Navigating the Tides of Change: How Global Politics May Shape America's 2024 Elections

Today we're going to be talking about foreign policy and have an amazing panel to talk to us about that and engage in a really interesting dialogue and to moderate the conversation , my co-host , joel Kotkin . Joel .

I'm not going to tell everything that these people have done , because we'd be here for a week , but Ron Spogli , who's a great friend of this university and is the co-chairman of Freeman Spogli , which is one of the major private equity groups in LA , and he was the US ambassador to Italy and actually lives part of it here in Italy , and so we really wanted Ron

to give us some of the perspective of NATO and what's going on in Europe . Ashwin Raghun is a native of . Africa , as it turns out , not from India originally , but obviously of Indian descent , and he was the former head of innovation in CIO with ICANN In other words , he controlled the Internet , so you can blame him .

Ron Kep , who's here at Chapman as well , is a director of the Asia Pacific Geoeconomics and Business Initiative and is very well informed on issues involved with East Asia , not just China , but also Japan and South Korea , and obviously there are a lot of points that we're going to be able to get into .

And then Luke Nickner , again also at Chapman , who is a professor of history , occupies the James Kavanaugh endowed chair in Presidential Studies and is also the director of the Presidential Studies program at Chapman , and this is really going to be the first part of a cooperation between the Center for Demographics and Policy and the Presidential Studies program , and

obviously I have given who the candidates are going to be . Unfortunately we have a presidential election this year and it's obviously going to be very painful , but we're going to try to make some sense out of it .

So I'd like to just start off a little bit with Luke , who has a historical background and really historically , we always had this old saying from Tip O'Neill all politics is local , and of course you have the famous Bill Clinton line the economy's stupid . Is foreign policy going to be a major issue this year and if so , in what form ?

But I think it's a valid question and the question is really how many elections does foreign policy determine the result ? How many elections does foreign policy make even a significant difference ? How many elections does foreign policy drive voter turnout ?

I think these are things that we're all interested in and I think a lot of the times the answer is not much , or at least it's not decisive . And so the question in 2024 is is it going to be different this year ?

Is we're looking around the world , whether it's Ukraine , whether it's Hamas and Israel and all the issues that were heard to talk about immigration , in a sense , is a foreign policy issue in addition to a domestic policy issue . Is this year different ? I think is what we're here to talk about .

I think this is a case where the two are very closely connected , in the sense that I think , at least for the incumbent , for President Biden , a lot of these foreign policy issues are not natural issues for him this year , and so sometimes the strategy with foreign policy is to discuss it as little as possible is actually to your advantage .

So I think there's different ways of looking at it . I grew up in Toledo , ohio , so part of this whole southeast Michigan area was a few minutes away . I grew up a suffering Detroit Tigers fan , a Detroit Sports fan , and so I'm very familiar with that part of the country . It's a big issue .

It's certainly a big issue in pockets of the country and in certain regions . Does that translate to a broader movement ? I think we haven't seen yet .

We obviously have a strong technical involvement . What do you think is going to happen in terms of it hasn't really been discussed very much , but what are the implications of a possible invasion of Taiwan or intimidation of Taiwan ?

We've been talking about it both amongst the panelists here over lunch , and you keep seeing in the headlines what's going on with TikTok , for example . That's the one thing that's really unified both sides of the aisle in Congress in a way that we haven't seen before .

When they had the interrogatory sessions on TikTok where the CEO was hauled in , it was surprising . The unanimity on being against what TikTok represents . Just further add to that , by the way . I think yes , tiktok does pose a national security risk .

Whether or not the current solution that's been offered , which is to make ByteDance , its parent company , divest it , is the solution . I'm not sure , but I would say it would be interesting if we had the same sort of attention to social media in general , we would say as a threat to the American polity that still pertains .

Facebook isn't controlled , ultimately , by the Chinese Communist Party . I think that , simply , things remaining as they are , you're going to see this high level of tension between the US and China . I don't see that abating . It's the one thing that unifies both parties in terms of what that should also mean , than is more support for Taiwan .

We'll see if more is done with that Part of what . It hasn't been discussed so much , with the Ukraine bill being held up , is support for Taiwan has also been installed , I think more than Ukraine actually . You see , once again China is a galvanizing force in US foreign policy , at least since the Trump administration .

In particular , it was becoming an item of concern under Obama , but now Biden has just perpetuated the same trade policies and basic stance towards China that Trump had . Just a little bit more friendly . If there is an actual invasion to the heart of your question it would be interesting to see what the US does .

It can do everything from provide logistics and material support to actual engagement , which is the big question in what people tend to fear . My own supposition is one , there won't be an invasion and two , should an invasion happen , it would probably be more in the area of support .

We don't actually have a treaty with Taiwan , which makes any direct support , direct military engagement , difficult , but it could go to that because , again , the sentiment against China is so strong , and for Taiwan also strong , that you could actually see US kinetic involvement .

Now I'm going to go back on the internet to Ashwin , but I would like to start initially as the one country you never hear about in foreign policy discussions is India , which is clearly going to be the next great superpower and , as we were discussing over lunch , as Ashwin is originally from South Africa , after India , africa , and yet we don't deal with this in

foreign policy at all . What's the role of India , how do you see that unfolding and what's the term of the relationship with the US , because there's been a lot of tension over the years between the US and India .

One of the primary ones is technological . We are a technology dominated society right now , and the future is being crafted with artificial intelligence and the source of that , the engine for artificial intelligence , is almost entirely and uniquely produced on the island of Taiwan by one company called TSMC .

If we lose that supply chain , our technological future is at stake . This is not new news . This was foreseen at least 10 years ago , and the cognizanty in the semiconductor industry you're truly included have been pounding the desk saying we need to do something . From a policy perspective , that has resulted in a couple of things .

One is a raising of awareness in the political circles in DC , and therefore we're starting to see some action on that front , with the understanding that losing that supply chain will be catastrophic . The second is pressure on TSMC to diversify their investments outside of the nation state borders of Taiwan .

So we're seeing investments happen in Germany and also in the United States , by Taiwan , by TSMC , but it'll be years before these facilities are up and running .

And one of the most interesting outcomes of their willingness to invest has been that we , as much as we claim to be technologically superior , do not have trained labor to operate the factory that's now being built in Phoenix . This requires about 4,000 people , very high paying jobs . The minimum salary in that facility will be $100,000 .

But we don't have the people with the training necessary 4,000 of them . It's not like we need 4 million of them . We do not have 4,000 trained personnel to make this factory operational . So this is a very sad commentary on the state of education in this country and the lack of vision of what it takes to actually build the things that we need ourselves .

So that's point number one . Point number two is clearly there is an ideological difference between the way Taiwan is regarded from Beijing vis-a-vis it's regarded from DC , and there's a lot of rhetoric .

It's in everybody's best interest to keep this conversation going , as opposed to having a confrontation of any nature , because there is no end state where everybody is going to be happy and it's a kind of weird twist of fate that the two companies that make the chips that make AI happen both happen to be Taiwanese .

Jensen Huang in Nvidia is from Taiwan and the lady who runs AMD is his third cousin , also from Taiwan , surprise , surprise . So this is really weird . It's all kind of mixed up , right . So there are a lot of reasons why we need to keep these things separate and straighten our heads and also make sure that we don't get to a confrontation state .

There is no end game that can be gamed out today , where there is happiness at the end of an engagement , and we also know from history that when we engage , our exit strategies are rarely , if ever , clear . So we don't know when we're done . All we do is we abruptly shut down and withdraw .

That's what we've done repeatedly over the last 75 years , no matter where we've engaged . So that's as far as the Taiwan question is concerned .

Going to India , india is a very unique nation , with a billion and a half people on the Ascendant as a result of a lot of things that have occurred in history , not least a very strong education system that has resulted in a large and growing population that is extremely well educated and English-literate and therefore able to engage with what is considered to be

the West and , from an ideological perspective , as a democracy , it is more aligned with this nation-state than most other countries that have a large population . From a geographic perspective , its location is such that it can be a counterbalance to China . If China is regarded as threat , india is regarded as a counterweight to that threat .

Now China has its own strategies to surround India with what is known as a string of pearls in the Beijing speak , which is to have a series of countries that are China friendly to contain India . The US has had a counter move with what's known as the Quad , with Australia , japan , india and the US to surround China and contain Chinese activity .

The Quad has not been talked about until quite lately , when there has been a request from South Korea saying why don't we make it into from a Quad to a Five-Song ? Let's also be a part of this , because we also regard the same threats as the Quad do from China as a threat to ourselves . So I think this game is being played out in real time .

The problem right now is that the focus , the world's attention , is on Ukraine and in the Middle East , and it's not quite there yet . There's no spark , there's no point that is sparking interest there yet , but all it takes is one spark and suddenly it will be spread too thin . We'll be thinking about three different fronts .

As it is , I think we're stretched with two fronts to think about , leave alone to fund . If worse yet , kinetically engage , we would be stretched beyond breaking point . So I don't think it's a very good idea at all to get Taiwan in the mix and China in the mix . I think just having it be comfortably moving along .

Let's face it , china has got plenty of problems of their own right now . Domestically , their unemployment rates in the below 30 range is somewhere in the 35 or 40 percent . They've got all kinds of structural capital issues . Evergrande is only the tip of the iceberg .

They're talking about a trillion dollars worth of real estate crashing down without the ability to refinance . They have plenty of problems , so we should just let them deal with the problems and not provoke anything in that regard . The last thing that I wanted to comment is the first question that you posed , and that is is all politics retail ? I believe so .

Look , this next election , from my perspective , is going to get decided with somewhere between 700,000 and 4 million votes in probably nine constituencies . Is it important ?

In those nine constituencies , you betcha it's going to be retail politics in those nine constituencies and when you game it out , whether you're Republican or a Democrat , you know which consist constituencies are these nine , and in those constituencies the swing vote is going to be the minorities .

However you define the minorities , and if you're able to capture the imagination of the minorities , then we will have one outcome versus the other . Who is going to be successful in doing that is the only game that's left in town . The rest of this is Shkrom and Drang as far as I'm concerned .

What do you think the effect of the of Ukraine will be on the election , on foreign policy in general ? And I wanted to . I noticed this morning that the Pope was calling for a ceasefire , basically , you know , doing what Hamas probably would like . Where are we going with this ? I mean , are the Europeans really ready to step up ? What should we be doing ?

And will this be a domestic political issue ?

I would like to think that it can matter , it should matter , but I'm not so certain it will matter . I'm not so sure it will matter for a variety of reasons , not the least of which is domestic politics , as we talked about , normally have a very significant impact on the election In this year .

Domestically , the current administration finds itself in somewhat difficult circumstances , not getting credit for the economy being what it is today and , however you want may want to describe it , that unemployment is reasonably low .

The growth rate has not turned negative for two quarters and therefore we do not have a technical recession , which a number of people were predicting for 2024 . But clearly this administration is suffering from a perception that somehow people are worse off now than they were several years ago .

I would argue that's probably due to inflation , where people recognize that their buying power has been has been eroded . So I think that the spotlight , however brightly it shines on , domestic politics normally is going to shine even more brightly , tending to vitiate , if you will , the focus on foreign policy .

It should matter , because Luke will know this substantially better than I will , but essentially the idea of seeing so many significant issues coalesce at the same time I can't recall seeing it in my lifetime .

You've got , obviously , the question of Ukraine , russia , you've got the question of NATO in Europe , you have obviously Hamas in Israel , you have the question of Iran continuing to create mischief in the Middle East and you have the China question .

So these are five very fundamental questions which should get spotlight , but I don't know to what degree they really they really will going forward . Why has Ukraine not gotten the attention that it should have received ? Well , for a number of reasons . The Democrats , by and large , are for a supportive of Ukraine .

Donald Trump obviously is not so certain what he's in favor of and certainly doesn't appear to be supporting Ukraine at this moment in time . Nato is another question which obviously we believe . Generally speaking , I think most Americans believe in the importance of key alliances .

Nato has obviously been a bulwark of our security mechanisms from the end of World War II and yet Donald Trump would , if not like to dismantle them . Certainly he wants to extract a lot more participation by the Europeans , which I don't think anyone has issues with .

The Europeans have been free riders for a long time as it relates to NATO , and I can remember in 2005 , sitting in Rome , trying to encourage the times to spend more than their meager three quarters of one percent , and it was not an easy proposition . At the same time , how that gets done is a fundamental question .

I'm not so sure bludgeoning our European allies is the best way to approach their greater participation , but certainly there will be a lot of contrast that will be drawn there in the election . But , as I say , I tend to believe that we we may see less focus on foreign policy issues just because of the primacy of domestic concerns .

What does that do politically , internally from the US , but also as we are perceived abroad ? Anyone want to tackle that one ?

So I think it seems that until we , regardless of who wins , until we can get beyond the seesaw of close elections , until we have someone who actually has a decisive victory and has at least one chamber in Congress , I think we're going to continue in in the seesaw .

So I think , in the short term , unless if Trump wins , unless he has at least one chamber of Congress , there's going to be absolute gridlock in Washington .

They had a mandate but really didn't deliver . If you actually look at what happened once we announced the Asia pivot , china started militarizing the South China Sea .

They ramped up to the level of real outright warfare , cyber attacks on everything from our businesses to a social security system , so they could find out which spies of ours that the CIA barely had operating in country and execute them immediately .

You know , you go on and on and on , and then there wasn't really this perceived warmth given to our allies like Japan and South Korea , and Singapore , I think , is one of the most underappreciated players in that mix , that that we could do more with and just haven't . So , in any case , I think what we're really in danger of is just further drifting away .

We talk about doing more with Asia . We are a Pacific power , as you mentioned in your earlier remarks , joel . You know California is part of this Asia Pacific Rim . We have the demographics that support close ties .

We actually in fact , if anything like what Ashwin was talking about , we have incredible corporate interaction , people to people in business interaction with Asia is largely good .

It was just announced on leaked , I should say to Western media that a citizen journalist of a sort a technopreneur who's got a beef against bite dance , the chairman of bite dance , who's also the head of the Chinese Communist cell at bite dance , has apparently , according to what looks like fairly verified evidence to illegitimate children by another bite dance executive

living in San Marino and in going to high school here . So even the communists like , like California right even they want to plant roots here and and that's always been an open secret within the inner circle of the Chinese leadership that as much as they've tried to eliminate .

Like Chinggong , the foreign minister was dismissed largely for the same thing having a lover who had birth of his son an illegitimate son here in the United States , and they get US citizenship , and so of course they're seen as compromised and they totally ago against the line , the official line , that China is the new paradise and the ascending power , and all this

. So in fact , beneath the surface of the politics , there's a lot going on . If America could just do a little more to coordinate and and align what we're doing with business and people at the government level , we would really claim a lot of influence in Asia .

It's not that hard , except we don't have the political processes in place to do that , yet you think it matters who wins and who doesn't offer that well , I'm gonna take that .

So if you think of historic arcs and you measure time in centuries , we moved in the last 120 years from what was a feudalistic society sorry , no pun intended to a more democratically oriented society where people's decided what their form of government should be .

And the question that I ask of myself is was the interregnum between the end of the Second World War and the early part of this century a dream state that we suddenly found ourselves in , only to see what was prior reality reestablish itself with highly control oriented central powers ? Or is what we experienced the normal that we redefined as a global population ?

But we're now seeing an aberration of some sort and we'll get passed again ? I think that is the question . We don't know , and I think in a hundred years time we may be able to look back and reflect on what transpired , but right now it seems to be this very difficult tension that we are not unique in experiencing .

Even other democracies , supposedly , are experiencing this . So think about this . I offer often offer two different examples in this regard . You think of democracy as defined by the European Union .

There is the members of parliament in Brussels , the members of the European Parliament , 700 out of them , but they have no powers until they go back to their member states and get whatever decision they make ratified by the member states . So effectively .

They are functional bureaucrats in a bureaucracy that's very transnational , and unless a nation state decides to embrace and make their own a policy made in Brussels , it doesn't mean a whole hell a lot . It just means that the MEP said a lot of discussion about something or the other .

Imagine , for instance , the AI Act of Europe , which is offered by them as here is the way we ought to do something . Well , they have come to a conclusion in their discussion .

It's not law in any land in Europe , not yet , and it won't be for the next many years , because 28 of them have to agree that this is the law , as opposed to saying this is our law . So that's one example . The second is India . You think of India ? India is a collection of states .

It is not a nation to speak of , because there are very few things that are Indian about India . Every region is different , culturally , linguistically , their foods are different , their observations of the same festivals are interpreted differently .

On the same exact day of the month , the north of India will be celebrating something that's totally different from the south of India , but it happens to be a common day that something completely different is being observed . So there are very few unifying forces . You think of that as a democracy ?

At the center , there is no opposition today by any definition of democracy . No , opposition is not a democracy .

And yet nothing that is done at the center is effectively going to get implemented at the state level , because practically every state in India has a party in position in power that is not aligned with the Bharati Ajanta Party or the BJP , which is at the center . So there is tremendous opposition . So it's all a matter of interpretation .

So it really matters what the outcome of this next election is going to be here , because that's going to define whether this grand arc of history is going to get reinforced with the interregnum that we already experienced as a dream state , or whether the old hegemonies are going to be back in power and we tell ourselves that was a good dream while it lasted .

So that , I think , is what we're going to see , so it matters Right .

The United States is the only indispensable nation , because if you're not organizing the world , it'll be the Russians or the Chinese . And so when they would be critical of what our particular policy might be , and I would encourage them to say , well , what do you want us to do ?

In the second , no , no , no , we want you to organize , we just want you to do it better . And so the notion was always that we had a special responsibility that they didn't want to give to anyone else because , effectively , there was no one else . And so this notion , this neo notion of isolationism as the answer , I don't think it's particularly well-informed .

I think it's difficult for the values which we have come to want to spread around the world of liberty , of democracy , of market-based economies . I think it's very difficult to have those flourish without the United States being in a position of leadership and where its word is believed .

And I think one of the things that we've done great to service to , and we can point to many examples of it , and I would simply point to recently , a very hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan .

I'm not making a political commentary , I'm just making an observation , but we lose credibility when we do things like that and we don't realize the importance of maintaining commitments . Nato has benefited the United States , it seems to me , infinitely more than it's benefited any country in Europe , and it's certainly benefited the countries in Europe .

By being able to keep the peace for 77 , now 79 years in Europe more or less , we have avoided having a third responsibility to come to the rescue of Europe .

And so I think that when we put America first if you want to take a Trumpian view of the fact that we needed to put the United States first supporting NATO is a great example of putting the United States first , and I think that because I think to have another interpretation just doesn't read history properly- so are you saying that you're a Republican who's

skeptical about Trump ? He's not a Republican . I don't know what he is .

Whether they're momentary or not remains to be seen , but certainly for the next period of time here , and especially when he becomes president , they are going to be the dominant policy of the Republican party , but I don't think those are long-term , sustainable principles for us to have .

I understand that a lot of people who say supporting Ukraine is a very difficult thing to do . There are a lot of difficult things to do . It's not a choice of a great option versus a bad option . There are two very bad options , but one is better than the other , it seems to me , and you've got to support that option .

It's been taken over by a populist who identified more Democratic throughout his business career , and it's because there isn't a third party . I'm not trying to say anything radical .

It's just an observation that a fundamental flaw is that we don't have more party organization to allow a voice like that to get channeled somewhere and not destroy what had been a very responsible pro-American agenda in a rational sense party .

The strength is that the United States continues to be in a unique position around the world , and that unique position is that the United States has a kind of moral authority that other potential leaders in the world don't have , and by that I mean since World War II , really the unique thing sort of all of human history sacrificing to rebuild our former enemies in

Japan and Germany and committing to NATO and multi-lateralism and common defense and long-term treaties , no matter who wins . These are elements of the past that aren't going to go away and that we have to live with and figure out what that looks like in the post-Cold War and the 21st century .

On the other hand , I assume by now foreign nations have awoken to the fact that if you wait long enough , the Americans will get tired and go home , whether it's Taiwan or whether it's Korea or whether it's Vietnam . Maybe Afghanistan belongs in that list . It really raises a question that you need support of the Americans .

You need to actively engage them in the world and keep them tethered to the world . Perhaps Ron's example of NATO . But it's also very much the awareness that I ask my students all the time and I have some students in both my classes here today that the question is you know what is ? Do we do big things anymore ? What's the value ?

How much faith can other nations put in this country in terms of long-term treaty commitments ? And I don't know the answer .

It never was completely , but it was disproportionately so , it seems to me , for a long time . Now it's become part of the conversation with respect to how one wages a political campaign and I think unless you have that continuity that we were talking about earlier , it's difficult for the United States to have long-term credibility .

Now they're having to regard it as what is the Republican position , what is the Democrat position , and that is sad , because if the outcome of each election is determining how each of our partners has to view us in their front mirror , leave it on their air view mirror . It's dangerous . We have become a danger to ourselves now .

If you look at , call it the Trump-Biden era , and I remember 20 years ago I taught my first college class . This coming fall the 20 years and that was again another contentious presidential election and for the younger ones in the room , that was President Bush's reelection against Senator .

Kerry and I remember then the media already starting the narrative of this is the most divided we've ever been as a nation . We've heard that more than once and it was a great teaching moment for these 18 and 19-year-olds in my classroom to say what do you think about that ? Is that true ?

And so timidly at first , but then the hands started to go up and they said what about the Civil War ?

And Nixon's longtime speechwriter , ray Price , was always fond of saying that if the 1860s was an actual Civil War , the 1960s was a proxy Civil War in a way , and as someone whose last book was on the 1968 presidential election , I think you probably have to go back to 68 in terms of another time period where you check , I would say , most or maybe even all

of those boxes in terms of the crises .

And the same goes for our allies in Asia . They prefer someone who's got a bit more of the consistency . Where we're coming up short is on the delivery .

But at least in terms of rhetoric and kind of planning , the Biden administration , I think , would overall be more welcomed by our allies at a deeper level , more feared by those we consider adversaries , which China is interesting , it's a frenemy . We do so much with trade but somewhat at odds politically .

At the same time the Chinese also see in Trump what they see in their own leadership . Right , it's nationalistic , bombastic , self-angrangizing leadership , and so in that sense they in some ways , I must say , maybe fear Trump a bit more , but that's more for the chaos than anything else .

But yeah , I think the Biden administration overall would better serve our national interest in East Asia .

Having said that , our policy with Iran that has been supported by both the Obama administration and by the Biden administration , has been problematic at best . We've tried to curry favor with the Iranians .

We have tried to for those of you who want to be real detractors appease them , and we have seen that they're basically bad actors in that part of the world , and so a Trump administration presumably would not cozy up as much to Iran going forward . I think that would be a positive for the US , based upon what we have experienced so far .

Hamas , israel , I think . Again the Democratic Party is conflicted . It has a left wing element of its party that is very pro-Palestine , and so , to the extent that we believe that the weight of the argument is in favor of Israel in that part of the world , I think Trump would be better . So it relates to China .

Again , we have to give the devil his due here . He was the one who clearly , I think , made a major issue of China obviously not being the best partner , if you will , economically and all the issues in perspective intellectual property rights and so on so I think you have to give him credit for that .

How that would play out in the second term , I'm not sure . So I think there would be some pluses , I think there would be some minuses , to be sure . I think on balance those minuses , I would agree , probably outweigh the pluses , but there are some significant pluses .

Trump did elevate the China issue and he brought attention to it where there had always been this in economics that's called the modernization theory and the assumption that well as China's economy modernizes , it will liberalize politically and everything will be fine and we'll get along , and he called out that lie Again . To me it's just a matter of implementation .

The Biden administration has not deviated significantly from what Trump instigated through .

I mean it took a process to figure out that he's a different kind of politician , and so I think in the context of our discussion today , to the extent that that observation is true at all , the question is how have other nations learned to interpret him after four years is kind of the big answer .

I recall in the Trump administration the Europeans feeling pretty bruised and beat up at times and I wonder you know the sentiment today in those foreign offices have they also adapted and learned to interpret him differently ? I suspect they have .

I mean , what is going to be the influence , even this year , of AI on international politics and our presidential politics ?

I think , if you look back , the technology that's unifying all countries is also the same technology that is trying to create polarization within the countries , and that's the internet enablement of technology , and it's the cell phone , right , it's everybody's addiction . It's social media . We don't know any longer how to live without this tool in our hands .

It's the first thing we look at when we wake up , in , the last thing we do before we go to bed . It's that addictive and I was reading just the other day that the Average citizen in the United States look at looks at their phone every six minutes , on average every six minutes . So if you're awake for ten hours you have looked at it a hundred times .

I Don't think you look at anything a hundred times not your dad , not your mom , not your wife . But your husband no , but this damn thing is so addictive and you need that one dopamine shot every six minutes to keep going . I Think that's social media interaction has now been cornered . I think we just need to admit that it has been cornered .

They've become echo chambers . If I look at social media X , it's very unlikely , no matter what Ron tells me to do , that I'll look at social media . Why , and If Ron is addicted to why , he will never even attempt to look at X . And that is as true . Offline , on the air , for instance , you have your favorite channels for your news .

You will only tune into those news channels because it reinforces your thoughts and your beliefs . You do not want to be informed about the other side , leave alone engage with the other side . So we've started to fight this end zone game where we shouted each other from each other's end zone . There's no meeting in the middle here , right .

So now you superpose that with AI and deep fakes and you have a public that wants to believe , that is not necessarily skeptical , but instead wants to believe what it is being fed , and you create deep fakes that are feeding those very beliefs that they want to now believe .

We , I think , are gonna see a crescendo of AI enabled deep fakes this year that will make Taylor Swift whatever look like . Ah , that was fun , right ? That is a level of I Don't know what to call it . It is Is elation , it is well , its manipulation , but it is dystopian that you know .

That was about three minutes in length and we haven't gotten to this point yet , but I think we're close to it in this country where when you see a candidate speaking , you know we're all produces of our own content , we all have devices that can upload content in moments while we're still here sitting in this room , when we see a video from a candidate and we

say how do we know that's authentic ? At a certain point I mean , the AI is gonna get that important and we're a Potential foreign leader , could say something that could bring nations to the brink of war potentially and and how do we know it's authentic ?

You know and this is a space that I think government is Hesitant to regulate but knows it must step in at some point but I think it's a real question . You've been going back to kind of the early worldwide web days or something you know .

I don't know what role I can might have played in kind of authenticating certain websites and protocols and IP addresses , but I think we're nearing a point where we have to have a system to validate and authenticate online content , especially political content .

They're fundamentally unlawful people who are doing this , so they don't care what laws we make . I'm sorry , go ahead .

The Some of you have undoubtedly read this book by Mustafa Suleyman called the coming way , which talks about the incredible changes that are Underway and will take place because of the confluence of AI and synthetic biology .

The greatest technological changes that Mankind has ever seen are taking place and will take place , and the need for International cooperation to be able to deal with these issues issues is greater than anything that we have seen and important on a scale that we have never imagined .

How that happens in a world in which , again , we're denigrating the value of international cooperation in many respects or the ability of institutions to to help mediate issues , it's going to be a real challenge going forward .

So I think you know we're going to need to have these institutions and these alliances much more to deal with what is both a fantastic opportunity for mankind and a great threat because of bad actors in particular . We don't want to play within the system .

We know that tick tock has had a big impact on perceptions of the Israel Palestine conflict . Where do you see that going , given the tremendous power that China has ?

You know common me well . For example , famously they were refusing any sort of top-level military to military communication because they prefer to keep the US on edge , and so they've increased gray zone activity around Taiwan and so forth . And how that relates to AI is this is obviously an area , just like Ron was mentioning , where we should be cooperating .

We could cooperate for the benefit of everyone , including they themselves , but they China is particularly tricky because you've got an authoritarian Lee Administer digitally savvy .

I mean , this is a surveillance state and so it has also hacking groups , non Technically non-state actors that are contracted out by the People's Liberation Army , and and we've been engaging with a kind of cyber warfare with them for years .

So I'm a little bit more concerned about that , and one of the lessons of like 2016 is , you know it , one of the it seems , swing factors could have been a tweet that was allegedly from the Pope Supporting Donald Trump . That that's simple by today's standards , all right , that was just , you know , some troll factory in Moscow Generating that , but .

But China's learned China , it kind of stayed out of 2016 . It could very much get involved , and it can be like Osman was sort of talking about . I mean this more dystopian , you know , type of All altered reality . I think of what you know , qanon fevered dreams Rendered as a deep fake .

I mean , you'd have fanaticized followers who have already shown they'll go to pizza parlors with Weapons , ready to kill people , you know . Anyway , I , china could be a great Solver of this problem , working together with the US . In fact , if the US and China got together , it could solve it .

I think I just don't see the will from at least China side , too much along the terms of what we're looking for .

You know Xi Jinping will remain in power and beat be the guide , deciding everything there .

We've been talking about state-to-state Relations and alliances . What about the theme of environmentalism ? This has been something that's on , it's in the zeitgeist of the world . It's on the minds of many younger people , especially younger voters in the United States , and Obviously requires a great deal of international cooperation to pull off .

How do you think that will play into either the Biden or the Trump agenda for foreign policy in this Upcoming election cycle ? And again , for people who want to ask questions , come on over here .

You know , we tend to look at everything exogenous to our own lives and say , oh , it's the number of trucks that are on the road , it's the amount of coal fuel that gets used to generate power . It's always somebody else's problem .

So , at a corporate level , I often look at net neutrality being set as a goal from an environmental , social perspective , but I also look at carbon credits being Offered , where people can buy carbon credits to claim net neutrality .

These are all distortions that are Market driven but are being embraced in order to lay claim to something that is Is false , is not really helping , but looks the optics look like something is being done .

So this , if anything , to me , is a very personal issue right where everybody , every person , has to commit to doing something that is different tomorrow than from yesterday and today , so that net we are doing something good for the environment by saying I will not and therefore hold true to that line . That's where I sort of bottom out on this .

It's not somebody else's problem , it's my problem .

Should he just say well , we're going to take care of it by inflicting pain on our , our citizens ? Or is there some ? Is there some solution to this ? Maybe , ron , it's some form of international cooperation which we don't seem to be very good at .

It hasn't been an alternative , effectively in the Democratic Party .

There's a great book again which I highly commend , called Unsettled , by Stephen Cooner , in which he essentially writes about the fact brilliant physicist and a member of the Obama administration , and he basically said the climate issue is an issue that is substantially not the same as the narrative that we hear today .

I think that is the question separating the narrative from the realities and what we can do to affect the realities .

We finally embraced industrial policy in the 1990s by basically saying we were going to have a semiconductor agreement with Japan . We had quotas on Japanese cars , and then Japan went through a bubble economy where they were no longer an economic threat and then attention turned to places like South Korea .

And once China rose up , using a similar method mercantilistic , where they suppress imports and promote exports through subsidies and so forth , and then they build a big industry , whether it's in solar panels or EVs , and then they have this huge , both internal market and export engine and then they can use that to their advantage and then it becomes a political issue

. So Europe , the United States , are both trying to counteract what they see as dumping of Chinese now EVs , but before it was solar panels . So yeah , it is kind of cynical . At the same time , you can't deny that China is on the right side of history when it comes to converting to sustainable energy forms .

One of the stark realities China faced is it has to import all its energy needs or it uses dirty burning coal . So they embrace the move to EVs .

I remember visiting , during the G20 in Hangzhou , a G-Lea facility , which is a Hangzhou-based car company the owner of Volvo now and they were talking about how they were going to be making this big transition to EVs and I thought , yeah , I know you're touting the government line . I didn't really believe it . And they've been making those targets .

I mean , there are a lot of things China isn't making . The data should be a suspect , but in the case of EVs , no , they saw this as an absolute national threat .

They also see the relation to a data-driven economy and , anyway , they fully embraced it and they are ahead of the US , certainly in terms of creating the world's largest EV market , both domestically and as an export market . Steve hey first congratulations .

What I wonder to myself is , if this corrosion continues , if there's more unrest internally , does this make China a passive tiger or a hungry tiger in terms of the world stage ? Second question I'll go for the bonus one right away is what effect do the rogue states have in terms of being a trigger point ?

Study history , think about Sarajevo , think about the idea of North Korea , If it's to be believed , or getting to the next step in terms of their nuclear capability in Iran , again mentioned again , what could these be flash points in terms of its stability ?

continues to see or express China being on the rise and the West on a descent , in fact , I think as reality hits they realize the risk of engaging the West more aggressively , and that would include an invasion of Taiwan . So I think it would actually minimize the issue .

However , I think it was on a previous podcast with Joel and Marshall that I mentioned there's also the Falkland scenario , which is so Argentina , the junta , is falling out of favor . It's like , hey , let's go create a war , distract the people , rally the troops . It was a disaster for them . I hope China would learn a bit from history with that .

But there is that real danger . So I can't say it's a probability as close to zero as I would like . It's less than 50% I think , but it's still a real enough possibility and part of it could be like if Xi Jinping feels his power is really slipping and because you have one key decision maker and that's it .

If he thinks he absolutely needs this for his political or even maybe physical survival , certainly the risk would raise .

I guess the question is will the extant circumstances in China favor the arrival , if you will , of a successor more along the lines of Xi , more along the lines of Deng Xiaoping ? And I don't have the knowledge base to be able to make that assessment , which is sensible . What do we get ?

No , even with 2,700 years ago , wow , it's even further . Yeah , it's 500 BCE . So , yeah , 2,700 years , so nearly 3,000 years ago . I mean kids , before they can really compose really persuasive essays , read that text . And the Greeks , for example , cannot read Plato in the original . They need to have it updated .

It's actually in a similar vein to Taoism and parts of Buddhism it is more meditative , it's more emphasizing self-improvement and it has a lot of positive features that are non-aggressive . And then they also love to study ancient history and ancient history . So Deng Xiaoping .

Deng Xiaoping is famous , among other quotes , for one that comes up a lot in terms of geopolitics hide one's sword and bite one's time , and they can be interpreted in different ways , but basically means stay chill , right , do not act rashly . So , in terms of Ron's question , I would say , if the successor continues with that more rational tradition .

Moreover , to the point that China is now so leveraged in the global economy Ashwin actually made the point very aptly , I think look , it is not in China's interest to go into Taiwan , because it would lose what it still needs , which is access to microchips and the global supply chain , which , if nothing else , even if the US doesn't engage in active warfare with

China , there's no way the US would sit by and allow the flow of goods to keep . I mean , they've already been restricted . It would be restricted more . We would lean on more of our allies to really isolate China , and that would just be a disaster for whoever follows .

So I think that hopefully the lessons from history will be for whatever the successor is , to just take care of things at home .

The status quo with Taiwan has actually worked for China and if they keep that in mind , whatever the rhetoric is a bit like what we were talking about regarding Trump you can say one thing and then people get used to understanding him in another way . I hope that will apply for China . At least , that's my guess .

I mean that's less than the undergraduate population of Chapman University . I'm wondering what sort of education models there might be abroad or historically , of nations that have successfully educated large masses of their population to be able to move into this next wave of kind of liberalization that we're experiencing in the world .

I mean , it used to be referred to you heard this a lot in the 90s the Confucian work ethic right , which also stresses education .

So China , in that regard too , as a later inheritor of what Japan proved was successful , and in between you've got South Korea , Taiwan , Singapore , ASEAN countries indeed , but I think this is the question was about liberalized economy , and the juncture there at and you really see this with China is what about creative industries ? We had this discussion over lunch .

You know Korea has done quite good with that , but they had to make a real hard effort to create the K-wave in K-pop . And even then , what is K-pop ? I mean apologies to any fans of BTS it's very regimented , right . It is very synchronized , it is very manufactured .

I mean , for those of us who like maybe more independent styles of music , it's kind of corporate rock to the extreme . So right there you go . You can have different argues for EDM , but fair enough , good point . So I would say this is yes to that . I mean , japan and other countries have been very good at it .

It's also what's preferred to is catch up economics . You know , for countries that lost out on the industrial revolution , which was localized around the Western economies , east Asian economies have done really good at catching up , but then it's when you reach that same level , that kind of middle income development state . How do you go beyond that ?

And this is where , in particular , I'll just make a final comment China is especially thwarted because it's adopted a surveillance state model , because it's emphasizing road education , because it demands obedience to a single party and a single leader , and basically North Korea are the least adept at really taking things to the next level .

I mean , you're kind of independent and creative in China on the side and the government talks about innovation , but it is by no means setting up the system for that . And even Japan , which is still largely an open society by comparison , has also struggled with that because of the formulaic approach it takes to education . So what ?

We're not a renaissance society in the 18th century in Europe , where art was the means of growth . We are a science of the means of growth economy . On top of that , when you talk of the liberal term , it's the ability to imagine and innovate that sets us apart . Much of the wealth that we've created I mean think about it .

Since Chad GPD 3.5 was released 15 months ago , we've added $10.7 trillion to the market cap of the top seven companies alone . That's a level of wealth creation that we have not ever experienced in such a short period of time .

That's what we are capable of as this economy , where we combine STEM with imagination , creativity , innovation , and the market supports it , and the market then says this is great , bring it on Next title wave , please .

We don't have too many other societies that give you those kind of opportunities , but for seeing that and being prepared to take advantage of it , there are very few who are capable of including ourselves .

I mean , this is as much of an accident as it's an engineered outcome that we're having , and the fact that we now want to reshore some of the more critical elements of our supply chain is coming as a surprise to ourselves . This is the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing . The policy was not in sync with reality .

The policy suddenly got the right side of reality , but the reality of education was not ready for that . So there's a supply chain gap here . It's a lagging factor . It's not that it won't ever catch up , but it'll take 10 years to catch up . The question is whether 10 years is good enough , which goes back to the foreign policy with Taiwan .

So , if you ask me , I say use the 10 years to create the 4,000 people for the next 10 years . Keep talking to China .

As was mentioned earlier by Rob , we have too many layers of contact and interaction with Europe , whether it's economic , foreign , direct investment , tourism , people-to-people relationships , civil society linkages . There was a period of time during the second Bush administration where Jacques Chirac , who was the head of France , and Schroeder , who was the head of Germany .

They had such animus toward Bush they didn't even have a relationship . Obviously , we survived that whole period . Chirac went to jail because of corruption and Schroeder went to Gazprom to become a stoolie of the Russians .

The pivot to the West is taking place for clear reasons , not the least of which is the economic dynamism of that part of the world , and when you put Europe on economic dynamism in the same sentence , you're worried . It doesn't read well .

So I'm just concerned that , with demographic issues , with immigration issues , with a political system which is cumbersome at best , I worry 25 years from now and Europe will not be as relevant as it is today and will not be as good a partner for the United States because of that , and we will therefore almost need to have that pivot to the West become incredibly

, incredibly successful .

Let's focus on this country . What do we do about it ? And I think there are a lot of people at Chapman from different fields who are beginning to have conversations about where do we go from here , what does our structure need to look like ? What do our degree programs need to look like ? Centers , colleges , majors and courses .

I think we come from different places but we have , overall , the same mission , which is we have a duty to prepare the next generation for the challenges of that generation , and we need to anticipate what those are today .

We can't wait until then , and so I think , both within presidential studies I think certainly you would agree in the Center for Demographics and Policy and other places Smith Institute , others around campus there are people having conversations to figure out how do we address this challenge going forward Myself being a historian and of course , we all have a bias towards

our own fields is for the lifetime of my students . We have been so focused on a STEM society . Science , technology , engineering and math Not to say those aren't important . My nine-year-old daughter loves every one of those fields more than she loves history , in fact , and that's perfectly fine with me .

But the fact is , I think to succeed in the future world , we really do have to be good at everything all the time , and I do wonder personally whether , with the pendulum going too far towards STEM and what that's meant is too many optional boxes for students who don't know their history , who don't know what American institutions are , who don't know what acceptable

political behavior in Washington , even if we don't see many good examples of it , what it should be , and so I think there needs to be a recalibration , and I think that recalibration is occurring here .