Natalie Winters

So that's not really the best two-way street, shall we say.

And I don't think we need more young American students adopting a communist indoctrination, but definitely more to drill down

On that front, like I said, this is a hill to die on.

There's no explanation for it, let alone the doubling down, let alone doubling the caps to 600,000.

It's absolutely ludicrous.

And I think our first guest, Sam Faddis, I would wager that you probably...

agree with me i won't get too far over my skis but i think you understand the the prc to be america's probably largest existential if not really only real existential threat um your your thoughts on this continued discourse if not outright doubling down on uh broadening uh student visa caps for for chinese students here in the states well natalie i uh i was listening to your introductory comments there and i'm tempted to just respond amen

Yeah, and it's an interesting, I think, concurrent strawmanning and steelmanning of the argument.

In other words, these Chinese students are totally strawmanned and made to look like these individuals who are, and I'm sure maybe one of them is, but are coming here to altruistically learn and absorb the American way of life.

then the steel man, I think, is that these American universities are these wonderful, you know, free-thinking places where they're going to be indoctrinated with pro-America thought.

I would almost posit that American universities are probably more anti-West and more anti-America than some universities that are actually in Beijing.

I mean, what was it?

It was Harvard that was working, of course, with the Chinese Communist Party.

They were running, it was through the Ash Center.

They were literally running a

Chinese leaders development program where they were training the next cadre of Chinese officials even working with a Xinjiang production and construction corps which was a sanctioned entity basically overseeing the Uyghur genocide up in Xinjiang so this is not run-of-the-mill stuff and I also think too I'm curious your thoughts I think a lot of this discussion making it about the students really is sort of a limited hangout in the sense that the students are just sort of the

foot soldiers of what is a massive multi-billion dollar effort for China to own our universities, right?

It sort of gives them the pretext, the ability to plow all this money where they're curating not just what the Chinese students are learning, but even I think more nefariously, this very whitewashed version of China's rise, which is one of, oh, it's an economic miracle, right?

I'm curious your thoughts on that asset or facet rather of compromise.

Yeah, students can very easily become spies, can very easily become sleeper cells, consensually or non-consensually.