China, Russia, and America: Where Do We Go From Here?

23:51I believe it does. I believe supporting Israel and Ukraine are all part of the bigger struggle between the Russians and Chinese and Iranians and North Koreans that are working together and are allies. So it's not about white and Chinese. I mean, I don't think I don't think that's our issue as we I mean, I've sat around you've sat around tables and that's really never the issue. It also is surprising. Most of the economists go nuts when I say this. And that is usually when you're getting down to the big issues, it's not about the economy. Oh, we're going to invade that country to get oil or we're going to fix this so that it really comes down to this geopolitical analysis of it.

24:25And what I'm saying and what Reagan was saying is you represent a threat to the West. And, you know, we're going to push back. Now, let me take you back to Afghanistan as a footnote. People don't realize this, but the Afghans were on their heels in 18 in 1985. Washington was saying, how long are we going to put up with this? When Reagan took the helm on this, he said, we're going to give it one more big push and we're going to give it everything we have. And that turned out, and that meant stepping up to something like the Stinger, and we tripled the budget. So there were real concrete issues, but there's a slight, there's something, a footnote I want to caution so we don't get too bellicose.

25:07When Reagan did what you said, Anthony, we will remember we almost had a nuclear incident because fortunately we had a spy in London. And what happened is the KGB, we started a routine plus exercise in Europe. The Russians actually believed because of the rhetoric that a nuclear attack was feasible and they were moving towards that. This is all documented, by the way. It's called the Ryan operation. Fortunately, Reagan, they were able to put that report on Reagan's table and we were able to back off a notch, tone it down a notch. And then we started to head towards the Gore. He felt if we got that close, I want to meet Gorbachev and where was it, Anchorage or whatever.

25:50So I think strong, well-defined. One of the things about Reagan and when you look at it, I remember as a kid, he was an actor. He communicated in very simple words, simple language. Everybody got it. But the message was straightforward. forward. So it's important for leaders in our country, I think, to be crisp in their analysis of what they're doing. So the layman that walks in the office, you say, this is part of a real struggle today. We're one side, the other. And this move or that move is explained in that context. It is not driven by ethnic or pure economic greed or colonialism, imperialism.

26:29That's my reading and many years sitting in those meetings. So Jonathan, I'll leave it to you and Anthony to take it from there. But that's my take on it. Sure. And I mean, you're dealing with regimes that have very clear ideas of what they want to get. And that involves dismantling, you know, America's leadership and pushing in their own regions. But, you know, it really comes down to, in my opinion, it's this is about the free world. And the free world is actually a very deep, complex and diverse place. And I think Reagan understood that very well. You know, anti-communism, as someone, you know, wisely said to me at one point, was really a human rights cause.

27:05And I think today when one thinks about what we're really dealing with, I mean, on one hand, you have Ukrainians fighting against, you know, a vicious, you know, horrific invasion that's perpetrated essentially by a madman, in my view. And then, you know, you have Taiwan, which is part of the free world. You have Japan, which is part of the free world. I mean, India has, you know, there are plenty that would take issue with that, but that's going to be one of our most important partners there is. It's the largest democracy and we're the oldest, you know, Brazil's democracy. I mean, the entire OECD from Europe to Asia to us, Canada, I mean, this is a very powerful body economically and militarily when we get everything together.

27:41And then there's the fact that within all of these regimes, there are so many people that stand against them. I mean, in different degrees. I mean, there are people in, you know, Chinese gulags who are, you know, I would say are members of the free world. You have Hong Kong, which was destroyed from the standpoint of rights and freedom. And that was a place where people, young people younger than me, were waving American flags. And you have, you know, in the streets of Tehran in Iran, you have people who give their lives to fight that regime. So there's so much variation to this. And I think Americans can understand that as much as we need to be realist and we need to back our values with hard power and economic superiority across all fronts, in my view, there's also something that we stand for that many, many others around the world stand for too.

28:27And alliances are a very important expression of that. I mean, we've always had allies. Whenever we've had to do anything hard, that goes back to the American Revolution. It was France that saved us. And then, you know, we saved France in the Second World War. And this is one big community that I think, you know, stands for something that exists over time and is more important than, you know, many of the instruments of power. But the instruments of power are things that we have to develop and we have to keep them strong in order to get through this moment. It's going to be much harder than people expect.

28:58And at the same time, I think we can do it. I mean, we can win this new contest with Russia, China and their hangers on. But we're going to have to do it together. We're going to have to rebuild our economic advantages. We're going to have to rebuild our military strength. In the communications field, the Cold War was pretty straightforward and simple to get. Capitalism, communism, right? Isms. Today, I actually believe we're in the Cold War and all the dynamics of what's happening, the Wagner Group in Africa, meddling in Latin America, working with the Iranians for the Russians and the Chinese.

29:32We're in it. It looks just like it. It's bifurcated. It's the same type of fight. But what we have is, as I said, our democracy and anti-democracy. It isn't an isn't. It isn't exactly an ideology. So when you tell people we're fighting for democracy and anti-democracy, it's just one step away from that ideological orientation. I think it's a little bit harder, and you're an expert in it. It's harder to package that concept, but I believe that's what we're in. We're in an ism world without the isms. Welcome to another round of Boardroom or MiroBoard. Today we talk retrospectives with agile coach Maria.

30:08Let's go. First question. You've spent two hours in a team retro, but the only input you've heard is Dave's. Boardroom or MiroBoard? Boardroom. In Miro, Dave can't hog the space because everyone can add thoughts anonymously, online at the same time. Correct. Next. You need the team to act on feedback fast, so you turn all those retro notes into JIRA tasks. Miro all the way. And I can assign those tasks to teammates. You're nailing this. Now, you see hundreds of sticky notes from the retro. A real mess. But you organize them into five themes in just seconds. Miro, I basically get back an entire hour when I use its AI tools for clustering.

30:46And she's done it. For a limited time, visit miro.com slash retro now for a free business plan trial to unlock advanced retro tools like private mode, voting, and two-way Jira syncing. That's M-I-R-O dot com slash retro now. I guess, you know, what I'm I guess what I'm worried about is when I listen to both of you talk, there's cohesion. There seems like a long term battle plan. We both know that the Chinese, all three of us know that the Chinese think in twenty five, fifty and one hundred year increments. and the way the two of you are talking, in my opinion, and correct me if I'm wrong, is completely incongruous to our leadership, congressional or otherwise, our executive leadership.

31:31I don't think anybody, and I haven't heard it, and I go to these think tanks, Council of Foreign Relations, I go to the different speeches, listen, business executives of national security. I don't know anybody in the administration, current administration, past administration or the Congress that has a well thought out plan. Now, if I'm wrong, please push back on me and tell me why I'm wrong. Make me feel better. As a career bureaucrat, let me tell you what I think the secret to this is. When I joined the agency, I thought, well, these are all bright people. I can't wait to get to the next level when we start thinking strategically.

32:07Everything was tactical. What are we doing today? get the inbox, fire. We got a war, get it done. I got to the next level, I looked around again. It was, well, where's the strategic thinking? And then I got to the top of all this. I said, I'm it. So my point is, when you describe it, you're absolutely right. But it doesn't come natural to people as much as you might think it does, because you're a strategic thinking, a thinker. So at the top right now, I'm not blaming. I understand what happens. Russia invades Ukraine. It's all about Ukraine. How do we get the weapon? How do we get there? How do we do this?

32:42We've got to put this with, get with the Chinese, do this. No one, if you go to the meeting and say, listen, let's talk about the big picture. Oh, no, Jack, we'll get to that later. So it isn't that administrations and political forces are denying it to us. It's that it's a very hard commodity to sell in institutions. And frankly, you're in a private sector and have been a good part of your life. And strategic thinking isn't as big as you think there either. You know, big companies have been around a long time. It's how am I going to make more cars? It's not, you know, what is it going to look over the horizon?

33:16That's the difference between managing your government and leadership is such a hard commodity. And there's a risk in it, as you know. If you're stepping out and saying this is where we're going to go, you know, you're taking chances. You have to be a risk taker. So that's my take on it. I don't see it as if here's one last thing. I'm continually amazed at our founding fathers. How out of 7 million people did we find so many big thinkers that could put together the Federalist Papers and the Constitution and balance of power? And out of 7 million, we have over 300 million. I mean, I'll settle for one, let alone the other.

33:58So I'm just saying I'm with you. It's a harder thing to get your hands around. That's why the pen and that's why communications in your field is so important. I mean, that's where the battle should be fought. That's why I write once in a while. I think I want to say something. We talk about, and I'll flip this over to Jonathan. Can we talk about our allies for a second? How do our allies feel about our stalwartness and our long-term commitments to things at this point? Well, Anthony, unfortunately, you know, and I do I do talk with plenty of people from around the alliance system on a pretty regular basis.

34:34And I think there is a lot of concern about the U.S. I mean, I think people are most of all concerned about our volatility, our divisions at home, our staying power, our coherence on foreign policy. Basically, where is America going? I don't think there's a clear indicator of that or that's certainly what a lot of people reflect to me in my discussions. And at the same time, I think they also, you know, certainly if I'm talking to them, I think they like to hear, and I think this is very true and very fundamental, that the alliance system is incredibly important to the United States. I mean, that's something that I believe very strongly as someone who lived and traveled, you know, all over the world.

35:09I mean, it's just, this is a structure and you do not want to have to rebuild this structure. I mean, we built in a structure after the Second World War, and it sustained us through the Cold War, and it sustained us through the post-Cold War. And you still have the elements of this that mean that the alliance system is really the majority of global GDP. It's the vast majority of global wealth. It is the bulk of global military power. But we're going to have to use it, I think, in a different way where we're dealing with adversary sort of regional strategies, pushing back on them, making sure that they can't break out the way that they want to.

35:44And at the same time, coming together as more of an economic community where we can secure our supply chains, achieve dominance in the key strategic industries and technologies, and also achieve dominance in global trade. Because at the end of the day, that's you asked about the US dollar earlier. I mean, the only thing that I think doesn't threaten that today, but in the long run, certainly Russia, China and others would like to create an alternative sanction proof, you know, trading system. And in a weird way, we should let them and we should make sure it's very, very small. That's how we won the Cold War.

36:13So as long as the allies are growing, integrating, building, securing supply chains, winning at global trade, pulling big emerging markets like India and Brazil over to our side, I think we can win this whole thing through economic power. But the US has to lead that. I mean, we are a$27 trillion economy. And the next biggest thing in the alliance system is Europe, which is about 15. So we're now like 60 % larger almost. And nobody talks about that. I mean, it's still American leadership. But we have a global team. And I think we're going to have to start getting serious in terms of a global shared strategy.

36:46For instance, Europeans who are continuing to invest in the wrong industries in China, I mean, they've got to come to the same side as us. And that's true across the board. Jack, the interest on our debt is going to go from 10 % to 30 % by the end of the decade. So by 2030, as we roll our debt to higher interest rates, we're going to have 30 percent of our budget going to interest, which obviously will have to eat up some of the entitlements, some of the military spending, some of the other things. What do you think about that? Are you worried about that or you think that's not a big deal for the United States or what's your thought there?

37:25Well, for a while, I taught high school and I taught economics one year. And I'm ashamed to say I probably haven't grown much since then. That's a tough call. I mean, the reality is what you've defined, right? What are we going to do about it? Sometimes we wait until the last minute and then we find out, hey, it's a lot harder. I'm not proposing this. But one thing that happens sometimes is you have inflation and inflation reduces your debt. I'm not proposing it. I'm just saying that at some point when the rubber hits the road, it's not sustainable. Therefore, it won't be sustained, that old sort of quote.

38:00So I don't have an economic answer for it. We should tighten our budget. We should have balanced budgets. But you said something very refreshing and very honest. You're saying that, you know, we'll monetize it. We'll create enough inflation where the debt will be manageable. That's what we've been doing since the end of the Second World War. But we had really dynamic growth in the economy. So the middle and lower middle class did better. But the monetizing that's happened recently is really having a big impact on the middle and lower income people. And they're getting upset. and they want to vote for people like Bernie Sanders or AOC or Donald J.

38:33Trump. They don't like the system anymore. Listen, I'm with them. They feel like they've been gypped and left out of the system. I don't have a problem identifying with them. I have 15 529s I could worry about. But my point is I'm not proposing that. I'm just saying eventually you end up there. Right now, what you hope is pain leads to action, right? You vote, you push for change, but they have to balance out. Are you going to have a military? No, are you going to support Ukraine or are you going to build a border? You start doing that, it's going to get really messy. Look what happened, though.

39:11And again, I defer to you on this economic side of it. We poured$3 trillion into the economy and we fought two wars worth$5 to$6 trillion, right? That's a lot of debt, right? A lot of debt that we've generated. But look what it does. We have a really strong economy. We're having trouble cooling it down because we put so much into it. So, you know, maybe we need to be more fiscally conservative in how we put the money in. And then you get the priorities. Where are you going to put your money? And that's why we're in a democracy. Go to the go to the ballot box and decide how you want your dollars spent.

39:46Used to be you voted with your pocketbook. So, Anthony, I also think a couple of larger macro issues here. I mean, you are going to have to re-industrialize the U.S. in many ways. We're going to need an expanded defense industrial base. That's just a necessity. We're going to have to secure certain supply chains and pharma and semiconductors, microelectronics, all of that. I think you can do a lot more with USMCA and North America as a general industrial base. And as you see capital flows out of China and ideally into the U.S. and into healthier, better, geopolitically healthier places. you know, that should also give us some opportunity here.

40:21I mean, there's going to be a whole lot of sector level and technology level contests that will have to be won, which I think will certainly provide some growth. But you're right. I mean, we're going to have to, you know, probably really figure out how to, you know, sustain a global foreign policy financially and also continue to have U.S. growth. That's going to be the biggest, toughest challenge. I want to talk about our five eyes and get your reaction. The five eyes got together on 60 Minutes. They were out in Silicon Valley. These are New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain. I guess it's France and the US, correct me if I'm wrong.

40:58They got together and they said that there's a huge threat from China. And they put this on national television on 60 Minutes. They were interviewed by Scott Pelley. What was your reaction? Did you see the interview? And if so, what was your reaction to that. I didn't see it, but I did see the right up bottom line. But here's my cautionary statement. Who isn't saying that? And isn't that conventional wisdom that we're listening to? I'm not, I'm not, they're reading all the same stuff. All the information is coming in and we're working ourselves. You know, we are like a pack of wolves and maybe that's the wrong one, but we're following a stream of thought.

41:39And is that the right thought? I would like to think more about not that there is a threat. I mean, it clearly is. So what are you going to do about it? And this goes back to your point, Anthony. Where's the strategy? What is it going to be? And you have different interests. Do you think the businessman that's invested there wants to have a hard time? The person who wants to invest is going to walk away. So there's a lot of countervailing forces, but I'm saying that was not a stark statement from my point of view. That wasn't bold. And remember, they were working with classified stuff. So they're only telling you, I mean, it's China's a threat.

42:17It's just one more voice saying the same thing that if you went into AI, is China a threat to the United States? I'm well in the bet it comes back. Yes, it is. In that sense, exactly. It's the sort of thing that we, it's important to hear from very authoritative voices on how serious this is. I mean, there are plenty of people out there, myself included, who've been explaining how serious this is for a long time. And there was a time where all of that was dismissed, or at least certainly taken with a skeptical mind. But it's really clear what's going on. And it's important to hear those sorts of voices weighing in, like FBI Director Ray's statement about this is the greatest threat we've faced in a generation.

42:56There's nothing else like this. I mean, these are very good verbatim statements for those of us that have been trying to communicate it. And, you know, at a certain point, we have to recognize that we're in this contest. We're not going to get out of it. We're not going to wish it away. We have to win it. And, you know, the strategy to do that. I mean, I wrote one in the decisive decade. I don't think we see a real grand strategy from U.S. government yet, but we can do grand strategy. We have done it. We won the Cold War through a grand strategy developed by Kennan, passed all the way along for 50 years, essentially.

43:24We won the Second World War through a military grand strategy. America does this well, but we have to agree that there is an issue. And the longer that we play sort of, you know, can't see this, don't know what it is, the longer we're going to go down the wrong path. And I think it's also important for the business community to hear that, because at the end of the day, if we have any shot of winning an economic contest, it's going to be Wall Street, CEOs and boards that play a bigger role in this contest than anything since the Second World War. Let me just say, we shouldn't talk ourselves into something, right?

43:55All sitting around saying the same thing. I remember reading a paper a few months ago, it was an old historic one, 1940. And if you took the word Japan out and put China in, you could see the same language. I think we just have to look at it hard-nosed. And I think what you're hearing here is kind of hard-nosed, these are the facts. What's your strategy? But let's not talk ourselves into something here. That's my concern that we're all saying the same thing. And I think Jonathan's teasing out pieces and so on. I think I think we need a hard, realistic look and not conventional wisdom. That's my party words.

44:27Be careful with conventional wisdom. So I'm at the point in the podcast where I ask our authors and our thought leaders. I come up with five words with my production team and then I ask you guys to react to those words. And it could be a sentence. It could be a word. When I say the U.S. military, let's start with you, Jack. What do you think of what comes to mind when I say U.S. military? The best in the world. Nobody can touch it. I mean, it's a skill and they've been fighting for years. You don't want to mess with them. And Jonathan? Keep it that way. Make sure we remain the best. Military superiority over Russia and China is going to be vital to keeping the peace.

45:06Okay, let's go to cyber. I said the word cyber. Jack, what do you say? We're underestimating the threat internally. I think the adversary is much deeper into our system than we are prepared to recognize. And that includes in the national defense arena. Jonathan? Something I'm learning more and more about all the time. I think every time I learn more, it's more worrisome, but especially private sector. I mean, people are going to need a geopolitical strategy that takes these threats seriously. And that absolutely includes the cyber domain. As FBI has said, there's two companies, ones that admit they've been hacked and the others that just don't say they have.

45:44Everyone's been hacked. Right. I say the word economic or the global economy or the U.S. economy. What do you think of, Jack? Uncertainty. No one knows what's happening. The old models aren't working. Not every piece of it, but we're in uncharted territory. And again, I think the best minds have to get on it. and I'll leave it at that. What say you, Jonathan? Well, this is the part that I'm excited about. The bulk of the decisive decade is about the economic arena. I mean, I think we can win the geopolitical contest by winning in the economic arena. You know, decoupling is important. There's going to be reality to that, but more importantly is restructuring.

46:26I mean, restructuring the world economy so the U.S. remains the center of gravity and everyone depends a whole lot less on China. That's how we win. Okay. Let's go to the word industrial. Start with you, Jack. Jonathan mentioned earlier, I think we need to rebuild our industrial base. I think when we made the push to go to China, it almost, and I'm surprised how we absorbed that without demonstrations and unions and strikes. I think we need to industrialize ourselves because I think after the, during the pandemic and the supply chain, people began to realize you better have a capability to provide the necessities of all industry, industrially key items.

47:05Jonathan, anything you want to add? That's certainly how we won World War II. And the problem is we've given those advantages away to China. So we have to take them back. And we've got to re-industrialize. It's going to be one of the biggest jobs we've got. And how long do you think it would take, guys? Five to 10 years, get it moving in that time frame. Yeah, I was going to say a generation. It doesn't mean you can't make big inputs early. I mean, it took us, what, 40 years to de-assemble it. Let's say it'll take us 15 to re-assemble it. But it's more complicated. But I'm optimistic. When America decides it wants to do something historically, it gets it done.

47:42The last word, guys, diplomacy. A vital tool. And I'm going to elaborate. So one of the things I learned in the private sector is when I was in the government, we were always trying to work. Let's find a solution. We'll keep working. We'll keep working this solution and eventually find some compromise. And that's diplomacy. And it's so valuable. But in the private sector, what I learned was everyone said, listen, I'm leaving the room. I'm done. I'm out of here. And so I'm just saying sometimes diplomacy is great, but also putting meaningful stakes in the ground where you mean and you walk out, you'll be surprised how many times people call you back.

48:24Yeah, I think diplomacy is most important with our allies and with key sort of neutral or emerging market nations that we want to get on our side that are going to be very important to us in the long run. I don't think we're going to accomplish a whole lot with our adversaries in diplomacy. I mean, it makes sense to do summiting and meeting, but at the end of the day, we're not going to change their strategy. We're not going to change their objectives by having a discussion. You know, Xi Jinping isn't Gorbachev, he's Stalin. I think he's told us that over the last five or 10 years. Guys, it's been a terrific conversation.

48:58I want to thank you both for joining me on Open Book. And I look forward to reading more of your thought pieces. And hopefully you'll tune in again with us if I can invite you back on. Great questions. It was a pleasure to be on dealing with them. Yeah, thank you for having us. I appreciate it, sir. Thank you.

49:23My closing thoughts today on Open Book is how should the U.S. and its allies handle Russia and then China? And what about the China-Russia alliance? So there's so much to think about here, but let's just start with the Russian situation. The great tragedy of our lifetimes is that we have not been able to get it together with the Russians. And unfortunately, the Russians do not want to accept, and this is a brutal thing to say, and of course, if I was a diplomat or a politician, I could never say it. But truth be told, the Russians do not want to accept their current place in global history. Yes, a tremendously prideful country, a country rich in history, covering 11 time zones, the largest landmass, covering most of Eurasia.

50:07And it dates back to preventing Rome, preventing the Huns and others from conquesting Russia. They just want to stay in sort of that imperialistic flex relative to their neighbors. And so a situation like in Georgia or the Ukraine or Moldova, you pick the place, they want those powers to be in complete and total control of the Russian government, even though the former Soviet Union was disbanded over 30 years ago. Now, one of the mistakes that Barack Obama made was calling the country a regional power, but the truth be told, it actually is a regional power and it has the GDP of approximately the size of Italy.

50:53So why can a country like that wreak so much havoc on the rest of us? Well, all you have to do is cursory read Russian literature to understand that these are some of the toughest people in the world. And that government, which is an autocratic government, is not going to relent in places like the Ukraine unless we overwhelm them with strength and force them to the negotiating table. So unfortunately for the U.S. and the allies, there's only one way to handle Russia. What Ronald Reagan once said, it's peace through strength. And they should have never invaded Ukraine in the first place. But now that they've done that, unfortunately, the only way the West can handle this is by beating them back.

51:31Moving on to China. China is a different relationship, way more complicated than Russia. I think the United States has to make a decision about what the imperialistic impulses are for China. Remember, there are 5.7 billion people in the world that are living under some form of tyranny at the present time. And it's incumbent upon the United States to be that beacon of liberty and leadership and to provide helpful support to our allies that repel autocracy and authoritarianism. And so to me, I think they've declared war on us, whether we like it or not. It's an economic war. It's a hard cold war, if you will, or lukewarm war.

52:11It's economic, but it's also strategic, AI-related, social media related. And I think, I guess, what's at issue for us and what we have to understand as a group of people is where we're going to be in five or 10 years. And I think if we don't continue with the sanctions that we have on the Chinese, unless they change their view towards the West, we have no choice but to continue to put pressure on them. In no time soon, however, will they attack Taiwan. That's the opinion of this program, just based on what it would take to attack Taiwan. So this is difficult stuff for this current president and any future president.

52:59You're on TV? No, but you're on my podcast, Ma. You listening? You ready to be on the show? Yeah, go ahead. All right, Ma. So we're fighting with the Chinese, right? Right. And we're fighting with the Russians. Right. So you think we should be doing that? Or how do we make peace with these people, Ma? What would you do? I don't think there's any peace that you can make with the Russians because of Putin. I think he's got a Napoleon hang-up. Okay. And so there's no peace to make with him. He's got a little bit of an inferiority complex and he's trying to flex on everybody, right? Yeah, for sure.

53:38All right. So then you agree with Biden then in funding the Ukrainians then, yeah? Yeah. Yes, I do. Definitely. It's terrible because if he wins Ukraine, then he'll go to Poland. Right. So he won't stop. I believe that too. Why would he stop? Once he feels the weakness, it'll strengthen him politically to continue. Right. So you have to beat him now. Otherwise, we're going to have a bigger problem, right? And the Chinese, I think they're... Do you want me to say what I really feel? Go ahead, Mom. I'll probably have to edit it if you say something ridiculous, but go ahead. I think the Chinese are overpopulated and they do not treat their human beings correctly.

54:25And the ones that are in power want to be number one, but they can never be number one over the United States. We've got to fix our country better and go forward. But I think the Chinese people have a terrible life in China, the regular human beings. Okay, so there's lots of... The ones that are in power treat them like they're animals. I really like that. Yeah, so there's a lot of human rights violations that are well-known and well-documented in China. They do have a large population, but the problem is they don't have enough young people to sustain the older people. So they're sort of upside down in terms of the demographic of the population.

55:07But they still want to be ahead of us, and they'll never be ahead of us. even though our country's a little upside down, because I do think the country can get fixed if they have someone like you in there. Okay, here we go again with me. But our country is fixable. You're right about that. And also the relationships that we have with our allies can be strengthened. But you're worried about China, or you're not really worried about China? Well, at 87, I'm not worried about too many people, but I worry about China because of my grandchildren. brunch. All right. What, what, what else you want to talk about, Ma?

55:43It's your show. Okay. You're the star of the show. So what else you want to talk about? Anything else? I love you very much. That's for sure. All right. I love you too, Ma. All right. I'll call you later. All right. Okay, honey. Bye. I am Anthony Scaramucci and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you.

56:22I'll see you back here next week.