[MUSIC]
Hi everybody, welcome to a new episode of As Khalid Anything. Israel has a strange blind spot when it comes to China, or at least it has historically had that blind spot. And the more I've read the work of today's guest, the less I understand why Israel doesn't see China as a fundamental and central actor in this region. An actor who supports the greatest enemies of Israel, in ways that without which they couldn't operate in the ways that they operate. I'm talking about Iran, but not only Iran, I am absolutely guilty of this.
You almost can't talk about Iran without talking about China, and I managed to talk for years about Iran without really ever really talking seriously about China. It's Iran on the Palestinian front, on AI, on many other questions of the Middle East, and on algorithms on the internet that drive anti-Semitism today. Here to discuss all of these issues is Melissa Chen. Melissa is a former journalist, specializing in China, and in geopolitics generally who now serves as managing director of strategy risks,
which is a business intelligence firm dedicated to assessing and mitigating China-related risks for corporations, NGOs, and governments.
Very glad to have Melissa on. We'll get into it one second. I just want to tell you, we have a sponsor for this episode, one of our favorite sponsors, the Technion of Israel.
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“If you want to ask the questions that guide the topics we talk about, we draw those topics from the Patreon. I learn a lot from that forum, and you get to be part of our monthly live streams where I answer your questions.”
Live, please join us at www.patrion.com/askave/that link is also in the show notes. Melissa, how are you? I am well, how are you, have you? Good, it's so great to have you on. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.
First of all, we'll start with just tell us a little bit about yourself. You bring a first-hand perspective, you raised in Singapore, you're born and raised in Singapore,
educated in the United States, and now you live in London, you're a citizen of the world familiar with all these different worlds. So tell us a little bit about yourself, and then we'll dig into the meat of the of the issues.
“Yeah, I think it's really weird to be born and raised in Singapore because it's just a such a unique country that you almost can't relate to anyone else in the world.”
In that sense, maybe the insight on Israel is, it colors that in a little bit because ties between Israel and Singapore go way back to Singapore's founding. And one thing that is probably what'd be interesting to your viewers is that my father was the head of Deputy Head of Military Intelligence under the Ministry of Defense in Singapore, and he embedded and trained very closely with the idea of and the Mossad at the time, because the Israeli Defense Forces were the ones that helped Singapore once again independence reluctantly to build up an army.
Singapore knocked on the doors and asked for help from Egypt, from India, from Australia, and the UK. They all sit now, and only Israel came to Singapore's help. And so till today, the two countries are very close. And the model that we have of the officer training, and even the conscription, all based on the idea of, except we don't get the girls involved. So it's just, the girl's job is to have babies with a country, not working as well as Israel's, but it's just men who are conscripted.
“Why was Israel so open to it where others weren't? What was the reason for that release?”
I mean, Singapore is a story of going from a third world backwater to the front, you know, lead,
you know, the developed world and even the top of the developed world. It's a astonishing development story, not unlike Israel.
There's so many interesting parallels, but why was Israel happy to do that?
Why was Israel part of that process? It's a very good question, and this was only declassified, you know, mirrors late after the fact, because I think what Israel saw in Singapore was something like a mirror. It saw itself a small country, very vulnerable, no natural resources. It had to rely on just human capital. And, you know, there was a joke in the 50, 60, 70s
about how Singapore was basically Israel of Southeast Asia, because it's a small island state,
and it's surrounded by bigger Muslim neighbors. So you have Indonesia on the doorstep, you have Malaysia's and neighbour, and that region of Southeast Asia was quite difficult for
“Singapore to be in. And so I suspect that's what it is. I think these really saw in Singapore,”
you know, just a fellow traveler facing very similar challenges. And till today, I think the Singaporeans, even youth are very grateful to the Israelis for that help for early on. Okay, let's get into it. I want to start with Iran, and we're going to cover all the things I promised in the introduction. China's relationship with Iran. This is something that to me is mind blowing in the sense that I kind of knew pieces of it. But until I prepared for this
episode, and until I actually listened to you and read some of the things that have been written on these issues by others, I didn't understand the scale of it. Iran and China are not just partners. Iran is the China is the sole guarantor of the Iran's economic survival. The Iranian regime
to survive, you know, all these waves of protests that have happened since 2009 has basically
been able to play the carrot and stick game with people. It has, it has, you know, increased subsidies, it has tried to use the economic leverage that the RGC has any Iran of control of Iran's economy. Basically, by off the population and constantly, you know, stay off the next revolution, the next protest, the next uprising. And the one international force, the one element, the one actor that constantly refills Iran's coffers and allows Iran's regime to continue to play these
games, it literally buys more than 80% of Iran's total oil exports. And it does, you know, does all the work necessary to bypass American sanctions to do that is China. China is the, is the
“backup, is the strategic depth of Iran. Can you tell us about that? How deep does it go? And why?”
What, what does China see in Iran? What benefit does China get from backing Iran to the help to that extent? Well, you're right, even though the Iranian oil is being sold to China, very steep discounts. For Iran, that big customer in China essentially feeds the war machine because it bypasses the sanctions. And in terms of the gameplay that that you're seeing here,
it's been developed over time, but Iran is also very crucial to China in its global strategy.
And so I think we should maybe get into what China's global strategy is. Ultimately, what China wants is to display the US-led world system with a Sinocentric one, in which its interests dictate the norms of the world. And the goal of that is 2049. China wants to be a pre-eminent, unchallenged military power by 2049. It's the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the PRC. That's when Mao founded it in 1949. And so
it's a nice round number. It's a romantic story that they can tell the world and they can tell the citizens. And so by 2049, their goal is to actually supplant the US-led world order. And in order to do that, it has to make these moves on the chessboard. If you look at, you know, where China can co-opt and essentially, you know, the strategy of say building up allies or even co-opting other countries to become vast old states.
“What China has done is effectively, I think it was maybe in 2012, roughly, that they launched”
this thing called the Belt and Road Initiative. And the Belt and Road Initiative is a economic development program, ostensibly about infrastructure investments. So they would go to various countries, invite them to join the Belt and Road Initiative. On the pre-text that, you know, it will fund road projects, it will be railway. And but essentially what that becomes or evolves into is a kind of debt trap. So sometimes written in these agreements would be,
Okay, if you cannot, you know, meet this payback, the debt for our initial in...
you would have to give up your port, you would have to give up, you would have to do something,
“you would have to give up this airport or something like that. And so what it is is actually kind”
of a form of neo-colonialism around the world, it's just not in a very overt way. It's a very underhanded way that is almost intentional, a heart to see with your own eyes. Iran is part of the Belt and Road Strategy for China. It's situated very strategically, you know, salient, it has access to the Red Sea, the straight is right there. And also China is not energy secure. So it has to get, it's still very rely on fossil fuels. It is a, you know, rapidly industrialized, an industrial
powerhouse. And so it has to feed its own economy with fossil fuels. Even though, yes, China has made a lot of inroads into green energy and a nuclear energy, but still, by and large, it still has to rely on a lot of oil. And so Iran is a perfect partner. That is the nuts and bolts of the
“geography, right? But beyond that, what, because China's goal ultimately is to supplant the US”
led order, Iran is just the perfect foil, because of the eschatological myth of Iran, what it
represents in terms of third world kind of national liberation type rhetoric. Iran stands in
opposition to the West. And so in that sense, the ideological goals of both nations are actually completely aligned. Ultimately, what they stand for is to take down Western hegemony, is to challenge it. And to that end, Iran has become very central partner in this access of resistance that China is building. That includes North Korea, Russia, Iran, China. It has attempt it to co-opt you know, co-opt this whole access into the bigger movement called bricks. But it was all the rage
maybe like seven, eight years ago, but you know, it today, it has kind of freight bricks has become completely incoherent because what global, what movement can have both Saudi Arabia and Iran in the same coalition, it just didn't make sense. You're talking about, you know, Iran facing the United States and challenging the United States in a way that's very useful to China. And I'm just thinking as we're recording, right? The Abraham Lincoln has arrived in the Persian Gulf. It left the Chinese
frontier where the United States was using it to push back against Chinese influence. And it's now in the Persian Gulf facing Iran and whatever Trump's decisions on Iran, it's a distraction from China's perspective, from America being able to think about Taiwan. And so just having that nexus of American distraction that requires moving those resources, it plays out in real time if we're just starting to notice, right? So Iran is very useful in that way, but it goes deeper.
The Bay-do Navigation System, satellite navigation system, is something that Iran uses to avoid Western American-led GPS system, right? So they're all these like alternative, fundamental infrastructure that we don't think about, but Iran is basically on the Chinese infrastructures. And therefore it's also kind of a testing ground for them and for the their reliability and whether they can survive in American strike or in Israeli operation, things like that. So Iran serves for China as a
a front against America in so many ways and so many layers. Yeah, bear in mind that what has happened since the leaders' round of protests have flared up is that Starlink was an alternative
internet system that was operated by SpaceX and that was very crucial in Ukraine in the Ukraine
Russia war. And about what day 12, day 13 into the war and you saw the internet just completely just off a cliff, just blocked in Tehran. And this helped to not just prevent the world from
“getting images and videos and what's going on on the ground in Iran, but it also prevented, I think”
Iranians from coordinating and actually deciding to go out and protest. So it helped to stifle the attempts for the population to show their discord. And what the technology that was used to actually block this was Chinese. It was electronic warfare that they had gleaned from China. The military and intelligence sharing technology sharing between China and Iran that the scope is very big. It is not just satellite blocking. It is also the repression apparatus that China has
really perfected at home domestically. The Chinese internet environment is a very tightly controlled,
Highly censored environment.
right after, sorry, 2002 maybe, when China joined the WTO Bill Clinton said, you know, you can't
“nail the, the great firewall is basically going to be useless. You can't nail jello to a wall, right?”
Saying that essentially implying that China will not be able to try to censor the internet, but they won't really be successful. That turned out to be false. China has been very successful in building a very closed off internet. All their apps are homegrown for every software that exists in the US, for every app and platform that exists in the US. There's a Chinese version that exists within the artificial, the great firewall. And there are many topics that are simply just out of bounds.
If you insofar as tight anything, alluding to June 4, 1989, which is Tiananmen Square,
it is, you can even post it. So these are preemptive bands on the internet. And then anything that is sensitive, you know, any comment that is sensitive on the story, in just a matter of hours, we'll be removed. China spends a lot of resources and not just men, power resources, but now increasingly AI-driven resources as well that, you know, it's able to enact this perfect level of control. And it's not just on speech, we're talking about facial recognition, gate analysis. All these
are AI surveillance systems. They've managed to deploy it in Xinjiang, which is where the weaver Muslims have been under repression. The State Department, back in 2021, under Biden, Colts, Colts City, a genocide, a culture genocide of the, of the weegers. And that has become the perfect laboratory to experiment with these repression technologies. And how do you state apparatus to essentially control movement? Control speech, Iran has essentially co-opted the, the Chinese
technology of repression apparatus, surveillance tech tech for its people. It is astonishing to me the extent to which seriously diving into this issue of China has really refrained for me the Israeli
Iran standoff. If 35s were facing basically Chinese radar systems. It was a lot of Russian stuff,
the S300s and all that, which turned out not to be very effective. But a lot of the things that Iran is trying to install, trying to bring in from China is in operation there. The cybers, Chinese, the repression, apparatus, and mechanisms are Chinese. Whether or not our future in this AI run Internet landscape is a future of wide open, everybody yelling at each other like America right now, or total in absolute repression and control down to the granular individual because
the AI can do it is what's at stake here in this great war between China and America. And the laboratories for a lot of these technologies are the Israeli-Round war. Is it? Am I exaggerating? Or is that
“how you understand what's going on here? Yeah, that's what I understand. I also do recall that”
during the Israeli-Round war in June last year, there were Chinese planes that turned off the transponders and ended up lending in Tehran and there were speculation as to whether or not China was actually directly replenishing stocks, weapon stocks, because Iran had sent a lot of the simplistic missiles. The question of what it was carrying is still up in the air. The depth of that relationship is it's very deep, but it's very pertinent for Israel because if China's
feeding is Iran's war machine and repression apparatus, it is also indirectly feeding a funding Hamas. It is also indirectly funding, essentially the instability of the region, the Iraqi militias, the Houthis. It is, it presents itself as if the stabilizer and the responsible actor on the world stage, but through his actions, if you understand what is doing in Iran, it's completely
“the opposite. What should Israel do about it? How do you, Israel can't face off China, right?”
Where a tiny little Hamlet in the political of the big region, where a little island nation, so to speak, what do we do about this Chinese Iran connection? It's interesting because Israel actually got closer to China 2010 and beyond, so this is really under Netanyahu's tenure that China deep in its relationship with Israel. I will argue that was a calculated risk that
Ended up backfiring, but maybe we can go into that later.
has any way to change what China's doing in Iran unless it has leverage over China. And so the question is, when you're dealing with an adversarial nation like China, what leverage do you have? Simply, the United States has a lot of leverage on China. It has this large trade relationship with China that it could use. It had tariffs and that's where you see President Trump using tariffs as a foreign policy tool. It has leverage on China because of chips and that's very important.
“That's why we had the chips that enacted export controls. China needs the chips for its”
growth for its economic growth and for all its new technologies. So the trick for Israel would be identifying the areas in which it does have leverage over China. Is there particular technology? I know Israel got close to China on sharing agriculture technology or water technologies or things like that. Is that enough? Is China dependent on Israel enough? Does it want anything from
Israel, ultimately? That can be used to coerce China, but unless, you know, for China, the
calculus is simply, is there alignment with Iran? Does that get them closer to their goal of replacing the US-led world order? As long as that outweighs what Israel can give them, it's not going to change. Israel has no leverage over China. It just has to fight Iran and fight Iran hard enough that even China's help for Iran doesn't help Iran, right? That would be the answer. I agree. So let me, let's get into the Palestinians. China is on the world stage
at the UN consistently pro-Palestinian to the point where at least in diplomatic terms it protects
“Hamas at every turn during the last two years, for example. Is that important, significant,”
also a strategic thing with, as with Iran, also a way of thumbing its nose at the Americans or building out the world order that it wants to see? Or is it just kind of diplomatic moral positioning
showing that it has the moral high ground to, you know, to the third world? Are there any real
fundamental strategic interests there? Well, Israel's relationship to China goes back a thousand years, but China's relationship with the PLO actually goes back to right after when Mao takes over and finds the PLC, the people's Republic of China. His foreign policy back then was, you know, whatever it takes to support anti-imperialist, you know, third world kind of liberation movements and the PLO represents it exactly that for them. They were one of the first non-Europe states to
establish relationships with the PLO. They sent weapons, they funded them, they even had shared guerrilla tactics and made sure the PLO members were all reading the little red book. So this was a, you know, complete ideological crossover as well. And so since Communist China was founded, the relationship between the Palestinians and the Chinese have been very consistent. Ultimately, China can to see Israel as the, you know, the representative of U.S.
imperialism, but in the Middle East. So that has always been their calculation.
However, during the Netanyahu years, you know, China was opening up to Israel a bit more.
“You had bilateral trade bloomed from, I think it was 8 billion in 2012, but it grew to”
20 billion in 2022. So more than doubled, there was more agreements and deepening economic ties. You invited the Chinese to invest in the high-faport. That deepening all of a sudden I think was changed on October 7th. That for me was the mass slip moment and I think many Israelis woke up to that as well, including Prime Minister Nanyahu. Back in 2017, when he went to Beijing on a diplomatic trip, he actually said to Xi Jinping that Israel and China, you know, is a marriage
made in heaven. He was back then clamoring to join the Beltran initiative. So he was, you could see Israel was hedging at the time. But then the way that China responded after October 7th, he needed aftermath. Okay, we're talking about was horrendous. You know, when the attacks have been, you had all the Western allies and countries expressing solidarity, condemning Hamas.
Instead, what China did was not only did they fail to actually condemn Hamas,...
label it as an act of terrorism. And instead, the first instincts right after October 7th was to
express concerns about escalating tensions between Israel and Palestine and to urge calm and and restraint among all parties. So that was the first instinct, which to me already shows the cards, it really shows what China's game was at the time. And if Israel is trying to contemplate
“of whether China is a friend or a foe, I think those actions, which does not pass the absolute”
lowest moral bar, the bar of human decency, tells you everything. And since then, as you said, we, at the UN, at every moment, China as a member of the Security Council, it vetoes and blocks every pro-Israel resolution, every resolution that the U.S. backs to condemn Hamas, it has blocked
for the last two and a half years. And it basically shows Israel very clearly what the relationship
between China and how it sees to exploit the Gaza conflict to advance its own geopolitical goals. If you look at this great group that I met up with in Jerusalem, it was called Palestinian Media Watch. And it's a group that monitors and translates all those Palestinian state media. And
“they noticed that the Palestinian media was actually talking about one China policy and Palestinian”
leaders of Fatar were saying that China would be the savior of the world. And so you started to see Palestinian media now echoing Chinese CCP narratives. What does Palestine have anything to do with Taiwan? In fact, it doesn't even follow that they would be anti-Taiwan because isn't Taiwan the David versus the Goliath of China. So they have every reason actually identify with Taiwan, right? Just if you superimposed the two struggles, but yet it is parenting CCP narratives,
because by projecting that kind of ideas into Palestinian media, it helps China convince this is also viewed by the rest of the Arab world. And it just cements their view of the world in legitimizes it outside of just Chinese propaganda. And it's very, very useful in terms of sewing discord, not just between Israel and and Arab states. It's also very good at sewing discord in the US, within the US population. And it just helps to advance its goals.
So I want to get into this and really maybe also focus in on the thing that my audience would be more interested in, which is the anti-Semitism question. You specifically talked about how one of the drivers for this astonishing new rise in anti-Semitism among tens of millions of Americans, especially the young, especially those on TikTok, on both left and right, couched in different ways,
but it's always about the Jews. You know, somehow China's behind all of this. Can you tell us about
that? How does this fit with anti-Semitism issue in the US? So let's really zoom out here to understand why online platforms are being flooded with anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic content
“and why China's driving it. You have to read this book. It's called Unrestricted Warfare.”
And it's written by two kernels in the PLA. And Unrestricted Warfare is basically a book about how to wage asymmetric war using all kinds of techniques that are outside kinetic war. And so it kind of goes back to that, you know, ancient Chinese military book, Soonzhu's Art of War, which says that the best war is the one that you didn't have to fight because you've weakened your enemy from within. And the tools that can be used in unrestricted warfare are tools of trade,
are tools of media and diplomacy, things like that. And you have to understand that anti-Semitic content is part or anti-Israel narratives too. They're part of an informational war to wage unrestricted warfare. Not Israel is part of the game, but really it is about the West. Right? The battlefield is not Gaza. The battlefield is the hearts and minds of young people in the West.
That's how they see it.
I noticed this actually during COVID that Chinese state media, just like Russian state media,
“like RT started Arabic channels. So you could watch now CGN Arabic, Arabic. And this is basically”
Chinese state media and Arabic. It's like Algeria and English, which is Qatar media in English, what do you American market? So you have state media. Then you have bought farms and coordinated activists who are paid directly by the state or indirectly through NGOs. Right? And we're seeing that with the reporting now on Neville Roy Singham, which is a American billionaire based in China, that's been funding a lot of the pro-Palestinian protests, the globalized intifotor protests,
going on in America on the streets, on campuses. And then you have online platforms that is direct, you know, on Twitter, I'm sure you have been the subject of the target of a lot of anti-Semitic hate.
“There was a moment, I think it was quite a few months after the Iran Israel war last year that”
every time I posted, I had $7,000, $7,000 in my responses. And if I had a dollar for every time, someone said $7,000, I would actually have $7,000. It was, it just floods your replies and they're relentless. So those are the bots and operating on Twitter, Facebook and places like that. And then you also have TikTok. Now that, this is the Piesta resistance, because TikTok has an algorithm. And it's by way owned by a Chinese company, recently,
divested and sold to an American conglomerate. But TikTok has been one of the main drivers. So right after October 7th, in the months proceeding. So this is even before Israel started to act.
“That was like a three week, you know, just low. And there were, I don't know if you remember,”
you know, there were clips of youth, just young people praising Osama bin Laden, playing Osama bin Laden clips that went viral. There was a pro Hitler content. There was, you know, content denying the Holocaust, content inverting, doing the moral inversion. So equating the Israelis with Nazis. And even on, on Chinese state media, for example, I saw a clip that essentially was examining how 3% of Jews in America controlled 70% of wealth in America. Right. So it's, it's, it's again,
you will notice that this is not unlike things that can't, there's no one's has said that Ian Carroll has said, and there's a reason for that. This is complete alignment. And the statistics on TikTok is that the surveys show that anyone who spends more than 30 minutes a day or more on TikTok is at least 17% more likely to hold anti-Semitic views. And people at NCRI has done these studies. They look at hashtags. And they compare what, you know, how things trend compared to, say,
other platforms like Instagram or threads. And so they, you can see how things are throttle, right. So how things are the gas, they put the, you know, pedal on the gas to kind of throttle that. Or they fail to remove anti-Semitic content. Right. I mean, again, China is such a, um, operates its online platforms in such a, in a way that has so much control and some are censorship. So essentially, anything that is trending is allowed to trend, there's
tacit approval from the government for that, for the topic to be spreading virally. They would never
let that happen unless there wasn't, uh, that was actually endorsement. It's trying to going to be pushing the anti-Semitism, turning it on when it's its only interest, turning it maybe a little bit down in the west. It's trying to now the great perver of anti-Semitism in the west at will for all time. Is this now something just just have to learn to live with that they're now these back end kinds of infrastructures pushing anti-Semitism into their existence,
into their lives, into their surroundings for all time. So there, there is actually a white pill. Um, you know, anyone who has gone to university in America or in, you know, uh, works in certain sectors like tech, one of the most common, interracial coupleings is Jews and Chinese.
They always find each other, they get married, it's rare come in pairing, and there's a reason for that.
I think Jewish culture and Chinese culture are very compatible.
family orientation, the very family oriented peoples. They are high achieving the, they are focused
on education, the relationship between Jews and China goes back a thousand years. And my white pill is
“that, you know, in contrast to Europe, for example, European cultures, where I think anti-Semitism”
has ed and flowed over the years. Like a lot of what we're seeing on the online right podcast sphere is rehashed David Irving. Um, and then obviously in Arab world, there has been, you know, expulsions of Jews every now and then, it's just, it's baked into history. But for China, you've had a thousand years of, you know, interactions between Jews and China and ancient China.
And there's never been anti, there's this no historical record, virtually none of anti-Semitism.
In fact, the, the first wave of of Jews came 900 years ago during the Tang Dynasty, and then during the height of Western colonialism and trade that daddy Jews, Sephardic Jews were, um, they fled their, their, their homelands, and they went to China and they literally built Shanghai and Hong Kong. This is a soon family, the Cudry family. These are our well-known, and, you know, China also provided a safe healing for Ashkenazi Jews fleeing Russian programs in 1917.
They, uh, they actually housed 20,000 Jewish refugees during World War II. Yeah, and I just want a few places where a Jew could get a visa to actually flee and escape the Holocaust.
“Yeah, a few places on earth. Exactly. And so I think China's, um, view of anti-Semitism is not ideological.”
The, you know, the word for Zionism in Mandarin is "youtai fu kuo" to Yi. I'm going to translate that. Youtai is true. Fu kuo means to return to your homeland, to return to your home country, and to Yi is just doctrine or ideology. And so baked into the, the very definition of Zionism in Chinese, is the core aim of Zionism, which is the return of the Jews to the homeland. So it recognizes that. And, which is rare in most languages, which would just be a phonetic translation of Zionism.
So I think there is no deep animus between the, the Chinese and the Jews. This is nearly political expediency. And the reason why, uh, late, like in the last month or so, you started to see anti-Semitism
“kind of dial down a bit on online platforms. I think I 24 reported this, um, that China was kind of”
calling off its bots, and, and the Wu Mao army, the 50% army, that it, it pays to, um, and act as propaganda goals. And the reason for that is now hedging, because it realized that the access that it has invested a lot in, which is Iran, Venezuela, that access has dramatically weakened. And it needs export markets. And that market is now looking like it's on the way out, especially with the, the regime, looking very weak, might collapse in a few months, um, China's now starting to hedge. And you see
it kind of pivoting again. Now it's say to Israelis and Jews in general to kind of keep your eyes open, you know, like, because China's so pragmatic, I don't think that Jews feel comfortable again,
kind of trusting that they will always be a friend. Um, the INSS survey's posts, or towards seven,
shows that 50% of Israelis now viewed China as unfriendly or hostile. And that is way up from just a few years ago before October 7th. Um, but historically there's just nothing embedded in the culture, and nothing embedded in, you know, any kind of like spiritual doctrines that preclude Chinese and Jews from, from really getting along. So, um, I hope I hope we'll see it, but, but I still expect it to be used as a, as a tool. Why Jews? Why, I mean, who cares about Jews, them? It's like, what,
3% of, um, Jews do not control 70% of America's wealth. Um, both of those numbers are totally fake and weird, and I have no idea what they, where they even draw that from. Why make that claim and then ship it out into the world? It's a, a few reasons. One of them is to position itself as, you know, an ally of the Arab states. So it's to gain influence, uh, in regionally, right? So
China wants to increase its standing among the Arab nations, the Gulf nations.
a player in the Middle East. It can elevate in some themselves that way. Um, that's one reason. The second reason is to so discord between Israel and the United States. Uh, you would notice that, you know, the rise of the world right has, has really made this coalition very fragile, the maga coalition. It's torn at a part. Um, it, um, you know, used to be that conservatives in
America were almost always aligned with the Israel cause, and now that has been torn apart,
and partly anti-Semitic troops have helped get us there. And then you can see how that became a wedge where this podcast host didn't condemn that podcast host. And now, you know, it used to be that you were all fighting woke on, on the online right, and now you're fighting each other. And so the maga coalition gets torn apart. Um, and then the third one is that it's completely destabilizing to the West, you know, to have, uh, anti-Semitic content kind of with being, with being up a frenzy,
getting people to protest, getting them on the streets. Um, it, it disenfranchises people. It's demoralizing. It demoralizes the Jews. It turns the Jews against everybody else, and it's, it's like the perfect wedge issue to, again, going back to, you know, unrestricted warfare. You can weaken society so much. I, I kind of remember who it was who said that, um, anti-Semitism
is always the, the sign that a society is about to collapse. And, uh, if that's true, then it is the
perfect, it's the perfect piece of content. It's, it's so cheap, you know, it's every, every few year, every, like, a few decades. It seems to get rebooted, like, a really bad Hollywood movie. Um, that's happened in, in Europe has, has the cultural memory of this. And so it's so easy to kind of
“drama, um, to, to weak in societies from within. And that's how it sees, um, this, this, uh, project of,”
of flooding online platforms of anti-Semitism. How much do you think the disruptions, the insane, uh, you know, polarization that social media algorithms are driving? How much of this is Chinese propaganda? Is it 3% they're trying to push it a little farther because it helps trying to
as interests in various places, or is it 70%. Is China the basic problem? Is the West basically
have a China, you know, China the virus, the Chinese regime, this virus infecting Western democracies, and it's not actually the Western democracies are throwing, you know, tearing each other apart, tearing themselves internally apart, um, but in fact, this is being driven by a malign actor by the PRC. You know, during the run-up to the first Trump election, you saw Russian accounts funding or supporting pages and content that inflame both sides. So you would have, you know, the,
the kind of rise of the sort of far right, alt-right back then it was called, um, and, and movements to kind of push Trump into office also funded by the Russians at the same time the BLM stuff was funded
“by by certain, um, subversive elements. And I, and I think it is the same now, just the focus is all on”
anything surrounding Israel, um, because it's just been so effective at dividing the coalition that is in power right now in the US, but also not just in power, but but literally pursuing a campaign to stop the, to deny the rise of China to deny China kind of building the world and it's, it's remaking the world and its own image. And so it is, um, you know, a very, it's been a very long game. It's not just Qatar's funding for, you know, universities, China's been doing the same as well,
and it receives almost a lot less attention. Everything they accuse is real of doing, of lobbying, of infiltrating, of co-octing elites. China has done to a scale that is shocking if you really look into the details. Um, we're talking also, you know, infiltration and espionage into into US homeland in the form of students. Um, every day the FBI is releasing information about, um, someone, you know, caught stealing IP, uh, tech transfer industrial espionage. These are military
companies. Um, by the way, Israel has had some cases of this too. There were attempts by the Chinese,
“and I think some of them successful to steal military data from, uh, the company that was running”
iron dome, um, on UAVs and things like that. And, you know, that kind of espionage sure happens
All the time.
institutions in America. It's not just scope. It's also depth. And I kind of liken it to, you know,
when, when you kind of go down the rabbit hole of microplastics and you realize that microplastics is everywhere, um, including in the water supply, including, you know, you know, people have found microplastics in the, in balls, like, in testicles, like, it's everywhere. That, that is the level of infiltration, uh, China's like microplastics. It's in almost every institution, um, and at the end of
“the day, we have to be very cognizant. It's like, you know, the only thing that prevents infiltration”
is vigilance. The only thing that prevents, uh, Beijing's dominance in the world is full spectrum
deterrence. And it's the same on both that macro global scale, right, having a strong defense,
you know, making sure you secure your supply chains, making sure you, uh, you know, do not see the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. That's full spectrum denial, because if you didn't do that, China will infiltrate. We'll take over. That's why they're militarizing islands now in the South China Sea, and it's the same at home, as well. If you're not constantly vigilant about, you know, who is running your, your apps? Um, you know, by the way, before TikTok grinder,
which is the gay dating app was actually owned by a Chinese company as well. And the United States government very early on recognized that that is comparable, you know, learn those how many secretly gay Republicans have had their, you know, dick pics on Chinese servers. And so they actually forced the sale of grinder to an American owner. Um, so constant vigilance about about vulnerabilities and ways in which there are, you know, there would be, reason for the
Chinese to want to create use that to subvert the state. So education health care, it's, it's
“everything. It's constant vigilance is the only way. Uh, how does the West,”
tend to West win this? Well, are you optimistic? What, I mean, is the United States capable? Is it's intelligence apparatus? Is it's only filtration of China, even remotely, um, up to scratch? Can you defend against this kind of full-court press that an entire, I mean, it's a government that rules over a seventh of humanity, give or take? With vast, almost limitless resources invested in this. How do you, how do you fight this? And are you optimistic that the American led alliance coalition,
World Order, uh, can win this over the long term? You know, the Trump strategy of securing the Western Hemisphere as he outlined in the newly released national security strategy is really about rebuilding civilizational confidence is about securing the Western Hemisphere. And a lot of the
“actions from, you know, what just happened in Venezuela with the decapitation strike on the”
derawns on preventing the outflow of Venezuela oil to China and Iran. Um, all of that can be seen
as moves to deal with this rising threat of China or taking the world. Um, you know, ultimately
you're asking about the systems, right? You know, China's sell to the world and to the developing world, which is very popular among Arab nations, among African nations is the China, Chinese model is better. It leads to more prosperity, it leads to more stability. And, you know, whenever there is chaos coming up from the US, whether you have school shootings or rampant drug problems and crime, all of this is being used by the Chinese to say to people around the third world, you don't want
that, you don't want democracy, right? And every four years you have a changing government. And so the Chinese sell to the world is that our model is stable, our model is superior, and so join us. And, um, the one, you know, the big advantage I do think that the US has simply and this really goes back to the same kind of similar dynamics we saw during the Cold War is at the end of the day, authoritarian systems have bad information. They have bad information because they do not have
a free environment. They censor so much speech, um, dictators generally don't like to hear bad news. And so their own systems may seem very stable on the surface, but underneath it all, they're not. And if you look at what happened in the last few months, China has purged six out of
Seven of the generals that run its central military command.
You know, this is worse than like the death of solid vibes. It shows a society that is actually
paranoid. I don't know how anyone is sleeping soundly at night, you know, compare that to say these really generalcy American, you know, Army personnel. Why what this was about? Was there
“some great military failure? So, you know, with China, you have to guess because a lot of”
that whatever is communicated is, it's just what they want the public to know. It's, it's couched in an anti-corruption drive, but because the generals that I've purged are involved in the rocket force. Um, and because these are kind of red aristocracy types, you know, these are people
of the general that was purged. Zhang Yuxia, he is a Prince link. His father found it the PLA. So,
to purge that high ranking of an official, some very big statement. And the guess is that the target for China to develop a military that is ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. That was the target that was given to them. And because it was not met, because they're not halfway there, that was the reason for the purge. So, it's, it's a way to get rid of generals who would dissent in the event that an order was given for our Taiwan invasion.
That's the signal of the future, actual practical, pragmatic policy that China will want to pursue in the next couple of years vis-a-vis Taiwan. It's a very bad signal for Taiwan. These purges. Long term, long term. Although the short term, I don't know how you can evade Taiwan when you, you know, your command structure just got nuked like that. And turmoil is, is, is just rampant underneath a very stable surface. And likewise, the, you know, the Chinese
economy is, people say it's a paper tighter. Even the gross numbers, the demographics, there is a demographic time bomb that they're facing. And so the idea that China will actually get old before it really gets rich is a big problem because no, no nation can really, you know, surpass that kind of obstacle. So, there are natural constraints. China has a closing window when it can actually surpass the United States. That is the white pill here. It can do a lot of
damage in the meantime. But there are physical constraints to China's rise. And despite the seeming, you know, instability of the US system of, of liberal democracy, you know, you see now with Trump kind of rolling something's back, right? We're doing things that that would make Francis Fukuyama cry, right? Because he's now enacting industrial policies, which they call picking winner to losers. The, the US system is resembling a bit, something that looks less
laser-fair, more mercantilist. But all of this is to correct some of the economic circumstances
“that has precipitated the situation in the first place. But ultimately, I think, you know, it”
might sometimes seem very pessimistic. When our return, there's just turmoil in use. And then you look at China and it like, oh, well, look at those people. Like, they're just, you know, going along and everything's all fine. But underneath the surface, if you really like following the country and you're reading, you know, Chinese news sources, you realize, like, firstly, life there is not, the social contract has changed. The, the situation for just the average middle
class person increasingly bad prospects. Youth unemployment very, very high now, especially under the age of 28. So China has a lot of structural problems not to save the West doesn't. But I'm not that worried yet. One reason that I have for optimism, and I don't know if it just comes from ignorance, is that, for example, the Belt and Road Initiative, you said this, right? These countries get into this terrible debt. I was reading just for this conversation about Pakistan and Sri Lanka,
“many other countries have some of the most important infrastructures, things are deeply dependent”
on for their military prowess and capabilities, are now basically owned and/or run by China.
People will have to choose whether to have a world order that is somehow Western leaning, Western base, Western centric, or to be owned by the CCP. It seems like China's offering for all that it says, look, we're stable, look there democracies. It's actually offering a much
Worse deal, isn't it?
choose either way and I have 25 year runway because of the oil, I would lean to the American side of that. I would hedge my bets to the last minute, obviously. But if I had to choose what's
“the future, wouldn't the future be American, wouldn't that be a better future, the Western future?”
That to me is an optimistic thought. Yeah, I think for small countries, middle powers, as Mark Hardy recently called it, Davos. Everybody has to hedge the only major players in the world, our Russia, China, and the United States. There's just no other, there's no other power. And, you know, there are industries and supply chains, which are totally okay to be integrated, right? So the, you know, global societies have become so complex that it's impossible to
completely decouple. And I don't think that matters for Israel if China was making crayons for Israel, but it would definitely matter if China was making any electrical components that would go into
things like your smart brids or your drones, for example, right? Because for China ultimately,
all these trade links are also points of leverage. And we've seen them weaponized trade. Whenever there's a diplomatic outcome, they want to protest, they want to reverse. They've used trade in order to coerce the country from doing, you know, to do what it wants to do. You had a very specific story you told me about Israeli officers and their cars. Oh, yes, yeah, that would be a great way to end with that warning to my fellow Israelis.
Can you tell us that story?
So in just 25 last year, the MOD has the Ministry of Defense and Israel is finally
passed a law banning Chinese EVs electric vehicles. This would be your BYDs, your neos. By the way, when I wasn't Israel saw a lot of these cars, so even the taxis now are BYDs. They were being driven into by officers, into military bases. These are basically surveillance platforms on wheels, right? They are, they, they hover up terror bites of very granular data from videos, from biometrics, audio in the car, LiDAR information, sensors, GPS, they're
just collecting all this information. And some of these cars have very sophisticated self-driving functionalities, right? And so in order to do that, it must be collecting a lot of information.
And they're basically spy mobile on wheels. And I was surprised to see these cars being driven
by IDF members, right? And they're parking, I was in Israel. You know, first, the first time I raised the alarm was 2024, January 2024. So the IDF guy who was taken us around the Kibbutts, driving a Chinese EV, is like, do you know what information this car is constantly collecting?
“But not only collecting, it is also transmitting data to Chinese servers. And that's what the IDF,”
that's what the MOD found. It's that they were actually transmitting as well. And so the, thank heavens, it was called Er, well, I don't know if any other salient information, you know, in terms of knowledge given to the Chinese about where is really basis are, you know, you can imagine they are allies with Iran. This is very, very prized information for the Iranians. And obviously they would share that information. And so to be very careful
about especially electronic smart components that are transmitting, that are data collecting, Israel of all countries should know what happens when you lose control, when you do not secure end to end you're supply chain, right? I mean, you must have the beeper operation. So that
“becomes a very salient issue, I think, for Israelis too, to wake up to. It's fine of China's”
making you're clothing and the toys. It's not fine when these are, you know, electronics and things that allow China to essentially cover up data because data for them is like oil. It's, it's a strategic resource. And it can be weaponized because of the laws that China has the cybersecurity laws, which essentially says that any company that has data, if compelled by the state, has to give it up. They have to give it up for national security purposes if asked by the state.
That is a very big danger.
explain to our audience that Israel needs to understand that there's a much larger picture here
that China's a big significant dramatic part of this picture. It's a huge part of the Iran
“friend. It's a huge part of a global architecture that I think threatens us all. Thank you so”
much for joining me. - Thank you, Harvey.
