Shawn Ryan Show - #53 David McCormick - Fmr CEO Bridgewater Associates - A Battle Plan for America

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

David McCormick is the former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, a premiere asset management firm and author of Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America. McCormick also served as the Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Policy and was a personal representative and negotiator to the G8 under the Bush Administration.  McCormick and Shawn discuss the issues at the core of the United States rapid decline in industry, education, innovation, and foreign policy. In his latest book, McCormick describes a plan to renew America. In a world full of uncertainty, McCormick tells a realistic but hopeful message on how we can get on the right path. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: LearShawn.com - Information contained within Lear Capital’s website is for general educational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Consult with your tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment decision. HVMN.com - USE CODE "SHAWN" ZipRecruiter.com/SRS Blackbuffalo.com - USE CODE "SRS" David McCormick Links: Website - https://www.davemccormickpa.com/ Book - https://www.amazon.com/Superpower-Peril-Battle-Renew-America/dp/1546001956 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/davemccormickpa/ Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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been raised to believe in, is currently being destroyed by a very small group of people. A lot of people just sit back, very their head in the sand, try to pretend nothing's happening. There's another group of people that just sit back and complain about everything that's happening, but they don't want to do anything about it. My next guest actually has some real solutions on how to get this place back on the right track. I suggest you pay attention. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David McCormick to the Sean Ryan show. Last episode, we were number nine out of over 8 million podcasts on Spotify. Please head over there, give us a five star review, share this episode with everyone you

know. Let's get this show to the number one slot. I love you all. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being here. A lot of truth coming with this one and a lot of truth coming with the upcoming ones. Love y'all, cheers. One last thing. Keep the faith, keep the hope. God bless America. David McCormick, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to have you here. I cannot wait to dive in on your new book, and I really want to get what you're thinking about China. But brief introduction, real quick. West Point, grad, Ranger School, honor, grad, 82nd Airborne, exo of a combat engineering unit in the Iraq invasion, 1991, you're on the first wave clearing minefields in Iraq during desert storm. At 37 years old, you're the president

CEO of free markets, the company sold in 2004 for $500 million. You're on the Bush administration. The personal Bush rep and negotiator to the G8 then to the Treasury Department. You served as Henry Paulson's point man on the international response to the 2008 crisis. During the Trump years, you're offered roles. You declined due to your position with bridge water associates. Mattis assigned you to the Defense Policy Board and then Trump removed you along with 11 others for ties to foreign policy establishments. You ran for Senate against Dr. Oz,

who endorsed Dr. Oz over you? I'm curious. Why is that happening? President, why did he? Yeah, well, I think the thing with Oz was he was this TV personality. So he had a hundred percent name ID. And as you know, President Trump valued that a lot because the ability to sort of communicate on television.

And Sean Hannity was a very close personal friend of Oz's. So that helped him get a lot of early attention. Interesting. You seem highly, a lot more qualified for that position than Dr. Oz, but then your new book, Super Power in Peril, Battle Plan to Renew America. Let's dive then. All right, well thanks for having me.

Really good to be with you today. It's my pleasure. You know, the book, actually I started a couple years before I decided to run for the Senate. And I had written a couple articles and the book was based on this idea that the country was headed in the wrong direction. Economically, we were in decline, debt, inflation,

it's only gotten much worse since I started writing the book. National security wise were under growing risk. Our militaries losing its way, but we have China on the horizon. And spiritually, our institutions are getting corrupted, corroded, this woke progressive ideology, sort of hijacking. Some basic principles of America around merit and capitalism and all these things. So that was the reason I started to write the book.

And I got about 60, 70% of the way through it, and then I decided to run for the Senate because that seat opened up. So the basis of it is that America is in decline, but decline is not inevitable. Like it's not inevitable that we're going to lose our place in the world, that we're going to be a superpower in peril, but neither is renewal. It depends on what we do. It depends on leadership.

And so this is the what-to-do book. This is a book that lays out a plan of how we can renew ourselves. And so it's a very ominous cover. You know, our country is at risk of slipping away, but it's also an optimistic book, as you know, because I believe we'll get there. I believe there's a path, but we need leaders to step up, and that's what I'm talking about in this book.

That's, you know, what I really like about your book is it's not the typical, let me just complain about everything that's going on. There's actually a plan to overcome all of this, and that is very refreshing. There's actually a plan to overcome all of this. That is very refreshing in today's world. Before we dive in, nobody escapes here without getting a gill. All right, thank you. There you go. Check it now. Check it now. My shameless plug to, I love it. to my vigilance elite gummy bears So thank you very much for the travels on my six kids and I will appreciate

So David I just want to go kind of down the outlining your book starting with America's decline you say that we've lost the ability to adapt. I 100% agree with you. Let's start there. How are we declining? What are the most pressing issues? Yeah, there's, you know, I just just want to say something beefy.

Let me go a little bit deeper. So, if you look in economic terms, what's always been great about the American economy is it's been dynamic. And that means that with capitalism, like businesses go out of business, people lose jobs, but there's new job creation and productivity has driven our economy and technology, technological leadership has driven our economy over hundreds of years.

And we're losing that. We're losing that dynamism in our economy. Let me give you a couple examples. Well, first, the debt is enormous, $31 trillion, and when you have to pay interest on debt, that squeezes out investment and other good things. Inflation is at a 40-year high. That's hard on all of us.

It's really hard on working families. Across Pennsylvania, it's really hard on people with a fixed income. During the campaign, I pull up to a gas station one day, I get out, there's a guy standing next to me, phone up his pick up and he can't fill it up. Because it costs 100 bucks to fill up his pick up, he needs it to go back and forth.

I mean, if you're living month to month, the inflation kills you. But the thing that's the worst about our economy, the thing that should scare you to death, is that the whole premise of America has been essentially no matter where you start, you work hard, have a little luck, take risk, build opportunity, you can get anywhere.

So if you're born in the fourth quartile of people economically at the lowest end, you can get to the top. And there's thousands, millions of stories of Americans that have done that. Well, that's increasingly less likely today. The likelihood that you're going to start in the bottom and get to the top is the lowest it's been.

And that's why two things. 80% of Americans think the country's going in the wrong direction. And two-thirds of Americans, parents, think their kids are going to be less well off than they are. So that's economically what's happening. And it really chips away at the whole idea of the American dream. From a security perspective, we're losing our way.

So China is on the rise. China has a technological capability that is far superior to what it was even 10 years ago. There was a story in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago that had this think tank in Australia that studied the 44 technologies that matter most to national security and to the economy, satellites, artificial intelligence, quantum science, things like that. This article, independent think tank said China is in the lead in 37 of those 44 in 37 disaster, right disaster And there's all sorts of reasons for that that we can get into when we talk about China

But but our military is it is at risk and part of what makes it at risk is the wokeness and the progressivism That's sort of driving the agenda. Let me give you a small example. I know you're an Navy guy, but as an Army guy, the fact that the Army came out with its climate strategy under Joe Biden before it came out with his war fighting strategy is all you need to know. And that's part of the lack of focus on war fighting and the lack of ability to look over the horizon

on new platforms are gonna be necessary to win. Those are both big problems, national security economically. How do you think these agendas are filtering into the military? Do you think this is China pushing this one way or another? Well, I think it's a little bit of the third thing I'm about to say, which is the spiritual decay.

And I think that this is a war of ideas, and there's a progressive ideology that's chipping away at some fundamental premises about America. It starts in our schools, where our kids are being taught a history of America that is unrecognizable to me. A history of America conceived in evil. The notion of the critical race theory that

that that's the defining narrative of America when by any measure America's been the most exceptional country in history. In terms of bringing people out of poverty, in terms of a country that was conceived with the idea of liberty for all, the notion that the government is created to support the liberty of the individual, a country that has fought wars to help others, in the case of Hitler, and the domination of Europe, and the terrible evil that took place there.

So America has been a force for good in the world. That doesn't mean that we haven't had our dark chapters of racism and all those things. Of course, that's true. But in overall history, it's been a search for a perfect union, getting better and better, and it's been a great history of accomplishment. That's not the history our kids are being taught. And the reason that's so important is if you don't think America is an exceptional country,

then you don't grow up thinking that you have to do everything you can to preserve it. And there's lots of reasons for it. I blame President Obama in some ways. He was the first one that said, America is exceptional, but I bet the Greeks think they're exceptional, and the British think they're exceptional. No, it's not the same. America has been a unique contribution to the world.

So it starts with that, but that progressive ideology has creeped into business with the hijacking of profit motive and allocation of capital for ESG measures, really cutting away at the notion of merit and profit motive. We see it in the whole D and I agenda that's driven how decisions are getting made. We see that in not only our business community and our schools, but in our military. So it's a pervasive, I don't think the Chinese

are behind it necessarily, but places like TikTok, magnify it. And this is one of the reasons I think China has growing confidence and we should be worried is because you're chipping away at the core of what's made America great. And so the book, we'll talk about this, but the book talks about leadership that reforms those institutions and drives in a direction that gets back to American fundamentals.

You don't think China is behind this pushing propaganda towards critical race, the gender dilemma, whatever you want to call it, all these woke programs. And the reason I'm asking is because you see all these politicians that have businesses in China that could be ripped out from under them at any time. Yeah. Mitch McConnell, the Lidens, you know, on both sides of the aisle. And nobody that has ties to China

seems to be fighting any of this stuff. Well, I think the best way I'd say it is, I think it's in China's interest that this progressive ideology continues to gain traction. And I'm sure China is doing all it can do to magnify it. But I think it is core, it's hard to understand where the progressive ideology comes from. But it's core, I think, is a lack of appreciation for the uniqueness of America and a set of beliefs

that's undermining some very fundamental things about what's made America so great. And so I look at the current polarization in our country and everything else. And I think the most important thing about it is what ideas are going to prevail that will take our country forward. And we can talk about some of those ideas, but that's where I'm so worried about the left, because I think it's taking us down a path where if we continue in 10 years from now, we're not going to recognize the country that we all grew up in.

Yeah, I 100% agree. Do you think all the left is into these woke agendas or do you think it's a small portion of the left? Because it's sold by the right, as it's the entire left. I tend to disagree with that personally. I think it's, there's definitely an extreme element of it that's taken it in a very scary direction. If you look in Pennsylvania, for example, which I know passed,

it's the first time in 76 years that we've had two Democratic senators. And if you look at even the one Senator that's there, Bob Casey, the incumbent Senator, even he's sort of jumped on board. He's been viewed as more of a mainstream, Bob Casey, the incumbent senator, even he's sort of jumped on board. He's been viewed as a more of a mainstream, you know, more of a conservative Democrat or a moderate Democrat. He's adopted and gone full circle with the policies of Joe Biden and where the left's taken us. And I think that, you know, when you go on business circles and talk to people who are

Democrats, where I come from, I'm a business guy, they'll say, man, this has gone way too far. But I think the far left is so vicious that if they speak up, they're gonna get crucified. So I'm kind of agree with you that it's the extreme that's pulling it in that direction, but that extreme has had a disproportionate amount of influence on the agenda of the Biden administration,

on business leaders, and I think that's part of the Biden administration, on business leaders. And I think that's part of what we have to push back against. How much influence do you think BlackRock has over all of this this woke agenda with the ESG stuff? And I just heard a guy Andy Puzner talking about how BlackRock, Vanguard, and I can't remember the name of the other company, but they own 80% of all of the public traded companies on the S&P 500. Well, I think the BlackRock particularly early on played a role in terms of promoting the idea that they would influence the companies they invested in by saying they wouldn't invest

in them unless they had a certain agenda that was consistent with ESG. And I think that gets to the real core of the problem with ESG, ESG investing particularly. So if you think about it, it's your money. How do you want your money invested? So if you, as an individual, Sean wants to invest in Ben and Jerry's, because Ben and Jerry's has a progressive agenda, or Black Rifle Coffee, because Black Rifle Coffee has a conservative agenda,

great, it's your money, do what you want. But it's when institutions start to dictate how the pensions or the money in the pocket of you or I or others gets invested. And so that's where the problem is. So the problem I have with this whole ESG investing movement is who decides if you're a pensioner in Texas and part of the government dictates

or in New York or California, and the pension board dictates that part of your pension is gonna be allocated to ESG, kinds of investing. And you don't believe in that, that's a real problem. So I'm objecting to the whole notion that political ideology of any kind should be integrated into how somebody's pension is planned invested.

Because I think the most important thing is that a return for the pensioner for the years of service is maximized. So the fiduciary responsibility to do that. And BlackRock, I think, made a huge mistake, mistake miscalculation to be pushing companies to adopt to certain standards, was moralizing, but it also was taking responsibility and control out of the people who actually should be exercising their responsibility, which is the individual investors.

And so they're trying to backstop on that because places like Missouri and Texas and others have pushed back and said, no way, we don't want that and we don't want BlackRock if BlackRock is going to be pushing that agenda. But I think it was a major mistake and I think it's indicative of losing sight of who gets to decide. Do you think there's any competitors to these companies? Yeah, growingly. Growingly, you're seeing two things, which I think are very encouraging. Well, three things.

You're seeing a big pushback on who gets to decide. So these pension plans are saying, no, no, no, we're not gonna try to implement some sort of ESG agenda on our pensioners. You're seeing a whole new emergence of money managers that are managing money in a very anti-ESG way. So it gives options to investors. And then the other thing you're seeing is

a whole range of investors are saying, we're gonna invest explicitly away from China. So if you wanna put your money in investing in ways that is explicitly not gonna be China and in ways that is potentially against China, and you're seeing an emergence of that, which is the way it should be. I think the market should dictate

where people get to put their money because it's their money. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the latest deal with China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran? I think it's indicative of the risk of China. So what I say in the book, Super Power and Paral is China has a plan, but we don't have a plan. We don't have a whole-of-nation plan for dealing with China. And there's two real pieces to the plan, which we can talk about in D-Tiblet.

One piece is you've got to go to the gym. We get to get strong at home. We got to build our muscle by educating our people. We got to build our muscle by ensuring we have technological leadership. We're losing that, as I said before. We get to build our muscle by getting our institutions back on track. So we got to fix it in home.

We can't blame the Chinese for the fact that we've got a lot of decay here at home. We can blame ourselves. At the same thing, we are facing an existential threat from China. China is a techno authoritarian state that's on the rise. It's on the march. And it's taking leadership around the world. It's trying to impose its way of governance. It's trying to advance its national security interests and the South China Sea and elsewhere. The partnership with

Putin is a great example of that. It's trying to exercise its authority as one of the biggest economies in the world. And partnerships that go exercise its authority as one of the biggest economies in the world, and partnerships that go against U.S. interests as the one you just described with Saudi Arabia and Iran. And that's a direct byproduct of two things. One, we don't have a plan. And two, we have very weak leadership in our White House. And so one of the things that compelled me to run, I was writing this book, and the Afghanistan debacle. And the weakness we saw from Joe Biden, to me, was sickening.

It left me sick to my stomach to see those service members die because of that incompetence to see the Afghan folks dropping out of the airplanes. I mean, it was just an American humiliation on the global stage. But what's happened since then are one thing after another, which I think has suggested weakness, slowness to react. You saw that with Ukraine and the support of Nord Stream 2, the pipeline, which was an invitation to Putin that we've got a week, a week leader here. We saw it in the response to the Chinese spy balloon.

So when the world perceives that we've got weak leadership in the White House, that's opportunity for others and China's feeling that gap. And when our allies start to think that maybe they can't count on us like Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a stalwart ally. I was in the original Gulf War, which was to protect Saudi Arabia, those oil fields. I mean, that alliance has been with us for, you know,

100 years and for the last few decades has been critical. But Saudi Arabia, I think rightly, feels like they can't count on the United States. And when you start to lose trust in the strength and reliability of the United States, you look for other partnerships. China's standing right there saying, hey, we can be your new friend.

How about the world's currency? Are you concerned that because of these deals, that the US dollar is gonna come to this, you know, go to this, is it gonna get pushed to the sideline? Well, you know, the thing about the US dollar, it's a huge advantage, huge advantage to be the reserve currency. We are the reserve currency.

So everybody wants, when times of crisis, to go to the dollar, that gives us the ability to fund things, that gives us the ability to draw capital that's unique. And the reason people believe in the dollar is the strength of the U.S. economy. They believe that all things being equal that the United States is the safest place in the world. So when you have the kind of economic policy, we've had, particularly over the last two years, that starts to shake the confidence of the world in the dollar and the US economy.

So there's two pieces to that. One is we've had more than a decade of prolonged low interest rates. It's persistent under the Biden administration when there's lots of reason to raise interest rates, but they've kept interest rates really low. And that makes money really cheap. And when people have cheap money, they invest in some ways that are risky. The second thing that's happened, that cheap money has been,

that what's gone along with that is enormous spending under Joe Biden. Discrashary spending is up 40%. We have a $31 trillion debt. That's not sustainable. And so that has been the root cause of inflation. Inflation then has to be met with a raise in interest rates, which is making the economy, putting the economy at risk. Those bad policies, that excessive spending,

those that reengineering of our economy and pursuit of a green agenda through the Infrastructure Act, through the inflation reduction act, which did everything but reduce inflation, it added to inflation. Those things are the things that undermine the power of the dollar and the strength of the dollar. And so when I say we've got to go to the gym, we've got to get our house in order.

If we have our house in order, it doesn't, it doesn't on economic terms. It doesn't matter what the Chinese do. We are going to be the economic powerhouse in the world. But the fact that we're not right now and that we're weak is creating an opportunity for the Chinese and others. How close are we to get in push to the sideline? I mean, if you watch the news, it seems like it could happen at any minute. But, you know, the news is very fear-based on both sides. What is your insight into how close we are to losing?

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or your time in bar fights or whatever it is. Sometimes the biggest guy has some weaknesses. China has some weaknesses. They have some huge strengths, but they have some real weaknesses. The weaknesses are that they have an authoritarian model. And an authoritarian model requires the ability to continue to keep a cap on people. And they have an economy that's state allocation of capital. That state allocation of capital is advantageous in some ways for the technology leadership that I mentioned earlier, so it's given them a benefit in the near term, but it also creates huge risk in the long term because the government can never allocate capital

as well as the private sector. And they've got a huge demographic problem. So, you know, they're not growing, they have a huge aging population and their birth rates are such that ultimately they're gonna have far more older Chinese than up and coming Chinese, and their birth rates are such that ultimately they're going to have far more older Chinese than up and coming Chinese, which is a key driver of growth and productivity.

So part of this is creating the economic juggernaut in America that can compete into the decades ahead. And they have a system that will struggle. I think President Xi sees that. He's a smart guy. He sees that. He also sees as this is a moment of American weakness, and that's why he is moving as aggressively as he is to establish China's leadership in the world

and these partnerships. So to answer your question, I think there's time if we act now and act decisively. And that's why this 2024 cycle for the president and for control of the majority and then the House and Senate is so critical because on the current path, we're going to lose the moment. We're going to lose America's leadership in the world. That's why we are in peril.

But if we, of course, correct in the coming couple of years why we are in peril. But if we course correct in the coming couple of years, there's a clear path to taking leadership again. So we have a couple of years. All right. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. What are your thoughts on how we're handling Russia, Ukraine? China's come in. They're trying to negotiate a peace deal. We're fueling the war, basically forcing NATO's hand into, into, into eating Ukraine. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, my thoughts are that, that, that we can't lose sight of what's happened here. Putin is the aggressor. This is aggression at the heart of Europe and this is a US interest. This is a US interest. So, I believe we should strongly and decisively support the Ukrainians. I believe that President Biden hasn't done that. It's been very ham-handed. That doesn't mean give the Ukrainians everything,

but it means support their efforts strongly and fully to push back on aggression and win this war. We don't do that because of human rights and the pursuit of liberty. Those are things that we're in support of. We do that because it's in US interest to do so. And those that say that we should not do this, we should not focus here, we should turn our attention to China. Those two are very connected. If we show weakness and withdrawal from our support for Ukraine, that won't mold in the Chinese, that won't give us an opportunity to focus on the Chinese. That'll make our situation

with the Chinese more challenging, not less so. Now, with that said, listen, and you, far more recently than me, we've had 20 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq where we lost sight of the end game. And I don't think had a decisive victory when we spent thousands of lives and treasure. And so for those people that say we need to be careful to make sure US troops aren't drawn into this. I agree. For those who say we have to make sure the money doesn't get corrupted and stolen like it was at Bogger Mayor Forrest Base, I agree. So we have to be wise, but we also have to be forceful in our support and our strength

for Ukraine. What happens if the Chinese, the reason I'm bringing all this up is I think this is all, these are all reasons why America is falling. What happens if the Chinese successfully negotiate this peace deal? Yeah, I think that would be disastrous and I think that's unlikely, but it shows you the level of ambition that the Chinese have for becoming the world superpower. And it shows you the vacuum that weak leadership creates. So, you know, if anyone's wondering about the ambition of China, the caginess of China, just watch what's happening. And think about how craftily they're positioning themselves,

whether it's in Ukraine or whether it's with partnership with Iran and Saudi Arabia, in a way that runs counter to US interest. So we'll see what happens, but I think ultimately our leadership on the world stage, our strength at home, will make it very difficult for China to continue to fill these voids. But we leave voids and we show weakness, and this is going to continue to fill these voids, but we leave voids and we show weakness and this is going to continue. What do you think our interest in the Ukraine-Russia conflict is? What is our interest? Why are we there?

Well we're there, I think, because stability in Europe, the biggest market in the world other than Chinese in the United States, Western democracies which have been our allies for many, many decades, unique economic partnerships and mutual interest, instability in Europe, chaos in Europe, ultimately risked US interest. That's the primary reason. Instability where, and anyone who thinks that if you said tomorrow, but let Putin have Ukraine, anyone who thinks that then that stops the aggression, hasn't read history because giving into aggression encourages aggression. So that's why it's an inner interest because stability in Europe, both economic and national security

spilling in Europe is critical to US interests. And that's why we should support Ukraine in pushing back on that assault. But we need to support them in the way they describe wisely, decisively, strongly, but not in a ways that becomes a slippery slope. If they negotiate the Puse deal, does that automatically throw us in the number two slot? Well, I think there's a number of different things on the world stage that, no, I don't think one thing takes us from number one to number two. But there are a number of things that are currently happening, economically, national security wise, and elsewhere, that in combination are why we're in peril. So I don't think there's one day that we'll wake up and say, oh, that happened, therefore.

But listen, the trend line in relative terms, what's happening when I talk about decline? In absolute terms, we're slowing down in our capabilities economically and national security and spiritually. But in relative terms, China is rising. And so it's across that front that we have to worry. And that's what the book tries to address. It tries to address a comprehensive whole of nation strategy for combating China because it's not, there's not like a hole in one where all of a sudden we're

back. It's lots of a hole in one. We're all of a sudden we're back. It's lots of things that together have to represent a strategy for ensuring we remain strong and the superpower in the world. Okay. One more question about this. If they negotiate that peace treaty and the war stops, does that throw us into a recession? Reason I'm asking is because the way I understand it,

and I'm glad you're here because I do not understand economics, but the way I understand it is the only reason we're not in a recession is because we spawn up the military industrial complex and Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, a couple of other of these companies, are the only ones that are, that they're the reason we have a positive GDP. Yeah, I don't think that's true. I think the amount of spending on Ukraine while significant is

relatively small compared to the overall defense budget, even the whole defense budget's $800 plus billion and we're talking tens of billions of dollars in the case of Ukraine. So it's enormous amount of money to Ukraine, but it's not, this is, the economy is not going to go one way or the other because of what's happening in Ukraine. The economy is at risk because of the enormous spending of Joe Biden. So trillions, more than 10 trillion dollars of incremental spending over the next 10 years. So it's adorfs anything that's happened in our economy for forever. And it also is creating that misbalance

between assets and liabilities because the inflation is creating a need to raise interest rates in a way that's gonna have lots of ripple effects. So I think the economy is at a lot of risk, but I don't think the economy is at a lot of risk, but I don't think the primary issue is gonna be Ukraine. It's gonna be much more about how we deal with this mismatch that's been created

by these terrible policies of Joe Biden. Well, that's actually refreshing to hear. So I don't know, maybe not. Yeah. That was not meant to be optimistic. Well, I've been really worried about the pastry between the China's negotiating. And I've been thinking that that would throw us

into the number two slot, especially after this stuff with Saudi and I ran. And then the way I understood it, like I just said, I thought that if they would negotiate that, we're going right into a full-blown recession. So let's move into what is the American way of renewal? Well, this is, I wanna step back here because when you think about, people have asked me

about the book, they say, oh, it's such super power parallel, like wow, like that is that scary. And then you read the book and the books kind of optimistic. How do you reconcile that? How do you reconcile that? And I tell the story, which kind of puts in perspective, you're younger than me. So you don't remember this, but I lived through a period

just like this, felt a lot the same in the late 70s. So I was 14, 15, in 1979. We had 15% inflation. We were in a recession. We had gas lines that went around the block. During the card administration to get gas because we were shortages, there were odd days and even days. And you can only get gas on whether you were an odd day or an even day.

And I remember sitting with my dad in the gas lines, we had one of these station wise, the country square, I had wood on the sides, waiting for gas. And there was desert one in 1979, where Jimmy Carter sent special operations into Iran to try to rescue the hostages. There was a crash on the stands. We lost eight service members.

It was an emiliation, just like Afghanistan. 80% of Americans thought the country was heading the wrong direction, 1979. 1983, I'm at West Point. I'm walking down these beautiful pathways, mountains all around. You feel like you're at the top of the world. America's back.

Inflations in check. The economy's growing. D-regulation tax cuts have made a huge difference for the economy. The military was back on track. There was a build-up which ended the Cold War six years later in 1989, 1989. It was morning in America. Four years it was morning in America. Four years later, morning in America. And why was that?

Because of the pro-growth, pro-American policies of Ronald Reagan, it made a huge difference. And so the point there is a leadership matters. We've been here before, it's the American tradition. We get to the edge of the cliff and we pull ourselves back. And that's what's happening at the edge of the cliff and we need leadership to pour ourselves back. The second story I wanna tell you,

and then this will show you the path on renewal and innovation, is I was born in Pittsburgh. I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania up near Scranton, but after the Army, I came back to Pittsburgh and I lived in Pittsburgh and I joined a small company and eventually ran this technology company. We took public. But on weekends, I used to run and I'd run through a Shanley Park and you get up to the top

of Pittsburgh and you see down the Menongaheela River and you see all those steel mills that were now just the carcasses of the by-gun days. And then you come up through Oakland and you get to University of Pittsburgh, which is now the Life Sciences Center, one of the Life Sciences Center of the country because of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. And you keep going to see Carnegie Mellon. And Carnegie Mellon had all this basic federal funding for R&D, which is critical to innovation. But then it had these entrepreneurs that graduated

and then started these companies that drew on great talent from across Pennsylvania and across the country. And that became the basis for the renewal that took place in Pittsburgh. In my company, we took public, was on the skyline. We had a building, free markets was the name of the company. And we were like the hot startup that was part of the technology renewal in Pennsylvania.

The two things that those stories hadn't common, the renewal of Ronald Reagan and the renewal of Pittsburgh, is that it was focused leadership that was dealing with the challenges of the moment. And the challenges required different solutions. It's not like you can say, hey, let's take Ronald Reagan's playbook. Let's do that in 2024.

No, no, no, no. It's you have to have clarity of vision of the America you want. You have to have clear policies that are dedicated to dealing with the root cause problems and you have to have execution. And so in Super Powell and Parent, what I try to lay out here is an innovation agenda, a renewal agenda that brings back productivity,

that brings back dynamism to our economy, restores the American dream, but also makes us strong. So we can combat China at home and abroad. And there's really three pieces to it. It's very simple. It's educate our people. We can talk about what that means in terms of schools

and skilled workforce. It's educate our people. We can talk about what that means in terms of schools and skilled workforce. It's ensure technological leadership. And so there's a whole series of things we need to do to reverse what I described to you with the Chinese being in the lead. And here's the one that probably is talked about too little, data. Data, there was an article in the economist

a couple of years ago that said, data is the new oil. It is the strategic asset that's going to determine which country's rise and fall. It's not quite like oil, because when you use oil, what's gone? When you use data, you can use it over and over again. Controlling data, using data for innovation, using data for strategic advantage is one of the core things to maintaining leadership in the world. China has a data strategy.

China is looking at the fit bit data of the soldiers in Afghanistan to see what's going on. China is using the data from TikTok. China is using the data from its own people to drive artificial intelligence and remote vehicles. Data is a strategic asset, and we are not treating it as such. So the policies I'm laying out are education, talent policies,

technology policies and data policies is a renewal agenda to take America forward. And this addresses a lot of things, and we can talk about them, but the one thing it addresses is, those folks I met on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania that the whole system's left them behind. And they're angry and pissed off. And my big takeaway, and I talk about this in the book, is they have every right to be.

The last 20 years has been great for lots of people, mostly at the top that already had assets, that the system was working the elites. It's been pretty bad for a lot of other people who had real income stay flat, who didn't have opportunity, who sent their kids away to war, who got screwed by fentanyl in their communities, who were dealing with the crime in the inner cities.

So this renewal plans, I'll plan for all Americans. Well, I wanna dive into each and every one of those pillars. Real quick though, I'd like to take a break. I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patreon support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one of a kind stories to the public.

Go to patreon.com, slash vigilance, elite, and support the Sean Ryan Show today. All right, David, we're back from the break. Let's dive into these three pillars. So let's start with talent. Yeah, talent, if you think about running a business, and you've experienced this too, I mean, the quality of the people on the team

make all the difference between winning and losing, succeeding and failing. And we've been blessed in America where we've had the greatest workers and the most entrepreneurial people in the world, but we need to continue to do what's required to be able to compete and win on the global stage. And there's a lot of things that are happening

that are chipping away at that. Mostly starts with our schools. So our schools, as I mentioned earlier, what we saw during COVID should have been a wake-up call for all of us. So if you look at the data, we're losing the quality of our students in terms of mass science and engineering against the developed countries in the world,

like 18th, in developed countries in terms of the quality of our students if you take a test worldwide. That was, you know, 30 years ago, that was not the case. We were, you know, one of the greatest education systems in the world, but we're losing steam. This episode is brought to you by Rebel Ice Cream. With less than one gram of sugar in most pints,

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People could look over the shoulder and see the history of America that's being taught. They could learn about the fact that, you know, teachers are introducing our kids to sexual concepts and sexualization and playing that role is an intermediary as opposed to parents being the ones that talk about their kids about that and and help them understand gender and all those things. That shouldn't be teachers. And the school system, the public school system is failing. If you look over the last 20 years, the spending has increased fairly dramatically in education, but 70% of that has gone to administration rather than actual teachers and the quality of teachers.

So this is a rallying cry, this moment for dramatic reform of our education system. And, and we're seeing that in key states. We're seeing that. That COVID really empowered parents. We're seeing in school board races where parents are running to replace, uh, woke school boards. We're seeing that in states like Florida, uh, in Arkansas, where Sarah Huckabee couple of weeks ago just got past her education bill to really begin to change this. And at the core, none of this is going to change. It's going to be incremental until we break the back of the teachers unions. And the problem we have is that that's a monopoly.

It's a monopoly and it's standing in the way of choice. And so we need to introduce the concept of choice where kids have the money that the public's gonna spend on them. And we should support education like on their backs, like a backpack. And the kid and the money goes to the place that their parents think is gonna be best for that kid. And so this I hope will give new momentum

to the idea of choice. You brought, you had an interesting fact in your book that I found alarming. You said that seven point seven, there was only been a seven point seven percent increase in teachers in the past 20 years, but there's been a 75% increase in school administrators. That's right.

How does that happen? How do you dump 75? It doesn't make any sense to me at all. What's bloat? It's bureaucracy, it's wokeness. It basically you lose sight of the mission. The mission is all about the kids. It's like every dollar.

I mean, honestly, Sean, go to our military today. Look at the tooth-to-tail ratio. How much money is with the troops and the front line and the weapons, and how much is on everything else. And you'll see even that ratio is changing. It's a byproduct of bad leadership. It's a byproduct of losing sight of the mission. And I think it's fairly a byproduct of this progressive ideology, this putting all sorts of Christmas tree ornaments on the mission of schools or the military at the expense of the actual mission, which is to educate our kids. So we've got a real problem there, and that's a building block for our renewal.

We've had this happen through the Bush administration, it happened through the Obama administration, it happened through the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration, were there spikes, or was this a steady incline? It's a steady increase, but I think the progressive, woke, rallying cry has only grown. I think that has definitely grown, and I think that's pervasive in our team. By the way, my mom and dad are both teachers. So I'm pro teacher. I say that in the book.

I am, I reckon, and the people to change my life was a teacher and a football coach who showed me the path to leadership in the world. So I want to just say our teachers are critical, but they're locked in a system which they can't possibly perform their job and they're been hijacked by this teacher union ideology that's taking us in a terrible direction.

And so we've got to change that. And the only way to change it is like, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, the things on the margin are like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. We got to change it structurally. And I think the concept of choice is the pathway to real structural change. And then there are going to be some great public schools that give great opportunity to kids, but they're going to have to compete for the dollars. And, you know, the important thing for us to say on this is that broken school system,

the people that hurts the most are minorities and blue collar kids. It is the biggest, biggest barrier to true opportunity because the people that have money can send their kids to any school they want. It's the people that are dependent on the public school system and locked in a system that's just not giving them what they need that are relegated to, you know, not an adequate education and not an adequate opportunity. So this is great for the American dream

to fix our schools and give opportunity to everybody. So that's one big piece on talent. The second big piece, there's three pieces that I talk about in the book. The second big piece is skilled workers. You know, when you and I were growing up, the path to skilled workforce, the path to success, the American Dreamers go to college. And I grew up on a college campus. Can we move back to the school? Yeah, I'm sorry. I jumped too quickly there. It's, um, right now we're in Williams from County, Tennessee.

These are some of the best ranked schools in the entire country. I just had an 18 month old. Every friend, acquaintance that we have that has kids doesn't matter what age, and this county is yanking their kids from the public school system, all of them. Everyone's home school, and now your starting to see these.

Despite the fact that they're great schools, you say? Despite the fact that these are the best schools in the country. They're yanking their kids out of the public school system. And what you're seeing are these clusters of these little communities popping up where it's a group of parents and they, and, and, and they homeschool their kids.

And, and one parent does it on Monday, then another one does it on Tuesday. I don't know one person that's sending their kid to the public school system. Yeah. And I would like to be able to send my son to the public school system, but I feel like because everybody's yankin' their kids

out of the public schools in this county, there's not gonna be any funding. So how are we gonna restore faith in the public school system? Well, you know, what's gonna happen is that what you're describing has so many bad consequences of it because you are still paying for the schools because the schools paid for it by taxes.

So the people that are doing that are essentially able to afford to do it. And the people that can't do that or the people that are living month to month who can't afford it. So it furthers the gap between those who have opportunity and those who don't and the lack of understanding between the two.

And ultimately, I don't think you can fundamentally change education without it being pretty disruptive. It's gonna be pretty chaotic, because the idea of choice is gonna create just what you said for everybody, because it's not just the people who can afford it, but everybody's got backpack full of money on the kid, and they can go anywhere.

And then the public schools have to compete on their capacity to have somebody like you say, no, no, it's, well, I could afford to do anything with the kid. I want to put him there. And the path from this moment to that is going to be painful. It's going to be chaotic. But the fact that it's going to be painful and chaotic shouldn't deter us from doing it because the consequences of staying on the current path are just disastrous. But the fact that it's going to be painful and chaotic shouldn't deter us from doing it, because the consequences of staying on the current path are just disastrous.

What are some of the things you foresee happening that are going to be chaotic? Well, it's already starting to happen where I think you're going to see more and more choice. And so the more that people are taking or have the capacity to have public funds go with the kid, the more pressure that's gonna put on underperforming schools. And the more pressure's on underperforming schools, they're gonna have to shut down, or they're gonna have to alter themselves dramatically to compete.

But the process of going from here to there is gonna be chaotic in the sense that schools are gonna fight. There's gonna be fight over taxes. This is gonna be a very chaotic fight, but a fight that's necessary. It's not like we're not going to make them one day and say, oh, we've passed this legislation and we're in good path. Now, it's going to be sort of bottom up.

School boards, state legislatures, and a fight for who gets to decide. And, you know, 10 times out of 10, I'd put my faith in the capacity of parents to pick the schools that are best for their kids, to influence through school boards, and not the state to decide that they're gonna create a school system

that's good for everybody. That competition and that parental involvement, I think is gonna take us in the right path. But, and as I said, it's absolute school reform is great for all of us. It's really great for working class families and my Norse right now, they're the ones who suffer the most from such a weak school system. So when you talk about a choice, when the parents have a choice, where they send their son, their child to school, are you saying that in order to go to a charter

private school that would be state or federal or local funding? Yeah, I'm saying that the funding that you put into that right now for every kid in your county, there's a certain amount of money that gets allocated to that kid. And that money right now gets put through the public school system.

If you flip the switch tomorrow and said, that money's to the kid, and then you could go to a religious school, you could go to a charter school, you could go to the public school, it's up to you the best way to do that. All of a sudden the parents have the power. They pay the taxes, but the taxes come back to them

in the form of a tuition voucher where they can go anywhere they want. And that competition and that empowerment of parents is gonna make a big difference in terms of what teachers schools teach, how they compete, and what the quality is. So I have one question. How are you going to trust the parents to take the money and put it towards the child's

school? How are you going to keep people from just collecting the money and then putting them back into a public school? Well, there's no money that actually goes to the parent. The money is in the form of a support of voucher, an ability to use the resources that would have been dedicated to the public school system in pursuit of education in some certified form. So it can't just be, you know, any option for education, it has to be a way to ensure

that the quality of education is adequate for all, but in a way that's very not top-down driven from the government, that's a balancing act. We need to make sure that if public funds are paying for education, that it meets a certain standard of quality and certification so forth, so we know if a kid graduate of my school, they've got a good education. At the same time, we need to have a competition within schools to deliver on the best education possible. That's the dynamic you're trying to create. Okay, so it would be similar to like a scholarship.

Right. It's not just a welfare check. Here you go. We trust you to do it. Absolutely not. Okay, absolutely not. Moving on, moving on to the next pillar. Okay.

Yeah, there's two other parts of talent that I just talked about. One is skilled workforce. And if you look at what's happening today in Pennsylvania around the country, is there's a mismatch between, well, there's a couple things. One is there was always the mantra when I was growing up and I suspect new grew up at the path to the American Dreamers College. You got to get a four year degree. And in my hometown, like most people didn't go for a four-year degree, but that was the mantra. And so you've got a lot of kids going to college when they necessarily shouldn't have to go to college. And maybe that's not the right path for them.

And at the same time, there's a huge gap in a highly qualified workforce technically trained to meet the opportunities that are in our economy today. And semiconductors is a good example. So one of the challenges that we have with semiconductors, and I was just part of a big study that looked at these, is that they can't find the workforce in the United States to fill all those great jobs. They're not college education jobs necessarily, but they're technical jobs, which should have great middle class living and opportunity and so forth.

And so there's a certain subset of our population that should have the opportunity to opt out of college and develop great skills so they can have the kind of middle-class, great existence, great jobs that the steelworkers had in the 50s in Pittsburgh where, hey, you can have a great house, you know, have, take great vacations, you would have a great middle class existence rather than living month a month or a paycheck to paycheck. We don't have, we're not geared to creating that sort of capability today. We have community colleges, we have some technical schools, but it's tiny relative to the demand. And the gap that you see in employers,

when I was traveling across Pennsylvania, manufacturing firms, chemical companies, fracking, fracking's huge in Pennsylvania, I talked to the people that run the fracking companies, I went and visited a bunch of rigs, they can't hire enough people in Pennsylvania to meet the needs so they import them from Oklahoma or Texas. So there's a huge opportunity to reorient our kids, a subset of our kids, to these great

careers and great jobs. We need community colleges that do that, technical schools that do that. We need to think about the funding of that, veterans benefits that would typically be with the VA, GI Bill for college, should be dedicated to also be able to do that. Pell grants, there's a whole way that we can both create these opportunities, a good example in Tunkanic in Pennsylvania, industry, and like home and community college have come together

to create a whole technical program, a two year degree for four or five key areas in fracking in the oil and gas industry. And those are key gaps, but that's, I don't know, 60 or 100 kids. I don't remember exactly what it is, but it's tiny, relative to the demand both in Pennsylvania and nationally. So these be a whole focus on skilled workforce that creates opportunity for people to really build their skills. And this also will help people that are, in some cases, there's been a lot of folks that have been put out of work by globalization

and typical manufacturing jobs and so forth have gone abroad. Some of those need to come home, we'll talk about that in a minute, but some of those aren't ever coming back. And we need to help people retool and be able to compete in the new economy. So that's the second piece. I have a third piece, but do you,

any follow up on that? I do, I have a question. So you think that a lot of the, the jobs aren't being filled because there's no skilled workers. A big media narrative is they're not being filled just because government spending's out of control and people become lazy. Well, some of that's true.

I mean, clearly we paid people under the Biden administration not to work in the early days of the COVID response. So, we've got a, we've got a cultural drift where kids don't necessarily have the same determination to work. So that's a real thing. I'm not trying to end anyway, minimize that. We had the misincentives where if you make it easy,

we can have a decent life without working, that looks pretty good to a lot of people. So that's a second problem. And then we definitely have a mismatch with the skills that are required and the skills training that's available for those enterprising people that really want to work and build a great middle class existence.

How do we motivate the laziness? Well, you can disincentivize at amendment. You and I both learned the hard way. I think I started in the army. I think my first salary was 19,000 a year. And you had to work and the people that were joining the military at the time, it was a path, it was a path to opportunity,

it was a path to moving forward. So you've got to create that, hey listen, there's no free lunch. And if you want to be a participant in our society, you've got to go do it. And I think we've become a little too lax on that. Certainly, COVID perpetuated that, I'm afraid. How do you think that's gonna play out with the vote?

I mean, there's a lot, I don't know how many, but it seems to be there is a lot of people that are just totally fine with just living off the system. So, well, I don't know. I've got, I've got, I'm an optimist. You know, I'm an optimist. I can't help myself. And I see all the problems.

But in the end, I believe that Americans deep down inside know two things. And we got to reinforce these messages over and over again. But, you know, being a citizen of America, being a citizen of the United States is a huge privilege. It's part of the greatest country in the world. Even on our worst day, America is better than you know, our poorest among us are richer than 90% of the world. It is a marvelous country. It's a privilege, liberty, freedom, and responsibility. It doesn't keep going unless we keep it going. This is what I try to reinforce with my kids, and this is what I think we need to reinforce with that next generation, which is this will only be the America that we know and love if we actually all act to do it that way.

What's that mean? It means builders and workers in the economy that make know and love if we actually all act to do it that way. What's that mean? It means, you know, builders and workers in the economy that make it great. It means people that run for office that are high quality people that want to serve. It means, you know, a great military that's not struggling with huge recruiting challenges because people don't believe anymore. So you know, we're at that moment. It feels a lot like 1979 where people are questioning America's greatness at home. I understand that, but the way we get through that

is we lead. And so, I don't know if that's too pie in the sky, but that's the way I think about it. I hope you're right. I hope you're right. All right, let's move on. Yeah, third thing on talent is just immigration. And this is so polarizing right now. And I mean, I saw this firsthand. So everywhere

I went on the campaign trail, I would say, illegal immigration, you know, the open borders killing us. And so I went to the border, I went to Yuma, had Brandon Judd, who is the you know, president of the Border Patrol Union, take me around along with some local leaders. And the crisis we have on the border is beyond anything I could have imagined. The degree to which it's porous, the degree to which is controlled by the cartels, the degree to which we have huge human suffering, exploitation of women. I mean, it's just, it's awful. And so, and the Biden administration has in the last two years

taken a situation that was moving in the right direction and very stable under President Trump and made it orders of magnitude worse. And the reason that affects Pennsylvania, which is not obvious to some people, is that open border results in fentanyl coming across a border and making its way across the country but into Pennsylvania

a couple of days. And my hometown where I grew up is right down in Route 80. That fentanyl comes right down from New York and around 80 and others. We had 5,000 fentanyl deaths in Pennsylvania last year, 100,000 nationally. I mean, this is a crisis. That's not talking about other people that are addicted,

rehabilitation. This is a national crisis that's perpetuated and part by the border. There's also the, you know, illegals coming into different parts of Pennsylvania and there's the crime in the city of Philadelphia, but the fentanyl crisis is a particular consequence of this. So you can't start an immigration conversation

without starting with that. It's a huge thing, I think the Biden administration has been irresponsible on it, and it needs to be fixed. But there's another side of the immigration story that you actually can't even talk about these days because it's so controversial, but it's the fact that we've were a nation of immigrants, and we need a legal immigration process.

That works. That works. We can't stop having a legal immigration process. My wife is a legal immigrant. My wife was a Egyptian Christian, and her father served in the Egyptian military and brought his daughters. My wife included, to America so they could practice their religious freedom.

And she's had a remarkable American dream. Her father, Maud Lons, was a mechanic and then became an entrepreneur and is wildly successful. And has been extraordinarily great contributor and citizen to America. That's what's made America great. So we can't, in our desire to cut off that border,

which must happen, lose sight of the need to continue to have an immigration system that makes sense. And what I describe in the book is what President Trump actually recommended, but wasn't able, didn't, wasn't able to implement in his administration, which is reforming the immigration system. So it's more merit-based.

So if you look across America today, we've got big gaps. Some of those can be filled by the training that I'm describing, but there's gaps we have that are really standing in the way of economic growth that bringing in legal immigrants. Don't displace American workers at all. And there are critical parts to our economy continuing to grow and be prosperous. So the third part of the chapter is, listen, let's talk about this, it's conservatives, let's talk about this as people, someone who actually witnessed the border and wants to stop. But let's also talk about what we need to do and legal immigration to make

the system work. President Trump had these ideas, didn't implement them. The current legal immigration system has a lot of problems with it. A reformed immigration system, I think, had addressed some of those problems. Why has the Biden administration just completely abandoned the border, especially with the fentanyl? Do you think any of this comes from Chinese influence? The reason I'm asking is because China is supplying

the car tells and teaching the car tells how to make the world's most deadliest fentanyl. They've already, they're already implementing the next thing that's going to take over fentanyl, one from heroin to fentanyl. Now this other thing is getting ready to come out. It's already being pushed across the border. We know Biden has ties to China.

Do you think? Well, I think for sure that China sees this as a very insidious way to undermine America. So the fentanyl, as you said, that's manufacturing in China, comes through the Mexican cartels, teaching the Chinese, the Mexicans to manufacture. And all of that, I totally agree with.

And this is one of the many ways, when I say China has a whole of nation's strategy for winning, this is one of the many ways when I say China has a whole of nation's strategy for winning, this is one of the ways that they do so indirectly. And so I'm certainly, I'm sure they're happy to see the way this is developing, whether, I don't think so in terms of the Biden piece, and I think this is essentially a direct, the border policies of Joe Biden are a direct consequence of what he ran on. He ran against Trump. He said that Trump had done a terrible direct, the border policies of Joe Biden are a direct consequence of what he ran on. He ran against Trump. He said that Trump had done a terrible job with a border when I don't think that was true.

And then he's been pulled to the left by the progressives that have essentially continued to say, you got to have open border policies. I think that will likely change because it's so obvious what a disaster it is. How do we combat this? Well, we need, I mean, we had a path. I mean, this isn't hard. I actually think that we should consider in a very disciplined way the use of the military to work with the Mexicans to stop the cartels.

You know, we did so in Colombia some years ago. I think it's that insidious of a risk. And so that's one piece, but we need to close down the borders. I mean, that's the most obvious thing. And it's not like, it's not obvious some of the things you could do when you're there at the border. You can literally look across the Rio Grande. You can see the cartel guys up in the bushes, sending people across.

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Look at the cameras at 900s of people are coming across. Unchecked. I mean it is wide open. It's not like it's, there's been efforts to curtail it and they just haven't been successful enough. It is wide open. So there's some basic things we can do to secure the border. Whether that'll be

adequate or not, I doubt it. We probably need to do more extensive things. But at the heart of it's the cartels. It's big business. And they're not going to stop. Do you think Mexicans going to be open to working with the US military to resolve this problem? I would hope so. I mean, it's the same in Columbia. It's challenging because it's economic and the economic benefits are pervasive throughout the society. But the consequences of not getting it right in terms of having a good relationship with your biggest neighbor and there's all sorts of other leverage we have that we found through the NAFTA negotiations.

So, I think there's a path to getting the Mexican government and we working together, but it takes leadership and we haven't had it. How much do you think the car tells to getting the Mexican government and we working together, but it takes leadership. We haven't had it. How much do you think the cartels infiltrated the Mexican government? I don't know. I substantially as my guest, but I'm not an expert on it, but that'd be my guess. Okay. Moving on to technology. Technology.

Yeah, let me just say two things on technology. Big picture. Man, you gotta be careful here. You got to be careful here because what you don't want to do is Develop a path to technology leadership. The is sort of try to be like China We got to have a strategy that's not China. We've got this markets Free market system that's led us to have the greatest economy in the world, the greatest technology in the world.

So we can't become China. We also can't become the left with industrial policy where you say, hey, we're going to spend a much more money. We're going to pick companies. And by the way, those companies, they have to have certain climate change strategies and ESG and childcare. And we're going to dictate that. And that's the

price you pay for the government and the government's picking winners or losers. We can't do that either. But we do have a problem and we have to confront the problem. And for those people that say, hey listen, just let the markets work. Well, we've been letting the markets work and the markets aren't working because I just described you 37 out of 44. Under the boot, a Trump administration, Bob Lighthizer did that same analysis that just described you in 2017 on 20 technologies and said the Chinese were in the lead in 10. That was five years ago. So we got to do something six years ago.

So we got, we've got to do something. And here's the two things I think we should do. One is we got to, we got to increase our basic R&D. So basic R&D is something that the private sector doesn't invest in because it's long, you know, they're investing for decades, they don't invest in at the level that we need to. And the benefits of that have always been critical for the space program, for satellites, for the internet, all these things are a byproduct of basic R&D. Our basic research and development today is about half of what it was in 1950

as a percent of GDP. So we got to invest more money in basic science. Second thing we have to do, in my opinion, is, and it's unique to this moment, we have to nudge the private sector to invest in those areas that are critical to national security, critical to our economic success, AI, 5G, those sorts of things. Right now, the capital that's going there is not inadequate.

It's huge expenditures, huge. We're fighting against subsidies that are coming from other parts of the world and the Chinese in particular, and we're losing. And so what I propose in the book is a way to ensure that private sector capitals moving towards the sectors that matter most, not the companies. I don't want the government picking companies. And I essentially argue for three things. And I learned a lot of this through why I saw happening with fracking and the regulation that I saw in Pennsylvania

and elsewhere. But we have to look at those sectors very carefully in terms of regulation and make those more accessible to private capital and reduce the regulations and places where we think it's making it hard to invest. Fracking is a good example, not national security wise, but a good example. But for those technologies, 5G is over.

Second, we have to create tax incentives to invest in those areas that are going to be most beneficial for the country. And then I recommend something called an innovation fund that concept them in innovation fund. It's essentially this. If you want a lot of private capital to come to a particular sector, have the private capital invest side by side with

the government. So if you want money in satellites, you have the government invest side by side in a fund. And that fund, the government would take first loss and the government would cap its return at like 15%. And so if you're a private investor, you're saying, well, I look at satellite, and it's so overwhelmingly, or I look at artificial toast, it's so overwhelming. But that government side-by-side partnership makes the likely return a little higher

and minimizes the risk. So I'm gonna put my private capital into that fund and my private capital investing in companies in that area. And that concept, which isn't what China does, and it's not what the left is describing, but it's also not lazy fare. It's also not hands off. That's the kind of thinking I think we'll need to make sure we win this technology battle. And in the book, I talk about, hey, what would Milton Friedman say? Because Milton Friedman's like the free markets icon that all conservatives point to, and I said, listen,

I'm not sure what Milton Friedman would say. He probably would have questions, but my question to Milton Friedman, hey, we're losing. We're losing, man. So what's your solution? This is the way that I think we can rely on that, which makes America economy the best,

which is the risk, the reward, the free capital, the allocation, the market forces, but also nudge it in a way that's going to keep America safe. I believe you said there was 41 sectors of technology. In that report, I was describing, this is just one report, but it was the Australian think tank. They identified 44 and said China was in the lead in 37. What would be the top five, do you think we need to invest in? Well, certainly semiconductors is a huge area, because semiconductors are what drives a lot of the economy and we're completely dependent on suppliers outside the United States for semiconductors.

That's a disaster situation. The Trump administration tried to start turning the wheel on that. I'm sorry, the Trump administration, the Biden administration passed the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS Act didn't have enough money, but more than that, the Chips Act now has started to bring all this social policy on top of it, which is exactly what the big fear is. But semiconductors is one for sure. Artificial intelligence is one for sure. You're seeing the power of artificial intelligence and chatbot, the power and the risk, the threat.

I mean, it's scary. Certainly quantum science, which allows for all sorts of developments in other areas, I think probably life sciences, there's huge genetic steps being taken that have huge implications for national security for the economy, maybe satellites, I don't know, but there's five or six big ones that have huge opportunity. Do you have any insight on how far behind we are in the AI race?

I really don't. I really don't. First of all, it's very hard to decipher and then you see a breakthrough, like Chatbot, and that gives you two, for me, it gives me two reactions at the same time. Wow, like mesmerizing, like what the power of that thing could be, and, woo, scary. What that might do at home, but also in the hands of somebody else. And I was speaking, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago with the CEO of Microsoft, I saw him at something, and we're friends. And I said, tell me about this.

Like, what do you think? And he said, it's the most significant development in technology since the personal computer. Oh, wow. This is, he said, this is huge. And it's going to have enormous consequences, some of which we don't even begin to know yet. So that's good consequences are back. I think it's going to be both. I think it could be both.

Yeah, it could be both. Do you have any, can you give us a mincello on any of those consequences? Well, one of the things that it certainly is doing is it's just like the personal computer was in the internet was, it could be highly disruptive to businesses. Because if you think about,

I know businesses that require people to write things or that require people to process data or things like that, this has an ability to replace all that in an nanosecond. So I imagine as it becomes more mainstream, it could result in very significant disruption in some industries, elimination of jobs. Now it may create other opportunities and jobs

on the other side, it's a little too early to tell, but at a minimum, this is creating a huge pressure on business models that are a huge or opportunity, depending on how you look at it, on business models that are highly dependent on human processing. They could recreate this entire interview and have you say something completely different. Yes, that's the scary.

So your capacity to take all the information and present something that would be credible as the words or ideas of others, when in fact they weren't, is very plausible. I mean, there's two scary things about it. One scary thing is they could do that and present an interview that's not far from this. That's one scary thing. Another scary thing is they might present an interview that seems very credible, that's completely different

than this. And that is their lies, the problem, because one of the things that I found on the campaign trail, I'm sure you find it with your listeners and your interviewers, interviewees, people of lost trust. They've lost trust in their leaders. They've lost trust in the church, they've lost trust in the military, they've lost trust in business leaders, they've lost trust in the church. They've lost trust in the military.

They've lost trust in business leaders. They've lost trust in government. The trust levels are 15, 20% schools, schools, they've lost trust in schools. They've lost trust in the media. They've lost trust in the accuracy of the information they receive. And this, if used poorly, could just reinforce that. I mean, who speak, who

am I really talking to? What is really being said? Is it actually, and so you've sort of think about like an existential question, how does a society run if nobody trusts anything? Right? That's, that's, so that's the worry I have and, and finding leaders that can give people faith or forthright can lead through this deal with these complexities. It's not easy. It's not easy. It's this AI stuff scares the hell out of me. I mean, for anybody that's not putting this together, they could replicate the president

of the United States and have him say something completely different that looks 100% real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, by the way, what we'll get to that in my third part of the book, we talk about. But part of that is the inaccuracies in the lack of trust and social media in particular.

And that's a big thrust. But the absence of privacy on our information combined with the pervasiveness of a social median narrative that's often completely inaccurate and misleading, that's feeding the mistrust. Yeah. Yeah. Do we have anything else to cover in technology? I think we hit it, man.

All right. Let's move on to data. Yeah, so dataless. I'm trying to get my head around these concepts in a way that I really understand them, but can also explain them. And I don't want to present myself as an expert. But as I said earlier in the interview,

innovation is a byproduct of data. National Security is a byproduct of data. Data is a superpower. Data is one of the defining things for who wins and loses, the next decades of leadership in the world. And China has a plan for data. China is very purposeful about data. And because China is an authoritarian country,

it has much more control of data. And my big point in this chapter is we don't have a data plan. We don't have a strategy for dealing with data. What kind of data are we talking about here? All data, I mean, if you think about as an example, one of the reasons that the United States responded is incredibly quickly as it did to deal with COVID, you gotta give, I think President Trump appropriate

credit for that warp speed was because the pharmaceutical company shared data. That data was the core for innovation and breakthrough. So data is a critical driver of innovation and remote vehicles in artificial intelligence. And I mean, data is the underlying asset in AI. You're processing enormous amounts of data in pursuit of outputs that come out of chatbots. So data is really critical. And we don't have a holistic data strategy

for the country. I talk about three things in the book that this isn't comprehensive, but it's three things that I think are quite valuable. The first is privacy. We don't have a privacy regime for our data. And if it doesn't scare you, it scares me that when I order a pair of sneakers on the

internet for the next three months, every time I get a social media or email or whatever, I get some new advertisement for sneakers. So, I mean, God only knows where my data is going, who's processing and how it's being used. We've lost complete control of our data. And I mean, there's the thing at the end, you sign and click, who knows who gets what. You know, we are all vulnerable to our data floating out there in incredible ways. So we have no model for protecting privacy appropriately. And it's very decentralized and inadequate. And it puts us all at risk and credit card theft and all these things are going up dramatically,

identity theft, all this stuff because we don't have privacy or at at the same time, our individual data is growing exponentially. The amount of data around you is hundreds, maybe thousands of times what it was a year ago, because look how much more you're engaging in ways that your digital footprint is growing. That's one thing. Second thing is we've got this pervasive social media environment. You know, I've been going through just this interest to me. I'm old school. I like newspapers. You know, so when I get on an airplane, I like to pick up a newspaper and read it on the airplane. I'm a dinosaur this way. They don't sell, they don't sell

newspapers anymore. Yeah. You can't buy newspapers. Everything is online and most people get their news from non-traditional news sources. They get their information from social media. And the big tech firms are the purveyors of this social media landscape, which is the opposite of a marketplace of ideas. It's not, hey, you pick, you decide,

it's an entire narrative that's for the most part very left leaning and progressive, which is shaping our understanding or most Americans' understanding of the world, what's going on, the issues. And you just have to pick a couple examples to see that. And the Wuhan lab is the most obvious one, where it seems just common sense that if a

virus was started in Wuhan and And there and which everybody acknowledged and there's a lab in Wuhan that does all sorts of experimentation around such viruses That's just probably a connection between those two things Not 100% sure it doesn't mean the Chinese even tried to do it. I'm not even arguing for the intent. It just seems like that connection is highly likely and obvious. And yet for years, we've been so denerative that anyone who says that's being a conspiracy theorist and all this stuff.

And now, we just find out very recently, no, no, there's been a lot of serious people in the intelligence community and elsewhere that have been thinking that for a long time. That's a perfect example of why people have lost trust in what information they receive. And so we need to do something about that. We need to create some sort of obligation, some sort of accountability for social media to play a role as a marketplace of ideas

where it's actually not a one-sided era, but one way to do that is to create liability associated with what social media comes to. It's produced right now. They can basically produce anything. They're not liable. And so there's a whole set of things that we need to think about to reign in Big Tech, because they're playing a role with social media that I think is very counter to America's interest. There's also just as an aside, something that really pisses me off, but it's an example of, I think, the problem is that, you know, when we won the Cold War, the 50, 60, 70s,

80s, one of the things that made America successful was our big industry, particularly our technology firms cooperated with the US government and the Pentagon, because we were in pursuit of something together, which was America's security. That doesn't happen anymore. Project Maven, Google wouldn't have their workers, their developers wouldn't work with the Pentagon. None of the big tech firms worked with the Pentagon with the exception of Microsoft to some degree.

That's a huge problem. And so with an opportunity to be a US company and benefit all the ways it comes with that window of security and well-being that's being an American company, no, no, you got to do your part. So that's the second piece that I argue. I'll say the third piece and then whatever thought you have. The third piece is, and we're not in this alone. We've got great allies that we share everything with.

Intelligence, defense spending, the five I countries, which where we have the most trusted circle of Intel, we get there Intel, they get ours. We should have a data strategy that's consistent with them because the more data you have, the more of a benefit it is. So countries like Australia, countries like the UK, where we've got these deep integrated partnerships, we should think about how to have data regime

that goes head to head with China and puts us in a really strong position. And this is one of the areas that the next generation, hopefully 2024 and beyond, is gonna have to have a dedicated strategy. We don't have that now. Interesting. I don't have any, I don't have any questions, technology.

So, let's take a break and when we come back, we'll hit the next chapter. Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan show review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right David, here we go, the final start. All right, home stretch. So leading renewal, let's talk about confronting China and securing America. Yeah, you know, the thing about changing the direction of the country is you got to win elections

and you got to have ideas. And those two are related. You got to have leaders that can win primaries, win general elections, and then have ideas for taking the country forward, and then they got to execute them. And so when I was thinking about writing superpower and peril, I didn't want it to just be an ideas book.

I wanted to be a leadership book too, because that's what it's all about. It's all about leaders when I was telling that Ronald Reagan story, it's about the leaders. And so I identified a couple areas where I thought leadership was really, really important. And the first one was China. And when we talk about China, there's two things we need to do. We need to go to the gym at home. So you and I just spent an hour talking about the gym, you know,

data and technology and education. But you also need to confront China and have a strategy for how we deal with China. And so, and we need leaders who know how to do that And so I talk about my background in China You know I Went to China after I left the military for the first time in 1992 and I had read this book Which was called riding me iron rooster through China, which is this guy Paul Thoreau So I went into China, it was there for about probably six weeks,

just by myself with a backpack. And this train was this dilapidated train that drove through the countryside, but China was rural. And I went to Beijing, and there was, you know, handful of skyscrapers. I went running in the gardens in Shanghai.

There was no Caucasian people. Everybody was doing chai-sheen, that who is this crazy guy? There was two currencies, a local one and one for tourists. I mean, it was just a country from the almost left, left behind. And then I went back 15 years later, 16 years later, as a government official,

and it was just full of skyscrapers, a 10-year, 10-lane highway to the downtown of Beijing. And China was going through this incredible transformation, which sadly went off course and became increasingly a threat to American interest. And I saw that early on in the government. I was in the Commerce Department in 2005 and I was in charge of technology exports. And there was all sorts of pressure from the Chinese to export certain technologies. They came and talked to President Bush about the job

I was doing because they said I was being too just restrictive. I wrote a bunch of speeches, not beds. But what's happened since then is even far worse than anybody would have imagined because China has stolen all the technology, built its own indigenous capability. It's not been reciprocal on trade. So the deal was initially the initial vision was,

hey, we'll give access to US markets, you give access to China's markets. That never happened. And China took increasingly the interest of China, US diverged, and then President Xi came in, and went like that. Because President Xi had a view of the world, which was very counter to the United States. China's rightful place was on top, displacing America as the superpower.

And all that bad behavior that I'm describing got much, much worse under President Xi. And President Xi really created the techno authoritarian model that we've described. And unfortunately, what's happened over the last decade or so is our policy makers have been sleepwalking. Sleepwalking through this, they missed it. Republicans and Democrats alike missed it. They missed the growing risk of China. And then President Trump showed up.

And to his credit, and I gave him credit in the book, and I gave him credit on the campaign trail, he called out China for what it was, which is a true adversary, and began to put in places that have policies to deal with that, ensuring more reciprocal trade and so forth. And what I'm arguing for is a much more comprehensive strategy,

a whole of comprehensive strategy, a whole of nation strategy to address China. And China has a plan and we don't have a plan. And so that strategy has four parts. The first part is to decouple from China strategically. And you talked about, you mentioned this earlier, I mentioned this earlier, I mentioned it earlier, but during COVID, we discovered that we were dependent on China

for our supply chains for pharmaceuticals, shocking. I didn't know that, honestly, I didn't know that. I didn't know that 90% of the salmon conductors were manufactured 90 miles from mainland China. We have put ourselves in a position of huge vulnerability. So we need to very consciously bring those industries home that are critical to America's security, critical to our future.

And that's what I mean by strategic decoupling. Let's identify those key sectors, satellites, or AI, whatever it is. And let's make sure we've got the capability here at home. We can't be dependent on China. That's the first thing. Second thing is we've got a whole China countable. We call it called balls and strikes on the bad behavior.

The human rights abuses in China, we're not gonna go into China and fix their system for human rights, I'm not saying that, but we need to call it out for what it is. I mean, President Biden did a lot to call out what was going on in Saudi Arabia. There's millions of weekers killed out in China, and there's no voice.

But we also have to hold them accountable for COVID. The fact that the COVID virus became such a burden on the world, the United States, the millions of lives lost, the Troids of Dollars, with zero cooperation or transparency from China. And again, I'm not saying it was intentional that to start COVID, I don't know,

but we don't know because they haven't actually dealt with it in a transparent way. So that's the second thing. How would we hold them accountable? But we don't know, but we don't know, because they haven't actually dealt with it in a transparent way. So that's the second thing. How would we hold them accountable? Well, it could be sanctions, it could be a whole, if nothing else you start, by every time you talk about China,

and you start with that. Like literally just saying, hey, to the world, are you kidding me? Like why are you letting this bad behavior persist? That's been nowhere. President Biden has said nothing on that. And then there's all sorts of economic tools that we could use to say, hey, we're not going to do this

unless you do that. But because we haven't even called it out as bad behavior, it's very difficult to get that momentum now. But that's what we need to do. The third thing is involving investment. So you made the point that I ran an investment firm. My view in China hasn't, has only gotten more incrementally worried

as the situations evolve, but I just wanna put it in context. So I ran an investment firm that's one of the biggest in the world. We had 2% of our business in China, investing in broader markets. And if you go to most Americans today, 30% of the items in their homes are manufactured in China.

So, our economies are very integrated. So, when people say we need to stop all economic activity with China today, I'm not sure they totally understand what they're saying because not only do we have that huge amount of trade, but then the trade goes through other countries. So we sell things to the Netherlands that they then finish manufacturing and send it to China.

So our economies are very integrated. What we need to do on that strategic decoupling is make sure, first and foremost, we're not dependent on China-pr depending on that matters. And then the second thing we need to do in investment is we need to make, we need to create a process for ensuring nobody is investing in China, no company is investing in China, in a way that supports the Chinese military of the Communist Party. And today, we have investors in the Silicon Valley that are investing in artificial intelligence companies in China that are working with PLA

So that is completely unacceptable. So when we talk about investment in China and investment from China The most important thing I would start with and it's not happening today So all the you know all this for all the talk and the rhetoric, these things aren't happening, is I would strategically decouple in the way I described and I would put an investment review process in place. And the thing you would at least do then, is you would stop being dependent on China for things that matter and you would stop helping China in things that matter.

And that would be a huge step forward. And then we can begin to think about how we untangle our economy's further as we move forward. And I felt this on the campaign trail because I'd go into some manufacturers and they go, you know, China killed me, you know, like the outsourcing and all that stuff killed me to China. And then I go in the next one and there'd be like a Harley Davidson supplier and they'd say, hey man, China's our biggest market.

We're sending Harley Davidson to China. So as someone who's been an economic guy who's run a couple companies and been military, my basic view is let's start with, we can't do anything with China that's gonna sacrifice our security. And then once we get that done, let's start about what the next phase is.

All the time holding China to a very high standard. What do you think the repercussions are gonna be from China if this comes to fruition? I mean, they're involved in so many different aspects of the thing that really bothers me the most, I think, is our energy. You know, this is huge green energy initiative. Who's going to manufacture all of that? China. Who's got all the lithium mines? China. Well, this is the great, I mean, the great irony of the great irony of the Biden administration, right?

So energy policy has done two things, I think. It's made us less secure, less environmental, and more dependent on China. Let me describe what I mean by that. So I, Pennsylvania is a huge fracking state. Got great natural resources there. If Pennsylvania were a country, it'd be like the fourth biggest natural gas reserves in the world. So it's huge. And so when President Biden came in to office, he stopped the keystone pipeline, he doubled down on a number of regulations, and that was particularly challenging

for fracking. And yet fracking is very, very clean from an environmental perspective. It's very, very safe from an environmental perspective. So almost overnight, what happened is we became less secure because we went from being an energy exporter to an energy importer. So we were dependent on others. It was damaging economically because all those jobs in place like Pennsylvania and Texas and elsewhere were pushed back because the purchase is the restrictions on drilling and so forth. And that does just hurt the energy industry. It hurts all the derivative and there's these that come with it. And so we're less economically viable, we're less secure and it's worse for the environment because what happens when we're not bringing out natural gas and exporting it, we're importing much dirtier sources of fossil fuel from Nigeria or Saudi Arabia elsewhere. So in one fell swoop, Biden made us less secure.

He made us less economically viable and he made us less environmentally so. And I'm someone who, like I'm an environmentalist in the sense that I've got a ranch that I protect the things like I am very focused on protecting the environment, but I'm protecting in a way that's great for Americans, that's great for our industry, that's great for our national security. So that's the first thing. The second thing is all this spending in the Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, and even in the CHIPS Act, to some degree, but mostly those first two is pushing the green technology on and imposing it

really on our economy as part of this transition. And finally, as you say, most of what's required to make that green revolution happen is highly dependent on China. So we're making our economy more dependent on China rather than building the indigenous capability at home. So do we go back to fossil fuels or do you think we need to start looking

at nuclear energy? I definitely think we should start looking at nuclear energy. Westing house is in Pennsylvania, and absolutely, there's a next generation nuclear capability that has huge possibilities. The fossil fuel energy capabilities we have with natural gas is far cleaner than it's ever been in history and there's carbon sequestration, lots of other things. So there's lots of ways that we can continue to take advantage of fossil fuels in a much more carbon-friendly cleaner way, build out nuclear as a real possibility.

And listen, I'm not opposed to alternative fuels. I'm not opposed to the alternative industry. I'm opposed to being more dependent on China, and I'm opposed to a subsidy process that totally undermines the market. And that's what's happening in this push for clean energy. One question on your business dealings with China, even if they only were 2%, What I'd like to know is,

what was the turning point where you realized, was it COVID, was it the pharmaceutical industry? Well, the big difference I had, and I talk about this in the book, my, I wanted to sort of make a real point, and this became a very public thing, my difference with the founder of my firm, who is a big, you know, is a big

China supporter, is just not recognizing the threat from China. And so my view is that China has become an existential threat. It needs to be treated like an adversary, and that we need to have our economic policy, international security policy reflect that reality. And so I recognize that if you went to the top hundred companies in the world or companies based in the United States, US companies, many of them are highly dependent on selling products into China at the moment. That is important for American workers and all that stuff. So if we untangle from China's economy, it's going to have to be very careful how we do that to as it affects American workers.

But once you identify China as an adversary, then you start to do the kinds of things that I'm saying to mitigate your risk. And that's the point I try to make in the book. And that's how I reconcile all of it, which is to say what's become more and more clear over time as China as an adversary. And that was maybe more obvious sooner than people saw it, but it's certainly obvious after President Xi, and yet our country is not responding in a comprehensive way. I know your time's limited and more push in the envelope here.

My last question for you is, are you going to run for office? I'm thinking hard about it. So, I had basically decided I was probably never going to run for office when I'm thinking hard about it. So, you know, I had, I basically decided I was probably never going to run for office when I became a CEO of Bridgewater. And, you know, I had always been deeply involved in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. I was, I'm 57. I spent 35 of my years in Pennsylvania. You know, I've got a farm there. I've got my friends there, my mom and dad are there. So I'm deeply committed to Pennsylvania. But when the seat opened up and people approached me to run for it, I was probably not the right time for me. But then Afghanistan, as I said, just grabbed me. And the direction

of the country grabbed me and said, man, if people who have been blessed by all that America has don't run, who's going to run? You don't want the people running who have been blessed by all that America has don't run, who's gonna run? You don't want the people running who have no other alternatives. You want people to run who, you know, have had great experience and the benefit of everything America has to offer. And I feel like a lucky guy.

So that's why I ran the first time. And I put everything I had into it, you know, we ran a great race. Whenever you lose by 900 votes, there was 1.4 million votes cast. We lost by 900. Whenever you lose a election that close, it's not like the next day,

you say, oh, the motivation for running one away. It hasn't. I'm certainly want to serve. I want to find a way to contribute. I feel like people need to step up now. I feel like I want to step up. Whether running for the Senate in 24 is a way to do it or not, we haven't decided yet.

We're thinking about it, praying about it. It's a big, big thing for families to do it. It's not for the faint of heart. People ask me, what's it like? And I said, have you ever watched the movie Gladiator? And I said, yeah, okay. So imagine that. You're in the arena. People are in there throwing beer cans from the stands,

people cheering for you, people throwing stuff at you, and you got your sword, you're in there by yourself, it's just you, and then all of a sudden, the trap door comes up and there's the tiger. So you kill the tiger, and then next thing, you know, there's the chariot, and you're just in the arena. And it's a real privilege to do it, but it's a big thing for a family.

So we're thinking hard about it, but we haven't decided. Which way are you leaning? I'm having decided, honestly. I mean, I would tell you if I had, my thought was that this book was a great way to crystallize where I think the country needs to go. And a great way to get out there and talk about it,

and talk about it in Pennsylvania, talk about it nationally. And I thought that that process would give me some data, give me a sense of whether it was resonating, give me a sense of whether I felt like I had something more to offer here. So, but I'll call you when I know. All right.

Well, I hope you do. Thank you. I just want to say thank you for coming. It was an honor to be able to meet you and interview you and dig into your thoughts. And I hope to see you again. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Great opportunity.

The Bullwork Podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of déjà vu sprinkled on our PTSD. So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world. You document in a very compelling way all of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hangover. No shouting or grandstanding.

Principles over partisanship. The Bullwork Podcast. Wherever you listen.