Frontline special - journalist and weapons expert Ian Williams
32:37 Share

BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30-second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out.

Take control of the numbers and supercharge your small business with Xero. That's X-E-R-O.

With our easy-to-use accounting software with automation and reporting features, you'll spend less time on manual tasks and more time understanding how your business is doing. 87% of surveyed U.S. customers agree Xero helps improve financial visibility. Search Xero with an X or visit xero.com slash ACAST to start your 30-day free trial. Conditions apply.

Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full.

Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting. Hello and welcome to Frontline with me, Philip Ingram. Now today we are very privileged to be talking to Ian Williams. Ian is a journalist who's covered business and technology for the Sunday Times before becoming a long-time foreign correspondent in Russia

and Asia. And during a 25-year career overseas, he was based in the bureaus in Moscow, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok for Channel 4 News, and then NBC, the American network. And he's also covered conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Ukraine. Our paths may have crossed in the Balkans, Ian. Welcome back to Frontline. A pleasure to be here. It's good to have you. Now, Ian, as the

world readies itself for conflict in the Middle East with America threatening to get directly involved.

and Donald Trump coming out with some very interesting statements, as is Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. We have a lot of activity involving three of the four axis of evil countries, Russia, Iran and North Korea. But the fourth remains quite quiet and quite passive in what it seems to be doing in a public domain, and that's China.

Is it that passive? It's not China's way to get actively involved. China will be doing stuff. It is close to Iran. Xi Jinping this week is at a Central Asian countries summit at which he came out with a memorable phrase that China opposes any nations, any actions that violate the sovereignty, security and integrity of others.

other nations. But of course, that's not something he's been able to utter during three years of Russian warfare against Ukraine. But China is close to Iran. It has a treaty with Iran. It buys 90% of Iranian oil. It brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran a while back. And clearly, this

So Israel's actions in Iran have concerned Beijing, both in terms of the economic fallout, but also in terms, interestingly, of the sort of tactics that the Israelis have been using, which in some respects mirror what the Ukrainians have done with the very innovative use of drones.

and which no doubt the Taiwanese are keeping very close tabs on. So I think China's certainly watching the situation there very closely, but it's not the Chinese way to get actively involved at a diplomatic level, as in fact we've seen with its...

complex, for want of a better word, attitude towards Ukraine. But with this attitude towards Ukraine and Russia, China has been more overt in its support for Russia. Xi Jinping has hosted Vladimir Putin in Beijing, and Xi Jinping went to the May Day parades in Moscow. And

What are China's interests really in supporting Russia with its full-scale war on Ukraine? What does China want to get out of it? Yes, the no-limits partnership, as they like to describe their relationship. I

I think that fundamentally it's more about who they both oppose rather than what they're both aiming to achieve in that both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have a very similar world outlook. They are both very much opposed to the current international system.

built by the Americans, built around Western democracies. Even though, of course, China has benefited enormously economically from that system, gaming it at every possible turn, one could argue, but nevertheless, they have done very well out of it. And I think it's a shared opposition to America and the West

in general that drives their partnership, that drives their relationship. That and I think a very crude sense of self-interest from Beijing. They were always the best

They were always a stronger partner in this relationship, even before the Ukrainian war started. But this has solidified Beijing as by far the most powerful partner. Russia is totally dependent upon China. It wouldn't be able to wage this war without the support of China. China's economically underwriting the war through its trade, through its economic

purchase of raw materials from Russia through supplying dual-use materials from drones to machine tools to chips and other technology. So the war wouldn't be possible without China's support. So I tend to be very sceptical. I have been over the months and years when we've heard hopeful voices in the West saying, well, you know, maybe China could put a bit of pressure on Russia. Maybe they could

emerge as a dealmaker in this. But I've seen no evidence that Beijing wants to play that role because I think it suits them perfectly well at the moment. And also, China's main concern is Taiwan. Its main concern is extending its interests

in disputed areas of the South China Sea. And as long as America and Europe are preoccupied with Ukraine and the conflict in Ukraine, then that's drawing attention away from what China may or may not do in the Taiwan Strait. Yes, but...

China, surely it's missed an opportunity here because it's a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations. It's the one permanent member that hasn't got involved in any real peacekeeping, peace enforcement or other missions around the world where the other four members, including the Russians, have in the Balkans already.

I remember the Russians coming and being part of a NATO-led force into Kosovo, and they'd come from Bosnia, which was originally a NATO-led operation and then became an EU operation. If China and Russia wanted to dislocate the West...

Surely, whenever there was talk of peace negotiations on this coalition of the willing that were Western countries coming together, primarily EU, but the UK and Australia, Canada, New Zealand and others potentially in there, if China had volunteered to.

to be that peacekeeping or peace enforcement force, that would have dislocated a lot of Western politicians. It would have played directly into Vladimir Putin's hands. It would have given Chinese military operational experience, which is the one thing they lack now.

completely and is the one weakness that they've got in their military. Having invested huge sums and huge effort in trying to professionalise and modernise their military, they need to get that operational experience. Have they missed a trick? I

I think they probably have, but I've seen no evidence that... China's always been very shy about putting into practice what is largely quite empty rhetoric they come out with about various conflicts. Usually the baseline is that's all be jolly nice to each other. But in terms of actually putting themselves forward, putting themselves in a position that they can...

make a difference, whether that's as a peacekeeping force or as an active middle person. They've always been shy of that. That's one of the reasons why the Iranian and Saudi deal that was brokered by China, arguably they were both in the right place, those two countries. And so China didn't have to push them particularly hard. So it was less of a diplomatic achievement than just

being somewhere at the right moment to bring them together. But you are right on the China has invested large amounts of money in modernizing and expanding its armed forces.

arguably at a rate unseen in peacetime. But modern warfare depends upon bringing together all these different aspects of military force, whether it's the different domains ranging from cyber to naval to air force. It's all about coordination. It's all about what

China and others call the informationalization of warfare. And that is an incredibly complex thing to achieve. The Americans arguably are very far ahead on this. And

Viewed from Washington, yes, they've seen this incredible investment in shiny new kit, but little evidence at the moment about Chinese ability to bring together all these moving parts in a way that would turn it into an effective fighting force, say,

in the Taiwan Strait or in other potential conflicts in the South China Sea, which is bristling with competing claims of sovereignty over different islands and different areas. And yes, China's had some limited experience in peacekeeping roles around the world, but that

really is very, very small stuff compared with the experience of bringing together different facets of a rapidly modernising military. Yes, it is extremely complex in trying to bring things together. And that's something that China...

I don't think is grasped. And the complexity, I think, was illustrated by Russia's attack into Ukraine just over three years ago, because on paper, they were hugely stronger. They should have just walked all over Ukraine because of the numbers and everything else. But if you look at the way they practice and they exercise, it's all serialized. It's

This serial, those 50 tanks will move from there to there. They'll shoot their guns and then they'll stop and wait for further orders. And in China, I'm wondering if the way they train is serialized as well. And it doesn't then simulate the complexities of conflict. It's all about show and looking good. Is that what you detected when you were in China? Yeah.

It is because the PLA is very much modelled on Soviet concepts of warfare. And I think in Beijing, they are very aware of that. And one of the things that I'd heard in Taipei, not long after the Russian invasion, was, you know, let's look at what happened on the road to Kiev. Well, the equivalent of the road to Kiev is the Taiwan Strait. And we're ready. And

China is aware, Taiwan is aware that geography, the weather, these are all intangibles which favor the defense. There are only small mirrors every year, small windows every year where it's possible for an invasion to take place. And even with the best of kit, even with the money that's going into quite innovative landing kit,

every vessel, civilian vessel, ferries that's coming out of shipyards and they're coming out at quite a rate along the Chinese coast has to be able to carry military vehicles. So all this is taking place. But then they look at what happened in Russia and they wonder, well,

Will you win a conventional war against a small but extremely determined island, which has also been looking at Ukraine and has also been looking at what's called hybrid warfare and

Also looking at the way a power which on paper is inferior can nevertheless use what they have available to them, small, mobile, highly lethal weaponry to thwart the ambitions of what we thought was one of the world's most formidable militaries. And of course, the Russian military is riddled with corruption. So is China's.

The PLA, hardly a week goes by without another general disappearing for alleged corruption. I say alleged because corruption in China is very elastic in terms of what it means. And it frequently is used as a cover for any sort of opposition to Xi Jinping. But there's a lot in common between the militaries of Russia and China. And

I think they are aware of that. And as you say, the only way that you can really test a lot of the ability to bring together all this shiny new kit is in a conflict situation. And they may, yes, have missed an opportunity of by not inserting themselves more assertively as a diplomatic force.

player or peacekeeper in the Ukraine situation, although I think it would have gone right against their whole sort of cautious attitude towards diplomacy for them to have done so.

But for China's level of support, if Russia's relying on it that much, China knows that. There must be something that's underpinning this level of support or underwriting this level of support in the same way that China, when it's invested into Africa, has effectively bought critical national infrastructure. It's bought access to mines that are the only mines that can provide commercial infrastructure

levels of rare earth metals. It's bought ports that it can exploit from a military perspective and refuse to give them back to the African nations whenever they can't repay their debt. Is there a big debt building for Vladimir Putin with Chinese support that should Putin not be able to service that debt, China is going to come and go, well, we're having it back anyway, mate? Oh, a

Perhaps we'll have back large chunks of the Russian Far East. And that's what I was thinking of. North of the Amur River. I mean, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have a similar view of the world. It's all about big power, spheres of influence, annoying little places like Ukraine and Taiwan get in the way of this big picture of what real power is about. And

Putin has his Ruski Mir, the Russian world, Russia's right to determine what happens in that rather expansive area in Putin's mind. Xi has his China dream, which encompasses Taiwan in the minds of many Chinese nationalists. That also encompasses areas which were part of the Qing dynasty.

Now, unfortunately for their relationship, the Qing dynasty included large parts of what is modern day Russia, including Vladivostok or Haishanwei, the sea cucumber bay as it translates. And Chinese nationalists still dream of taking these places back. Only a year or two, the Chinese Communist Party decreed that all maps in China were

would now have the names in Chinese of areas which were snatched from them in the 19th century. Now, you know, China bangs on about its peaceful rise. It bangs on about its 100 years of humiliation, unequal treaties.

I think all that is part of sort of CCP mythology. But the most unequal treaties weren't over Hong Kong or some of the other little enclaves, Macau. They were those that Russia imposed on China, you know, and took vast swathes of land, which were much, much bigger than anything the Western powers took. And Chinese nationalists have not forgotten that. And I think if you travel in the Russian Far Easts,

There are a lot of Russians who are very concerned that, in fact, Russia may well be mortgaging these areas to a rather hungry Chinese Communist Party, only too keen to get its hands on those sorts of raw materials. I mean, we saw earlier this month that delicious leek, which was supposedly...

Western intelligence agencies said it was genuine, the document that went to the New York Times, supposedly from the FSB, Russia's internal security group, effectively labeling China as an active threat.

and going through all the numerous ways in which China was spying on Russia. And it was a very paranoid document. And I think there is a deep paranoia in the Russian intelligence establishment about the activities of China. And one of the things they were looking at were the performance of various weapons and other techniques that the Russians were using in Russia.

in Ukraine, their performance and indeed the way the Russian army in general were coping. Do you think, talking of weapons and the use in Ukraine, do you think China is beta testing some of its technologies by letting the Russians use it so they can see how good it is or isn't in the same way that most Western nations are beta testing a lot of their concepts

with Ukraine by providing Ukraine these capabilities and seeing how they perform on the front line? I think almost certainly. China has...

There's a red line which Western countries have drawn beyond which they say you shouldn't be supplying weapons to Russia. Now, China's edged very close to that red line and some would argue it's gone over it. There are numerous Chinese companies, companies in Hong Kong, which have been sanctioned for supplying military weapons.

a potential military equipment or military with a potential equipment with a potential military use to Russia. So it's one of the big problems they have with their relationship with Europe. They'd love to prize Europe away from America, away from Trump. But Europe is particularly concerned about China's support for Ukraine. So I think that is valid. I think it's not

There are Western weapons that are being used by Ukraine, and China is keen to see the impact of them on a force, the Russian army, which is similarly organized to the PLA. China claims not to be supplying weapons per se, but there's certainly a lot of equipment, a lot of technology which is going in there and without which the Russian weapons would not be able to perform.

Interesting. And I'll come on to China's espionage again in a moment. But you talked about your annoying little countries. And from Russian-China's perspective, you mentioned Ukraine and Taiwan.

The debate over Taiwan being a country is one our politicians are looking at. But the other annoying little country that there is around that's involved in both things is North Korea. If you look at, from a cyber perspective, the internet connectivity into North Korea, there are two pipelines in. One is provided by China. It's been there for a long time, relatively low bandwidth. The other has been there for about five years.

10 years provided by the Russian National Railway Company and is a very large bandwidth pipeline that's gone in. And then North Korea, which doesn't have people who are technically trained easily, seems to be this big cyber threat to the Western world. Do you think China and Russia use Kim Jong-un effectively as a

plausibly deniable little bad boy to cause a stir and stir the pot and keep the international community fixated on something else and deliver disruptive activity on their behalves? I think they almost certainly facilitate a lot of that activity. It was always amazing for me when I went to Pyongyang, because, of course, it's cut off in

from the rest of the world digitally. But you'd go, for instance, I remember going there for a visit by the New York Philharmonic just for a couple of days and lo and behold, it was like the light suddenly coming on. You were in a press center with quite fast internet. I'm sure there were numerous people monitoring it and keeping an eye what flowed through it. But

We talk about different cyber powers that different countries have. Well, North Korea, considering its size, is actually quite a formidable cyber actor. And they've cornered the market in crypto crime. And whereas ransomware is largely a Russian speaking phenomena, criminal gangs based and protected in Russia, crypto is a speciality of the North Koreans.

And there have been a lot of suggestions and accusations about Chinese companies facilitating North Korea's access internationally, digitally to facilitate this. What's also intriguing, I was having a conversation recently with a number of cyber specialists saying,

about what's emerging as a new form of cyber extortion is fake IT workers.

It's a very and this is a lot of Chinese companies are providing fronts for this. And these are quite well trained. Yes, there's not a huge talent pool in North Korea, but there is a talent pool. And you have IT workers who are applying for jobs online in Western companies where there is IP worth stealing or secrets worth accessing.

And through these fake identities, they're being employed as virtual workers, allowed inside the firewall of the companies and being able to access the computer files, not by hacking into it, but essentially as being employed by those companies as apparently bona fide distant workers.

But instead of, you know, Joe Bloggs, it's Mr. Kim from Pyongyang logging in via a Chinese front company. It's interesting. A few years ago, Fiona Hamilton from The Times wrote a story on me saying,

after I was approached by Chinese intelligence, which was a completely different story. But we see North Korea getting involved with Russia and Russia's war inside Ukraine. Part of the reason why North Korea focused on crypto was that was the way Kim Jong-un managed to finance his luxury lifestyle and everything else. And it was all about money. Now he's getting lots of money from Russia in supplying capabilities, whether that

be artillery shells, missiles, personnel, and he's sitting back, emboldened by this. I would assess it. And

he seems to be improving his longer range missiles and his nuclear capability at the same time. And to my mind, that suggests there could be some form of link that's there. But with an emboldened Kim Jong-un, do you think he could be dangerous regionally? I,

I think so. I mean, I think what he going back to what we were saying earlier on about getting the experience that you need for your military. Of course, the North Korean military was very untested and very Soviet in the way it was set up. And of course, it's getting battlefield experience in.

in Ukraine or on the Ukrainian border, which will inevitably enhance their abilities. We don't fully know what the quid pro quo is, what's flowing back to Pyongyang apart from money, about how generous the Russians have been in terms of sharing other technology, whether that's missile technology, a lot of which the North Koreans were getting on the black market, although there'd been accusations

against Chinese companies for supplying them. We don't know how much assistance in the nuclear program has been provided by Russia. There is a fairly deafening silence from the Korean Peninsula. Does that suggest that they are too preoccupied with maintaining this force in Russia and the relationship with Russians?

Or should we be more worried about how an emboldened North Korea with better technology, with better experience of fighting a hot war in Ukraine might then do in Asia, in North Asia? Clearly, the Koreans are very worried. They see the link. They've been very keen to get intelligence back from the Ukrainians.

about soldiers who have been captured, about the techniques the North Koreans are using. And in fact, the South Koreans themselves have been quite generous suppliers of equipment to Ukraine. So the Korean peninsula

tensions are very much playing out on the battlefield in Ukraine. And I think the question, the uncomfortable question is whether that might come back to the peninsula. Well, as high on predictable as Kim Jong-un, but the other unpredictable leader that we've got at the moment is Donald Trump.

However, a lot of Trump's policies seem to be Chinese focused. When we look at what he was saying about Panama, what he was saying about Greenland, Canada, it's all about trade routes around the United States and being able to get shipping through either the northern routes in the Arctic or through the Panama Canal in a way that you've got control over it.

And these trade routes, China was exploiting. And it's clear Donald Trump sees them as a threat. But China, as you have articulated, thinks in generational terms, whereas Donald Trump and Western democracies think in prime ministerial or presidential terms, or more accurately, what tomorrow morning's headline is going to be. So China can be proactive in

very slowly, whereas we are reactive and have no way of getting that proactivity in. In the longer run, who's going to win? I think there is a clever strategy to be employed against China.

Whether we are following that, I'm not at all sure. I don't believe that the tariff war so-called has used up a lot of bandwidth. There's been a lot of noise. I see that in many respects almost as a sideshow to a broader issue.

move that we're seeing on the one hand with the United States and its allies looking to exclude China from sensitive supply chains and cut it off from advanced technologies, especially those that have military application. And in China, we have Xi Jinping looking to create a system of

where a self-contained, self-generating system of innovation built around China's own technology, which is separate from that of the West, separate from that of America, and which he sees as a key for extending Chinese influence in the world.

Who's going to win? Arguably, the trade war, Trump too, has come a little bit too early for Xi Jinping because he has multiple economic issues that the Chinese economy are facing. They're trying to talk it up about having a stronger technology sector now, being able to withstand the pressures of a trade war. I'm not so convinced. And I also think that there are...

We may be seeing peak China in the sense you're not going to see what we have seen over the last three decades for multiple reasons. That model is gone. China can't sustain that level of economic activity. The world is a far less benign place.

But I think peak China gives a lot of opportunities to a clever Western policy to blunt China's influence in multiple different ways, because I think they're overextended around the world. They're largely unloved around the world. Now, the question to me is whether we have governments smart enough to take those opportunities and to reassert China.

I know it's a bit corny, Western values, Western interests in a way that will blunt those of China. And I'm not a pessimist and I don't think the conflict is inevitable. I think there is a smart way of dealing with China. But whether or not we have politicians that can embrace that,

is another question. Well, yes, I think that's another programme that would take us a lot longer. Finally, from your perspective in watching everything, we've got brewing tensions in Southeast Asia, Chinese involvement in Middle East and in the war in Europe. We've got a war in Europe between Russia and Ukraine that...

the US is withdrawing from. We've got growing conflict in the Middle East that could easily turn into a war. From your perspective, are we on a path to a wider European or global conflict? I think we already have pretty wide global conflict. I think one of the questions is the degree to which we connect the dots, the degree to which they come together. We've seen North Korea

going to the assistance of Russia. We've seen the Iranians supplying drones to Russia. There are already multiple interconnections. China

Russia, Iran have all carried out joint military exercises over the years, admittedly with limited interoperability, which means that a lot of Western analysts have regarded them as being performative rather than of real substance. But I think we're already seeing these different conflicts coming together because of the overlapping interests and the degree of support that

that these different players have shown for each other. I suppose the question is to what extent that hardens over the coming weeks and months if these conflicts become more entrenched. Yes, and on that slightly depressing note, and I'm watching closely, I've never seen a clear path to global conflict. I can now see several, and that's what worries me.

But Ian, thank you very much indeed for spending time talking to me on Frontline today. A pleasure to join you, Philip. Take control of the numbers and supercharge your small business with Xero. That's X-E-R-O.

With our easy-to-use accounting software with automation and reporting features, you'll spend less time on manual tasks and more time understanding how your business is doing. 87% of surveyed U.S. customers agree Xero helps improve financial visibility. Search Xero with an X or visit xero.com slash ACAST to start your 30-day free trial. Conditions apply.

Hi guys, it's Hannah from Gigli Squad. With summer on the corner, I wanted to tell you guys how I'm staying comfy and stylish. Lululemon is my secret weapon. There are plenty of copycats out there, but nothing compares to the Lululemon fabrics and fit. I've literally had my pair of Lululemon leggings since college.

And I'm out of college. I know I don't look it, but I am. The quality is next level. I especially love the Lululemon Align Collection. It's made with this weightless, buttery, soft Nulu fabric that feels like next to nothing. It's so soft. Whether you're in Align pants, shorts, a bra, tank, skirt, a dress, you get nonstop flexibility in every direction so you can stretch the summer limits.

Align even wicks sweat. And as a sweaty girl, I love this. You know it's going to be my best friend when I play tennis this summer. Shop the Align collection online at lululemon.com or your nearest Lululemon store.