Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:00]
A
So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business IBM,
- [00:33]
B
Bloomberg audio studios podcasts, radio news Mr. Secretary, thank
- [00:39]
C
you very much for being here.
- [00:40]
B
David, good to be with you.
- [00:41]
C
We've heard from the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I'm curious at this point what your understanding is of the case this administration has made for the US Going to war against Iran.
- [00:53]
B
Well, look, the case keeps shifting, but the first thing to say is this from my perspective. Once our men and women in uniform are engaged in an operation or in a war, my first thought is for their safety and for their success, irrespective of what I think about how we got there or even where this is going. So that's primarily what I'm thinking of. But having said that, we've heard, you know, a number of shifting rationales, but I think it's important to take into account that we've got to be able to hold multiple truths in our head at the same time. Is it a good thing that this Ayatollah is gone? Yes. Terrible tyrant. Is it a good thing, potentially at least, that Iran's nuclear program is, I guess, re obliterated because apparently it was obliterated last June, but maybe not so much because they had to re obliterate it or its missile program diminished or its navy sunk. Yes. But to do that and to take on the extraordinary risks that go with it without having made the case with the American people, with citing imminent threats that apparently didn't exist? I think that's problematic. And the chances of unintended consequences taking hold in any situation like this are very real, very serious for our partners and allies in the region and for ourselves and, of course, for the Iranian people. I think a big question that everyone has is, okay, have we done regime change in Iran or just Ayatollah change, which is the way it looks right now?
- [02:32]
C
You brought up the argument that there was an imminent threat. In years past, you'd warned that there were a matter of weeks before Iran could develop fissile uranium. Is that an argument that's persuasive to you so much as that's been made by the administration that there was an imminent threat?
- [02:45]
B
Well, it's an ironic argument in a number of ways. First, as I said, they claim to have obliterated the nuclear fissile material program back in June and now we're told actually no, we didn't. And a number of us warned at the time that one of the reasons why military action against the nuclear program might not do the trick is that the Iranians were likely to start to rebuild, maybe rebuild deeper underground where we couldn't get at it. Whether that was happening or to what extent, I don't know because I'm not privy to that information. But at least that seems to be part of the rationale. The deeper irony, of course, is that we never should have been in this position. Insofar as the agreement that President Obama reached, the Iran nuclear deal, the so called jcpoa, put Iran's nuclear program in a box. It made sure that Iran could not produce the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And so if they chose to break out of the box and go for that, we'd see it and we'd have plenty of time to be able to do something about it. President Trump tore up that agreement, said he'd replace it with something better. He never did. And that's the road that we then wound up on that led to in some ways to where we are today, with Iran, yes, dramatically advancing its production of fissile materials so that that breakout time moved from one year to a couple of weeks. But you don't only need fissile material, you actually need a weapon too. And I think as has been publicly reported, our intelligence agencies and others, the IAEA continue to conclude that Iran has not made a decision to actually weaponize if and when they do, or if and when they did. Most estimates had that that timeline at a couple of years. There are different kinds of weapons, less sophisticated ones you could build on a quicker timeline. But the bottom line is that on the nuclear side, there was no imminent threat. There was though, the fact that yes, in terms of fissile material production, they'd gone from the Obama deal more than a year to a few weeks.
- [04:40]
C
The Supreme Leader, who's been killed of course, warned in the run up to this that if there were US strikes, the US risked a wider regional war. How has what's played out over these last few days, how does that compare to what you expected was would happen here? I imagine in your old jobs there were planning meetings and war games in which you kind of tried to figure out what might happen here as we see this war widen, is that in keeping with what you expected when you heard the Supreme Leader warn of that?
- [05:05]
B
Well, look, it's certainly something that should have been anticipated. And what's one of the striking features so far is that Iran has, has launched far more missiles and far more drones at the Arab countries in the Gulf and in the region than it has even at Israel, disproportionately so. And in part, that's to. Because we, we have bases and a presence there. But they've gone beyond that. They've gone at infrastructure that these countries have, the oil infrastructure. They want to try to inflict so much pain that we can't sustain the effort. And that's something that should have been anticipated. And David, I think we're looking at a couple of things going forward in terms of where does this go and how does this, how does this end? And it seems to me that there are two critical factors to look at. Markets and munitions markets. Where are the oil markets, where's the stock market, where's the bond market? I know President Trump is very attentive to those. And if they go in a southerly direction and stay that way, or in the case of oil in a northerly direction, that's going to be possibly a limiting factor. Then munitions, there's really a race on to figure out who expends their munitions first and fastest. The Iranians put us in a position where we've used up a lot of interceptors to deal with defense or even our offensive missiles to take out their launchers, or conversely, do they run out and we still have what we need? Again, I don't know the numbers here, I'm not privy to that, but it is something we have to be very, very attentive to because these things are not in infinite supply. We, the production times are very long. And of course, we're also using very, in many cases, very expensive weapons to take down $20,000 drones. That's not a good equation if you keep that going over time. What I'm worried about, one of the things I'm worried about, and this gets to the second and third order consequences, is we so deplete our arsenal and it takes a long time to rebuild it, that that puts us in a disadvantageous position when it comes to, say, a China or a Russia. All of those things need to be factored in. And again, it's one of the reasons why if you're going to Undertake something like this, you've got to make sure that you've. You've factored all of that in. And again, it really should start with explaining to the American people why you're doing something, why it's necessary, why. Now, do you see an off ramp
- [07:21]
C
anywhere at this point?
- [07:23]
B
I do, in the sense that one, as I said, I think the off ramp will be governed by this question of munitions and markets. And then what is that off ramp? I think the President may simply declare victory. He'll say, got rid of the Ayatollah. We diminished or degraded or destroyed their nuclear program. Again, we did the same thing to the missile program. We did the same thing to the Navy. And as to the regime, well, over to the Iranian people, good luck to them, hope they succeed. And if they don't, it's their fault. If they do, we'll take the credit. How Iran responds to that remains to be seen. And for the regime, survival is success. Right now, the expectation seems to be, at least, as has been reported, that the Ayatollah's son is his successor. He's very tied into the irgc. And so you may have a situation where much as we want and everyone should want to see a change in that regime, we have, you know, regime change without regime change, status quo, status quo, and even, potentially even worse, because it may simply ultimately reinforce the irgc, the military, the specialized military. And part of the problem with these things is that it's very hard to produce regime change from outside. You can't bomb your way to it. We've had a lot of experience with that and not such good experience over the last 20 years. It's even not so likely to come from the streets, even with extraordinarily courageous Iranian people. It's more likely to come from kind of within the palace. And then it could go in any one of, you know, multiple directions. You could get more pragmatic people, not good guys, but more pragmatic people who are open to, you know, curbing the excesses of the regime, focusing at home instead of focusing abroad, doing deals. But right now, it looks more likely that you're going to have hardliners and. And, you know, the. Who had a song way back in the 60s or 70s, you know, here's to the new boss, same as the old boss that seems to be right now, at least where we're headed.
- [09:33]
C
You've warned of the dangers of US intervention many times. In 2024, you spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, and you said, effectively, I think if we look at the last 20 years. Our experiments in regime change have not exactly been resounding successes. CNN is reporting that the U.S. is considering arming the Kurds in Iran. Bloomberg hasn't confirmed that reporting. When you hear that, what red flags does that raise for you?
- [09:56]
B
Oh, the red flag it raises is this could be Syria redux or it could be Libya redux. You've got, you know, Iran is a country where, you know, the Shiites make up less than half of the population. You have all sorts of other groups, including Kurds, Azeris, others who make up the, the bulk of the population. You could see the country fracturing, imploding, or even exploding with refugees in migration, with the exporting of some of their problems, with extremist groups taking hold in one part or another, it's incredibly fraught and incredibly dangerous. And as sympathetic as I am to the Kurds, who've been incredible partners for us, incredibly brave, I don't think that getting into the business of arming these groups is ultimately going to be a good thing. And then you're going to have other countries that pick their partners inside. And again, you wind up with something like Syria, something like Libya.
- [10:52]
C
Let's talk a bit about diplomacy. The president posted on Truth Social, they want to talk, referring to the Iranians. I said, too late.
- [10:59]
B
Yeah.
- [11:00]
C
Is it too late for there to be a diplomatic solution or to have those conversations at this point?
- [11:05]
B
No, I think it's never too late for diplomacy. The question is, is there a, a good moment? Is this the right moment for it? I would hope so, because on one level, the Iranians have never been weaker, at least not in recent memory, militarily, politically, at home, diplomatically, abroad. And so, and their proxies are for the most part gone or vastly diminished. So that's why I was hopeful before this action started that maybe they actually would get a renewed nuclear deal because Iran had a very weak hand to play. So there, I think there is a possibility of doing that. Whether the new, whatever the new regime is or the continuation of the existing regime is, is ready to do that, wants to do that, to be determined. It also depends on what the, what the Trump administration wants to do. And I imagine Israel is going to have a say in this as well
- [11:56]
C
as the administration was marshaling all of this military might to the Middle East. You had Jared Kushner, the President's son in law, Steve Witkoff, his longtime friend, now envoy to many conflicts and regions, meeting in Geneva in meetings mediated by the Omanis. Do you think that those were good faith conversations. When you look at it now, in hindsight, look, I can't.
- [12:17]
B
It's hard for me to tell. Not, not being in the room, not being privy to those conversations. I certainly want to believe. So I don't know. As, as you know, I think Jared Kushner, Steve Woodkoff are very able negotiators, but it was not clear to me that the expertise was also with them, which is very necessary when you're dealing with nuclear matters. When we did the jcpoa, we had very senior diplomats, but we had tremendous technical expertise at hand because it's complicated stuff and you want to make sure you're not making a mistake. So I'm not sure who is actually in the room and whether the people in the room could fully evaluate and assess is this a good deal, is this a bad deal? And I've heard different versions of what the Iranians were actually willing to do, not willing to do, different versions of what we were willing to do or not willing to do, not being there. It's hard to tell. But you know, David, when President Trump tore up the JCPOA back in the day, first term, he said he wanted to replace it with a better deal. And I think there was actually an opportunity to do that because Iran was in so much of a weaker position now than it was back when President Obama negotiated the deal.
- [13:23]
C
You, of course, are a professional diplomat. You've dealt with the Iranians directly. And I'm curious if you think that Steve Witkoff, Jared Kirchner, were at some sort of inherent disadvantage in those talks because you had professional diplomats on one side and they were on the other. This isn't what they've done their entire lives.
- [13:37]
B
Look, a number of the Iranians have been doing this for a long time. And when we change administrations, we change out the people who are doing these, doing these issues. And there's a certain learning curve and you have to get up to speed and become genuinely expert in things. Again, that's why I think it's so important to make sure that you have the experts with you, because they have the, they're the continuity. The Iranians have continuity because it's usually the same cast of characters, the same guys that have been doing this for a long time. Aranchi, the foreign minister, was Zarif's, the then foreign minister's deputy back then. So he knows what he's doing.
- [14:17]
C
I'm curious what you are thinking as you watch the chaos unfolding in the Middle east, particularly with Americans who would like to leave and are being told different things. It seems like there is no easy out, for lack of a better term, for them to get out of the region. What has happened there, as you see, and what needs to happen to make it so that Americans can get back to the United States?
- [14:38]
B
Well, it's not very America first to put American citizens last. And that seems to be what happened. I mean, it was not until days into this that the administration thought about maybe getting some planes out there to try to get people out a little bit late. And when people at least initially were asking for help, calling for help, the answer they got was basically, get out, but we can't help you when after October 7th. In the days immediately after October 7th, we surged charter airplanes to Israel, boats, cruise ships that could ferry the tens of potentially tens of thousands of dual nationals who were there out of harm's way to Cyprus. When it came to boats, and as long as the airport was operating to various places, the boats were there because we thought the airports might be shut down. All of that happened very quickly. And this was in response to something we obviously didn't know it was, was coming. And so I think doing this after the fact in a not very planned way, especially when you're the initiator, is, is unfortunate.
- [15:50]
C
You've noted in the past that during war games something's come up where if there were to be this kind of chaos in Iran, the regime might move uranium to different places across the country. And going back to what you were talking about a moment ago, the prospects of there being a Libya esque or Syria esque civil war, how worried should we be about that nuclear material being effectively scattered across this country and there being next to no accountability for A, where it is and B, into whose hands it falls?
- [16:19]
B
Yeah, I think that's a real concern. I would assume that the remaining material, and again, I don't know, we've seen lots of reports that it's likely that they were able to preserve, safeguard a lot of your uranium, but I don't know that for a fact. I would assume that they've tried to disperse it, as you said, presumably in places that the regime has some control over. But if the country winds up in some kind of civil war. Yeah, that's a real concern and something that we have to factor into our thinking. If we're going to start, you know, dropping matches there in terms of arming various groups, we better watch out in terms of getting what we wish for. But you know, of course you've seen extraordinarily courageous people beyond imagination, who are out in the streets looking for change, getting mowed down by this regime. And we all want to see a different future for them, different leadership for them. But it's very, very hard, if not impossible, to do that from the outside, as we were saying. And the risks now are that instead of having a change, having a transition, you have an implosion and then maybe even an explosion that has real effects outside the country. We have partners in the region. I was talking earlier about how one of the limiting factors on this, you know, goes to munitions. Our partners in the, in the region have far fewer interceptors, air defense interceptors, than we do. If it gets to the point where they're running out and the Iranians have enough to continue going at their infrastructure, at their people, I think there's going to be a pretty strong demand signal on the administration to take an off ramp to stop. We've had other second and third order consequences here. At the very time when Russia is really reaching a weak point because of its dependence on oil to fuel its war economy, its revenues, the government's revenues are down almost 20%. And in large part because the price of oil has gone down. It's having more trouble exploiting oil because of sanctions and restrictions that we put on technology. That's been a huge and growing factor. And the thing to do now, ideally, would be to squeeze the shadow fleet that they have that's going around the world, and that's the one thing that's able to keep them going at the very time when that's possible. And that that might force Putin to finally cut a deal on Ukraine. They get a lifeline, and the lifeline is the price of oil is going up. And the value of that shadow fleet, oil is going up, and people will need it and want to buy it. The Europeans, in turn, having moved away from Russian gas, are now more dependent on the Middle East. And if that gets tied up, if the Straits of Hormuz remain problematic, that's going to put a lot of pressure on them. So mapping out, gaming out, planning out, and then making sure you have something in place to deal with all of these second and third order effects, usually important, and it's not at all clear to me that that was done from
- [19:19]
C
where we sit today. Are you confident that the US can extricate itself from this without putting boots on the ground in Iran?
- [19:26]
B
It depends what the objective is. I think that, yes. In short, as I said a moment ago, you know, the President could theoretically declare victory tomorrow and claim that, you know, Severe damage was done to the resources regime, to the missiles, to the nuclear program, to the Navy and say, and call it a day. But then for what? Most of that stuff ultimately can be rebuilt. And absent a change in the governance in the regime, which right now in this moment doesn't seem to be forthcoming, huge risk without the support of the, well, without the, in effect, the buy in from the American people. That leaves us actually potentially for some time in a strategically weakened position with regard, for example, to China or Russia, because our own stockpiles of critical long range precision guided weapons are down, our air defense stockpile interceptors is down. That's usually usually questionable, but that is, I think that is an off ramp that's available to the president if he wants to take it.
- [20:34]
C
As you've pointed out, President Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal during his first term. When you were Secretary of State, there was an effort to reanimate that, to get another iteration of it. What were the challenges of that? And why was it the case that in 2022 those talks broke down?
- [20:50]
B
Look, we tried very hard to get back to the deal, but at that point in time, and especially with the passage of time, there were two things that were critical. One was that, of course, the Iranians, not without reason, said, how can we trust anything we could do? We can do a deal. And then, you know, maybe the President, Biden's successor does exactly what President Trump does. So there was a limiting factor there, but the bigger limiting factor was getting the Iranians to agree to terms that we deemed necessary and sufficient to make the deal the right deal to do. And in particular, re extending the timelines, the constraints that the original deal had in them on the nuclear program. We couldn't get to where we thought we needed to be to make it worthwhile. And we were doing it in partnership, in very close partnership with our European friends and allies, with the French, with the British, with the Germans, with the European Union, something that hadn't been the case in the immediate previous years. And I think we all agreed that the deal that the Iranians were willing to sign on to was simply not adequate. I wish we could have gotten there. But more than that, I wish that President Trump had not torn up the original deal. We'd be in a very different position and a very different world.
- [22:02]
C
Do you feel at all like perfection shouldn't be the enemy of the good here, that it would have been wiser to find some sort of deal with them?
- [22:08]
B
Yeah, look, you have to make, you always have to make judgments about these things. And you have to make judgments about whether, yes, the good enough is good enough. And it was our judgment, our estimation that we, that we weren't there. But, you know, we, we were, we continued to stay at it, but the Iranians in that moment were not moving sufficiently to get us to where we needed to be.
- [22:30]
C
I want to ask you about something that your successor said this week. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was talking about the motivations for, for this war. He said Israel was planning attacks that could lead to reprisals on American troops, so the US had to get involved militarily. He since walked that back a bit. But what does that say to you about the relationship between the US And Israel and the influence that the US has over Israeli policy?
- [22:52]
B
Look, you know, this has been a long story when it comes to Iran. And back during the Obama administration, the Israelis were pushing President Obama to take military action against Iran and were warning that they would do it themselves if. If he didn't. And he wouldn't, because he thought the better way to get at the nuclear program, which is what we were focused on, was through very muscular diplomacy, backed up by very, very strong sanctions that we rallied the world to put in place. And then we got the Iran nuclear agreement. In the days after the October 7th attack on Israel, the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas, the Israelis were insisting that in the north, Hezbollah from Lebanon was about to attack and they wanted to strike preemptively against Hezbollah. And President Biden said, look, we will. We're with you. We'll always be with you in defending Israel. And if you're attacked, we're there, but we're not there if you're going to start something. And we came within about 30 minutes of having a war in the north based on bad information that the Israelis had about an imminent attack from Hezbollah. We were able to avert that, but the president was, Biden was very insistent. We're not going to do something that you initiate, that you start. It's very different than, than defending Israel when it's been attacked. I can't speak to what the dynamic was this time. I, you know, I heard that, then it was walked back. The president said it was the other way around. There's been, there's been a shifting rationale, a shifting explanation for why this, why now and again that that's why it's so important to have ideally laid this out before the American people and our partners and allies. We might have had less friction with them if there was a compelling case to be made to make sure that we laid that out in advance and had them with us on the takeoff, not mid flight or on the landing.
- [24:49]
C
You have faced protesters when you've given speeches. I remember there was an interruption in the press briefing room at the State Department when you were giving remarks. And the criticism you faced has been you and the administration. The Biden administration effectively gave cover to Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu for them to prosecute the war that they prosecuted in Gaza that led to 75,000 people dying. In hindsight, do you regret not exerting more pressure on or trying to do more to constrain. Yes, Israel, but principally the prime minister in that war.
- [25:22]
B
Look, David, when there's been such terrible loss, such terrible suffering, when so many innocent people, Palestinian men, women and children, lost their lives, you're always going to ask yourself, I always ask myself, could we, should we have done something different? And we had to make judgments in the moment to try to achieve a number of objectives. And in a way, I should really start with where we ended, which is we ended with a ceasefire that we handed off to the Trump administration. We ended with the hostages coming out, prisoners being released from Israeli jails, tens of thousands of trucks going into Gaza.
- [26:02]
C
I wish that is a mutual achievement between the Biden and the Trump administration.
- [26:04]
B
Well, I think it was large. It was largely President Biden's, but I'm very thankful for the role that Steve Witkoff in particular played in supporting that in the moment. And that's what we were able to hand off. And then in that, in that agreement, in the secret ceasefire agreement, it was, it was for six weeks. And during those six weeks, the notion was that the parties would negotiate the terms of an enduring cease fire. That didn't happen. They went back to war. And then finally President Trump, eight or nine months later, landed this, the current ceasefire. But do I wish that we could have gotten that sooner with less suffering? Absolutely. But there were a lot of things that were going on that we had to factor in. One was we were trying, obviously, to make sure that October 7th could never happen again. And October 7th was almost written off immediately by much of the world, starting practically on October 8th. And you had a traumatized Israeli society, and then now you've had a traumatized Palestinian broader Society from October 8th on. But we wanted to make sure that couldn't happen again. We wanted to avert a wider war, which would have caused even more death, to save destruction and suffering and probably would have prolonged Gaza even more. And so that meant making sure, among Other things that there was a strong deterrent in place, including Israel's deterrent, to say to would be aggressors who were prepared to jump in, pile in because they thought Israel was down, if not out. Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, etc. Don't do it. And so we had to preserve Israel's deterrent. We wanted to get. We thought the best way to end this was through the deal that we ultimately got, the cease fire and hostage deal. But part of the problem was, part of the challenge was that Hamas was constantly strong arming things because of two factors. One, it thought the cavalry was eventually going to come to the rescue, the Iranians, Hezbollah, et cetera. And until it was clear. And that didn't happen until really September of 2024, with the death of Nasrallah, with other leaders who were taken out by the Israelis, with the decimation, if not well, or diminishment, at least of Hezbollah itself. That wasn't clear till then. And that notion of the cavalry coming to the rescue was still there. The second thing that was really problematic was that, and we know this from all the information we had, Hamas was looking for any gaps between us and Israel and Israel's other supporters. And as soon as they saw something emerge, they would step back. So in public, it was critical that we preserve as much solidarity as possible. Even as in private, we were hammering them every single day on humanitarian assistance for Palestinian people, on civilian casualties. And of course, they were operating in a unique environment where Hamas was hiding among and below all of the civilian infrastructure and civilians themselves in schools and mosques and hospitals. That doesn't excuse some of the actions that Israel took in trying to get at Hamas, not at Palestinians. But it is necessary to understand that that was part of the environment. I also think at the end of the day, this is just my judgment, and I may be wrong, that this was perceived in Israel among the vast majority of the population, not just Prime Minister Netanyahu, people in his government, but the vast majority of the population, including many who don't like him at all, to be an existential matter. And irrespective of what we did or anyone else did, they were likely to continue with or without us. So for us it was, how do we try? How do we bring this to an end as quickly and effectively as possible, again making sure that it's not likely to happen again, averting a wider war, and all the while trying to look out for people who are caught in this horrific crossfire.
- [30:03]
C
Is it wrong to look at this as A continuum that Prime Minister Netanyahu is able to prosecute the war in the way in which he wanted that led him to feeling bold enough to take these strikes in concert with the United States.
- [30:18]
B
Certainly there's a, there's a profound connection there because I think in the past he has probably been reluctant to go, go at Iran directly because of the threat of retaliation, a response from Hezbollah, but with Hezbollah vastly diminished, even though they, they did respond, not in a, not in such a significant way. And by the way, something truly remarkable, the President, the Prime Minister of Lebanon denounced Hezbollah for getting into this and firing it at Israel. That's remarkable. But for sure, I think the Israelis, yes, were in a position where something they hesitated to do in the past, that is direct confrontation with Iran because of the likelihood that others would get in and go at them. That was taken away and that did open the door, door to them doing what they've done.
- [31:04]
C
I want to wrap up with where this leaves us, where this leaves the world. And Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada spoke recently and he said this is just another example of what he's talked about before, this rupture in the global order that that's happened on two counts here. There have been two failures. The first of which was the multilateral institutions that we've relied on weren't able to constrain Iran effectively. That's one. The second is you have the US and Israel now going it together without the consent of the UN or other multilateral institutions. Do you agree with him as he talks about the way that, that hegemony, the global order has changed?
- [31:36]
B
Look, we're very much at an inflection point in the, in the global order, in the rules based order that we spent 80 years building up. And that was premised on one, I think profound insight and that was enlightened self interest, the notion that the success and strength of others would be our own as well. And we were able to build a system that avoided other countries ganging up against us, as is usually the case when one country rises above the others. We had new markets for all the stuff we wanted to sell. We had new partners to deal with different conflicts, different problems. We had new allies to deter aggression, especially with NATO. And now that system is being put in the, for now at least in the dustbin and being replaced with. There are different versions of this. Some people believe that the President's engaged in going back to a kind of spheres of influence world where the Russians do what they want in their part of the world. The Chinese do what they want, except maybe on the economic issues in their part. And we do what we want to do in our part, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. And then you've got these problematic areas that are dealt with by force. That's a profound thing and that's what's happening now. But I think at the same time, and this is what's maybe most frustrating of all in the Middle east, is that there's also extraordinary opportunity, if very big. If this does produce some kind of real change in Iran, then you have the prospect of a region that heads in a very different direction, that is integrated with its people, it's moving back and forth, its economy is integrated, greater success, greater prosperity for folks. But there remains one catch to that vision besides how Iran resolves, and that's the question of Israelis and Palestinians. The, the truly big vision right now would be to actually resolve that question, not to try to put it under the rug yet again. The bottom line is There are roughly 7 million Jews in Israel. There are about 2 million Arabs, 5 million Palestinians between the west bank and Gaza. No one is going anywhere, despite the efforts of some on both sides to make that happen. And so tell me how this ends. I don't see how this ends without some kind of genuine political accommodation that realizes the rights of Palestinians. This is the moment for that big vision because that brings with it something incredibly powerful. Normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And then potentially other countries will follow suit from Qatar to Indonesia. And then if the Iranian problem is diminished and Iran really has to face a choice between being a of part pariah gadfly or mending its ways, I think that's the most likely way we're actually going to see real change. Unfortunately, tragically, given the trauma on all sides after October 7, on the Israeli side and among Palestinians, it's awfully hard to get there. But that's where you need people of vision to try to move things in that direction. There is actually an opportunity to do that. I worry that that opportunity will not be, will not be seized and we're going to just see a continuation among Israelis and Palestinians. And also Iran is again likely in this moment, if I had to bet, again, we're replacing one Ayatollah for another and the nature of the regime in this moment doesn't seem likely to change. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised and the Iranians get the leadership that they deserve. But the jury's very much out on that.
- [35:20]
C
Something you warned about during your tenure as Secretary of State was the role that China could play in subverting or reinventing the international order. How do you think about that now in this moment?
- [35:29]
B
Well, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. If, if we're disengaged, if we're not leading in the effort to shape that order, then China is going to fill the void. I'll give you one example at the. During the Biden administration, the President took the lead in working with all of the frontier AI companies on getting voluntary commitments on safety and security for these AI artificial intelligence products that were being rolled out to make sure that they were adequately tested, that there was transparency, and that the guardrails were put in against the misuse or abuse of something that has such extraordinary positive potential, but also has real potential downsides. And then we took that around the world and we got the G7 to endorse it. We went to the United nations, we got the first resolution ever on artificial intelligence from the entire United Nations. We were leading the effort to carry AI forward in a way that would be, that would conform to our norms and basically have them adopted by the world. Then the administration got out of that business and said, no, it's just the Wild west, and it's too important that our companies be able to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it, however they want to do it, because the competition with China is what matters the most. But who picked up the banner on AI safety and security? China did. There was a conference in Shanghai. Many of the other AI players, from the United Kingdom to Singapore to others, were there. And China may be the one that's shaping some of these norms and rules, but to its liking, not to ours. So, you know, there's a, as I've seen it again and again and again, if we're disengaged, if we're not leading, then either someone else is, and most likely that's going to be China, or no one else is. And then you're going to have a vacuum that's filled by bad things before it's filled with good things. The flip side of that coin, David, is we've got to be doing it with, with allies and partners. We need in all of these problem areas to be working in concert, whether it's dealing with the problems that China poses. We're much stronger when we're allied and partnered. We successfully align countries around the world in dealing with some of the challenges that China posed economically and on technology. When we're doing with dealing with China alone, we're 20 or 25% of world GDP. When we're aligned with the Europeans, with, with Japan, Korea, India, we're suddenly 50 or 60%. That's a lot harder, you know, bigger weight that China has to, has to account for. And what I worry now is that as a result of so many of the decisions that the administration has taken that have alienated allies and partners that have treated them worse than our adversaries, we're heading to a world where as much as these other countries want to work with us, they are looking for ways to work around us to make sure that they're never caught in this position again. Where the United States can bully them into doing something it wants and they don't want. 70% of Germans in a poll the other day said the said they see the United States as an adversary. 16% of Europeans now see us not as a friendly country. Similar numbers when it comes to Canada and Mexico, similar numbers when it comes to South Korea and Japan. That's not going to be a good world for the United States. In the first instance, yes, someone might take a knee because they have no choice. But then they're going to make sure that they do everything possible not to put themselves in that position. Again, where the United States with a, the tariff can hammer them into doing something that's not in their interest, there are limits to that. The U.S. financial system is, is so central and so strong that there are limits to how far you can work away from or around the United States. But that's what we're seeing. And that's not a world in my judgment, that's in our, in our interest.
- [39:15]
C
Last question is what this war in Iran means for President Trump's other ambitions, be that Cuba, be that Greenland continued project in Venezuela. How do you think about what this may or may not lead to?
- [39:28]
B
Well, in some ways Iran's the outlier because these other areas that you just mentioned are all within what would be our so called sphere of influence. And that's why I said, you know, before, what we're seeing is at least one of the shifts I think we're seeing is the president seems to see the world as in terms of these spheres of influence and anything within our sphere we should in one way or another control. And there's kind of a very 19th century view that actually controlling the territory is the most important thing. Nevermind that there's absolutely no need to do that. I mean, in the case of Greenland, simply asking would have gotten the right answer in terms of putting more military forces there or striking deals on their Raw materials. But that world, the spheres of influence world where the big guys on the block, and it is guys in this view get to do what they want in their area. That's the way things were for much of the latter part of the 19th century. But it didn't end well. We ultimately end up with World War I. What happens? The big countries always want more elbow room. And so they rub up against the other, the other sphere, and that produces conflict. The smaller countries within a sphere, they, they get to a point where they don't like it and they band together and try to build their own strength to take on the hegemon, the people within the country exerting that hegemony. Typically it's in non democratic countries. They conclude that this is not the life that I want to live and rebel against it. And then if you have a system where you've got these spheres of influence and one of these spheres is controlled by a democracy like the United States, and the others are controlled by autocracies. The autocracies at the end of the day, can't abide the success of democracies because in a world of instantaneous communications, their people get to see what's happening and conclude, oh, life looks a lot better there. And so they, that's going to be a constant incentive for them to try to take us down, pull us down by meddling in our elections, by trying to foment societal conflict, et cetera. So that is not a recipe, as I see it, for a world of peace, for a world devoid of conflict, for a world in which the United States can do everything that it needs to, to be successful. One last thing is this. As much as I'm concerned about the diminishment of our alliances and our partnerships, the moving away from enlightened self interest, the move toward spheres of influence, or some people have talked about building empires. I'm equally concerned, David, with another alliance that's been shattered and that's an internal alliance. You know, when we started the 20th century, there was not a major pursuit of science in which the United States led the world. By the time we got to the 21st century, there was not a major pursuit in science and technology where the United States did not lead the world. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because we built an alliance between the federal government, universities, research institutions, national labs. The amount of GDP that we dedicated to research and development went from about 1 1/2% after World War II to by the time President Biden left office, 3 1/2% and that produced extraordinary innovation, coupled with this welcome mat for the best and brightest from around the world who would do their studies here, attracted by being with the best and brightest and an open system. Then they stayed around and created things that made us a leader in all of these fields, which redounded to our economy and redounded to our national security. As that system is being blown up, I think that may be the biggest threat of all to sustaining America's place of strength, of leadership and place power. I'm gratified that the Congress has resisted a number of these cuts that the administration has been pushing, but a lot of damage has been done. You know, when Mark Zuckerberg was trying to hire the best AI talent in the country, what about nine or ten months ago, you know, taking it from other companies in the United States, there was a first group of 11 people who he brought on board his ship. And I looked at the list of 11 people, and it was kind of striking. And I checked into it to see if I was right. And indeed, yes, every single one of those was an immigrant attracted again by the system that we had put in place to attract the best and brightest, to fund the work that they were doing to the benefit of our companies, of our people, of our country. If we lose that, we lose a lot.
- [44:05]
C
Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.
- [44:07]
B
Great to be with you. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. The time is approximately 11:15am about to start consensual telephone call with Dr. Daiwa Zhang. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. I'd never seen that much evidence in my entire career, and I don't think we'll ever see that much evidence again. I now have several terabytes of of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question of his life, and that's a unicorn. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the Six Bureau from Bloomberg Podcasts starting on February 13th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.