MM#323--Tech Reliance and its Geopolitical Shockwaves: Who Needs Red Lines?

Transcript

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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

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Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute.

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In our last Mojo Minute we talked about our latest Academy review, which we just released this past weekend Chris Miller's Chip War and how vital that book is to understanding our complex world of dependency on semiconductors.

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Of all things, they're literally in everything.

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If you can think of a product, semiconductors or chips as they are commonly called now they're used in those products.

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Anything with technology or electronics certainly has many, many chips in them.

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Automobiles on average have between 1,400 to 3,000 semiconductor chips in them.

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Some even have the electric cars.

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They even have 6,000.

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Roughly double the amount of a normal non-energy car in terms of chips.

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So our heavy reliance on semiconductors is causing heartburn in the halls of Congress and most especially in the West Wing and in the Pentagon.

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So if you're a member of the Academy Review, be sure to check out the Mojo Academy Review for Chip War.

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I think you will find tons of nuggets of wisdom there.

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And if you are not a member, what are you waiting for?

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Our library continues to grow.

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You can check out all the details at teammojoacademycom in the upper right-hand corner.

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Click on the subscribe button.

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You'll get all the details there corner.

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Click on the subscribe button.

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You'll get all the details there, and in our last Mojo Minute I teased three important questions that we will attempt to answer on this Mojo Minute.

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But, if you don't mind, I'm going to call an audible.

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So, in the words of the great Peyton Manning, I'm going to call an audible Omaha, omaha.

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And that audible is because of what I just read the other day.

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It is a wall street journal op-ed from Matt Pottinger.

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Matt Pottinger, deputy deputy, uh, national security advisor under the former president from 2019 to 2021.

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And, in keeping with our custom, let's get after it with our first pull quote.

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President Biden warned China two years ago not to provide quote material support for Russia's war in Ukraine, for Russia's war in Ukraine.

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On Friday, secretary of State Antony not Anthony, but Antony Blinken conceded that Xi Jinping ignored that warning.

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China, mr Blinken said, was quote overwhelmingly the number one supplier of Russia's military industrial base, with the material effect being of fundamentally changing the course of the war.

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Whatever Mr Biden chooses to do next will be a momentous for global security and stability.

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Oh boy.

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So Mr Foreign Policy himself, mr Foreign Policy himself, president Joe Biden has painted himself into a corner again.

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Sounds similar to the recommendations he made when he was vice president under President Obama right?

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This guy is just the worst.

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He can't get anything right.

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Any recommendation he gives is absolutely the wrong one.

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Let's continue from this Wall Street Journal op-ed.

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Mr Biden can either enforce his red line through sanctions or other means, or he can signala collapse of American resolve by applying merely symbolic penalties.

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Beijing and its strategic partners in Moscow, tehran, pyongyang and Caracas will surely interpret a half-hearted enforcement as a green light to deepen their campaign of global chaos.

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Mr Xi sees a historic opportunity here to undermine the West.

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This is a moment akin to President Obama's 2013 red line failure in Syria.

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When dictator Bashar al-Assad defied Mr Obama's warning not to use chemical weapons on his people, the president abstained from military action, and the consequences were dire.

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Six months later, moscow launched its 2014 invasion of Crimea, the beginning of the now decade-long Ukraine war.

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A failure to act decisively against China now would open a path for Russian victory in Ukraine.

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For Russian victory in Ukraine, mr Biden drew his red line on March 18th 2012, three weeks after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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Quote I made no threats.

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Unquote.

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Mr Biden said after a video call with Mr Xi that day.

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President of China.

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But Mr Biden said he made sure the Chinese president understood he would quote be putting himself in significant jeopardy unquote and risking China's economic ties with the US and Europe if he materially supported Russia's war.

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So Mr Biden's deterrence has been lost.

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No-transcript.

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And here comes our nugget of wisdom.

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Mr Biden's cabinet reinforced his ultimatum with specific warnings.

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Commerce Secretary Gina Ramadando warned that the administration could essentially shut China's biggest chipmaker, semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, in response to its chips being used by the Russian military.

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen threatened financial sanctions.

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She followed up with a pledge late last year to quote take decisive and surgical action against financial institutions that facilitate the supply of Russia's war machine.

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And there you go Two members of the president's cabinet offering specific warnings to shut down China's number one, their semiconductor manufacturing company, because the Russian military has been given too much access to that technology.

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Number two, treasury Secretary Yellen's threats of financial sanctions against China with the words decisive and surgical action against those financial institutions supplying the Russia war machine.

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So we have exactly what we have been talking about over the last three weeks coming to fruition.

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Data is the new oil and semiconductors of the vital link that everyone is targeting.

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We are seeing this play out right before our very eyes.

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So I would recommend again the book chip war by chris miller.

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It gives you a wonderful background briefing.

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If you don't want to read the book, check out our Academy review in the members area.

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You can get through that in roughly about 35, 36 minutes.

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We offer it in PDF format and in audio and it gives you the top six to seven key ideas and the great quotes from the book.

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So we save you a lot of time and get you up to speed.

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Plus, in the library you get another 36 books, and those are all book reviews.

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We think there's a lot of good stuff in there, so be sure to check that out.

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Now back to this red line business.

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In this op-ed Trade, data suggests Beijing was careful to avoid overtly crossing the red line in 2022.

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But in 2023, when the Biden administration applied only token sanctions on listen Iranian entities that provided thousands of kamikaze drones to the Russians, drones that have saturated Ukrainian air defenses and caused widespread carnage, the Chinese probably decided that Mr Biden's bluster was a bluff.

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In March 2023, mr Xi visited the Kremlin in a bold show of solidarity with Mr Putin.

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It turned out to be a watershed in Moscow's war, effectively turning the conflict into a Chinese proxy war, with the West Now skipping down another couple of paragraphs.

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Here's another nugget of wisdom and another reason I wanted to call this audible nugget of wisdom, and another reason I wanted to call this audible.

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Fracturing the West through proxy wars in Europe and the Middle East fits neatly with Mr Z's exhortation to his bureaucracy to seek opportunity in international turmoil.

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Quote.

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The most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, chaos.

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This trend appears likely to continue.

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Mr Xi told a seminar of Chinese Communist Party CCP leaders in January 2021.

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The times and the trends are on our side.

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He is quoted as saying as Mr Xi departed a Kremlin meeting in March 2023, he went further, effectively declaring himself and Mr Putin agents of chaos.

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Quote right, there are changes the likes of which we haven't seen in 100 years, he said.

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And we are the ones driving those changes together.

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Hmm, the ones driving chaos?

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Huh, here's that nugget, if you missed it.

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Right now, there are changes the likes of which we haven't seen in 100 years.

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Who else is talking about changes?

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Who else is talking about the changes that we just covered from this microphone in the form of a great and wonderful book, ray Dalio's Principles for the Changing World Order.

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So it would be good to read up on that book, to get it read it.

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It's on Audible.

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You can cheat and rip through it in a matter of 11 to 12 hours, like I did at 1.5 speed If you so wish.

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Works for me.

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I crush them as I drive and 1.5 speed is not too fast.

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2.0, that's fast, not 1.5.

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Now Mr Pottinger gives us some ways China could be dealt with, but none of these options are good.

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So that red line that Mr Biden painted is now looking like a highlighter, not the bold, crisp, very dark red line that we would all want.

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It's looking pretty weak, like it's running out of ink a very weak line.

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Going back to the op-ed, as the Biden team contemplates the potential cost of imposing sanctions on major Chinese banks and other systematically important companies, it must also weigh the cost of failing to do so.

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China's leaders are vulnerable to meaningful sanctions.

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Stopping there, not so sure.

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We imposed sanctions on Russia at the onset of the invasion and within six to nine months the ruble was back up trading at effectively the same rate.

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So I'm not sure I agree with Mr Potentier here.

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But going back to the article, in late 2017, the Trump administration quietly but firmly threatened to impose sanctions on China's main energy producer after Beijing resisted US requests to restrict oil imports to North Korea.

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China knew the threat was credible and quickly agreed to co-sponsor an unprecedented United Nations Security Council resolution capping exports.

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Okay, well, they got, they did something effective in 2017.

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But this is, this is not the Trump administration.

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This is Joe Biden.

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So the world's looking at him and seeing a very weak man in word and in deed.

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Going back to the article Today, that credibility is looking threadbare.

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Yes, it is.

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Beijing's official statements after the Blinken visit made no mention of the American complaint and the Chinese foreign minister official said flatly the Ukraine issue is not an issue between China and the United States.

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The US side should not turn it into one.

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So they are laughing at our deterrence.

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So nice of the Chinese foreign minister to say such a thing.

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And, as we know, the world under this president is getting far, far more dangerous than even he can contemplate.

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He has been the worst president, certainly in the last 150 years.

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He's pushing, he's striding greatly for James Buchanan's top spot at being the worst president ever.

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I'm going back to the article to finalize this thing Worse, there are signs Beijing, in the axis of chaos which includes Russia, iran, north Korea and Venezuela, is planning the next phase of violent disruption.

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Beijing welcomed a delegation from Hamas On the same day.

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Mr Blinken left China, a fact Chinese officials kept from the American delegation.

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Ah how nice of them.

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So again, no deterrence.

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They're not afraid of anything More.

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Ominously, mr Xi dispatched one of his most trusted aides, former spy chief and current Politburo member, shen Wang Xing, to Moscow for a nine-day visit.

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Nine days, folks, nine days.

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The purpose of the trip was to tighten intelligence and security cooperation and pave the way for Mr Putin's visit to Beijing next month.

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In a telling essay this month in the CCP's top ideological and policy journal, xin Zixing I'm pronouncing that wrong, I don't care the current head of China's premier spy agency promoted the idea of waging quote struggle far beyond China's borders.

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Mr Xin's essay in the magazine quote quote Quixia included a line that may serve well as the informal slogan of the axis of chaos.

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Quo Quo Quicia?

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Included a line that may serve well as the informal slogan of the axis of chaos.

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Quote seek advantages and avoid disadvantages and chaos.

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Unquote the axis of chaos.

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The axis of chaos.

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That sounds about right.

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This president, fumbling, bumbling, stumbling, shuffling here and there, and on a total side note, with all due respect, don't you just look at Mrs Joe Biden and say you really allowed your husband to go through with this?

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You know how fragile his mental state is and you see him day by day by day and you think he's up for this job.

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Mrs Biden, is your quest and desire for power such that you can't take an objective?

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Look at your husband and his lack of mental capacity and say with a straight face that this country is getting the best leadership?

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Really, seriously, mrs Joe Biden, shame on you, I mean.

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This is so sad to see.

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Frankly, I don't blame Uncle Joe.

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I'm not sure Uncle Joe knows where he is at at this point.

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Joe knows where he is at at this point, but for all the people surrounding him, this is utterly abuse, far and wide utterly abuse.

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Now this article again is at the Wall Street Journal.

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Matt Pottinger, like I said, who was deputy security national security advisor from 2019 until 2021 under Bill O'Brien.

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Pretty good guy, pretty effective guy, and this is how we keep you up to date on how to flourish in our own lives, and part of that flourishing is knowing how to read the tea leaves and see the direction the world is changing and how it can potentially change for the worst, as we're seeing all around the world.

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So in today's Mojo Minute, let's keep an eye out for the details all around semiconductors and especially the threats in the Far East.

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They can influence us here at home until we can unbuckle ourselves from the semiconductor manufacturing sites and build up a wonderful domestic manufacturing system of chips ourselves.

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We will be behind the eight ball, as they say, but regardless, let's keep our eyes out on the world and let's keep reading to develop our knowledge base.

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And, as always, let's keep fighting the good fight.

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Thank you for joining us.

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We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast.

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Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources.

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Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.

MM#323--Tech Reliance and its Geopolitical Shockwaves: Who Needs Red Lines?

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