Daniel P. Driscoll

But it makes, I think, a lot of their...

their outcomes more narrowly predictable, meaning if you look at DeepSeek as an example of something where their generative AI model kind of caught the world on fire when they released it.

As far as I last know, much of the work that was done for DeepSeek was piggybacked off the innovation of OpenAI.

And what China is really good at is fast following.

It is really good at getting what we, the United States, and other nations develop and quickly mimicking and copying it.

That is a superpower of theirs.

But we, the United States, also have strengths that I think when we lean into those strengths and empower them as a department of war, like, we have incredible outcomes.

But back to the kind of question you were asking.

What I am most nervous about with China is their ability to be hyper-focused on an outcome, and they don't have to go through the same political cycles we do.

Their pain tolerance can be a lot higher than us because they don't have to suffer the same sort of short-term political consequence that I think a lot of our leaders have to suffer through.

And define short-term as two or four years, not that short, but much shorter than China's 100-year horizon is.

And I worry that they will view us from the lens of the previous four years as not strong enough to hold them back, not having the political will to engage with them, and that they have taken all of these technological leaps in the previous decade, and then it makes them more aggressive

And I worry that they act in a way that forces us to send our American sons and daughters to go engage directly with them.

I don't know if you saw the parade recently.

I think what you get out of totalitarian governments is homogeneity is a lot easier to achieve, and homogeneity is a strength for some things.

What it is not a strength for, in my opinion, is warfare.

When you think of what China is really good at, I don't think the idea of commander's intent is something that they have ingrained into their soldiers.

I think what that means for the listener who might not have served is the United States Army prides itself on this concept of commander's intent.

which is if I work for you and you give me a mission, I want to make sure I know why you want me to do it.

I push that down through my guys and we go out and execute.