The Exchanges

Q You represent Wisconsin's eighth district. You're the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on the CCP. That's, is that taking up a lot of your focus recently?

A That is taking up a ton of my focus, but it's, uh, been an incredible challenge and mission. When Speaker McCarthy, former Speaker McCarthy created the select committee, he really kind of intended it to do two things. One was to communicate to our colleagues and the American people why any of this matters, right? Why someone in Texas or Wisconsin should care about the threat posed by the CCP, which at times can seem Like a distant over there problem, but occasionally we have a spy balloon or pandemic to remind us that it's not, it's a right here at home problem. And then also to kind of act as the accelerator or incubator for smart bipartisan CCP related legislation that could pass in the 118th Congress, even in divided government. So it's been a huge challenge, but very rewarding. And, um, you know, I think this is the biggest challenge for us national security. So to be in a position where I can influence it is It's really a privilege.

AI assessment note: “That is taking up a ton of my focus, but it's, uh, been an incredible challenge”

Q never stopped fighting for our country. You went from being a Marine who's fighting, now you're fighting potentially the most important fight we're facing right now with China. You know, before we jump into your committee's work more, I want to ask, what do you make of President Xi's visit to San Francisco last week? Are there any significant outcomes? Is there anything to this fentanyl deal? What's going on?

A Well, I, I will confess I'm very skeptical about the fentanyl deal for a few reasons. One is we, we've kind of seen this movie before. Trump had an agreement with Xi on fentanyl. Nothing came of it. Um, you know, they, they tend to kind of agree to working groups and then the flow of fentanyl continues. Even when they scheduled or did the equivalent of scheduling fentanyl in China, they switched to precursor production and they shipped the precursors to Mexico. And the DTOs have now taken some of the technology that used to be in In China and the fentanyl continues to flow across the southern border and, um, it's killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. And of course the Biden administration has no interest in securing the southern border. I w listen, I'd love to be wrong about it. I, I hope that China cracks down massively on precursor production and the flow of fentanyl across our borders dries up. I would welcome that development. It is unfortunate, however, and this is kind of the second point that we had to kind of give up In this case, a human rights related sanction in order to get their cooperation when they just should, if they want to be treated as great power, they should be taking this, this, uh, step proactively. The other big, um, development that came out of this allegedly was the reestablishment of military to military communications. The Chinese had, …

AI assessment note: “I'm very skeptical about the fentanyl deal for a few reasons.”

Q it's, it's, it's anti-American. It's against our patriotism, against our country to even invest there. And I'm horrified because we have lots of U.S. pensions, U.S. endowments financing their military innovation right now still. I mean, I mean, I'm curious, like what, what, what should Congress be doing about this? Should we pass laws to stop us From investing in certain things in China? Like, like what's going on there?

A I think so. I mean, we, we did, we've done an investigation of BlackRock MSCI, and we've only scratched the surface. We've investigated some other, um, some venture capital, uh, organizations, and we are, we're, Capital continues to flow even to companies that are on various, uh, federal government blacklists. So it isn't just like a technology company, like a biotech technology company, which, you know, you could squint and convenient, convince yourself yourself that there's no dual use purpose. We're talking about companies that build aircraft carriers, artillery shells, fighter jets. So just as a matter of principle, I don't think American capital should be subsidizing the production of things that are designed to kill Americans in a future conflict.

AI assessment note: “I think so. I mean, we, we did, we've done an investigation”

Q Are there people on both sides who see that the CDC is not doing its job? I mean, it seems like the CDC has become very politicized, very bureaucratic. It's like, I mean, Elon would say it's the woke mind virus has conquered this place and it's no longer useful. Like, like, is that true? Are there great people at the CDC still? Like, what's going on there?

A I think on the first part of that question, I think if you talk to Congressman Costa, whose district this is, and I don't want to put words in his mouth so he can dispute this. I think he would say, cause he, he did the preface to our report, which was a bipartisan report with my ranking member, which pointed out the CDC's failure. I think they would all concede that the, the CDC dropped the ball, uh, in this case, or quite literally didn't answer the phone in this case. I think there was some hesitation among our democratic colleagues to criticize the CDC just because Coming out of the COVID pandemic, there was so much, I think, deserved criticism of the public health establishment, um, but we were able to get out of that in this instance, and my point to them was like, we don't, we don't, we're not doing the CDC any favors by pulling our punches, because if Americans continue to lose faith in the public health establishment, and I think a lot of us have lost faith in the public health establishment, local, state, and especially federal, After sort of like the Fauci-ization of our response to the pandemic, which was its whole failure, then we're going to go down a very dark, dark road. So by confronting failures and fixing them, that's the only path back to sanity. But to the core of your point, there's been an incredible politicization of science, right? Like the science and …

AI assessment note: “he did the preface to our report, which was a bipartisan report”

Q Yeah, totally agree. Two last questions for you, Mike. First of all, I was curious, is there anything positive you could say about China? Are there areas of mutual benefit? Are there impressive things there that we should be trying to work with?

A Listen, even on TikTok, right? Like there's no, I mean, you have a better view than I, and I, I really don't use social media, so I guess I don't know from firsthand, but like the technology appears to be good. Like, I'm not saying it's like bad technology. Like it, it seems like they're, it's like doing something better to addict Teenagers than other forms of social media. Now I would argue that's not like a noble mission, but hey, whatever. Like, so clearly there is a ton of, of innovation and I think more broadly, and the reason I actually asked speaker McCarthy to change the name of the committee to, uh, say Chinese communist party and not China or PRC was to point out the distinction between the regime, the party, this is a party state, right? The party sits on top of everything. It's a Marxist Leninist organization driving everything, and increasingly there's nine people and maybe one person that are driving everything. Versus the Chinese people, right? We have no quarrel with the Chinese people. The Chinese people, I would argue, are the primary victims of the regime's depravity. Um, so Clue is a country with a proud history, uh, rich cultural, uh, uh, uh, contributions. Uh, to the world, and it is a tragedy that this regime is doing the things it's doing, um, and acting in a way that threatens peace, stability, and prosperity for billions and billions of people.

AI assessment note: “clearly there is a ton of, of innovation and I think more broadly”