The Exchanges

Q Speaking of China as the big brother in a couple relationships, obviously they're a lot more powerful in a lot of ways than Russia and then Putin, and it feels like they must have had to sign off for Russia to do what they're doing right now. Is that the dynamic that we see in general?

A Boy, I, you know, I, I don't know that they would have signed off on this. It would have been a little more nuanced than that. They certainly would have been prepared, briefed for it. They might have been asked what they thought, but I think Putin had his full intention of doing this, uh, regardless of what Xi Jinping said, but having now failed, having now demonstrably been unable to execute the, at least the military and diplomatic objectives of the invasion of Europe, I think Xi has even more leverage over Vladimir Putin today. Think, uh, think energy as their sole customer, near sole customer, uh, a host, a host of places in the diplomatic world where China now has even more capacity to control what Vladimir Putin does going forward.

AI assessment note: “I don't know that they would have signed off on this. It would have been”

Q don't get too many builders running things in DCU, especially don't get too many builders running the state department. That's a, that's an interesting combination. You know, one of my big pet peeves in general is these unaccountable bureaucracies and it's so hard to deal with them. What'd you do to inject some of that business and risk taking energy into those places when you were there as a leader?

A Oh my, Joe, you know, it was a mess at the CIA was actually different at the CIA. You had risk takers there. You had people that understood how to put projects in place, deliver Measurable goods, right? The things we do in the business world. The State Department is fundamentally different than that. Three unions, civil service rules. You couldn't promote based on merit, right? You couldn't allocate resources. You'd get appropriate funds. You couldn't allocate resources on a risk-adjusted basis, and so we tried to do it culturally. We, we attempted to focus everyone on the mission We tried to reward people who were actually delivering on the, uh, the agenda that we had laid out for them. I must say, Joe, I, 70,000 people, a thousand days. I'm not sure I left that place materially better than where I began. We, we did a lot, but we had to work around and through what was the most resistant, unaccountable bureaucracy, the one that I've ever been a part of.

AI assessment note: “we tried to do it culturally. We, we attempted to focus everyone on the mission”

Q definitely people on both sides who, who are not bold enough, not willing to stand up. I hope we get a bold president who could do this. You know, speaking of boldness, you've had the fortune of meeting some of the world's worst authoritarians, uh, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, President Xi. I'm curious, I just, how do you prepare for those interactions? How do you project strength in those moments?

A You gotta know what you're looking for, know where your boundaries are, and just be laser focused. So I would describe that as a significant preparation. Don't walk into a meeting just thinking, I got this, I can wing it. Uh, be prepared. Know what they're thinking. Show up. It's, it's not terribly different than the risk taking I took at their airspace, that machine shop in Kansas. Uh, when you show up with a customer, here's the product. Here's the value proposition. Here's the, here's where I'm going. Happy to haggle on price a little bit with you. Um, but I know the worth of what it is I'm delivering. And I had the good fortune. I was America's secretary of state. So when I was meeting to them with them, we had a lot of value we could demonstrate, uh, to them. And, uh, A very capable military to back up that diplomacy, and we, we always tried to make clear this, this wasn't about hostility to, with none of them. Uh, we had an objective that we wanted for America. In Afghanistan, we wanted to get out. In Russia, we wanted to make sure their thousand nuclear warheads were contained, and we didn't want them to invade Europe, and a longer list for the Chinese Communist Party, but we were pretty clear about our expectations, and we were prepared in each of those meetings. They didn't, we didn't always succeed, Joe. We didn't get everything we wanted, but there was no ambiguity, …

AI assessment note: “You gotta know what you're looking for, know where your boundaries are”

Q How did the foreign policy establishment miss this, and how did your team make it happen?

A Goodness, you know, they missed it because they were in the rut. They were in the, uh, can't do nothing until Palestine is solved, uh, and they missed what was happening in Gulf Arab states, and so it wasn't just my team. It was, uh, it was Jared Kushner, Steve Mnuchin. There were a whole bunch of hands that made it happen. All the leaders, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump all came together. We, um, we just decided, look, let's see if there's a way to work through this. Let's see if we can't Satisfy the requirements of these Gulf Arab states to make it in their best interest to make peace with Israel. And took us, goodness, uh, three years or so to fight our way through that and to figure it out. Uh, but ultimately they concluded as, you know, as in any deal, every, every party's got to think they improve their life.

AI assessment note: “they missed it because they were in the rut. They were in the... can't do nothing”

Q I have to ask you, uh, well, I have you about these balloons that have been going on recently. Speaking of recent events, uh, it's, it's, it's the whole thing. It seems a little bit silly, but I think, I think one of the, one of the general study can't rule out aliens, which I'm not sure that was a good thing for him to say. What's going on here?

A I saw that. The response to that question to say we can't rule out anything, just let the internet go wild. Goodness gracious. I don't know. Maybe, maybe there was a better solution. I suspect not aliens. We certainly know that one of them came from the Chinese Communist Party. I don't know what the others were, but I'll bet when we figure it out, they came from one of our adversaries. They're testing, you know, Joe, that they probably collected from that balloon Something, maybe that they had alternative collection methodologies as well, so perhaps not that accretive to the Chinese government. But man, the fact that that thing flew over our sovereign airspace for five days hurt us geopolitically. And it's especially the case when it plays to type, you, you, you would know this. When someone makes an error and it's out of form, everybody kind of goes, oh, that was just a, an error. When that error is to form, when, when you've, you know, abandoned Afghanistan and had 13 Americans killed, when you talked about A minor incursion into Ukraine being okay, and then you let a Chinese balloon fly across your country for five days. It just, it's that weakness is provocative and I'm very worried about a cascading series of potential crises befalling America because our leadership didn't demonstrate sort of a basic rule of bad thing, sovereign airspace, make sure that you know what it is…

AI assessment note: “I suspect not aliens. We certainly know that one of them came from the Chinese”

Q Yeah, you, you wrote a lot about this, this obsession with celebrating identity over merit, right? So I guess it's a form of wokeness that means who cares how well they've done, what's their identity? Is that, You see, you see that a lot in government?

A Uh, everywhere, writ large. I'm, I'm especially worried about the incredibly unique organization of the United States military. I was a young officer 30 years ago, 35 years ago. Boy, when it loses mission focus, bad things happen. Uh, but by the way, bad things happen. You're not as secure. They're not as capable, but bad things happen because it's also been an important, an important cultural jumping off point for some young guys and gals. They say, yep, I'm going to go be a Marine for a couple of years. I'm going to enlist and be a sailor. When, when you are now saying, Hey, you know what? We're going to, we're going to make sure your vehicles are all carbon neutral and we're going to guarantee you a safe space. Like that is not what a kid who's thinking about joining the military is looking for. They want to go do mission, and today, across the government broadly, this ideal of, of, of equity has seeped in, in terms of, hey, how good are you at what it is we're actually, actually asking you to do?

AI assessment note: “Uh, everywhere, writ large. I'm, I'm especially worried about the incredibly unique organization”