture, you'll literally have people like laughing at you, saying like they get. And we're very lucky that we can confuse a cultural norm and the law that protects you from government censorship can kind of think they're one in the same.

But they're not. Free speech is the older, bolder, more majestic idea that led to things like the First Amendment. Well, I mean, so when people go and they talk about free speech and then they're talking about hate speech, I mean, who defines hate speech? I don't want Joe Biden defining it. I don't want Donald Trump defining it. I mean, so that's always you know, I always find it interesting to say, well, we don't want hate speech. Well, who's defining what's hate speech?

Yeah. Now, hate speech is the greatest PR coup for the pro-censorship forces in the U.S. over the last half century. And of course, it came originally from campus, came from

People like Richard Delgado, who is more in the news because he was one of the founding thinkers on critical race theory. And hate speech is one of those things that it brought people on the left and right, black and white, all over the spectrum together. As long as they were off campus, they got that suddenly creating a new exception on free speech that had just on campus, which had just finished.

arguing that free speech is especially important there. And off campus, everybody saw the rise of speech codes in the 80s as being usually nominally directed at hate speech, but really just anything that students find offensive.

that they got that these were unconstitutional. They also got that these were bad ideas and totally inappropriate in higher education. But unfortunately, as time went on, you repeat the same argument over and over again, and we have a generation of young people who've never heard any different. Yeah, and a lot of that to me goes back to the schools of education. I think the people that have been pushing this sort of

Societal censorship were really smart to focus on designing the curriculum in colleges of education around these ideas of suppressing free speech, of the need to suppress free speech, and really push that out into the K-12 system via those channels. And I think we're seeing the effects all up and down society today.

Well, 100%. I co-authored a book called Coddling of the American Mind with my friend Jonathan Haidt. And one question that we don't answer in it is how did we get, how did these ideas, these sort of like pro-censorship and what they would see as pro-enlightened censorship,

ideas really took off, it's partially that they get passed down from education schools. And this is heartbreaking in some ways, because, you know, like my kids go to public school. They have amazing teachers. They mean really well. They're decent people. But they also have been taught that the higher moral goal is not free speech. It's enlightened censorship.

Well, and the Soviets showed us, I mean, you know, if you go back, you and I are about the same age. The Soviets showed us that you can teach a child to believe almost anything as long as you constantly reinforce that from authority figures. And it seems like that's really been their approach.

Yeah, no. And it's it's going to be dangerous downstream. And, you know, we're worried about this. So we're trying to and, you know, of course, people have a hard time. Well, what is free speech culture then? I'm like, it's relatively old fashioned norms at this point that we all grew up with these idioms, these sayings that people would say, like to each their own. Everyone's entitled to their opinion and all this stuff that it's a free country for that matter.

Yeah, sticks and stones. Yeah, sticks and stones. These are signs of a healthy democratic society trying to teach young people how to be active members of a pluralistic democratic society. And unfortunately, the fact that they've fallen by the wayside, it leads it to groups like ours to try to remind people that these are good ideals. Greg, it seems like what this is really happening is,

and great forces on college campuses. Can you tell our audience a little bit about what happened recently at Boston Emerson College where the president, President Gilligan, which is an appropriate name, he accused a college group of anti-Asian bigotry and hate. Can you give a little background on it and what happened? - Yeah, this one's amazing. So there's a Turning Point USA chapter at Emerson, and we've had to bail out a lot of Turning Point USA. It's a conservative organization.

They get in trouble a lot and we have to come in and help them out, which is part of the job. But in this case, it was the college Republicans put up a sign or several signs that said, China kind of sus.

which is young people slang for suspicious. And it has a picture of the PRC flag with the stars and everything. It's really clearly directed at the country of China. Meanwhile, the actual, you know, the membership of the college Republican is largely even American. And,

And nonetheless, they claimed that this was this was not a criticism of an awful totalitarian government, but rather this should be found offensive to all Asians. And it was hate speech. I assume I assume Taiwanese were supposed to be particularly offended. Yeah.

Yeah, no, exactly. So and I've watched I've watched a bunch of these cases happen where people who are being critical of the Chinese government are suddenly told they're racists. And it's like, wow, the Chinese are loving it. They're kind of like this little weakness that American campuses have for if you claim it's racism, you can never say, oh, come on.

And so the group has been, you know, some other groups have actually even dropped out of Emerson College. We sent up I think we sent it sent up a truck, you know, with the China kind of thing on there to say, like, to call out Emerson College in Massachusetts, because this is patently ridiculous.

Yeah, that is absurd that they would object to that. And a normal day in the office for me. God bless Turning Point for keeping your days interesting. Well, if Turning Point wasn't there, unfortunately, we'd still have way too much work to do.

We have just one minute before we go to break. Greg Lukianoff from FIRE, thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to have you back on again after the break. But tell folks real quick, how do they follow you? How do they keep up with your work and with the work FIRE is doing?

Fire is at thefire.org. We didn't get in early enough to just have fire org, but thefire.org. And you can find me if you can spell my last name. I'm G. Lukianoff, L-U-K-I-A-N-O-F-F at Gmail. Sorry, at G. Lukianoff is my Twitter handle. Perfect. Greg Lukianoff with Fire coming right back after the break.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us right now, Greg Lukianoff, attorney, New York Times bestselling author, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. You can follow them at thefire.org. Greg, thank you again so much for joining us. And Chuck, I know you had a question you were eager to lead with. Yeah, Greg. So the Trump administration under Betsy DeVos changed some of the Title IX

issues that Obama had implemented. And now Biden's coming back and doing these new revisions, which basically eliminate due process. Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening again? Sure. Yeah. And, you know, I just talked about the expansion of FIRE and about how we're focusing on free speech off campus. But since we were founded, we've also protected due process on campus because we're

And there seemed to be this idea that kangaroo courts are appropriate for even really serious allegations of harassment and assault, which we disagree with. We think there should be due process if you're accused of something that serious. So we worked with the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos to reform a lot of these laws.

that by the way are also used to clamp down on free speech and have been for decades. But if you define harassment as basically things that are subjectively offensive, of course that's written in free speech. And campus have been using harassment rationales to punish free speech since the 80s. But also if you're accused of something like sexual assault,

you should have the presumption of innocence. You should have some meaningful due process in place. And what's happened instead, and this comes from Joe Biden even back in 2011, he was a big supporter of the idea of the single investigator model, that essentially there's one person on campus who gets to

nominally look into it and decide who is not guilty of things as serious as rape to things as trivial as, you know, cracking a sexist joke. And we obviously, you know, oppose the move back to the older, lower due process standard and less productive free speech standard. So now there's a law been passed in Louisiana.

that tackles this issue. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what your role was in that and are other states considering it?

We've actually had some pretty good success over the years getting state laws passed. In some cases, like we had gotten in Virginia, we got laws that better protect free speech. In North Carolina, we got laws that better protect due process. And in Louisiana, we got a good law that does a good job of protecting due process there. So we're always trying to get more of these laws.

you know, rights solidified through legislation. So if there are people, you know, who are listening, who are, you know, work for the state legislatures, by all means, contact us at thefire.org. You know, Greg, when I went through college in the 90s, these boards, these panels, these inquisitions, if you will, were kind of just coming into vogue. And I remember I actually was called in front of one for something and I blew them off and absolutely refused to do it.

And they couldn't do anything. They didn't have any teeth. But I think anyone who's older than us who went through university would have a hard time recognizing this kind of thing. They wouldn't even understand what we're talking about right now.

Yeah. No, it's kind of funny because the, and people get it in different contexts. Like when people read, you know, oh my God, I'm blanking on the name of it. When they read books about, you know, people being railroaded, like they get due process is extremely important. But when they,

And they understand it off campus, but somehow when you get to on campus, partially because we think the evil we're trying to protect, trying to get rid of, which is sexual assault, which is by all means a great evil that needs to be battled. But they don't get that you can also be accused of it and be innocent. Yeah, no, absolutely. And

You know, you're talking when I was it was not for that. It was for something along the lines of a joke. I'm known to have a big mouth. It happens. But, you know, I think people don't understand these sexual assault charges, while they may not be formal legal charges, are things that will ruin your life and stay with you essentially forever in the digital age in terms of the punishment.

Other than jail time, the punishment is really no different than if you're convicted in a court of law. But the standard for being convicted essentially doesn't exist, does it?

Yeah, no, it's extremely weak. And most schools don't have a presumption of innocence at all. Oh, and the book that I was trying to remember was To Kill a Mockingbird, which is currently controversial from multiple directions, partially because it does actually involve a black man who's falsely accused of being a rapist. And you have to remind people of this.

And when it comes to what can actually get you in trouble on campus, the ACLU about a year ago came out against the reforms that we were pushing back.

for the Department of Education to better protect free speech in due process. And I wrote a letter that your readers can find just explaining all the different times we've seen harassment, sexual harassment, racial harassment used to stifle clearly protected speech. And there's just dozens and dozens of public examples, hundreds or if not thousands of additional ones that never saw the light of day.

Greg, do people get more offended now than they did 20 years ago? I mean, it seems like everything triggers everything now. Everything. I,

You know, it's one of those things where what people get offended about tends to change. So people get offended about different things. But do I think people get offended more often now? I kind of do. There's no sum on the scale currently for, hey, growing up, there was a certain amount of like, OK, you know, like, just walk away or like, you know, can't you take a joke? I mean, we even called.

a documentary that I helped produce called Can We Take a Joke? which came back way back in 2015, 2016 when we didn't have a name for cancel culture yet. So I do think the cultural tolerance for offense has gotten a lot worse over a relatively short period of time. How much of that, Greg, do you think is driven by social media? Because I see a lot of the outrage we see today being essentially performative.

That it is intended for a social media audience where there is no understanding, affiliation, or connection to whoever or whatever is causing the offense. And so it becomes a very easy target to generate social media likes and interaction and all that sort of thing.

Yeah, social media took a lot of existing trends and sped them up dramatically. That's something that we talk about in Causing the American Mind. We think that it's been pretty rough for, we think it's been pretty rough for, sorry, there's a passing right by. We think it's been pretty rough for polar

polarization. We also think it's been rough for mental health. So social media, maybe in the long run, we'll see that it had lots of additional benefits. But in the short term, it's easy. It's hard to miss that it's had a lot of costs as well.

All right. We've got just one minute left. Greg, I want to thank you again for coming on the program. I really appreciate having you. People can follow you at thefire.org or if they can spell your last name. I think you said it was G. Lukianoff, L-U-K-I-A-N-O-F-F on Twitter. Did I get that right? Yeah, you did. Very good. Oh, fantastic. Okay.

Thank you again for joining us. We really, really appreciate having you on the program today. And hopefully people check out your work, read your books, because I think this is, and Chuck, I know you agree, this is really a critical issue for our future is getting this sort of hatred of free speech under control.

Well, it needs to become cultural again, like you said earlier. You just can't depend on the First Amendment since most people don't even know what's in the Constitution anymore. So we have to really develop a culture of free speech and not try to be passive about defending it, just saying this is important. Here's why it's important. Fantastic. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds will be back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us, our next guest, someone I'm very excited to talk to today, Michael Mazza, non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His work focuses primarily on China and the Far East, issues with Taiwan,

Obviously, this is a huge, huge deal for everyone in America today and around the world. What China has become, what they are doing, and how they are going to play on the international stage over the next 20 years will dictate a lot of what happens in the world. So, Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit about what you do. Oh, well, thank you for having me. So I...

You know, at AI, I research a variety of issues pertaining to U.S. security interests in Asia. In recent years, that has focused primarily on the Taiwan Strait, which has been timely given the course things seem to be taking in that part of the world. Tell people, because I think probably a lot of folks out there are not aware of what's going on in the Taiwan Strait.

Because that is – the strait itself is changing or being changed right now dramatically, and that, quite frankly, affects the security of the entire world. Yeah, absolutely. So for –

decades now, the People's Republic of China has claimed Taiwan as its own. Without getting into a detailed discussion of the history here, Taiwan has never been governed by the People's Republic of China. Really, only for relatively short periods has it been under the jurisdiction of past governments located in China. And it is for all intents and purposes

an independent state. It has its own government, its own military, it has its own culture and linguistic differences.

But China, under Xi Jinping now, is intent on pursuing what it calls unification or reunification with Taiwan. And in past years, what we have seen is that mission become, I would argue, an increasingly important goal, increasingly important piece of Xi Jinping's sort of animating vision for his time as China's leader. But at the same time, we see in Taiwan a

a further distance, a further distance growing between the two sides, a further identification of Taiwan as its own independent state. We see people on Taiwan identifying as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, really little if any interest in Taiwan of ever pursuing any sort of unification. And so what, you know, what we're coming upon here is a point at which

an immovable object is going to come into contact with an unstoppable force.

And unfortunately, we may get to finally learn what happens when when such a collision occurs. Michael, I know there's a lot. Sorry. Go ahead, Chuck. Michael. So talking about that collision possibly coming forward, how does the Nancy Pelosi visit here in the next couple of weeks feed into that? How's it feed into the narrative in China? I know that President Xi is.

You know, he's got looking for a five year reelection. So he's dealing with the communist elders. How does that all play into what's going on over there?

Yeah, so there's been this not officially announced visit from Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan and a sort of debate about whether or not that should go forward is broken out into the public sphere. The president has come out and said that the military is opposed or the military doesn't think it's a good idea.

You know, there's a number of factors at play here. You are right. Xi Jinping is coming into a party Congress this fall, either October or November. He's seeking a third term as the leader of the party and thus as the leader of China. This is a bit unprecedented, especially in recent times. And there are

concerns that because he cannot afford to look weak, if Pelosi, who is the third in line to the presidency, were to make this trip, he would have to respond in a far more sort of assertive, aggressive way than we've seen China respond to American actions in Taiwan previously. The counter argument is that he can't risk a crisis at this point in time. And so

The Pelosi visit, I think if it happens, creates some pressure on Xi Jinping.

But to my mind, the benefits of going going forward outweigh the potential risks. Yeah, absolutely. We have just about 45 seconds before we go to break and then we're going to be coming right back with more from Michael Mazza, non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the Global Taiwan Institute, the German Marshall Fund of the United States. And I'm going to have a kind of tough question for you when we come back here. Why is this so important to China? Yeah.

I don't know. I've never heard a great answer for that. I'm hoping you have some insight. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back in just a moment. All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us right now, Michael Mazza, non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an expert on Asia-Pacific affairs, Chinese military modernization, cross-strait Taiwan issues. When we went to break, Michael, I was asking the question previously,

Why is this so important to China? I really have never heard a great answer of why Taiwan is such a sort of cultural thorn in the side of Chinese leadership. You know, so I'm not sure there is a great answer, but it's an important question to ask. I guess if you don't mind, I'll kind of step back briefly into history here. An interesting nugget is that Mao Zedong, who was first leader of the People's Republic,

In his, you know, earlier days. So, you know, before the the revolution before the Communist Party came to power. He wrote and thought about Taiwan as an independent country right when it was it was a colony of Japan for a time and he thought that

Taiwan and other Japanese colonies should become free and independent states. And other communist leaders at the time talked about Taiwan in the same way. So it is certainly not the case that the communist Chinese leadership writ large has always thought about Taiwan as belonging to China since ancestral times and needing to come back home.

Eventually, of course, the leadership sort of did start making those arguments. In part, this has to do with what China sees as a

unsatisfactory resolution to the the the Chinese Civil War or perhaps better say a lack of resolution at all um that you know the the government of the Republic of of China uh in 1949 which had been the the government of all of China fled to Taiwan so essentially set up a government in exile and again as far as the the Chinese Communist Party is concerned that war is not

Not over. Right. So there's there's unfinished business. But but it is from the Taiwanese side. In other words, their leadership doesn't look and say we still have a right to rule China. Correct. That's a bit complicated, too. So current leadership certainly doesn't say that.

And and, you know, Taiwanese leaders essentially stopped making that case publicly in the mid 90s. Now, if you look at the I didn't realize it was that recent that they had just kind of abandoned that.

Well, that kind of happened with the transition in Taiwan from one party rule to democracy, right? Because that one party that had ruled for decades was the KMT, the Kuomintang, which was the ruling party in China until it lost to the communists in the civil war. And so for years, the ruling party in Taiwan, the KMT, did continue to claim to be the rightful government of all in China,

all of China and was intent on returning, on taking back control of continental China, if you want to call it that. But again, what we've seen over the past few decades, really since the early 90s at least, this is when sort of regular polling on these questions started to be done, is people in Taiwan really don't identify with China.

anymore, right? They identify as Taiwanese. They see themselves as something separate and different and apart. There are ongoing debates within Taiwan about just how to engage with China. There are splits within both main parties and between the parties. So there are unsettled questions there, but there is not the sort of strong desire to unify with China as there is in Beijing.

That's fascinating. Michael, how much is China watching our reaction to Russia's evasion of Ukraine? And how much of a role do you think that plays in their decision how to go forward with Taiwan? So I think they're certainly watching. I think there's a lot of lessons for China to draw here. The big question is, what lessons do they draw? Because there are potentially...

contradicting observations they could make. Right. So, you know, one one conclusion they could draw is it's a really bad idea to invade another independent country, especially if it's got friendly relations with the United States and U.S. allies. So that's one potential conclusion they can draw. That's a conclusion we'd like them to draw.

But there are other lessons which I'm more concerned we may see. One is, sure, Russia's had a pretty hard time dealing with Ukraine, and the United States and others have been providing Ukraine with a lot of military capabilities to wage that war, but Taiwan is an island. A lot harder to resupply Taiwan than it is to resupply Ukraine.

So, you know, to China, it's possible they see this as an easier, you know, an easier task or at least one that has certain benefits vis-a-vis or advantages vis-a-vis or as compared to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They might also come to conclude that if they're going to use force against Taiwan, you know,

Essentially, they need to go hard and go fast and go all the way. We know now that Russia didn't put everything it had into the invasion in the early going, which gave Ukraine an opportunity to successfully defend itself.

So one lesson China may be drawing is that they cannot give Taiwan an opportunity to put up a fight. They can't give the United States an opportunity to respond in speedy fashion. And so despite the fact that the United States, I think, has done, you know, gone quite far, and at least in the commitment of resources to Ukraine's defense, I'm concerned that

China doesn't draw the lesson from that we would like it to draw. I think this has changed quite a bit, at least from what I've read. Certainly 20 years ago, China launching an invasion across the strait would have had probably very little realistic chance to succeed. Is that still the case?

No, and that is a great point. So you're right. 20 years ago, China could not have pulled off an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. The military balance, both between Taiwan and China and between China and the United States, military balances has shifted significantly in China's favor. Now, an amphibious invasion is still a very difficult thing to do. China has essentially no experience doing this.

You know, but the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense assesses that they can't do it yet. They can do it soon. They assess that China can already successfully establish a blockade of the island if it wants to. They assess that China can already establish air dominance over Taiwan and surrounding skies if China wants to. So things are certainly moving in a very,

a bad direction. And when we live in a world where the People's Liberation Army, which is the Chinese military, we live in a world where the PLA says to Xi Jinping, you know, yes, we can, instead of no, we can't. You know, that brings us into a particularly dangerous period. So my question for you then is talking about the home front. Can we really tell the

American families that their sons or daughters life is worth sacrificing to defend Taiwan if it does come to an evasion? Yeah, well, look, you know, I certainly understand those concerns. And I would, I would, I would frame it a bit differently. I mean, yes, if God forbid there is a war in the United States does get involved, certainly, we will be fighting to ensure Taiwan's continued independence.

But, you know, why are we so concerned about that in the first place? It's because the United States has a pretty strong interest in ensuring that

Taiwan's ongoing or continuing freedom? What are those interests? There are a number, right? So since World War II, the United States has assessed that it would never again let a hostile hegemon dominate Asia. It would never again allow a hostile hegemon to have open access to the Western Pacific because the last time that happened, Pearl Harbor happened.

And Taiwan is a sort of a key link and what we call the forward defense perimeter, right? It helps box China and Chinese forces up close to the Chinese mainland, keeps them from roaming all over the Pacific in a way that would allow them to threaten the United States more directly, not just Pearl Harbor, but Alaska and the continental United States as well, frankly, including with nuclear weapons. So that's one.

Taiwan is an immensely important economic partner. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that were China to successfully invade Taiwan or unsuccessfully invade but cause plenty of damage, that the U.S. economy would suffer greatly.

Number one manufacturer of microchips at this point, right? Semiconductor. And not just microchips, but the most advanced microchips in the world. Our high-tech industry is dependent on access to the Taiwanese market, as is our defense industry.

And, you know, the third thing I'd say is there is certainly a values component here. It's, you know, arguably Taiwan is Asia's freest country. It's a democracy much like ours. You know, American leaders have long assessed that

A world that is safe for democracy is a world that is safe for the United States. And ensuring that such a world continues to exist perhaps requires ensuring Taiwan's ability to survive. Michael, if you believe in, and I don't entirely obviously, but that we got involved in Vietnam because of the domino theory. We were up against a global opponent in global communism that didn't have an economic model that is functional.

And so they were bound to lose that conflict globally, even if they didn't realize it. I think China, and tell me if I'm wrong, China represents a very different threat on that scale with a very different form of government. I don't think it's essentially just a one-party dictatorship, but they have an economic model that works, and they're actively exporting their version of a very sort of technocratic model

authoritarian state around the world. And that is a concern, or should be, I think, for us and Europe and others. Yeah, no, absolutely right. I absolutely think there is an

ideological component to the competition between the United States and China, or whereas the Biden administration puts it between the free world and the authoritarian world. You know, to your point, I think that China's model is it's certainly attractive to undemocratic leaders around the world. But, you know, there are also

which, you know, perhaps not seeing the darkest side of Chinese rule, see what China's system has delivered and enabled for the Chinese people over the last, you know, 40 years and are open to

seeing those kinds of results as well. And so, you know, this is exactly when you're on point. We are engaged, I would argue, in really a global competition with the Chinese system and not just your typical sort of security competition in the waters of the Western Pacific. Absolutely.

Absolutely. We have just about a minute and a half before we wrap up the program here. Michael, I want to thank you for joining us. How do people stay in touch with your work? Well, people can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Mike underscore Mazza. And, you know, all my published work appears on the website at www.aei.org. Fantastic. Michael Mazza, thank you for joining us.

What is the last word you would tell people about what is the thing you would tell people to watch for if? China is gonna make that jump across the street. What signal are we looking for? Yeah

So, you know, there's two ways to answer this. One is a lot of people think if China is going to make that move militarily, we'll have about a month's notice. There will be mobilization of the PLA that will be hard to miss. The Navy and the Air Force acting in ways that are different. We'll kind of know it's coming longer term. I think what we'll see is a sort of a more rapidly escalating series of

designed to put pressure on Taiwan and our relationship with Taiwan. Fantastic. Michael Mazza with AEI, thank you so much for joining us today. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back on the air next week, but be sure you tune in and download for our podcast-only segment. Welcome back to the

Podcast-only segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Fantastic program today. Make sure you download the whole thing if you haven't. Our first guest, Greg Lukianoff with FIRE. Tremendous, tremendous organization doing incredible work. It was great to talk to Greg. Second guest, Michael Mazza, non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute talking about China, Taiwan, all the issues we have there. Highly recommend both of those. But Chuck, thank you so much for being here.

For our podcast only segment, we're talking about a battle that is brewing closer to home. Is there a proxy war in the GOP? Right. August 2nd is Republican primary. So this week.

I have been called by the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The New York Times and other illustrious publications asking if there's a proxy war going on in Arizona. I think I have tried to downplay that a little bit, saying that, you know, really both candidates are.

are going to govern philosophically the same way, just temperament differently. Um, but they're not buying it because you have Donald Trump supporting Carrie Lake and then you have vice president Pence and Ducey doing Karen and Robson. And it's going to be really interesting to see what happens on election day. I think that's a race that can be very close versus some of the other races right now. I,

I actually do think it's a proxy war and it's one that sprung up in, you know, really just the last couple of weeks. As folks probably know, I'm policy director for Kerry Lake. So I have a dog in this fight and it is a dog fight. But I think right now Trump signaling, which I don't think anyone expected this early, Trump signaling that he's almost certainly going to run for 2024.

has really drawn the battle lines for this proxy war. In other words, he's lining up his run. A lot of others are lining up this run. And Arizona, Arizona voters and the governor's race are caught in the middle right now between opposing forces within the GOP.

Sam, you've lived in Arizona quite a while. Would you ever imagine that Arizona sort of become the center of the Republican universe? This proxy war fought four years ago, even eight years ago? No, gosh, no. I mean, I grew up here. I have watched us. We were a political backwater until all of a sudden, really, since the last cycle.

When it became clear Arizona was maybe the most important battleground state in the country now, the one where the vote is often now closest. And I think that has a lot to do with it. I think when you're looking at the presidential election, this is one of, what do you think, Chuck, four or five states that are truly up for grabs in a presidential election right now?

Absolutely. And if the Democrats and their progressive groups pass their initiative for the free and fair election initiative, I mean, that's all focused for 2024 and beyond.

And, you know, we keep talking in Arizona about these various races, which are all important. But that initiative and defeating it, if you are a Republican or an independent, is probably just as crucial as any of these elected offices. Yeah. If you're if you're a Republican out there right now in the state of Arizona and someone walks up to you with a clipboard asking for a signature, you got to turn them down.

There are no initiatives coming from the right that you want to sign. No matter what they say, that thing is not your friend. Oh, yeah. And that's going to be on the ballot. Talking about the proxy war, though, it's going to be interesting to see what Trump does, which we all think he will announce who runs against him. Tom Cotton supposedly running. But I'm really interested to see what Ron DeSantis does. Well, you know, you and I have talked about this offline quite a bit, Chuck, but

I really think Trump, if you have a three or four or more way primary with legitimate candidates, I think he's the nominee. If you have him one on one versus DeSantis, quite frankly, I've got a lot of folks out there may be mad at me for saying this, but I think Trump gets his clock cleaned. Yeah, DeSantis would be a very formidable opponent. Sam, as you've gone and worked as policy director for Kerry Lake.

and you followed Arizona politics for a long time. What has surprised you about this campaign? Less than I think most people, because I think I've seen this coming for a while. There has been

an increasing number. This state, for those who don't know, who aren't here in Arizona or who are new to the state and just tuning in, this state on the Republican side has been controlled by essentially the same group of insiders for 30, 40 years. They haven't always led the party structure that's an elected position. It changes. They haven't had all the offices. But if you look at it,

You know, a lot of the same folks that were supporting John McCain are the people behind Doug Ducey, were the people behind Jan Brewer, so forth and so on. It goes back really throughout my lifetime. And there's been a buildup of base resistance against that, which all of a sudden has broken out into total war. And that doesn't surprise me terribly.

But what does surprise me is how vicious it has gotten and so quickly. Well, folks, as we wrap up the podcast, stay tuned for us on August 2nd from 8 p.m. Pacific to midnight, where Sam and I and illustrious guests will be talking about the primary election results, not only in Arizona.

But Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas and the state of Washington, there's some really interesting races. And as we talk about these proxy wars, they're also experienced in those in those states as well. So we'll have a very entertaining evening. Before we go, Chuck, I got an important question here. But how did two guys who don't make it to never managed to stay up through the late show end up on a program that goes to midnight?

Well, I've already scheduled a nap that day, so I'm prepared. I don't know if I actually have time for a nap that day. I'm a little frightened by this. Folks, I snore badly. So if all of a sudden there it sounds like a chainsaw freight train coming through your microphone, you know I have just passed out.

Well, the interesting thing about this election night activity is not only you, but Kylie both have vested interest in two races. And so folks may see your mental breakdown on the radio. That's fine. We'll be there for you. We'll be there to comfort you. And we'll go from there. Well, you know, if we do this again in November, I may actually be on the air calling my own writer.

That's exactly right. Which could be the most entertaining thing ever because yeah, you could go anywhere from I'm screaming and blowing up eardrums to I am on the floor under the desk curled up in a fetal ball sobbing and who knows. Redrum, redrum. Folks, thanks a lot. Have a great week.

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