Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Sir Secretary, thank you very much for being here. Good to be with you.
We've heard from the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I'm curious at this point what your understanding is of the case this administration has made for the US going to war against Iran.
Well, look, the case keeps shifting. But the first thing to say is this, from my perspective, once our men and women in uniform are engaged in an operation or in war, my first thought is for their safety and for their success, irrespective of what I think about how we got there or even where this is going. So that's primarily what I'm thinking of. But having said that,
we've heard, you know, number of shifting rationales. But I think it's important to take into account that we've got to be able to hold multiple truths in our head at the same time. Is it a good thing that this iahtola is gone, Yes, terrible tyrant. Is it a good thing potentially at least that Iran's nuclear program is I guess reobliterated because apparently it was obliterated last June, But maybe not so much because they had to reobliterate it,
or it's missile program diminished, or it's navy sunk. Yes, But to do that and to take on the extraordinary risks that go with it without having made the case with the American people with citing imminent threats that apparently didn't exist, I think that's problematic. And the chances of unintended consequences taking hold in any situation like this are very real, very serious for our partners and allies in the region, and for ourselves, and of course with the
Iranian people. I think a big question that everyone has is, Okay, have we done regime change in Iran or just iotola change, which is the way it looks right now.
You brought up the argument that there was an inminate threat in years past, you'd warned the amount of weeks before Ron could develop fissile uranium. Is that an argument that's persuasive to you so much as that's been made by the ministration that there it's.
An ironic argument in a number of ways. First, as I said, they claim to have obliterated the nuclear fissile material program back in June, and now we're told, actually, no, we didn't. And A number of US warned at the time that one of the reasons why military action against the nuclear program might not do the trick is that the Iranians were likely to start to rebuild, maybe rebuild
deeper underground where we couldn't get at it. Whether that was happening or to what extent, I don't know, because I'm not privy to that information, but at least that seems to be part of the rationale. The deeper irony, of course, is that we never should have been in this position, insofar as the agreement that the President Obama reached the Iran Nuclear Dealer, so called JCPOA, put Iran's
nuclear program in a box. It made sure that Iran could not produce the facile material needed for nuclear weapon in less than a year, and so if they chose to break out of the box and go for that, we'd see it, and we'd have plenty of time to be able to do something about it. President Trump tore up that agreement, said he'd replace it with something better.
He never did, and that's the road that we then wound up on that led to in some ways to where we are today with Iran, yes dramatically advancing its production of facile material, so that that breakout time moved
from one year to a couple of weeks. But you don't only need fysile material, actually need a weapon too, And I think, as has been publicly reported our intelligence agencies and others, the IEA continue to conclude that Iran has not made a decision to actually weaponize if and when they do, or if and when they did, most estimates had that timeline a couple of years. There are different kinds of weapons, less sophisticated ones you could build on a quicker timeline. But the bottom line is that
on the nuclear side there was no imminent threat. There was though the fact that, yes, in terms of facil material production, they'd gone from the Obama deal more than a year to a few weeks.
The Supreme Leader who's been killed, of course, warned in the run up to this that if there were US strikes, the US risked a wider regional war. How has what's played out over these last few days, How does that
compare to what you expected would happen here? I imagine in your old jobs there were planning meetings and war games in which you kind of tried to figure out what might happen here as we see this war, widen, is that in keeping with what you expected when you heard the Supreme Leader warned.
Them, well, look, it's certainly something that should have been anticipated. And one of the striking features so far is that Iran has launched far more missiles and far more drones at the Arab countries in the Gulf and in the region that it has even at Israel, disproportionately so. And in part that's too because we have bases and presence there. But they've gone beyond that. They've gone at infrastructure that
these countries have, the oil infrastructure. They want to try to inflict so much pain that we can't sustain the effort. And that's something that should have been anticipated. And David, I think we're looking at a couple of things going forward in terms of where does this go and how does this end? And it seems to me that there are two critical factors to look at. Markets and munitions. Markets. Where are the oil markets, where's the stock market, where's
the bond market? I know President Trump is very attentive to those. And if they go in a southernly direction and stay that way, or in the case of oil in a northernly direction. That's going to be possibly a limited factor. Then munitions, there's there's really a race on to figure out who expends their munitions first and fastest.
The Iranians put us in a position where we've used up a lot of interceptors to deal with defense or even our offensive missiles to take out their their launchers, or conversely, did they run out and we still have need Again, I don't know the numbers here, I'm not privy to that, but it is something we have to be very very attentive to because these things are not in infinite supply. The production times are very long, and of course we're also using very in many cases very
expensive weapons to take down twenty thousand dollars drones. That's not a good equation if you keep that going over time. What I'm worried about. One of the things I'm worried about, and this gets to the second and third order consequences, is we so deplete our arsenal and it takes a long time to rebuild it that that puts US in a disadvantageous position when it comes to say a China or a Russia. All of those things need to be
factored in. And again it's one of the reasons why if you're going to undertake something like this, you've got to make sure that you've factored all of that in. And again it really should start with explaining to the American people why you're doing something, why it's necessary. Why now do.
You see an off ramp anywhere at this point?
I do in the sense that one, as I said, I think the off ramp and if we'll be governed by this question of munitions and markets, and then what is that off ramp? I think the President may simply declare victory. He'll say, got rid of the Ayatola. We diminished or degraded or destroyed their their nuclear program. Again again, we did the same thing to the missile program. We did the same thing to the navy. And as to the regime, well over the Iranian people, good luck to them.
Hope they succeed, and if they don't, it's their fault. If they do, we'll we'll take the credit. How Iran response to that remains to be seen, and for the for the regime survival of success. Right now, the expectation seems to be at least as has been reported that
the Iatola Sun is his successor. He's very tied into the IRGC, and so you may have a situation where, much as we want and everyone should want to see a change in that regime, we have, you know, regime changed without regime change, status quo, status status quo, and even potentially even worse because it may simply ultimately reinforce the IRGC, the military as a specialized military. And part of the problem with these things is that it's very
hard to produce regime change from outside. You can't bomb your way to it. We've had a lot of experience with that, and not such good experience over the last twenty years. It's not so likely to come from the streets, even with extraordinarily courageous Iranian people. It's more likely to come from kind of within the palace. And then it could go in any one of you know, multiple directions.
You could get more pragmatic people, not good guys, but more pragmatic people who are open to, you know, curbing the excesses of the regime, focusing at home instead of focusing abroad doing deals. But right now it looks more likely that you're going to have hardliners, and you know, the who had a song way back in the sixties or seventies. You know, here's to the new boss, same as the old boss that seem used to be right now at least where we're headed.
You've warned of the dangers of US intervention many times. Twenty twenty four, you spoke at the Council on Form relations. He said, effectively, I think if we looked the last twenty years, our experiments in regime change have not exactly been resounding successes. CNN is reporting that the US is considering arming the Kurds in Iron. Bloomberg hasn't confirmed that reporting. When you hear that, what red flags does that raise for you?
Oh? The red flag it raises is this could be Syria reducts, or it could be Libya reducts. You've got you know Iran as a country where you know, the Shites make up less than half of the population. You have all sorts of other groups, including Kurds, Azari's others,
who make up the bulk of the population. You could see the country fracturing, imploding, or even exploding with refugees and migration, with the exporting of some of their problems, with extremist groups taking hold in one part or another. It's incredibly fraud and incredibly dangerous. And as sympathetic as I am to the Curs who've been incredible partners for us, incredibly brave, I don't think that getting into the business of arming these groups is ultimately going to be a
good thing. And then you're going to have other countries that pick their partners inside, and again you wind up with something like Syria, something like Libya.
Let's talk a bit about diplomacy, the president posted on truth Social they want to talk prefer to the Iranians. I said, too late? Is it too late for there to be a diplomatic solution or to have those conversations at this point?
I I think it's never too late for diplomacy. The question is is there a good moment? Is this the right moment for it? I would hope so, because on one level, the Iranians have never been weaker, at least not in recent memory, militarily, politically at home, diplomatically abroad and so, and their proxies are for the most part gone or vastly diminished. So that's why I was hopeful before this, uh this action started, that maybe they actually would get a renewed nuclear deal because Iran was had
a very weak hand to play. So there I think there is a possibility of doing that. Whether the new whatever the new regime is or the continuation of the existing regimes is ready to do that, wants to do that to be determined. It also depends on what the what the Trump administration wants to do, and I imagine Israel is going to have a say in this as well.
As the administration was marshaling all of this military might to the Middle East, you had Jared Kushner, the President's son in law, Steve Witkoff, his longtime friend now on void to many conflicts and regions, meeting in Geneva in meetings mediated by the Omanis. Do you think that those were good faith conversations when you look at it now in hindsight.
Look, I can't. It's hard for me to tell, not being in the room, not being privy to those conversations. I certainly want to believe, So I don't know. As you know, I think Jared Kushner and Steve Woodkoff are very able nego, but it was not clear to me that the expertise was also with them, which is very necessary.
When you're dealing with nuclear matters. When we did the JCPOA, we had very senior diplomats, but we had tremendous technical expertise at hand, because you know, it's complicated stuff and you want to make sure you're not making a mistake. So I'm not sure who was actually in the room and whether the people in the room could fully evaluate and assess is this a good deal? Is this a
bad deal? And I've heard different versions of what the Iranians were actually willing to do, not willing to do, different versions of what we were willing to do or not willing to do. Not being there, it's hard to tell.
But you know, David, when President Trump tore up the JCPOA back in the day first term, he said he wanted to replace it with a better deal, and I think there was actually an opportunity to do that because Iran was in so much of a weaker position now than it was back when President Obama negotiated the deal.
You, of course, are a professional diplomat. You've dealt with the Iranians directly, and I'm curious if you think that, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kirsch, we're at some sort of inherent disadvantage in those talks because you had professional diplomats on one side and they were on the other. This isn't what they've done their entire lives.
Look, a number of the Iranians have been doing this for a long time, and we when we change administrations, we change out the people who are doing these doing these issues, and there's a certain learning curve and you have to get up to speed and become genuinely expert in things. Again, That's why I think it's so important to make sure that you have the experts with you, because they have they're the continuity. The Iranians have continuity
because it's usually the same cash to characters. The same guys have been doing this for a long time. Auranchi, the Foreign Minister, was Zerif's the then Foreign minister's deputy back then, so he knows what he's doing.
I'm curious what you are thinking as you watch the chaos unfolding in the Middle East, particularly with Americans who would like to leave and are being told different things. It seems like there is no easy out, for lack of a better two, for them to get out of the region. What has happened there is you see, and what needs to happen to make it so that Americans can get back to the United States.
Well, it's not very America first to put American citizens last, and that seems to be what happened. I mean, it was not until days into this that the administration thought about maybe getting some planes out there to try to get people out. A little bit late, and when people at least initially were asking for help, calling for help, the answer they got was basically, get out, but we
can't help you. After October seventh, In the days immediately after October seventh, we surged charter airplanes to Israel, boats, cruise ships that could ferry the tens potentially tens of thousands of dual nationals who were there out of harm's way to Cyprus. When it came to boats, and as long as the airport was operating to various places, the boats were there because we thought the airports might be
be shut down. All of that happened very quickly, and this was in response to something we obviously didn't know it was coming. And so I think doing this after the fact in a not very planned way, especially when you're the initiator, is unfortunate.
You've noted in the past that during war games, something's come up where if there were to be this kind of chaos in Iran, the regime might move uranium to
different places across the country. And going back to what you were talking about a moment ago, the prospects of there being a Libya esque or Syria esque civil war, how worried should we be about that nuclear material being effectively scattered across this country and they're being next to no accountability for a where it is and be into whose hands it falls.
Yeah, I think that's a real concern. I would assume that the remaining material and again I don't know. We've seen lots of reports that it's likely that they were able to preserve safe guard a lot of urseraneum, but I don't know that for a fact. I would assume that they've tried to disperse it, as you said, presumably in places that the regime has some control over. But if a country winds up in some kind of civil war, yeah, that's a real concern and something that we have to
factor into our thinking. If we're going to start, you know, dropping matches there in terms of arming various groups, we better watch out in terms of getting what we wish for. But you know, of course, you've seen extraordinarily courageous people beyond imagination who are out in the streets looking for change, getting mowed down by this regime. And we all want to see a different future for them, different leadership for them.
But it's very very hard, if not impossible, to do that from the outside, as we were saying, And the risks now are that instead of having a change, having a transition, you have an implosion, and then maybe even an explosion that has real effects outside the country. We have partners in the region. I was talking earlier about how one of the limiting factors on this, you know, goes to munitions. Our partners in the region have far
fewer interceptors air defense interceptors than we do. If it gets to the point where they're running out, and the Iranians have enough to continue going at their infrastructure, at their people, I think there's going to be a pretty strong demand signal on the administration to take an off ramp to stop. We've had other second and third order consequences here at the very time when Russia is really reaching a weak point because of its dependence on oil
to fuel its war economy, it's revenues. The government's revenues are down almost twenty percent, in large part because the price of oil has gone down. It's having more trouble exploiting oil because of sanctions and restrictions that we put on technology. That's been a huge and growing factor. And the thing to do now, ideally would be to squeeze the shadow fleet that they have that's going around the world, and that's the one thing that's able to keep them going.
At the very time when that's possible, and that that might force putin to finally cut a deal on Ukraine, they get a lifeline. And the lifeline is the price of oil is going up, and the value of that shadow fleet oil is going up, and people will need it and want to buy it. The Europeans, in turn, having moved away from Russian gas, are now more dependent on the Middle East, and if that gets tied up, if the Straits of Hormuz remain problematic, that's going to
put a lot of pressure on them. So mapping out, gaming out, planning out, and then making sure you have something in place to deal with all of these second and third order effects usually important. It's not at all clear to me that that was done.
From where we sit today, are you confident that the US can extricate itself from this without putting boots on the ground in run.
It depends what the objective is. I think that yes. In short, as I said a moment ago, you know, the President could theoretically declare victory tomorrow and claim that, you know, severe damage was done to the regime, to the missiles, to the nuclear program, to the Navy, and
say and call it a day. But then for what Most of that stuff ultimately can be rebuilt, and absent a change in the governance in the regime, which right now in this moment doesn't seem to be forthcoming huge risk without the support of the well without the in effect of buying from the American people, that leaves us actually potentially for some time and as strategically we can position with regard for example, to China, Russia, because our
own stockpiles of critical long range position guided weapons are down, our air defense stockpile interceptors is down. That's usually usually questionable, but that is I think that is an off ramp that's available to the President if he wants to take it.
As you've pointed out President Trump pulled out of the Iron Nuclear Deal during his first term when you were Secretary of State, there was an effort to reanimate that, to get another iteration of it. What were the challenges of that and why was it the case that in twenty twenty two of those talks broke down.
Look, we tried very hard to get back to the deal. But at that point in time, and especially with the passage of time, there were two things that were critical. One was that, of course the Iranians, not without reason, said how can we trust anything. We could do it, We can do a deal, and then maybe the President Biden's successor does exactly what President Trump does. So there
was a limiting factor there. But the bigger limiting factor was getting the Iranians to agree to terms that we deemed necessary and sufficient to make the deal the right deal to do, and in particular re extending the timelines the constraints that the original deal had in them on the nuclear program. We couldn't get to where we thought we needed to be to make it worthwhile. And we were doing it in partnership, in very close partnership with
our European friends and allies. With the French, with the British, with the Germans, with the European Union, something that hadn't been the case in the immediate previous years. And I think we all agreed that the deal that the Iranians were willing to sign on to was simply not adequate. I wish we could have gotten there, But more than that, I wish the President Trump had not torn up the original deal. We'd be in a very different position, in a very different world.
Do you feel it all like perfection shouldn't be the enemy of the good here, that it would have been wiser to find some sort of deal with them.
Yeah, Look, you have to make You always have to make judgments about these things, and you have to make judgments about whether, yes, the good enough is good enough. And it was our judgment, our estimation, that we weren't there, but you know were We continued to stay at it, but the Iranians in that moment were not moving sufficiently to get us to where we needed to be.
I want to ask you about something that your successor said this week. Secretary State Marco Rubia was talking about the motivations for this war. He said Israel was planting attacks that could lead to reprisals on American troops, so the US had to get involved militarily. He since walked that back a bit, But what does that say to you about the relationship between the US and Israel and the influence that the US has over Israeli policy.
Look, this has been a long story when it comes to Iran, and back during the Obama administration, the Israelis were pushing President Obama to take military action against Iran and were warning that they would do it themselves if he didn't, and he wouldn't because he thought the better way to get at the nuclear program, which is what we were focused on, was through very muscular diplomacy backed up by very very strong sanctions that we rallied the world to put in place, and then we got the
Iran Nuclear Agreement. In the days after the October seventh attack on Israel, the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas, the Israelis were insisting that in the north Hezbolah from Lebanon was about to attack and they wanted to strike
preemptively against Hezbolah. And President Biden said, look, well, we're with you, will always be with you in defending Israel and if you're attacked, were there, but we're not there if you're going to start something, And we came within about thirty minutes of having a war in the North based on bad information that the Israelis had about an imminent attack from Hezbolah. We were able to avert that, but the President Biden was very insistent, We're not going
to do something that you initiate, that you start. It's very different than defending Israel one it's been attacked. I can't speak to what the dynamic was this time. I heard that. Then it was walked back. The President said it was the other way around. There's been a shifting rationale, a shifting explanation for why this, why now? And again that's why it's so important to have ideally laid this out before the American people and our partners and allies.
We might have had less friction with them if there was a compelling case to be made to make sure that we laid that out in advance and had them with us on the takeoff, not mid flight or on the landing.
You have faced protesters when you've given speeches. I remember there was an interruption in the press briefing room at the State Department when you were giving remarks, and the criticism you faced has been you and the administration. The Bide administration effectively gave cover to Israel and Prime Minister and Yahoo for them to prosecute the war that they prosecuted in gods that led to seventy five thousand people dying.
In hindsight, do you regret not exerting more pressure on or trying to do more to constrain Yes, Israel, but principally the Prime Minister in that war.
Look, David, when there's been such terrible loss, such terrible suffering, when so many innocent people Alastaini, men, women and children lost their lives, You're always going to ask yourself. I always ask myself, could we should we have done something different? And we had to make judgments in the moment to try to achieve a number of objectives, and in a way I should. I should really start with where we ended, which is we ended with a ceasefire that we handed
off to the Trump administration. We ended with the hostages coming out, prisoners being released from Israeli jails, tens of thousands of trucks going into Gaza, I wish that.
Was a mutual achievement between the BID and the Trump.
Well, I think it was. It was largely President Biden's, but I'm very thankful for the role that Steve wood Cooff in particular played and supporting that in the moment, and that's what we were able to hand off and then in that in that agreement, in the ceasefire agreement, it was it was for six weeks, and during those six weeks, the notion was that the parties would negotiate the terms of an enduring ceasefire. That didn't happen. They went back to war, and then finally President eight or
nine months later landed the currencies fire. But do I wish that we could have gotten that sooner with less suffering. Absolutely, But there were a lot of things that were going on that we had to factor in. One was we were trying, obviously to make sure that October seventh could
never happen again. And October seventh was almost written off immediately by much of the world, starting practically on October eighth, and you had to traumatize Israeli society, and then now you've had a traumatized Palestinian broader society from October athon, but we wanted to make sure that couldn't happen again. We wanted to avert a wider war which would have caused even more death, destruction and suffering and probably would
have prolonged Gaza even more. And so that meant making sure, among other things, that there was a strong deterrent in place, including Israel's deterrent. To say it would be aggressors who were prepared to jump in pile in because they thought Israel was down, if not out, has Bollah, Iran, the Huthis, etc. Don't do it, and so we had to preserve Israel's de turn we wanted to get. We thought the best way to end this was through the deal that we
ultimately got, the sees fire and hostage deal. But part of the problem was part of the challenge was that Hamas was constantly strong arming things because of two factors. One, it thought the cavalry was eventually going to come to
the rescue the Iranians has Belah, et cetera. And until it was clear, and that didn't happen until really September of twenty twenty four, with the death of Nasralla, with other leaders who were taken out by the Israelis with the decimation, if not well or diminishment at least of hesblat self. That wasn't clear till then, and that notion
of the cavalry company the rescue was still there. The second thing that was really problematic was that, and we know this from all the information we had, Hamas was looking for any gaps between us in Israel and Israel's other supporters, and as soon as they saw something emerge,
they would step back. So in public it was critical that we preserve as much solidarity as possible, even as in private we were hammering them every single day on humanitterran assistance for Palestinian people, on civilian casualties, and of course they were operating in a unique environment where Hamas was hiding among and below all of the civilian infrastructure
and civilians themselves in schools and mosque and hospitals. That doesn't excuse some of the actions that Israel took in trying to get at Hamas, not at Palestinians, but it is necessary to understand that that was part of the environment. I also think, at the end of the day, this
is just my judgment and I may be wrong. That this was perceived in Israel among the vast majority of the population, not just Prime Netnyaho people in his government, but the vast majority of the population, including many who don't like him at all, to be an existential matter, and irrespective of what we did or anyone else did,
they were likely to continue with or without us. So for us, it was how do we try, how do we bring this to an end as quickly and effectively as possible, again making sure that it's not likely to happen again, averting a wider war, and all the while trying to look out for people who are caught in this horrific crossfire.
Is it wrong to look at this as a continuum that Prime Minister Netnya, who's able to prosecute the war in the way in which he wanted, that led him to feel them bold enough to take these strikes in concert with the United States.
Certainly there's a profound connection there, because I think in the past he has probably been reluctant to go at Iran directly because of the threat of retaliation a response from Hesbolah, but with Hesbolah vastly to Mintic, even though they did respond not in such a significant way, and by the way, something truly remarkable. The president, the Prime Minister of Lebanon denounced Hesbolov for getting into this and
firing it at Israel. That's remarkable. But for sure, I think the Israeli is Yes, we're in a position where something they hesitated to do in the past, that is direct confrontation with Iran because of the likelihood that others would get in and go at them, that was taken away and that did open the door to them doing what they've done.
I want to wrap up with where this leaves us, where this leaves the world. And Prime Minister Mark Karney of Canada spoke recently and he said this is just another example of what he's talked about before, this rupture in the global order that that's happened on two counts here. There have been two failures. The first of which was the multilateral institutions that we've relied on weren't able to constrain Iran effectively.
That's one.
The second is you have the US and Israel now going it together without the consent of the UN or other multi latteral institute. Do you agree with him as he talks about the way that that hegemony. The global order has changed. Look, we're very much at an inflection point in.
The global order, in the rules based order that we spent eighty years building up, and that was premised on one I think profound insight, and that was enlightened self interest, the notion that the success and strength of others would be our own as well, and we were able to build a system that avoided other countries ganging up against us, as is usually the case when one country rises above the others. We had new markets for all the stuff we wanted to sell. We had new partners to deal
with different conflicts, different problems. We had new allies to deter aggression, especially with NATO. And now that system is being put in for now at least in the dust bin and being replaced with They're different versions of this.
Some people believe that the president's engaged in going back to a spheres of influenced world where the Russians do what they want and they're part of the world, The Chinese do what they want, except maybe on the economic issues in their part, and we do what we want to do in our part, particularly in the Western hemisphere. And then you've got these problematic areas that are dealt with by force. That's a profound thing, and that's what's
happening now. But I think at the same time, and this is what's maybe most frustrating of all in the Middle East, is that there's also an extraordinary opportunity, if very big, if this does produce some kind of real change in Iran, then you have the prospect of a region that heads in a very different direction, that is integrated with its people, it's moving back and forth, it's
economies integrated, greater success, greater prosperity for folks. But there remains one cat to that vision besides how Iran resolves, and that's the question of Israelis and Palestinians. The truly big vision right now would be to actually resolve that question, not to try to put it under the rug. Yet. Again, the bottom line is this, there are roughly seven million Jews in Israel, They're about two million Arabs, five million
Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza. No one is going anywhere, despite the efforts of some on both sides to make that happen. And so tell me how this ends. I don't see how this ends without some kind of genuine political accommodation that realizes the rights of Palestinians. This is the moment for that big vision because that brings with it something incredibly powerful, normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and then potentially other countries will follow suit,
from Cutter to Indonesia. And then if the Iranian problem is diminished and Iran really has to face a choice between being a pariah gadfly or mending its ways, I think that's the most likely way we're actually going to see real change. Unfortunately, tragically, given the trauma on all sides after October seventh, on the Israeli side and among Palestinians, it's awfully hard to get there. But that's where you need people of vision to try to move things in
that direction. There is actually an opportunity to do that. I worry that that opportunity will not be will not be seized, and we're going to just see a continuation among Israelis and Palestinians and also Iran is again likely in this moment, if I had to bet again, we're replacing one Iatola for another, and the nature of the regime in this moment doesn't seem likely to change. I hope, I'm pleasantly surprised and the Iranians get the leadership that
they deserve. But the jury's very much out on that.
Something you warned about during your tenure Secretary of State was the role that China could play in subverting or reinventing the international order. How do you think about that now in this moment, Well, you know, s reporse a vacuum.
If we're disengaged, if we're not leading in the effort to shape that order, then China's going to fill the void. I'll give you one example. At the during the Biden administration, the President took the lead in working with all of the frontier AI companies on getting voluntary commitments on safety and security for these AI artificial intelligence products that were being rolled out, to make sure that they were adequately tested, that there was transparency, and that the guardrails were put
in against the misuse. For abuse is something that has such extraordinary positive potential but also has real potential downsides. And then we took that around the world and we got the G seven to endorse it. We went to the United Nations, we got the first resolution ever on artificial intelligence from the entire United Nations. We were leading the effort to carry AI forward in a way that would be that would conform to our norms and basically
have them adopted by the world. Then the administration got out of that business and said, no, it's just the wild West, and it's too important that our companies be able to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it, however they want to do it, because the competition with China is what matters the most. But who picked up the banner on AI safety and security? China did. There was a conference in Shanghai. Many of the other AI players from the United Kingdom to Singapore
or to others were there. And China may be the one that's shaping some of these norms and rules, but it's liking not to ours. So you know, there's a as I've seen it again and again and again, if we're disengaged, if we're not leading, then either someone else is, and most likely that's going to be China or no one else is, and then you're going to have a vacuum is filled by bad things before it's filled with
good things. The flip side of that coin, David is We've got to be doing it with allies and partners. We need in all of these problem areas to be working in concert, whether it's dealing with the problems that China poses. Were much stronger when we're allied and partner we successfully align countries around the world in dealing with some of the challenges the China post economically and on technology. When dealing with China loan we're twenty or twenty five
percent of world GDP. When we're aligned with the Europeans, with Japan, Korea, India, we're suddenly fifty or sixty percent. That's a lot harder, bigger weight that China has to
account for. And what I worry now is that as a result of so many of the decisions that the administration has taken that have alienated allies and partners that have treated them worse than our adversaries, we're heading to a world where as much as these other countries want to work with us, they are looking for ways to work around us to make sure that they're never caught in this position again where the United States can bully them into doing something it wants and they don't want.
Seventy percent of Germans in a poll the other day said said they see the United States as an adversary. Sixteen percent of Europeans now see US not as a friendly country. Similar numbers when it comes to Canada and Mexico, similar numbers when it comes to South Korea, Japan. That's not going to be a good world for the United
States in the first instance. Yes, someone might take a knee because they have no choice, but then they're going to make sure that they do everything possible not to put themselves in that position again where the United States, where the tariff can hammer them into doing something that's not in their interest. Their limits to that the US financial system is so central and so strong that their limits to how far you can work away from or
around the United States. But that's what we're seeing, and that's not a world, in my judgment, that's in our interest.
Last question is what this war and around means for President Trump's other ambitions, be that Cuba, be that Greenland, continued project in Venezuela. How do you think about what this mayriorment not lead to.
Well, in some ways, Around's the outlier, because these other areas that you just mentioned are all within what would
be our so called sphere of influence. And that's why I said, you know before, what we're seeing is at least is one of the shifts I think we're seeing is the President seems to see the world in terms of these spheres of influence, and anything within our sphere we should, in one way or another control, And there's kind of a very nineteenth century view that actually controlling the territory is the most most important thing, never mind
that there's absolutely no need to do that. I mean, in the case of Greenland, simply asking would have gotten the right answer in terms of putting more military forces there or striking deals on their raw materials. But that world is spheres of influence world where the big guys on the block, and it is guys in this view, get to do what they want in their area. That's the way things were for much of the latter part of the nineteenth century. But it didn't end well. We
ultimately end up with World War One. What happens, the big countries always want more elbow room, and so they rub up against the other the other sphere, and that produces conflict the smaller countries within a sphere, they get to a point where they don't like it, and they band together and try to build their own strength to take on the hegemon the people within the country exerting
that hegemony. Typically it's in non democratic countries. They conclude that this is not the life that I want to live,
and rebel against it. And then if you have a system where you've got these these spheres of influence, and one of these shares is controlled by a democracy like the United States, and the others are controlled by autocracies, the autocracies, at the end of the day, can't abide the success of democracies because in a world of instantaneous communications, their people get to see what's happening and conclude, oh, life looks a lot better there, And so they that's
going to be a constant incentive for them to try to take us down, pull us down by meddling in our elections, by trying to foment societal conflict. Except so, that is not a recipe as I see it, for a world of peace, for a world devoid of conflict, for a world in which the United States can do
everything that it needs to do to be successful. One last thing is this, As much as I'm concerned about the diminishment of our alliances and our partnerships, the moving away from enlightened self interest, the move toward shies of influence, or some people have talked about building empire. I'm equally concerned, David, with another alliance that's been shattered, and that's an internal alliance.
When we started the twentieth century, there was not a major pursuit of science in which the United States led the world. By the time we got to the twenty first century, there was not a major pursuit in science and technology where the United States did not lead the world. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because we built an alliance between the federal government, universities, research institutions, national labs.
The amount of GDP that we dedicated to research and development went from about one and a half percent after World War II to by the time President Biden left office, three and a half percent, and that produced extraordinary innovation. Coupled with this welcome mat for the best and brightest from around the world who would do their studies here, Attracted by being with the best and brightest and an
open system. Then they stayed around and created things that made us a leader in all of these fields, which redounded to our economy and redounded to our national security. As that system is being blown up, I think that may be the biggest threat of all to sustaining America's place of strength, of leadership and power. I'm gratified that the Congress has resisted a number of these cuts that the administration has been pushing, but a lot of damage
has been has been done. You know, when Mark Zuckerberg was trying to hire the best AI talent in the country, what about nine or ten months ago, taking it from other companies in the United States, there was a first group of eleven people who he brought on board his ship.
And I looked at the list of eleven people and it was kind of striking, and I checked into it to see if I was right, and indeed, yes, every single one of those was an immigrant, attracted again by the system that we had put in place to attract the best and vice to fund the work that they were doing to the benefit of our companies, of our people, of our country. If we lose that, we lose a lot.
Mister Secretary, thank you very much.
Great to be with you.