John Kiriakou

And that's really, I think, what we're seeing right now.

Almost none.

Of course, Australia is a member of Five Eyes like the United States is along with Canada, the UK and New Zealand.

You know, I never visited Australia while I was with the CIA, never came a single time.

I can count my meetings with Australian intelligence officials on these two fingers over the course of a 15 year career.

But, you know, it was always my understanding that the Australians were far more interested in China than they were in the area where I was, whether it was, you know, European.

It's quaint now, but European communist terrorism or the Middle East.

I just never really encountered them.

If I were in a position where my opinion actually had some heft behind it,

I would say, ignore this 5% number.

It's economically untenable over the long term.

You know, it's funny, when President Trump was in his first term, there was only one country in NATO besides the United States that spent 2% of GDP on defense.

That was Greece, because they're petrified of Turkey.

Now, we've got this 5% number floating around.

Here in the United States, we have a $32 trillion, trillion with a T, trillion dollar national debt.

The Chinese own a plurality of that debt.

And so...

We just keep selling the Chinese more long-term government bonds.

If they really wanted to just completely collapse the economy, they would just sell the bonds.

And for all intents and purposes, the American economy would cease to exist.