Episode Info
- Season14
- Episode5
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Charlie Parton
Charlie Parton is a veteran diplomat and leading expert on China discussing the threat posed by tiny chips in smart devices and China's monopoly in chip production.
Episode Summary
A veteran diplomat and one of the leading experts on China, Charlie Parton, joins his old friend Sir Richard Dearlove to discuss the increasing and personally invasive threat posed by the tiny chips present in everything from your smart fridge to your Fitbit. It’s a remarkable conversation that will change the way we look at the modern technology that now fills our homes. They also delve into how China’s monopoly in the production of these chips has put the world in a very vulnerable position and what we can do to extract ourselves from this dangerous dependency.
Listen & Subscribe
- Watch on YouTube
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
- Listen on Spotify
Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the key choices and decisions affecting our world today. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane. This week, Australia entered its nuclear age, not that of weapons, but of its new state of the art nuclear powered submarines designed and built to counter growing Chinese aggression in the Pacific region. The subs are the jewels in the crown of the AUKUS Defense Pact, a mutual agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Speaking alongside President Biden, the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled the upgrades in San Diego, California. The new subs will be able to travel faster and further than their current diesel fleet, and Australia will have the ability to carry out long range strikes for the very first time. Also this week, the Brits unveiled a new defense paper, the government setting out its assessment of emerging threats. The Integrated Review Refresh, or IR23, was commissioned as a result of new threats from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to China's growing assertion and aggression. Sunak describes China as an epoch defining challenge, but one that needed to include engagement. Today, we are looking at some of the ways in which China is presenting a risk to our safety and security that may be less discussed than the headline grabbing moves in the South China Sea or in the summits publicly supporting Russia. Through China's monopoly of tech, our digital supply chain is growing vulnerable. And as more and more of our household and everyday devices and appliances are going online, something they all need to operate comes directly from China. Cellular modules, tiny chips which have the ability to transmit data pretty much independently, could be a chink in our digital armor. Someone who cares very deeply about this emerging risk is a longtime contact of my cohost Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of Britain's MI6. He's called Charlie Parton. He's a veteran British diplomat who spent decades based in and focused on Beijing. He was also a former special adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Let's get straight to the discussion.
INTERVIEW
Mcfarlane: Now we wanted to talk to you, Charlie, today because at a time when we're seeing how Russia now has powerful leverage over dozens of countries in the EU, they've been able to profit and finance their ruthless war in Ukraine from billions of dollars they've made from selling oil and gas to the continent, which the West is only very slowly and bit by bit managing to wean itself off from in various stages and sanctions. At a time that we're seeing all of this, we could be staring down the barrel of another similar situation, of leaving ourselves and our supply chains for things that we cannot do without in everyday life, leaving us vulnerable to threat, extortion, disruption, maybe even destruction. And I wanna quote the head of the German security service who recently warned Russia is the storm, but China is climate change. So, Charlie, firstly, could you explain to our listeners what exactly is the scale of this problem, which essentially is our exposure in our digital supply chains to China? And have there been any instances yet of these problems coming up to the surface yet, or is this still a threat that lies in the future and one that we're not entirely sure yet how it will play out?
Parton: Well, let me start by saying that I think that quote from the head of the German Security Services is one of the better ones that we've heard in the last six months. I think it's entirely accurate. And I think the reason for that is three sort of threats which we're facing, both whether you think in terms of semiconductors or cellular Internet of Things modules or 5G telecommunications, etcetera, etcetera, and then they're all in many ways connected. I mean, the first is that if you can only get the supply of these things from China, or indeed from Taiwan, if Taiwan's disrupted, but particularly if you can only get them from China, although the Chinese have a monopoly on this, which is what they're trying to achieve in many of those areas, then of course you create an enormous dependency. And we've seen that in Covid through PPE, where much of the world was dependent upon China, and China was prepared, or the Chinese Communist Party was prepared to use that as a weapon. So that is one angle where I think we've got to be very careful, because it's in policies connected those sorts of things that the pressure can be applied. We don't like your policy on human rights, and you might want to consider it if you want to continue supplies of cellular modules or whatever. That would be the implicit threat. So dependency with a regime like the Chinese Communist Party is something to be avoided. The second fear is that in certain technologies, if you're entirely dependent upon China, it is that at a time of hostility, you could be vulnerable to, as you rightly say, either the destruction of those things that you need, or perhaps even more cleverly, the erosion of their ability to function, to some extent, just make you a lot less efficient and weigh you down. So that is something that needs to be avoided. And the third area is data. We've all heard the new cliche, if you can have a new cliche, that data is the new oil, but you can make some very powerful intelligence, military, economic tools by capturing — capturing is a loaded term — but by having possession of vast amounts of data. And China is quite systematically going about assembling that data, even if much of it is still enciphered and cannot be used and read at the moment. With the advent of quantum computing and future AI tools, it may very well be that they can read so they're getting it together now. So, I mean, I find it extraordinary but understandable that the first reaction of people when you start saying these things is, yes, but give us an example. I mean, where are they illegally egressing data, or where are they putting pressure on you? And my reaction to that is, well, you don't get into a boxing ring and wait till you've been hit firmly in the face before you start training. I mean, prophylactically, you need to make sure that you have your guard up well in advance. So a responsible government should not be allowing these dependencies and vulnerabilities to exist, even in the absence of any evidence that the Chinese at the present are using them. So I don't accept the argument that we have to provide evidence. We should be making sure that there is no evidence by taking measures in advance. That reminds me of the whole kerfuffle about Huawei.
Mcfarlane: Richard, you were pretty key in the lobbying effort to get the government to ban Huawei. Tell us about that campaign, and who were your biggest obstacles in that push?
Dearlove: Well, I mean, I started sounding off about the problems of Huawei quite a long time ago. I mean, it goes back a long way because BT signed its first contracts with Huawei back in the early 2000s and even then some of us subjected to the fact that they were making Huawei one of their key partners in developing mobile telephony in the UK. So the problem had been there potentially for a long period of time. But I think what really made me cross about this is that the government initially wheeled out various people from the intelligence community to tell us that Huawei was not a threat, which was the most extraordinary event. And, you know, some quite senior people stood up and said publicly, oh, we've looked at this. We can manage the problem. Well, I was just very vociferous. Which government was that? I think it was — well, I think it was Theresa May, actually. I think it was at the start of Theresa May as prime minister. It was in that period. It was before the policy changed. But I mean, I had a lot of backing from people all over the place. And, you know, gradually, managed to change the direction of the tanker, the super tanker, but it did take quite a long time.
Parton: But I mean, I think, Julia, it was stunningly arrogant actually. I mean, there was the various members of the British establishment standing up and saying, no, we can manage this problem.
Mcfarlane: You mentioned three things, China using dependency as a weapon. And then two other issues that I want to go into in a bit more detail. You talked of how China can erode the quality of our critical services, our everyday services, and also the weaponization of data. I think possibly the best way of going into this is just also going back to something else you mentioned earlier in the conversation, which was cellular modules. Now I think the simplest way to describe cellular modules is these are essentially chips. These are little chips that allow for devices to connect to the internet and receive connectivity. And they are used as part of what is known as the Internet of Things, which people will have read about or possibly heard about, which is becoming a really, really important system in our global economy. More and more of our household devices, more and more of our manufacturing, our transport, not just domestic applications, and also military. All aspects of our connectivity are involving these chips, which facilitate what is referred to as the Internet of Things. I read a paper that you wrote on these cellular modules and how they are really an underreported sort of frontline in this battle against Chinese influence in our digital supply chains. And you said that the presence of Chinese cellular modules in our systems possesses a greater threat than does relying on Chinese companies for 5G. Now given how many governments made such a fuss of the issue of Huawei and yet we haven't really heard this out in the mainstream, it's worth going into perhaps why that is. Can you explain to us, Charlie, first of all, how dependent are we on these cellular module chips? There was a piece recently that was headlined, Is my fridge spying on me? Which I think is probably a little facetious way of illustrating the scope of this problem. But if you could explain to our listeners what exactly is the scale of this vulnerability.
Parton: Yeah. Julia, I do wish I'd never written the word fridge in that damn paper because of course, you know, journalists inevitably tacked onto it, and it trivializes what is such a serious issue. I should just say on the question of cellular modules, that, you know, not only do they do all the things you say, but they're more than just a chip because they have a central processing unit that pushes out a vast amount of data and takes in, and that's the whole point of them. And they're there to link up with other modules, which they do automatically without human intervention, and improve the processes. And increasingly they are in all our processes and will become much more so. And the Chinese Communist Party knows this, and it's set out on a deliberate policy to establish a triopoly of its own three companies in global markets. Currently, these companies, which most people won't have heard of, but in many ways they should become as well known names as Huawei and ZTE and Hikvision, etc, because they're every bit as threatening — Quectel, Fibocom and China Mobile — they currently have 54% of the global market by sales and 75% by connectivity. And the aim is to get that as close to 100 and drive out the competition, at which point, as I say, the dependencies, dangers of erosion or destruction of your capability, data egress become eminently possible. So that is the Chinese aim. You know, just to give you a couple of examples of why I worry so much about these, particularly in terms of the way that you could — let alone the data that's being egressed, and it doesn't take much software writing to get this stuff out. I mean, it's basically as though Richard's old organization has put a technical operation in your house or your company or your government building, except that you've done it yourself. But just give a couple of examples, for instance. Smart meters. We all have smart meters. These are for the convenience of the electricity companies, not for us really. But it is not very difficult for the suppliers of the cellular modules in those meters to know exactly where all those are and where the base stations for them are. They have IMEI numbers, you can do this very simply. And it would not be difficult also to send software updates to those which would, at a given moment, crash the whole lot. And by crashing at a time of, say, high demand all the smart meters, you could probably bring down the grid. Or you could bring down, if it was a naval base, for instance, the electricity in a naval base. Or because, let's say, all the alarm systems will have one of these cellular modules in, you could turn off the alarms, or turn off the air conditioning in the building and make it uninhabitable if it was at the wrong time of year. I don't know if you've seen the film, The Italian Job, great film, where they mess up the Milan traffic light system in order to do a gold heist. Well, you could mess up the traffic system in London or Washington or wherever you wanted, if it uses these forms of modules. So that is the threat. And as I say, I don't think a responsible government should be allowing that sort of thing to happen.
Mcfarlane: That's really interesting. If the Chinese are the principal or majority suppliers of this kind of tech to the overseas market, and as you say, you talked about erosion of these services and you've given us some examples of how that can be actualized in practice. That essentially involves the Chinese exporting chips and tech that are basically sort of Trojan horses. Is it not, you know, designed to degrade or even sabotage other nations' critical infrastructures in order to achieve whatever goal that they have? But what would the strategic goal be here? Because surely, if those governments know that that's the case and the Chinese are sabotaging them in this way via these chips, surely they would be found out and then they would be boycotted as a result. Or is the short term damage that they could do with these processes, is that worth the cost as opposed to having your strategic objective being surveillance essentially, which requires installing these products in the West over a longer period of time. And surely that would necessitate having a more positive trading relationship, on the basis of these particular goods.
Parton: Well, I mean, the examples I gave were, of course, in a sense, the doomsday. That is when hostility has got to the extent of, you know, war by a different form. And I said that governments need to have that in mind to protect yourself, because you don't want to allow that possibility, because it can be used as leverage against you. But in the shorter term, as it were, let's give another example. I mean, if you own a Tesla S Plate car or one or two other types of Tesla car which have a Quectel module in, all the data from that car potentially can go back to China. Or you can imagine other things, whether that's your Ring doorbell, or your camera doorbell, whatever. All that information goes back. Now China, a few years ago did a massive attack on OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, and got hold of a lot of sensitive data about American civil servants, including CIA and FBI officers. Well, imagine if you are a CIA officer, or not just CIA, but a sensitive government official, important government official, driving one of those cars, which the information of which, and not just the geolocation, but that's enough, that's serious enough, goes back to Beijing. You can learn an awful lot about who's who, what they're doing, with whom, when you start putting that data together with other forms of data which also are vulnerable. So, you know, this is not just a matter of eventuality of serious hostilities, but as an ongoing form of weakening the defenses of others. Or indeed, commercial exploitation. After all, supposing I wish to take over an American agricultural firm, which is what's happening quite often. If I know more about that firm as a result of the data that's egressed from it than the firm knows itself, I can push a very hard bargain, thank you very much. Or I might know in advance data from American harvests for soybeans, so I can push a very good deal to the disadvantage of America or whichever country it is. So there are plenty of other forms of loss which one can experience well short of these doomsday scenarios which I started with.
Mcfarlane: Richard, what Charlie is saying is really fascinating. But I mean, obviously espionage and surveillance in order to get data and intel on government officials, whether that's to try and extort various ministers or try and put pressure on different governments to try and exert influence and get favorable policy or so on and so forth. But if we zoom out a bit, the cost for having cheap technology that can empower millions of people to connect up into the internet, have a better quality of life, promote small businesses and things. The fact that cheap manufacture of Chinese chips helps a lot of that happen. And why can we not simply just require government ministers to have sensible anti surveillance measures? I mean, we've seen recently governments banning their members of parliament and their employees from having TikTok on their phones, for example. I mean, cutting the Chinese out of our entire economy to try and mitigate this risk would be a huge cost. Do you think it's worth it?
Dearlove: I don't think anyone's suggesting. I well, look. We're not suggesting, you know, a complete sort of ban on technical or sophisticated technical trade with China. I think one has to, as it were, be balanced and reasonable. But on the other hand, if we understand the precise nature of the threat, we can then, as it were, take measures to develop the relationship in China, which takes account of those problems. I think in a recent interview, you know, with Pompeo about all sorts of things, we talked about China, you know, I asked him the question, what's your answer to dealing with the problem of trading with China? And I mean, he just immediately said reciprocity. Which actually, if you think about it, is a very clever and a very pragmatic answer. Because if the Chinese, as it were, gave us the same opportunities in their country as we're giving them in our country, then you can begin to see that, you know, we can build a trading relationship which has a sense of control and equality about it. I mean, obviously, you don't need in your economy to protect everything. That's ridiculous. But you need to identify what your crucial points of national security are and make sure that you take account of the multiple threats that come from different countries. But at the moment, you know, we've been so benign towards China. We've allowed them through doors which should be locked. We've allowed them into positions in our tech in crucial technology and critical infrastructure. And, you know, we're now trying to get them out. I think the problem is that people get very excited by the commercial opportunities, by cheapness, by economy, and all the rest of it. Bearing in mind, however, the Chinese have built these companies by subsidizing them and putting competitors out of business. And, you know, a lot of these companies do have strong military connections in China. So, I mean, the question you're asking is complex and difficult. But I don't think any of us are sort of so luddite as to say, oh, this has nothing to do with the Chinese. It's not like that at all. It's educating ourselves and knowing what we have to protect and taking the correct measures. But as Charlie's already pointed out, doing something about this is complex and difficult. And, I mean, the irony is that during the Cold War, we did have a system which, as it were, allowed us to trade with bits of the Soviet empire. But at the same time, we embargoed or put fences around those areas which were very sensitive. It was maybe simpler then because the trading relationship was not nearly as complex as it is with China.
Mcfarlane: Right. But what is the end game with this? The end game of this threat, I think, is also quite hard to really quantify. I wanna quote from your paper on the risks of cellular modules where you really sort of encapsulate what data means to the CCP. And I quote, new and emerging technology is central to the Chinese Communist Party's ability to achieve its goals. The most game changing advantage of tech is that it enables the accumulation of massive amounts of data. The CCP views data as a strategic resource. You quoted earlier that quote about data being the new oil. When processed and aggregated, data can support China's interests across military, economic, political, cultural, and other domains. That in itself may make sense and is really clearly summarized. But to what end? Why are the Chinese collecting our personal data? What use is it for them? I mean, I understand the reason that Cambridge Analytica and Facebook were so desperate to track our every moves largely in order to monetize it and sell it off to people who want our private information such as political campaigns. And we saw that in that scandal following the 2016 election. But the CCP, I mean, what do they want from foreign nationals' data? I mean, they've got a vast monitoring network on their own citizens, which they use in order to monitor their behavior, to sweep for dissent, control the populace and so on. Not to be facetious, but what does the CCP care about, for example, my online shopping habits and my obsession with sourcing yarn and knitting patterns and holiday homes in Cornwall that I can't afford? What do they plan on doing with that information?
Parton: Julia, I'm fascinated about some of your personal habits, but actually, if you don't mind, I'll go up to a rather higher level than that, because I think it is relevant actually. And in fact, if you'll also forgive me, this is a piece of gross personal advertising, because I have a paper coming out by the end of the month on Is China a threat? And the answer is, to right it is. But the heart of the matter is, what is the ultimate aim of the Chinese Communist Party? And I think it's very apparent, and I could bore you at length but read the paper instead, that if you look at what they call the second centennial goal, the one hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, 2049, it talks about an aim of becoming a strong, harmonious, civilized, modern socialist state. But what it really means, shorn of party speak, is to become the world's number one superpower, to put America down in number two, and so ordain the world such that it is better in the interests and values of the Chinese Communist Party. So, you know, so rising above all in bits of individual data, dominating new science and technologies, and particularly the industries that depend from those, and data and the use of data. And I think they're by far the most important, because not only will that give China economic rents to sustain itself as the superpower, but through all that data and dependency, which will come from occupying the highlands of science and technology, it puts the rest of the world thoroughly under its thumb.
Mcfarlane: Well, Charlie, we recently spoke to an author for an episode about the metaverse. And one of the main reasons he explained that we don't have the metaverse, that it does not exist at the moment, is the technology to store the huge amounts of data that would be needed for all the real time rendering and loading and updating of the digital sort of environment of the metaverse. We do not have servers. We don't have hard drives and storage systems capable of handling all of that. And I read that by 2025, it's estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created every day globally. They say that's the equivalent of 212,000,000 DVDs per day. An exabyte is a quintillion bytes. I mean, essentially what I'm saying is the fact that each and every one of us create through the internet, through the billions of WhatsApp messages we create daily, through the billions of emails we send, all of the pictures we take, our livestream, our videos that we put up to Instagram, the data every time we flick on and off our smart meters. How are the Chinese even able to process any of that in a meaningful way that will allow them to weaponize data in the ways in which we've discussed? That's a very tech heavy question. I'm sorry to ask it.
Parton: It is tech heavy, and I'm not a scientist. But I am told that in the future, as AI and quantum computing becomes more of a reality, then that sort of thing would be a lot easier. So again, going back to one of the earliest points we made is that governments have a responsibility to look into the future and protect against possible harms if they're big enough. Your listeners might be interested. I think a petabyte of information is equivalent to 30,000,000,000 pages of A4. There's a very good paper, incidentally, by Samantha Hoffman called Engineering Global Consent, which looks at just one Chinese state owned company which claims to export back to China every year, and this was a few years ago, four petabytes. So about 120,000,000,000 pages of A4 information. So one doesn't want to exaggerate that absolutely everything is seen all the time. But I think it depends on what comes in the future, and with the right form of machine learning and possibly AI tools in the future, you can work through that data, pull out the bits that you need.
Mcfarlane: Richard, as our resident, tame, former spymaster in the house, essentially what this is, is that it's a mammoth espionage operation really. Data collection is intelligence gathering. And because I really want to try and get to the heart of what it is we're staring down the barrel of. If we were to imagine that the Chinese have an end to every microphone, every camera, every measurable tool that gives meaningful information about our lives. If they are able to access all of that in all kinds of countries around the world and all this information about all of us, is the fear that knowledge is essentially power, that by knowing their adversaries, by understanding their ways of life, their priorities, their habits, their hobbies, all of this kind of stuff, that there is a way in which they can exert some kind of control or influence through that technology? Is it more about the application of propaganda that will be masterfully disguised as content that we are already consuming?
Dearlove: I think, you know, there's an uncertainty. We have an uncertainty about what China's behavior and intentions will be. It is an unattractive political system for us in the West, because it is so authoritarian and in fact, as we've seen in Hong Kong, specifically anti democratic. So we would be unwise if we didn't, as it were, take notice of what China is doing, because it's built the system of control in a way it's now having the technology to extend this control beyond its borders into countries, you know, which are completely different value systems, political systems, and, you know, the Chinese are probing and pushing. If China were, let's say, like Australia, we wouldn't be worried about, or we wouldn't be nearly so worried, or we wouldn't be concerned about what was happening. It's China's intentions and its stated intentions, as Charlie's mentioned in 2049, its objectives to dominate globally. And it's building a system which we, as it were, are very worried about, which completely rejects our value systems, as I've already said. So the question you're asking is a complicated one. And we would be very unwise to sit here and do nothing about it. We are waking up and doing something serious about it at long last. And this podcast, in a way, is a great vehicle for educating people about the problem. And I think Charlie's brilliant at articulating where the threat lies in these very mundane areas of our life, and I think that's what's so worrying.
Mcfarlane: So, Richard, you've known Charlie Parton for quite a while. He's such a well respected and renowned expert on China. And I think it's interesting because this conversation that we've had has been very, very tech heavy. I think that there is a bit of a disconnect between leaders and experts, leaders in the intelligence space, in the national security space, in the defense space, and the everyday general public, and to some extent, lawmakers and politicians, and generally the ones who don't have a particular interest in national security issues like this. And I was struck by that unprecedented announcement or press conference that the heads of MI5 and the FBI gave last year when it came to the threat from China, and they revealed so much actually about the threat. They talked about Chinese agents. It was quite unprecedented for them both to appear together and to give a sort of an on camera statement about this. And we hear time and time again, a lot of national security experts like yourself, like Charlie Parton, saying that, as the German minister said, Russia is the storm, China is climate change. And I think the disconnect here is because a lot of that potential threat, I think, has sort of yet to manifest. And we covered this a bit in that conversation with Charlie Parton. We don't really know yet what China intends to do with all of this data and all of this privacy that they've invaded. There's obviously the issues of government figures, important figures who may be subject to blackmail because of their private data being compromised and political and national security ramifications of that. Same goes for big business leaders. Information is power, knowledge is power, and yes, that can always be weaponized. But I think to the everyday man on the streets, our privacy is being invaded on a regular basis by all sorts of non state actors, state actors, companies that track us, hackers that wheedle their way into our systems. I think there's a disconnect and it's hard to get very incensed by the Chinese capacity to invade our data and to infiltrate a lot of these systems, particularly because we haven't yet seen what they plan on doing with that, is there not? I mean, do you accept that a lot of this is still hypothetical and potentially a problem in enlisting support to your cause, given that we have Russia dropping barrel bombs on hospitals in Syria and taking out critical infrastructure in Ukraine and soldiers carrying out alleged war crimes on the banks of Europe. Can you see how it may be difficult for people to look at all of these leading figures in the national security world who say, you know, Russia's not the problem. It's China that's the long term problem, and that there is a bit of a disconnect here?
Dearlove: Yes. Of course, there's a disconnect. And it's very difficult, I think, for people who are not professionally involved in national security to look at these issues and have a deep perspective about them. But, the fact is that the relationship with China has evolved in a direction which is extremely worrying. And then to put bits of your absolutely fundamental, you know, way of managing modern life in the hands of a country which has a totally different set of values, and has started to behave in a very aggressive fashion. I mean, look at its behavior in Hong Kong. Look at its behavior in the South China Sea. Look at its attitude towards India. Look at some of the statements that have been made from the twentieth party congress. There are many, many examples as to why we should worry and be concerned. And I suppose it's really being sensible about our vulnerabilities, if you see what I mean. And I think it is the duty of the people who are professionally concerned with this to try to educate the public about the problem. They don't necessarily have to change their lifestyles. They don't necessarily have to stop using social media. But we're really putting out an alert, which is basically warning the government or saying to the government, don't put National Health Service data in the hands of a Chinese company, which is storing it on a server inside China, where we have no control over what happens to it. And I think, you know, we would be being neglectful if we didn't articulate this problem and speak about it. So I think if China's value system was the same as the West's, we wouldn't be losing a lot of sleep over it. But I think, you know, what's happening is deeply worrying.
Mcfarlane: I totally appreciate it. But I mean, is it a separate issue, though? Because, you know, they are far from the only country that oppresses its people. And again, I think, you know, is that an international concern in so far as it presents national security threats for other nations domestically, not taking into account the ethics and the need to stand up for principles and human rights and all that stuff. It's the assessment of China as the biggest threat to all of our national security. Or I wonder if a lot of this is tainted by US anxiety about being displaced. And on that, we've seen last week China carry out this diplomatic coup of having Saudi Arabia and Iran reestablish ties. I mean, you couldn't get a bigger illustration of waning US influence in that particular part of the world, a part of the world where the US was the main power broker. And we're seeing this big shift in regional politics between Riyadh and Tehran as one brokered by President Xi just a couple months after he visited the region in person. I mean, what did you make of that?
Dearlove: I mean, I think — well, if we're talking about the Middle East, you do see declining American concern with the Middle East. But I think, you know, what is concerning is the fact that, well, let me put it like this. The world's refugees, are they queuing up to go to China, or are they queuing up to come to Europe or the United States? We know exactly the answer to that question. They're certainly not queuing up to go to China. And why? I think the answer to the question is obvious. I don't need to answer it. The Afghans leaving Afghanistan because of the Taliban, China is just over the mountain. Why aren't they all piling into China? Not one of them is going there. I think the important thing to say is that we have to find a modus vivendi to live and work with China over time. But we need to do it with our eyes fully open, and we need to have a clear understanding and knowledge of exactly what the Chinese strategically are thinking about and planning. And we need to be able to pressure the Chinese into becoming a more responsible player in the international community than they appear to be at the moment, I think. So I wouldn't like to be labeled as someone who's completely hawkish about China. I think one has to try to have an open mind, but we need a different sort of relationship from the one that we have, as it were, allowed the Chinese to have. But I think there's a theme here which we should definitely develop because it's the key issue in international relations for the next fifty years.
Mcfarlane: I think that's an excellent note to end on.
Dearlove: I hope you don't mind me needling you and me playing devil's advocate.
Mcfarlane: No. No. No. I love it.
Dearlove: I love being needled, and I think it's the perfect way to discuss these issues. You ask the provocative questions, and your questions are quite correct. I mean, you know, we have to look at it through the perspective of the sort of questions you're asking and I think that's exactly the way to try to articulate discussion about the problem. Excellent.
Mcfarlane: That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live? You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.
