Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Modern War - The Next Cold War - George S. Takach (Author Interview, 2024)
194 Plays8 months ago
Ep 050 – Nonfiction. Are we already in a second Cold War? George S. Takach says yes, and joins me to discuss his fascinating new book, “Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America.”
Support local bookstores and buy George’s book here: https://bookshop.org/a/92235/9781639365630
Subscribe to the War Books podcast here:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@warbookspodcast
Apple: https://apple.co/3FP4ULb
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3kP9scZ
Follow the show here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/warbookspodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/warbookspodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warbookspodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Potential Chinese Attack on Taiwan: A Missile Barrage?
00:00:00
Speaker
If China were to attack Taiwan, there are all sorts of theories about how they would do that militarily, but it would likely start with a massive missile bombardment. And I'm talking several thousand missiles in an effort to overwhelm the defenses. And if you think about the geography of Taiwan,
00:00:27
Speaker
It's 100 miles from the coast of China to the island of Taiwan, but you want your kill zone to be halfway, right? You don't want to be using your Patriot interceptor missiles right on the coast of Taiwan, because then all the missiles fall into Taiwan proper. So you basically got four or five minutes to figure out what you're going to do.
00:00:53
Speaker
And with a thousand missiles coming at you, it is simply impossible for humans to detect all the launches, figure out their trajectories, and the Chinese will be very, very creative. They'll be coming in at different altitudes and levels and speeds and so on. And even the best trained humans just will be overwhelmed.
00:01:21
Speaker
But what I've just described, I won't say it's an easy job for AI, but it's a perfect job for AI.
00:01:39
Speaker
Hi, everyone.
Meet George Tkash: Author of 'Cold War 2.0'
00:01:40
Speaker
This is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, I am extremely excited to have on the show George Tkash for his new book, Cold War 2.0, Artificial Intelligence and the New Battle Between China, Russia, and America.
00:02:02
Speaker
George is an author and lawyer, and for 40 years he practiced technology law at McCarthy Tetral, Canada's premier law firm. He has written three books on technology and technology law. George, how are you doing today? I am just superb. Really, really happy to be here with you.
00:02:21
Speaker
Excellent. Well, likewise, I'm very happy to have you on the show talking about this. Before we started recording, we were just talking about how this is a book that is future facing, but maybe not a book about the future, which we'll get into a little bit later.
00:02:43
Speaker
Cold War 2.0, heck of a title. So I want to dive right into the meaning of that. And if you could just tell us first, what is this book about?
Cold War Dynamics Return: China vs. Western Democracies?
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, so let's take the Cold War part. It could have just been Cold War II, because unfortunately, the autocracies have dragged the democracies into a new Cold War.
00:03:10
Speaker
So some of your listeners will know from memory that we had a previous Cold War from roughly 1945 to 1989. The two chief protagonists were the United States and the Soviet Union. And it was sort of framed as capitalism against communism. And then the Soviet Union collapsed and we had, you know, 30 years of a peace dividend, as it were.
00:03:40
Speaker
But I argue in the book that around 2014, the Cold War is back. This time though, and there are some differences between this Cold War and the previous one, this time the leading protagonist for the other team, if I can call it that, is actually China.
Democracy vs. Autocracy: A Clash of Orders?
00:04:01
Speaker
I put them as the leading autocracy.
00:04:06
Speaker
And Russia, though, is a very important other protagonist, largely because Vladimir Putin punches above his weight because he likes to punch so much. And so he's absolutely critical. And then on the side of the democracies, it's still the United States.
00:04:27
Speaker
hopefully, and we might get into that with some politics going on in the United States, but very much Western Europe, the European Union. And in a nutshell, what they're fighting about in the Cold War sense is whose vision of international order is going to prevail. In a nutshell, the democracies are pumping for a rules-based international order.
00:04:57
Speaker
and the autocracies are pressing on brute military force. And we can get into some of the examples, but that sort of sets it up as the Cold War. And then just very quickly, the two has the dot O along with it. So it's Cold War 2.0. That's to designate that technology, which is now so defining
00:05:22
Speaker
for military matters and general society matters and the economics and so on, that that's going to be a critical part of this new Cold War.
AI and Tech: The Backbone of Cold War 2.0?
00:05:35
Speaker
Yeah, and you actually, I believe you write in the book that the new Cold War will be won or lost because of technology. That's how important it is to Cold War 2.0.
00:05:50
Speaker
Why is that? Why is technology going to be the deciding factor? So just very quickly, the four major technologies that I look at, artificial intelligence, high-end semiconductor chips, and then there's quantum computing and biotech. Just the other day, you know, Vladimir Putin fired his admiral
00:06:18
Speaker
of the Russian Black Sea Fleet because Ukraine with $20,000 drones was able to push back these billion dollar ships from the Russian fleet and open up the ability of Ukraine to sell its grain abroad and to sort of transport it. And that's what technology is today. I mean, it's an
00:06:48
Speaker
And it's never determinative, but if you don't have those four technologies operating for you in a very powerful mode, you're not going to be successful in the national security realm, just as you won't be successful in terms of economics. Yeah, well, I'm curious. So you wrote,
00:07:14
Speaker
You've written other books that are more specialized for maybe more niche technical audiences. But this one I read is for a more general audience. Why did you write this book and why did you want to make it more general?
Why Write 'Cold War 2.0'? Tkash Explains
00:07:31
Speaker
So the book started to germinate in my brain around 2014. That's when Putin,
00:07:40
Speaker
And I think everybody who's listening or watching will remember this. That's when he first invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. And that was such a shock to me and to the system because years before the Russian government specifically agreed that the borders of Ukraine would not be violated and that included Crimea.
00:08:09
Speaker
And that was agreed to in 1994 by Russia when the Ukrainians gave up the nuclear weapons that they had on their soil when the Soviet Union dissolved. And the Ukrainians, you wonder if they're not feeling badly about that decision because had they had nuclear weapons now, I'm not sure Vladimir Putin would have invaded in February 2022.
00:08:39
Speaker
But in 2014, the response of the democracies was so tepid and so weak, and I was just beside myself. And at the same time, Xi Jinping in China was starting to become very, very aggressive in the South China Sea.
00:09:02
Speaker
And in both cases, I said, why are the democracies not pushing back? We have way better technology than them. You know, we can take these guys. And I thought that one thing that was missing was a groundswell of indignation by regular people in the democracies, the people that listen to this podcast or watch it on YouTube.
00:09:32
Speaker
to say to their presidents, prime ministers, and leaders, this sort of behavior can't just be let go. We've got to do something. And because if we had, if the West, the democracies, had a much more powerful response back in 2014,
00:09:55
Speaker
I'm quite certain, I mean, you know, counterfactuals are always difficult to work with, but I'm quite certain that we would not have seen the 2022 invasion, which so far has cost, you know, 500,000 lives and casualties, a trillion dollars of damage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Because unfortunately, this hasn't changed between Cold War I and Cold War II, namely,
00:10:23
Speaker
The autocrats only understand strong deterrence in a military sense. So that's frankly why I wrote the book. Now, would you say that we're already in Cold War II? Yes. Yes.
2014: The Start of Cold War II?
00:10:41
Speaker
I think, as I said, the start date was 2014. And then since then, there's been the major invasion. Because even in a Cold War, just to be clear,
00:10:54
Speaker
A Cold War means that the two principal protagonists, or in this case, the leading democracies and the leading autocracies, they don't actually fight each other, largely because nuclear weapon deterrence continues to work, but you do get hot proxy wars. And so the fact that
00:11:18
Speaker
the West, the other democracies have been helping Ukraine with weapons and so forth and intelligence, that makes it a classic Cold War, hot war. And then also, again, back to Asia,
00:11:36
Speaker
You know, China has not just claimed so much more of the South China Sea, it's building military bases on little islands that clearly belong to the Philippines.
00:11:48
Speaker
And by the way, the Philippines are starting to push back. You may have seen clips of that ship that the Philippines grounded on one of these tiny little islands. And they're desperately trying to claim sovereignty of this island and these huge Chinese Coast Guard vessels, which in any other country would be considered naval destroyers and frigates. But in China, they're just Coast Guard ships.
00:12:16
Speaker
So that's going on and that's very dangerous because of course the Philippines has a mutual defense treaty with the United States. So that could become a very hot war very quickly. And then the other front that's opened up just to complete the picture is Taiwan.
Taiwan and Semiconductors: Geopolitical Hotspot?
00:12:34
Speaker
Taiwan is an amazing country of 24 million people on a tiny little island. I was there a few months ago on a study trip for my next book, which is on Taiwan.
00:12:46
Speaker
And what they've done with this tiny little island, 24 million people, is they've built a juggernaut of a tech industry. And the world's most advanced chips, semiconductor chips, they're designed in California, but they're all being made in Taiwan. And China, all of a hundred miles across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan,
00:13:13
Speaker
China is claiming Taiwan as its own, and Xi Jinping has said, if you don't come over and allow me to absorb you peacefully, I'll be using military means. So that's another Cold War zone that needs our attention very carefully. Yeah, and I wanted to actually, before we go into some of the technologies that you talk about in your book, I wanted to talk a little bit about Taiwan
00:13:42
Speaker
Because I actually thought that... Well, you had eye popping things to say maybe I would say about Taiwan and China, or at least to me, because I'm no expert on the situation between China and Taiwan right now. But you're right that she's likely outside date for the takeover of Taiwan is 2034.
00:14:07
Speaker
So you've even given a date. Why is it 2034? Why is that the most likely scenario that Taiwan gets taken over? So Xi Jinping, the leader of China, the autocratic leader of China, has asked his army called the PLA, People's Liberation Army, to be ready. And they've said we'll be ready by 2027. So that's kind of the front end of the window.
00:14:37
Speaker
And Xi Jinping is not getting any younger. He's 71 years old. He's made it very clear that unlike his predecessors, he's not willing to just kick the can down the road and leave this for someone else. And if you look at the psychology of Xi Jinping, he's one of those men who feel they have a date with destiny.
00:15:03
Speaker
And that is a very dangerous psychological profile. So when you run his dates and the military, I put it at 2034, but you know, the Biden administration brought in a policy of blocking
00:15:25
Speaker
the export of high-end semiconductor chips, which effectively means that China won't be able to make the high-end artificial intelligence products either. They brought that in in October of 2022, and China's really, really feeling the heat. So I might actually bring that 2034 date ahead.
00:15:50
Speaker
Because the gap, you know, the gap between the American and sort of the Western capability on technology and the Chinese one is now going to grow. And you might, if you were, you know, thinking of your date with Destiny, say, it's only going to get worse for me. So I might take my chances with Taiwan sooner.
00:16:15
Speaker
Well, when I read that statistic in your book, actually I Googled, I was like, will there be a war in 2034, which led me to a novel by Elliot Ackerman called 2034, which is about, I think it's like World War III breaking out, which I'm actually, I'm in the middle of reading right now. I went down this whole rabbit hole.
00:16:43
Speaker
So there are other people who believe that that date is a special date as well. I'm not familiar with that work, but I think you'll start to see a number of people coalescing around. It's basically within the next 10 years. And that's why, you know, the United States, the EU, I mean, we've all got to be taking steps to support Taiwan.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, let's get into some history and start talking about some of the technologies that you detail.
Tech Advances: Driving Power Shifts?
00:17:15
Speaker
So first, if you could just talk about the relationship between technology and national power historically. For example, you go back into medieval times in your book, you talk about some of the technologies that have been used militarily. What's that relationship like? Yeah.
00:17:37
Speaker
A chapter in the book that's devoted to kind of a looking back because the concept that technology development and new innovation can drive step-level increases in economic power and military power is actually not a new thing.
00:18:01
Speaker
Now it's been greatly accelerated since the start of the computer revolution, but the example you mentioned for the historian generalists who are listening, you know, the invention by the British of the longbow.
00:18:17
Speaker
much more powerful than the previous bow and arrow that was used, and specifically the ability of the longbow archer to take out the medieval knight, fully clad in armor, riding on a big horse, because that was considered the most powerful weapon system of the day. These longbowmen allowed the British to beat the French in a number of battles,
00:18:47
Speaker
And it's not just functionality. It's not just that it was a better weapon. It was way cheaper. So you could either decide as an English king to have many more archers for the same amount of money that you had, or you could
Military Tech Evolution: From Longbows to Drones?
00:19:06
Speaker
you know, have fewer archers and save some money. And you'll remember that was the time, you know, Magna Carta and so on. Kings were always fighting with the lords over raising taxes. Hey, that sounds pretty modern too, doesn't it? If you're following what's going on in Washington today.
00:19:25
Speaker
So that process of a technological leap, giving an edge on the battlefield, I then take people through the submarine, the airplane, and so on. But when you get to the computer revolution, the
00:19:45
Speaker
The leap is just orders of magnitude greater. So precision weapons now are really quite astounding in just how precise they can be. And then what we've learned in Ukraine over the last two years is that drones, five, 10, $15,000 drones can take out large ships
00:20:14
Speaker
They can take out tanks. And that's not to say that the world has all of a sudden changed completely, because artillery is getting used a lot in the Ukraine as well, in artillery shells. So it's never like a complete break from the past, but the United States
00:20:38
Speaker
last summer started the replicator program where, and this is a fascinating Department of Defense exercise, to counter China's mass, because they are building a huge Navy and China has the largest shipbuilding capability in the world, instead of saying, oh, hey, let's build 10 more shipyards to build up our own Navy,
00:21:05
Speaker
The Pentagon has decided, you know what, we're going to fight that additional mass with tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of drones. And the replicator program is bringing Silicon Valley together with the traditional
00:21:23
Speaker
you know, defense contractors, the Lockheed Martin's of the industry. And they want to put in the field by the end of this year, not just airborne drones, but surface and subsurface in the water. And the United Kingdom about three weeks ago announced roughly a $20 billion program to build drones like crazy. So we are seeing the technology have
00:21:53
Speaker
a massive impact today. Now, what would you say were some of the technologies that define Cold War I? Well, it's interesting. So the previous Cold War, largely between the United States, because it was the country that came out of the Second World War still standing, right? The European powers,
00:22:20
Speaker
the British, the French, I mean, everybody was kind of devastated. And the big new weapon, of course, was the atom bomb. And as we all know, two were dropped on Japan and that precipitated their surrender. And what was fascinating in that instance was that Russia was way behind
00:22:47
Speaker
and they caught up largely through industrial espionage. If you remember some of the spies that were, you know, looking around at them in the Manhattan Project and this is actually captured nicely in Oppenheimer and so on. And in my book, I actually have some images and I have an image of the first atom bomb dropped by the United States and then the first atom bomb built by the Russians. And boy, they look a lot alike.
00:23:18
Speaker
What's fascinating, AJ, though, today is that the key technologies, these semiconductor chips, which now power just about everything, anything that has an on-off button and uses electricity, it has some semiconductor chips. So both the high-end chips plus the machines that make them
00:23:45
Speaker
And this is critical. And this is why, frankly, the Biden administration's sanctions, you know, a couple of years ago were brilliant because it wasn't just the chips that can't be sent and sold to China from the democracies. It's this equipment can't be sent and sold. And by the way, for any listeners who say, well, you know, why do we need other democracies? What's the point of a NATO alliance and so on?
00:24:16
Speaker
The most sophisticated chip making equipment in the world is actually not made in the United States. It's made in tiny little Holland in the Netherlands. And it's two principal components, some very funky optics and some laser technology. Well, that comes from Germany. Anyway, this machine, which makes the most powerful chips in the world, it took 20 years to develop. Everyone said, no, it can't be done. It can't be done. But the Dutch did it.
00:24:47
Speaker
And the Chinese actually have these machines that they bought before the sanctions kicked in. So they've reversed and they know exactly how they work. They just can't make their own. So this is another element.
00:25:04
Speaker
to the current Cold War technology dynamic. They also have these high-end chips. They're small. They can be smuggled in no problem. It's just they don't know how to make them, and they've tried, and they've failed. So this is going to be a very desperate China in a year or two. And it's interesting. I'll just end on this note. Last November,
00:25:34
Speaker
When Joe Biden met with Xi Jinping, and they had this summit in San Francisco, first time they talked in about a year. And the way these summits work is, you know, each leader brings his list of irritants. And China had two at the top. One was Taiwan, and number two was chips. And Xi Jinping, I mean, I wasn't a fly on the wall, but he probably leaned over and said, Joe, your sanctions are killing us.
00:26:02
Speaker
and not just militarily, but economically. And Joe probably said something like, well, if you agree and actually behave as if you're going to follow the rules-based international order, you know, we'll start supplying those chips again. But why would we give you
00:26:24
Speaker
the tools with which you can then harm us. That would just be madness. And so good on Joe Biden to actually, you know, put his foot there. Yeah. And I want to come back to semiconductors. But an interesting, interesting to note though, is semiconductors really seem foundational to all of the other technologies that you write about. So I do want to talk about that.
AI in Military Strategy: A Perfect Match?
00:26:48
Speaker
But first, before we talk about semiconductors, I want to talk about the big technology
00:26:54
Speaker
The one that is maybe most popular right now in the minds of just like normal people, I guess, and that is artificial intelligence made the cover of your book. Let's talk about AI. So obviously like most people are familiar with like chat GPT and some of the new AI chat bots that have come out.
00:27:20
Speaker
I want to talk about in a military capacity, artificial intelligence. First, why is it important? Why is artificial intelligence important from a military perspective? And then I'm also curious in what ways AI is already being used militarily. So one quick example of how it's being used. In virtually every war movie about
00:27:51
Speaker
World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. You have these wonderful scenes, usually early on, where the American command post is trying to figure out what's going on on the other side of the line.
00:28:11
Speaker
if you've watched the Battle of the Bulbs, right? It's Henry Fonda in a plane, a surveillance panel flying over the Ardennes Forest trying to figure out, you know, what's going on with the Germans and is this a major assault? Like what's happening? Today, it's satellites, right? Orbiting the earth, taking millions, like literally millions and millions of images every day
00:28:38
Speaker
And as recently as, you know, five, six years ago, human analysts in Washington would have to pour over these images and try to, you know, find the needle in the haystack. Well, what's changed? And where's this battleship now? And so on. Today, artificial intelligence is doing all of that. And it can do it at a speed
00:29:06
Speaker
and it doesn't get tired. It's not like, oh, I've been up for 24 hours and I really need some sleep. And what's fascinating is this artificial intelligence capability is doing the same thing in radiology images in a medical context. So we're simply taking the same concept from the civilian side
00:29:32
Speaker
and it's being used in a military context. But let me give you another one, because I opened the book with an air defense example. If China were to attack Taiwan, I mean, there are all sorts of theories about how they would do that militarily, but it would likely start with a massive missile bombardment. And I'm talking, you know, several thousand missiles
00:30:01
Speaker
in an effort to overwhelm the defenses. And if you think about the geography of Taiwan, it's 100 miles from the coast of China to the island of Taiwan, but you want your kill zone to be halfway, right? You don't want to be using your Patriot interceptor missiles
00:30:23
Speaker
right on the coast of Taiwan, because then all the missiles fall into Taiwan proper. So you basically got four or five minutes to figure out what you're going to do. And with a thousand missiles coming at you, it is simply impossible for humans to
00:30:44
Speaker
detect all the launches, figure out their trajectories, and the Chinese will be very, very creative. They'll be coming in at different altitudes and levels and speeds and so on. And even the best trained humans just will be overwhelmed. But what I've just described, I won't say it's an easy job for AI, but it's a perfect job for AI.
00:31:11
Speaker
And each missile will be tagged by AI. The trajectories will be calculated. The defensive assets, right? The air defense, you know, interceptor missiles will be locked in. A few will get through, but not nearly the number will get through if it was just humans, because humans, you know, would have been overwhelmed. So AI is like us.
00:31:39
Speaker
but it can do so much more and so much more quickly. And in a military sense, that's a huge advantage. Now, are there, I mean, not that we would know this, or maybe we do know this, are there advantages that some of these autocracies have when it comes to artificial intelligence as opposed to the West? Where in what ways is one side falling short and another side
00:32:08
Speaker
more advanced when it comes to AI. Well, it's interesting. There were a couple of books published about five years ago by a fellow, Kai, I think is his last name, born in China, went to school in the States, worked in Silicon Valley as an operator and as an investor. And then he went back to China and he wrote a couple of books saying, you know,
00:32:37
Speaker
China is going to win the AI race because these artificial intelligence systems need to be trained on huge amounts of data. So going back to my sort of ISR example, you know, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, you have to actually first teach the AI how to recognize a tank versus an armored personnel carrier versus
00:33:07
Speaker
you know, an M77 Howitzer. And this fellow's argument was that, oh, well, we have way more data in China. We're not constricted by, you know, privacy law and that sort of thing. And so we're going to win the race. But he's wrong. And why he's wrong is something that I actually spend quite a bit of time in the book discussing.
00:33:35
Speaker
because I think it's actually the great news story in the book. Like after I depress you with Cold War II, oh my God, we're back in it again. That's the bad. It is a hopeful book. But the good news is that in every one of those big four technologies, AI, but also chips, quantum and biotechnology, and then there's another chapter that I just quickly talk about a dozen other technologies with maybe two exceptions.
00:34:05
Speaker
The way democracies do innovation and the way they develop technology is much superior to the way autocrats do it. And it's a structural thing. When you're an autocrat and you have your enablers, a hundred key people around you that keep the economy going and so on, an enabler brings forward a technology
00:34:31
Speaker
And that becomes the incumbent technology. And usually the autocrat gets a percentage of the revenue generated by that technology. So when someone else comes along and says, hey, I've got a new technology, the enabler goes to the autocrat and says, yeah, don't listen to that new guy. That's not going to work. You know, ours is still the best. And that just stops cold any new development.
00:35:00
Speaker
Whereas in the United States, in Europe, in Canada, that new, it's either an inventor, a scientist, an entrepreneur, they're allowed to come into the market, compete against the incumbent, and often they win. And the example I use is a, maybe you smiled when you read about it,
00:35:27
Speaker
I still remember the Sony Discman, this big clunky kind of CD player. I did smile when I read about that. But it was mobile and it was a revolution over a cassette player and everybody bought it. And then Steve Jobs came along and invented the iPod.
00:35:48
Speaker
And I remember my first iPod, like I was welling up. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing, the size of it. Plus you could navigate your playlist and so on and so forth. And in short order, it competitively displaced the Sony Dismant. And then of course the smartphone comes along and includes the iPod functionality and the process continues.
00:36:14
Speaker
So whether it's AI, whether it's chips, this continual process in the democracies is a super strength of ours. And so that's why we're going to do better on the tech side than the autocracies. And just, and this is really important that ASML chip making machine from Holland that I talked about.
00:36:41
Speaker
The Chinese government funded like $15 billion worth of R&D to try to build another one that they could have within China. And it didn't work because you can't do it top down. You can't tell people to go and invent something. There's a secret sauce to it. Its home is still in Silicon Valley, but it's been replicated in some other democracies.
00:37:11
Speaker
And so yes, so in that sense, it is a hopeful book because the democracies do technology and technology, and sometimes it drives us crazy. What? That feature's already been superseded by something else, and what? There's another update? But that's precisely the process that gives the democracies an edge when it comes to innovation.
00:37:37
Speaker
Well, talk about a little bit semiconductors. Now, you had already given the 1,000-foot overview. Any electronic device we've got, it's got a semiconductor chip in it, so obviously very important.
00:37:53
Speaker
But why is it, why is it so hard for someone like China to just to make as many semiconductor chips as, as they need? Why is this such a flash point in cold or going to be a flash point? Maybe it already is a flash point in cold war too. It is already a flash point. China is feeling the heat. Uh, absolutely. So the,
00:38:22
Speaker
The chip is invented in Silicon Valley, but with the help of a bunch of immigrants.
Immigrants in Silicon Valley: A Competitive Edge?
00:38:33
Speaker
And this is another strength, just as a quick aside. China doesn't do immigration very well. Russia, especially now, doesn't do immigration very well. But the United States is this magnet attracting
00:38:52
Speaker
brilliant, the best and brightest from India, from Europe, from all over the world, from Canada. There are 300,000 Canadians working in Silicon Valley, just as an aside. And these immigrants, as well as Native American trained and so on, they started developing these chips, and then Moore's law kicked in. So every 18 months, they become double, if not triply, more powerful.
00:39:21
Speaker
And we're down to the point now where the most powerful chips, they're putting billions and billions of little circuits on the size of your thumbnail. And doing that is the hardest thing that humans have ever done. So doing it well and doing it in such a powerful mode is really, really hard. And TSMC,
00:39:51
Speaker
The company in Taiwan that has perfected the manufacturing of the chips using those very sophisticated machines from Holland, they have a workforce of engineers that have perfected this process. Now, China is trying to hire a bunch of them and they're offering amazing salaries and so on and so forth.
00:40:20
Speaker
but it's also a big supply chain around TSMC. If you ever get a chance to go, it's not in Taipei, it's in a town just about an hour south called Sinchu. And you see these huge factories that TSMC has, but all around them are factories owned by the Japanese, you know, the South Koreans, a lot of American factories, because the Americans are very good at the software.
00:40:48
Speaker
that's used to design the chips and the Dutch are there and so forth. So the whole world has come together and to replicate that is really, really, really difficult. So again, when the Biden administration cut off China from the most powerful chips, boy, that was a shot heard around the world in the technology domain for sure.
00:41:17
Speaker
So how much do you think, obviously, culturally, I think the Chinese feel like Taiwan should be a part of mainland China? But how much does their ability to actually manufacture semiconductor chips influence China's desire to take over Taiwan? Well, there's a lot of thinking going on around this very point.
00:41:45
Speaker
When I was in Taiwan, as I mentioned a few months ago, I was obviously blown away by the technology industry that they've created. But AJ, I got to tell you, the other things that blew my mind, the quality of the democracy in Taiwan. You know, they just had elections in January.
00:42:07
Speaker
And the two candidates that lost, you know, gracefully got up on the podium and conceded and congratulated the winner. I mean, this is how democracy is supposed to be done. That leads to a civil society. You know, there's a Catholic church on one block and two, two blocks down, down the road. There's a Confucian temple and everybody gets along. Gay rights are recognized.
00:42:37
Speaker
There's gender equality. The current president of Taiwan is a woman. Now they don't do immigration well yet, but all those other factors mean that they're a very different society than China. And so China's been spinning
00:42:57
Speaker
a view that, well, the Han Chinese, the culturally Chinese are, well, they don't do democracy. They're predisposed to authority and authority figures and always have been. And then here's this little Taiwan, an exemplary democracy, an amazing civil society, and frankly,
00:43:24
Speaker
If Xi Jinping attacks Taiwan, I think it'll be as much because it's an upstart democracy. It's only like in 30 years a democracy because the Chinese regime can't afford to have this example of a democracy sitting on its doorstep, just as I believe. And it's not talked a lot about, but I'm very confident that a big factor in Putin attacking Ukraine
00:43:52
Speaker
was very similar. Here was a budding democracy, but Slavic, when Putin's message, similar to the Chinese one, is, oh, Slavs don't do democracy. We don't like democracy. We like strong leaders. Well, that's Balderdash. Everyone likes freedom. Everyone likes to vote for who's in the government. So now to your narrow question,
00:44:22
Speaker
China has to be careful, like if they blow up TSMC in all of its factories, well, there's nothing left to sort of take over. Plus, if they lose, you know, half of the workforce to Arizona, because TSMC is building a facility now in the US, but it's not intended to produce the most advanced chips. But in any event, if they lose the people, plus,
00:44:52
Speaker
Even if you have the factories of TSMC producing today's chips, if they make a move on Taiwan, ASML will not supply new equipment to China-controlled Taiwan. So it's a very difficult objective for Xi Jinping to achieve to say, ah, well, if I take over Taiwan, I've controlled the chip industry.
00:45:22
Speaker
So, frankly, in response, for instance, to that Biden policy of sanctions, the response from the Chinese has been very muted. They put an embargo on two critical minerals and that was about it. I think they're waiting to see what the result is of the November election. And I think they're hoping that if it's Trump,
00:45:50
Speaker
as the new president, that they might be able to do some deal with him that clearly the Biden administration would be unwilling to do. But if it's Biden again in November, we talked about it earlier, the frustration level might rise to the point where Xi Jinping wakes up one day and says, look, it's not going to get any better. So maybe today's the day. Yeah.
00:46:18
Speaker
Well, it's interesting that your observations about democracy in Taiwan
00:46:25
Speaker
That strikes me as very interesting. And I guess maybe when you know your democracy is that close to danger, physically that close to big autocracy like China, you probably do pay a lot more attention to the things that make democracy function and function well. So that's an interesting observation.
00:46:49
Speaker
I'm curious. I do want to talk about some of the other technologies, but we haven't actually talked so much about Russia yet. China, I guess, is seen as kind of this juggernaut as it comes to advancing new technologies and having these massive capabilities
00:47:11
Speaker
Where does Russia stand in terms of their capabilities and their ability to use AI or semiconductor chips or some of the other technologies? Where do they figure in here and where does Vladimir Putin, what are his ambitions when it comes to some of these technologies? Putin understands the importance of AI. I actually have a quote of his early on in the book.
00:47:40
Speaker
I don't have it right in front of me, but it's to the effect of, he was talking to some young students, like high school students and said, you know, the country that wins the AI race, you know, will control the world. So he gets the concept, but frankly, and I do this in the book quite specifically and in some detail where I go through with each of these industries, you know, who the players are.
00:48:08
Speaker
what their sales are, how much they raised in financing and so on. And frankly, other than civil atomic energy, Russia is just not a player in most of these other technologies. What they've been able to do over the decades is they plow money
00:48:32
Speaker
serious money into a quasi-military technological program. So rocket boosters was something they did pretty well in the 50s and that's why Sputnik, you know, the first satellite in orbit was Russian. And you probably seen the movies like the Wright stuff and so on. And then the Apollo moon race that that generated and
00:49:02
Speaker
JFK saying, you know, before the decade is out, but the Russians in the sixties never got to the moon because they didn't have computers. And it's actually, I talk about it in the book because it's a perfect illustration. If you don't have a serious civilian capability in these technologies, your military or your space programs will not move forward.
00:49:33
Speaker
And why didn't the Russians have computers? Because Stalin, going back to the Second World War, he thought cybernetics, which was the predecessor of computers and then sort of early computers, he thought that was just a capitalist plot and that wouldn't amount to anything. And then in the 60s and 70s, when there was starting to be talk
00:49:59
Speaker
And certainly, in the late 70s and the early 80s, when we see the first personal computer, and what a storm that set off in the United States, the Russian response was, what? We're not going to allow our citizens to have personal computers. Like, in the home? No way. We won't be able to control that. So again,
00:50:24
Speaker
You know, the technology development process is greatly impacted by the political culture. And today, bottom line, this is why Russia is the number two protagonist to China, because really Russia isn't playing. And then, frankly, when they did attack,
00:50:50
Speaker
Ukraine fully in February of 2022, about 500,000 key critical tech types left Russia because nobody wants to work there anymore. So it's just gotten worse and worse and worse. The car industry, which isn't even that high tech in Russia, it collapsed and Russia has been buying cars from China. So it's becoming a vassal state, frankly.
00:51:20
Speaker
of China, and China finds it useful though because Putin and most autocrats do not value human life, sadly. And so he's sort of the mad pit bull that Xi Jinping can unleash and go create havoc. But in terms of the tech race itself, there's not much happening in Russia.
00:51:46
Speaker
Well, I want to, real quick, before I want to ask you about politics, but first I want to talk briefly. I hate to lump these all together, but I want to talk briefly about quantum computing, biotechnology, and some of the other technologies that you mentioned in your book.
Quantum Computing: The Next Strategic Leap?
00:52:05
Speaker
What are some of the more important ways that these technologies are being used?
00:52:13
Speaker
So quantum computing, which may not be as familiar to your listeners or your viewers, is a fascinating technology. It could leapfrog the current semiconductor chip-based computing ecosystem. In other words, this could be something net new. And if you're sitting in Beijing and
00:52:42
Speaker
The Biden administration and the other democracies have shut you out of the traditional semiconductor chip supply lines. Quantum might be your Hail Mary pass to a future. Because quantum, if you can do it right, it's actually even more powerful than today's most powerful chips.
00:53:09
Speaker
But again, good news in the book, I profile sort of 13 or 14 different quantum projects and companies. Because you can do quantum differently. You can do it with optics. You can do it with ions. You can do, without getting too technical, there are variations on the theme. Remember when there was VHS and beta?
00:53:35
Speaker
Maybe you're too young to remember, but so there are variations. No, I remember. There are variations on quantum and the US and Europe are placing, you know, about 15, 16 different bets because that's how Silicon Valley works. You have multiple bets and you plow a ton of money into each of them. The Chinese have one bet on quantum.
00:54:00
Speaker
There's one scientist who's a bang-up, brilliant man, and they're plowing money into his lab, and if he comes up with something great, but if he doesn't, there's three scientists at Caltech, just in California.
00:54:21
Speaker
And they're each doing quantum a little bit differently. And right now, they're not talking to each other as much because it's very proprietary. But there's a wonderful quote in The New Yorker. There's a New Yorker article about Caltech doing quantum. And one of the scientists says, look, I'm doing quantum my way. But if it build down the hall, has a great breakthrough,
00:54:47
Speaker
I'm going to start working on his technology. It's just a very different culture. And we have, as I say, so many horses in the race. Same with fusion technology. Again, the Chinese are putting their bets in one state-financed fusion project.
00:55:07
Speaker
And in the democracies, there's probably, again, a dozen going on. So just by the logic of numbers, we're likely to have better breakthroughs and more breakthroughs than they are, which is a good news story. Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to talk a little bit about politics. So we're in the United States. We are in a presidential election here.
00:55:38
Speaker
How important is this upcoming presidential election to the outcome of who wins Cold War II?
US Presidential Election: The Decider of Cold War II Dynamics?
00:55:47
Speaker
So I think this is the most consequential presidential election in my lifetime, and I'm 66 years old, full plain and true disclosure, because, and I'll be really, really frank with you,
00:56:06
Speaker
Trump's view of the world and thinking that he can do it all himself or the Americans can do it all themselves is just not corresponding to reality. I mentioned TSMC as the leading semiconductor chip company today, but IBM actually has some fascinating technology that could produce a very, very powerful chip
00:56:34
Speaker
and they're joint venturing with about 10 Japanese companies to develop a viable working model of that chip. IBM, again, they have a working model of a quantum computer. And where are they piloting it? In Germany, because there are a number of car companies and drug developers and so on in Germany who have really bought into that vision.
00:57:03
Speaker
And you can go through technology after technology after technology, and while the Americans are absolutely, you know, number one, you can't do it alone anymore. It's just impossible.
00:57:20
Speaker
And so when Trump says stuff like, well, I don't care about Europe, you know, I'm okay over here in the United States, or I don't care about the Western Pacific. I'm okay here in the United States. I think that is, I think it's just wrong. It's just not the way to view the world anymore. And, and even if you wanted to do it alone, like just one last one, his 10% tariff, you know, to, to shut out
00:57:51
Speaker
imports even of lower tech products. US unemployment is at 3% or 4%. Who's going to build all these other products that he wants to substitute from the foreign suppliers? It's just not realistic.
00:58:12
Speaker
the entire, you know, democracy system has been built around the US as I call it in the book. And I, and I tip my hat to the Americans. It's the indispensable democracy. And so Joe Biden gets it. Nikki Haley gets it. I'm neutral, right? I'm, I'm up in Canada. So I'm kind of neutral. Like Nikki Haley changed the party.
00:58:40
Speaker
but she absolutely understood the value of the alliance system and how that makes you stronger and to think that you can retreat into the continental US and put up big walls and the world will not come and intrude on you. That's just not how technology works for sure, but it's not how
00:59:04
Speaker
you know, health security or pandemic or, you know, the fentanyl problem. You know, that's a global problem and there's no way that Trump's going to solve that without a lot of help from others. So I'm hoping that it won't be Trump, but it could be, as I say, another Republican, just not this Republican.
00:59:30
Speaker
Well, I wonder if, not just talking about the United States, but any leader, any political leader in the democracies around the world, if there is one message that you hope they take away from your book in determining who wins Cold War 2.0, what message would you hope that is? I will leave them with a saying or a phrase
01:00:00
Speaker
that actually U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower first put out there, and I use it a lot, I think it a lot, and he said, you know, none of us is as strong as all of us.
01:00:18
Speaker
If Trump would just learn that one bit of wisdom from a former president, none of us is as strong as all of us. Because what I do in the book is, is that at the end, I actually total up, you know, how are, how are the democracies versus the autocrats versus the non-aligned countries, which you haven't talked about, but there's sort of a three guy, you know, how are we doing? Well, the US is, is kind of on parody with China.
01:00:47
Speaker
But if you include Japan, South Korea, I'm in love with the South Koreans. They are doing for military procurement what they've done with Kia and Hyundai. Poland, I'm in love with Poland. They're spending a huge amount on additional military kit, tanks, armored personnel carriers, you name it. Half of what they're buying though is being made in South Korea, which is fascinating.
01:01:17
Speaker
Because like Kia and Hyundai, they're not quite Mercedes or BMW, but they can do 80% on the battlefield, and they cost 40%. And Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, great companies, and they're building great stuff, but they're already at capacity. So you need the South Koreans. There was an article just the other day in the Wall Street Journal
01:01:47
Speaker
Australians are being trained to make gimlers for, you know, the HIMARS military, you know, system, artillery rocket system, because again, the Americans just can't do it all. So none of us is as strong as all of us. That's my takeaway. Excellent. Well, you know, George, I think we'll, we'll end the interview with that.
01:02:14
Speaker
hopeful message and hopefully there are people out there listening to that message who might be in positions of power. We can only hope. George, if people want to stay in touch with your writing, want to check out more about what you're doing, are you on social media? How can people stay in touch with what you're doing? I'm very happy to have my
01:02:42
Speaker
Gmail address out there and it's really simple George to cash so ge or GE No spaces no dots and then my last name, which is a little bit tough T a K a CH George to cash at Gmail calm and I'm happy to engage with people and and and have a chat online and that sort of thing for sure and the book, you know
01:03:08
Speaker
It's in Amazon. It's Simon & Schuster. You can get it in your local bookstore. Find bookstores everywhere. There you go. There you go. Support the indie bookstores. Yes.
01:03:23
Speaker
Yes, I agree. In fact, there will be a link in the description on this episode that'll take you to Bookshop.org, anybody out there who wants to purchase, and you can buy it from your local indie bookstore. George Tkash, Cold War 2.0, Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle Between China, Russia, and America. Go check it out from your library. Go buy a copy.
01:03:47
Speaker
Such a timely read and a fascinating read. And George, thank you so much for joining me here today. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks so much.