Brian Carter
speaker
98 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Brian Carter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, some of that is a lot of what we have by way of capabilities and cyber and a lot of other operational areas, we have fought with one hand tied behind our back because we only talk about executing things that are defensive. China has no such restriction. That's kind of why they've been able to run roughshod over some of the areas of our critical infrastructure.
They've gamed all that out with Taiwan and Japan and others too, but they don't distinguish between offensive and defensive. They don't distinguish between foreign and domestic. For them, the world is their oyster. They go wherever they can go. And we've basically been an open door on that front. And they've closed us off. There hasn't been reciprocity on that.
But there is a wide range of things we've never even made them believe we would be willing and able to do. in their own country.
I think there's some fun tests we could conduct that might send that kind of a message, but really getting our allies more prepared for these kinds of realities and having greater independent capabilities where they don't wait for Uncle Sam, they act on their own, I think that complicates things for Beijing. It doesn't make the world scared that they'll have to live without the US.
Well, I mean, John Ratcliffe is a friend and he's someone who's been in the intelligence world in multiple ways, but most recently at the office of the director of national intelligence, now going to be director of CIA. I think there's some big questions that are sort of a side issue, but just 9-11 was a long time ago. We lived in different circumstances.
I think we put some of these structures in place and priorities in place at a time of crisis. I think it's worth looking at what makes most sense about how to organize the intelligence community, resource the intelligence community all these many years later.
I don't think that it has been reformed to look at a world where we say the Communist Party of China is the largest existential external threat to America's way of life. believes that. I think President Trump believes that. Frankly, I think a lot of Americans do and don't think that the topics of recent years of climate change or other kinds of things are the top threat.
Leave aside how those should be addressed, but I think people tend to see this this way. If this is a transformational moment for looking at reform and whether Doge is a real thing that's looking at how to
find efficiencies and reorder things, then, you know, aside from being Republican or Democrat, blue, red, whatever, it appears to me from what's being talked about, we're at one of those moments. I think the CIA has frankly been right for something like that for a time.
I don't know whether the Office of the Director of National Intelligence plays a forever role or maybe things get reordered there, too. But What are we doing to make sure that we have the technology, personnel, language capabilities, and collaborations out in the world that reflect the priority that I articulated? A lot of members of Congress will echo that priority too.
I think that's the heavy burden for the incoming team. I think it's worthy. The time is now. But that's where I think the work is. And I would just emphasize there are many Democrats that I've known over the years that will think this way. It's sort of been the hot politics of recent past where they sort of pulled back from where that emphasis was.
But the Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP and the House of Representatives was bipartisan. And there are a lot of Democrats that signed up with the thinking that I just articulated. And so I hope that's that's where it's going. I wish I knew.
Mike, I mean, it's really been an interesting contrast where if you look at the Biden administration, he had a war breaking out with Russia's reinvasion of Ukraine. And President Biden, best I can tell, never talked to Vladimir Putin from the time of the reinvasion forward. And Yet there was this other challenge looming on the other side of the world in Asia.
And President Biden did have conversations back and forth with Xi Jinping a time or two. There was some in person, some by video conference, et cetera. And so in some ways, this idea that you should keep a channel of communication open wasn't held consistently and wasn't really kind of explained very well through that time in my estimation.
Now, I also think that the content and the quality of the conversation matters much more than, you know, how did they talk and how often did they talk. President Trump has his own style of doing these kinds of things. Steve, that's a very diplomatic way to put it.
In my lifetime, I can't think of a president-elect throwing out there, hey, how about the leader of China come and attend the inauguration? It's a kind of a form of communication that really hasn't existed. And I don't think in a million years that Xi Jinping is going to show up and listen to the brilliant oratory, the best words coming from the Capitol on Inauguration Day.
But clearly, Donald Trump is a kind of leader that is going to talk. to adversaries and others. I mean, he talked to Little Rocket Man after insulting him for a long time, and then they met and had their conversations.
He's clearly, I think, said that his objective is to open these channels of communication to try to lessen tensions and to explore alternative paths to peace and prosperity without necessarily opening with concessions. I can understand that logic. I can also see some things like that playing out.
It goes against the grain of what sort of the dominant views have been in past Republican and Democrat administrations. But when you look at a situation like this, does he want to pull Xi Jinping into a conversation and say, You know, you really did a number on me on that COVID business. You lied to my face and it cost a lot of people a lot of money.
And the thanks you're going to get for that are some tariffs for a time. And, you know, something near and dear to me. I hope he goes and looks him in the eye and says, hey, you know, we know that you have subsidized the chemical precursors for fentanyl and you've trans shipped these things in a number of ways. And hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed by this.
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