Daniel P. Driscoll

Okay.

Fair enough.

I think you listen to their words first.

I mean, I think they view us as their biggest threat.

Their economy has been gangbusters for a couple of decades.

Their ability to just manufacture and output things that currently may not be tools of war but could be converted to tools of war at scale is pretty remarkable.

Their innovation, the number of PhDs they are spitting out, the number of patents that

that they as a nation are being awarded is just unbelievable.

And if you look at their focus on the long horizon and their tolerance for short-term pain, I think that in some ways can be a weakness of our system is that we can't focus on the long-term all that well.

And our system of government forces us to think more short-term most times.

And that gives a different set of strengths.

But I think if you look at that collective set of characteristics for China, it puts them kind of far and away as our pacing threat.

But that being said, I think when I look back to my Title X authorities to man, train, and equip the army and get it ready to deploy anywhere in the world on behalf of the president and secretary of war, we are, General George and I, are hyper-focused on creating an army that not only will dominate the Indo-Pacific in a fight with China if we have to,

but is ready to go anywhere in the world at a moment's notice and fight any conflict, regardless of who it is against.

And so that requires us, because if you think of most of human history,

I think most people who have thought they could predict the future have turned out wrong.

And so we need to develop an army knowing that we may be used anywhere in the world at a moment's notice that might not be who we think or where we think we're going.

Well, so, and just to go back, because when this goes live and I listen to myself, if I had said I wasn't nervous of where China is, I'm going to be in Paris.

So I hope that that's not what I came across, because China's incredible.

Their system of government, what I was intending to say, gives them strengths in certain things because of what they can focus on long term.