All Things with Kim Strassel: Sen.Tom Cotton’s Seven Warnings About China
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Learn more at PHRMA.org/IPWorksWonders. - From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast. - Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel. This week, we are joined by Republican Senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, who is out with a new book,

"Seven Things You Can't Say About China." Senator, welcome. Thanks for joining us today. - Thank you, Kim. Thanks for having me on. - I want to link some of what you write about in this book to headlines, and we'll get back to that. But let's start with the book.

I'm going to read out the seven things that you lay out so clearly that you say you can't say about China, but that are so important. Here they are: China is an evil empire. China is preparing for war. China is waging an economic world war. China has infiltrated our society. China has infiltrated our government.

China is coming for our kids and most terrifying, China could win. All of these, if you read this book, and I suggest people do have a lot of information behind them explaining in detail why they are so important, but

Senator, as you look at these, and I know that as a fellow writer, we think that everything we write is the most important thing ever. But if you had to pick one of those things for your readers or non-readers, what would you think would be the most important that they take in their memory and realize is so worrisome about China? Well, as you say, Kim, it's always hard to pick something when you've put your heart and soul into a book like this. The main message of Seven Things You Can't Say About China, when you put all those seven things, all those seven chapters together, is that

The American people have a justly low opinion of communist China, but however bad and dangerous you think communist China is, it's actually much worse. It's more of a threat to our way of life and to you and your family. Now, one reason I start with China as an evil empire, because I do believe, as Ronald Reagan did about communist Russia, that you have to understand the nature of the regime and

why it does what it does and what it thinks it is before you can understand the way it treats its people and the way it interacts with other nations in the world. And there's just no question that China is an evil empire, one of the worst ever. It has a degree of techno-totalitarian control that Stalin, for instance, could have only...

envisioned may be something that goes beyond even what Orwell could have envisioned. But if you look at the way they've committed genocide against minorities in Tibet or in northwest China, the way they persecute Christians with one of the largest Christians populations in the world.

The horrible torture they've imposed on Falun Gong, a harmless spiritual movement rooted in Buddhism, what they've done to break their promises to Hong Kongers and to crush freedom in Hong Kong. There's no question that there is a malevolent

evil at the heart of the Chinese regime. And the only reason they haven't done that to Taiwan or to other nations on their perimeter or to the United States is they haven't been able to amass the power to do so yet. Yeah, I think that this is just such an overlooked and important point. If you go back in history,

The American people were mobilized against, fully understood the existential threat that was Soviet Russia and the threat it posed not just to American values and our safety and security, but the globe. And we put a lot of effort into thwarting that and combating that. And there's an odd disconnect here. I think one is that Americans have been somewhat lulled by the notion of more moderate communists in China, which

I think some prior policymakers have helped to cause to be the situation given our trade deals. We've done the World Trade Organization and this sort of acceptance in some periods of time to embracing China or thinking we could just work alongside China with differences. But you point out

that not only are they just as evil as that, but that they have more tools. And I'd like you to talk a little bit about the success that they have had, which I would argue is far greater than anything Soviet Russia had in embedding themselves in society and in government. Well, in their own country, again, it's a techno-totalitarian police state, something that Orwell could have only imagined. Something like half of the world's surveillance cameras are in China alone.

Orwell said that tyranny was a boot stomping on the human face forever. For China, you might add it's a smartphone app monitoring the human face forever. They've made efforts to export that model to third world countries that are dependent on Chinese technology. But they've also used, Kim, their vast wealth and economic power gained in no small part by American mistakes of giving China permanent most favored nation status in the 1990s.

and then accepting it in the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s to infiltrate our society, our businesses, our campuses, our governments in a way that Soviet Russia never did. Sure, Soviet Russia obviously had spies running all over America and trying to infiltrate

our military, our national labs, our intelligence community, but nothing like what China has. I mean, numerous FBI officials have said that they could open a Chinese counterintelligence case anywhere in America almost every minute of the day. We've had them in Arkansas with

proprietary rice genomes or with engineering professors at University of Arkansas. That's replicated in every state across the union. But it's not just that kind of spying, traditional tradecraft that's extended to corporate America or to campuses. It's also just the influence and leverage that China has. Maybe the best and simplest example

is to ask, when was the last time you watched a movie with a Chinese villain? And the answer is at least since 1997, when Seven Years in Tibet came out and had Brad Pitt depicted the Dalai Lama in very sympathetic terms and communist China in very harsh terms.

because realistic terms. And China came down like a ton of bricks on Brad Pitt and everyone associated with that movie in the studio. And Hollywood execs got the picture very quickly that if you wanted access to the very large, lucrative Chinese movie market, you could do nothing that criticized communist China. So that's just one example, but I could extend it further, Kim. Think about news networks in America. There's only one major news network, Fox News.

that is not affiliated with or owned by one of those movie studios, ABC and Disney, CBS and Paramount, NBC and MSNBC with Comcast Universal and CNN with Warner Brothers. Do we really trust

those news networks to give us the straight scoop on communist China, given the vast financial consequences for their movie studio corporate affiliates? I sure don't. And I think it's one reason why Fox News has the best reporting on China. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more with Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas.

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Welcome back. I'm Kim Strassel here with Tom Cotton talking about his new book, Seven Things You Can't Say About China. You talk about their success in embedding and essentially influencing some of these very important elements of our culture. And you run through everything, Hollywood, professional sports,

our academic institutions. But isn't it also the case they are attempting to use that technology control in the United States, at least from a surveillance perspective? We had everything going on with Huawei. But does it concern you that we are

now at the moment, ignoring this TikTok ban, which was put into effect to guard against this. But we seem to be blithely moving ahead without paying attention to it. I think it would have been better to enforce the TikTok law as it was written from the beginning, in part because it would give leverage to achieve the objective.

for which Congress passed the law last year, which is to force a sale of TikTok by its parent company with a complete break from communist China. I've heard lots of people say, well, TikTok is just another social media app and Facebook and Instagram aren't so great either. And I understand that those American social media apps certainly do have their problems,

The key difference is TikTok is under the thumb of communist China, and it can use TikTok, as you say, for surveillance. It can use it for propaganda as well. Now, I hear people say that, "Well, just kids' data. Who cares?" Well, there's a lot of adults on TikTok as well.

But kids also grow up to be adults, and those adults take jobs in law enforcement, in the military, and intelligence, and sensitive industrial or corporate positions as well. And all that data lasts forever in China. I've also heard people say that, well, the content is harmless. And sure, there is plenty of harmless content on TikTok as on any social media network.

cat videos or how-to videos for cooking or knitting or home repair, what have you. But there's a lot of very harmful content too, Kim. And I lay this out in the book. State attorneys generals have sued TikTok, Democrat and Republican alike. And they've demonstrated that if you get a new account and you tell TikTok you're a teenage girl without watching a single video, without expressing a single preference, it will start feeding you content related to negative body image, for instance, or eating disorders.

If you tell it you're a teenage boy, and again, you don't click on a single video, you don't express a single preference, it will start sending you graphic violence and obscene pornography. And for all kids, it will target you with content that glamorizes drug use and even suicide when you go on and tell TikTok that you're sad or depressive or you want to have sex.

content that is uplifting. And sadly, as I outline in the book, some kids have actually gone on to commit suicide. And then there's the other aspect of the content manipulation, which is using it for Chinese propaganda or anti-American propaganda or anti-Israel propaganda. You know, the anti-Semitism on TikTok is orders of magnitude greater than it is on other social media. When you go to TikTok, just like we've seen lately with Deep Seek's new AI engine, you can't get the straight scoop about Tiananmen Square or

Taiwan or Hong Kong or Tibet. And remember, when we passed the law last year, Kim, TikTok actually sent out push notices asking its users to press a button so they could call their congressman and tell him to vote no. And if they'll do it then, what will they do when, say, Donald Trump

wants to impose higher tariffs on China or in a moment of crisis over Taiwan. And yet I have a general rule of thumb, which is to say that if we wouldn't have allowed communist Russia to do it, we shouldn't allow communist China to do it. And we never would have allowed Pravda, the old

Soviet Russian propaganda outlet to get a foothold in the American news media space. We shouldn't have allowed TikTok and we need to reverse it. Yeah, you're correct. And one thing I really like about this book is you do go into the many different ways in which the Chinese Communist Party uses all of this. It isn't just to propagandize in favor of China. It's to disrupt

It's to cause discord. It's to poison our kids and generally bring down the American model. And that in that regard is not different than Soviet Russia. But as you know, they have a lot more tools now. One other thing that you get into, and I think this is also slightly different than Soviet Russia in that they didn't necessarily, we find out in retrospect, have the economic wherewithal

to compete with the United States from a military capacity. That's what we found out later. It took us a while to understand that. But China is investing all. It is throwing down to build its military and out-compete us. And you say that

The main goal of this, the end game, is to take over Taiwan. And you talk about the huge stakes of that island and why China is so interested. Can you explain that? Sure. And I do think you pinpoint a critical difference between communist Russia and communist China, and that's the economic power and wealth that China has accumulated. And again, they've done it in large part because we've helped them

We didn't just give them permanent most favored nation status and entry into the World Trade Organization. We taught them how to manage a modern economy. Yes, it's still a communist country, but as Deng Xiaoping said, they wanted to use market tools for socialist ends.

And they are much better at overseeing a modern economy than Soviet Russia ever was. Soviet Russia was always brittle, even if we didn't appreciate it at the time. That's not the case with China. That's why China has built up its military faster than any time in all of history. And it's really all geared towards Taiwan. I understand that some people say, "Well, it's a small island, and China has some vague disputed historical claims to it."

you know, so far away from us and so close to them, what does it really matter? You know, it'd be bad, but gosh, you know, when China rolled into Tibet and Hong Kong, we didn't have economic depression worldwide and we didn't have World War III. Why would it be different for Taiwan? And the answer is, it is just different. And it always has been. As Douglas MacArthur said at the outset of the Korean War,

Taiwan is the unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender just off the coast of China, right in between Japan and the Philippines that acts as an obstacle to Chinese ambitions. If China turned it into its own unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender, it would become a springboard for those ambitions.

And then you have to add in the economic dimension that Taiwan is now the main site of semiconductor manufacturing for the global economy. 60% of all semiconductors, 90% of advanced semiconductors, which is the lifeblood of a modern digital electronic economy from the device you're listening to this show on today.

to the phone in your pocket, to the TV in your house, your appliances, your cars, our tractors, everything runs on semiconductors. And any war over Taiwan will almost surely result in global depression, with stock markets collapsing, shortages on shelves, mass unemployment of a kind that no American has ever really seen. Because any war is probably going to destroy that manufacturing industry.

capacity. If it were a quick and decisive victory for China, then China would then control that semiconductor capacity, which would make it maybe even worse. So that's just the economic dimension. Then there's the military dimension, that if China can take over Taiwan, it immediately throws into chaos all of our alliance structures, not just in the Western Pacific, but around the world. So you have many countries beginning to doubt America's commitment to

to their independence, like Japan or South Korea or the Philippines or India or Australia. Many of those nations start to probably go nuclear themselves. So you have widespread nuclear proliferation that leads to the decline of American influence and pro-American sentiment around the world and ultimately helps China achieve its objective, which is to replace us as the world's dominant superpower, both from a military and an economic standpoint.

And as Chinese officials told Trump officials on his state visit to China eight years ago, basically turn America into a low cost commodity exporter for China, farm products, oil and gas isolated over here on the other side of the world. Well, that is a bit bleak. We're going to take one more break when we come back more with Tom Cotton.

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast. Welcome back to All Things with Kim Strassel.

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Things with Kim Strassel. I am here with Tom Cotton talking about his new book. Let's actually connect some of this to some of what's going on in the news. The president met with Emmanuel Macron, the French president, on Monday. There are active talks going on for some sort of a settlement.

of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We at the editorial page had a great piece on our editorial page on Monday listing Russia's long list of lies and broken treaties and commitments when it comes to Ukraine. They're not exactly a trusted actor. My concern is this, is that you walk in and you walk out of that and we have pushed upon Ukraine a settlement that leaves

Putin feeling emboldened that he gets away with this. And that, by extension, is a message to other tyrannical regimes, especially those that are partners with Russia, like China. We're talking about security agrees in terms of economic security agreements and guarantees for Ukraine, rare earth minerals. There's some talk about EU peacekeeping

What is an adequate deal here? How do you exit from this without rewarding Putin for his behavior? Yeah, without getting into the specifics of the deal, but looking to ends. I think at this point, which is a disappointing point on the battlefield, because Joe Biden, in addition to tempting Putin to invade in the first place with his weakness, most notably in Afghanistan, only weeks after which...

Putin began to mass forces on Ukraine's border, also pussyfooted around for three years and didn't allow Ukraine to win and win early when they had a chance to win, when they had Russia on the back foot in the fall of 2022. Unfortunately, Russia is more on the front foot now, and it's turned into something of a war of attrition, which does not favor Ukraine because of its much smaller size than Russia. So I think first is you're looking to have a durable and lasting truce.

I wouldn't necessarily expect to have a grand peace bargain where you can sign a treaty in an ornate hall, but something rather like what we had at the end of World War II in Germany or the Korean War, or even after Putin's aggression against Georgia in 2008.

that, yes, we all recognize the reality of Russian troops on Ukrainian soil, but we don't recognize the legality of those troops there, just like we still don't to this day in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, or for that matter, that we still don't recognize North Korea. So that's the first step is a durable and lasting truce that stops the fighting. Second is that we want to protect, as JD Vance put it, in Europe.

a couple of weeks ago, Ukraine's sovereign independence. And third, and maybe most important, as you say, Kim, is to prevent the future third invasion of Ukraine. The last two invasions have happened under the last two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, just a few months after notable displays of American weakness and irresolution, which

With Biden, it was the debacle in Afghanistan in the fall of 2021. With Obama, it was the red line fiasco in Syria in the fall of 2013. How you go about achieving that, there's a lot of different ways. The president has said we're not going to have American troops in Ukraine, but there's other ways that we can provide security support to European troops in Ukraine. I know they're negotiating on a minerals agreement, as you said. That's good, not just in its own terms, because it helps Ukraine have a foundation for post-war negotiations.

economic growth, but it's also good for us, as I write about in Seven Things You Can't Say About China, that we need to quickly diversify our dependence on rare earth minerals away from China. And it also gives us a stake in Ukraine's future. I would not rest any of this, though, on the goodwill or the promises of Vladimir Putin. That is a long catalog of his broken promises. And you could probably write a similar piece about

or the Baltics or his own people or his relationship with all of the presidents of our nation since he took office, since all five of them, starting with Clinton, have tried to have better relationships with Russia only to see it come a cropper because Vladimir Putin doesn't see Russia as aligned with America.

Let me ask you this. China, as we were talking about, it's amassed this economic wealth. It has poured a lot of it into upgrading and expanding its own military to rival us. And in some places, I fear very much we are falling behind

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth came out with a memo recently suggesting an 8% cut in defense spending. I know there's been some further explanation of that. I think we're all in favor, obviously, of cutting out waste and fraud and abuse. But we are entering a period where we are spending about moving towards 3% of GDP on defense spending. That's about half of what it was.

when we were challenging the Soviet Union. What do you see happening with defense budgets over the next year, especially in light of this reconciliation bill that's coming up and competing interests for tax cuts and given the huge size of the deficit? Are you confident that we're going to invest what we need to to maintain our dominance?

I don't anticipate a defense budget cut at all, Kim, under Donald Trump. That was not the case in our first term. What Pete Hexeth has said is, one, Joe Biden submitted a kind of ephemeral budget increase for the Department of Defense at the very end of his tenure after four years of proposing real actual cuts. So we're not going to do that. But also what he wants to do is make sure that we're focused on the president's defense priorities

and what we would need to fight and win a war over Taiwan, which is the only way to be able to deter it from happening in the first place. So just to give you one example is the need to prioritize aircraft that can survive against

China's very dense, very capable radar and air defense systems. The kind of aircraft that we didn't necessarily need in a low intensity guerrilla conflict in Afghanistan or Iraq. Also, we've got to do a much better job of increasing the pace of manufacturing of basic munitions in this country.

not cutting edge weapons, we have those and we're working on them, but just the kind of basic munitions that our Air Force and our Navy and our Army need to fight and win a war. You see the usage rates in Ukraine, it would be as intense for certain categories of weapons

if there was a fight in Taiwan, we need to substantially increase the manufacturing rates of those weapons. One way to do it, as you suggest, is to go outside the annual budgeting cycle, as we hope to do in this big budget bill, and put enough money on the table

for the long term to give defense companies the incentive to expand their current factories, maybe build new factories, because they know that the demand is gonna be there for them for years to come. And it's not gonna be subject to the vagaries of who wins a congressional election. Just like we need to do a better job of expediting friendly foreign nations to buy those weapons as well,

partly for their own defense, partly so our defense industry, again, has a certainty to justify the major expenditures it takes upfront to increase manufacturing rates. Those are just a couple examples of what we need to do and what I believe we will do in these four years. Let me round this back to your book, because this was actually one of my favorite parts of your book, was your very ending. I think

A lot of Americans, they look at this great heaving problem called China and the threat that's there and think, what can I do? Is my government doing enough? But you actually offer some practical advice to people for how they can help counter the threat to China.

Finish us off with your advice to people about how they can step up if they are concerned about all of this. Yeah. What I wanted to do in the conclusion of the book is give every American a chance to feel like they can make a difference. I understand not everyone is going to be in the Senate or the Congress.

be able to vote on these things, but you can make a difference every single day. One, I would encourage you to stay informed and keep learning. Obviously, if you've picked up seven things you can't say about China, you care about the topic. Encourage other people to read it. Give them the book, or even better, encourage them to buy the book. I'm glad you got that in there. Yeah.

Follow the news about China. Two, share that with other people as well. Inform your friends, inform your family, especially, especially inform your kids. Explain to them why you don't let them have TikTok. Explain to them why you shouldn't shop at Sheen and Timu. Tell them why communist China is governed by bad people. You know, my kids aren't old enough to understand everything I write in that book.

But they do understand that the bad guys are in charge of China and the good guys are in charge of places like the United States and Japan and so forth. Three, make China a priority on election day and do it in between as well. And not just for Congress and for the president, but do it at your state and local level too. As I say, China is definitely trying to cultivate your state and local elected leaders. You should make sure that you know where they stand on China too. And in between, stay focused on what they're doing.

Don't just criticize them if you think they're doing the wrong thing. Remember to praise them if they're doing the right thing. If your legislature is banning purchases of farmland by Chinese nationals near military sites, give them a call, send them a letter, tell them you appreciate it. Fourth, keep your kids and your family off of Chinese apps like TikTok or DeepSeek. Fifth, boycott products made in China to the extent you can. I understand.

that there's a lot of things that are only made in China now. If you want to have a fake Christmas tree, you're probably going to have to get it from China. I'm not telling everyone they need to smash their iPhones or throw away their Nike sneakers, but put in maybe an extra minute or two just to look at the label or check the sourcing code on the website and where you can, don't buy in China. Six is try to buy American where you can. Again, I understand that there are things not made in America anymore, regrettably, but everywhere you can, put your dollars behind American workers and businesses, not Chinese. And finally...

Pray for the Chinese people. Remember, the Chinese people are the first and the very worst victims of Chinese communism. And again, my kids aren't old enough to understand everything in this book, but they do understand that bad people rule China and they're oppressing all the good Chinese people and to say a prayer for them. So those are just a few things you can do in your everyday life to try to make a difference.

Well, words of wisdom there. Thank you, Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas. We want to thank our listeners. If you like the show, please hit the subscribe button. And if you'd like to write to us, you can at [email protected].