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Aug. 7, 2025 - Epoch Times
01:14:47
How the CCP and Its Proxies Created a ‘World on Fire’: Col. John Mills
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Time Text
China is surpassing American strength, whether it be naval forces or nuclear forces.
John Mills is a retired U.S. Army colonel.
His four-decade career has spanned key roles from the Cold War era to the war on terror.
At the Department of Defense, he directed cybersecurity policy.
I was brought into cyber in 2007 when the threat really was Russian cyber adventurism.
But by 2012, it was all China.
It wasn't even close.
For every dollar Russia spent on misadventure, China spent 20.
In this episode, we dive into Chinese Communist Party influence globally and how this has created what Mills calls a world on fire.
All the pieces are kind of in place for Xi to make his move around the world to establish China as the dominant nation state, and all other nations would be tributary vassal states, including the U.S. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellek.
Colonel John Mills, such a pleasure to have you on.
American Thought Leaders.
Jan, thank you.
It's such an honor to be on your show with you.
So you've said that all or most regional conflicts in the world actually trace back to communist China.
So justify that for me, because that's a big statement.
Well, right now, we live in a world on fire.
We have multiple regional conflicts going on.
When you start to break them down, every one of them traces to China, whether it's the American home front and fentanyl, Antifa violence in the streets.
It's all that traces to China, whether it's Ukraine, the Middle East, the Americas, whether it's Asia.
Now, I also like to use the allegory here that in 1939, in the summer, if you asked a group of experts, was the world in conflict summer of 1939?
Most would hurumph and say, well, no, we have something going on in China, we have something going on in Ethiopia, Spain, the rise of militarism in Germany, etc.
But there's not a world war going on.
And then in September, they changed their mind when the Germans crossed the border into Poland.
But if you look at everything, the world was already on fire in summer of 1939.
So all of these things, we're living in a very similar time here.
There's multiple regional conflicts.
When you break down every one of them, everything traces to communist China, communist China, and their focus and intent of dominating the world situation.
And really, the book in 1999, Unrestricted Warfare, really was, I would say, in many ways, the tipping point and the articulation of the coordinated campaign of China to be the dominant world power through all measures, unrestricted warfare.
Give me a few examples of how that manifests with this unrestricted warfare.
Well, I would say biological warfare is one of the basics.
And that is an actual, that is an actual strategy that China has written.
They call it the commanding heights of the showdown with America is biological warfare.
You have to look at the Wuhan lab, the chaos created in 2020 by the release of the virus from the lab at Wuhan and just the mass psychosis that China stoked and leveraged around the world, especially here in the United States.
And I think, so Gordon Chang famously says, I say famously because he said it a number of times on this show, that, you know, whether or not this was an intentional release or something like that, it's the way it was used, which basically made it, they made it weaponized one way or the other.
I think it's clear.
I was involved in the TMB report that assessed, gave an alternative viewpoint to the virus.
And, you know, in the early days, we were attacked, excoriated, anybody who questioned it.
But what Gordon said is true, that regardless of whether it was intentional or accidental From the lab, it was absolutely leveraged and exploited, no question about it.
But that's just one, but massive theft of intellectual property, massive takedown of market sectors in America to essentially undermine through low price point, steal intellectual property, and then take over the whole market sector, whether it be small consumer drones or whether it be textiles.
That is the Chinese strategy.
But it's also a buildup of military forces, which we've now seen.
In many cases, China is surpassing American strength, whether it be naval forces or nuclear forces.
You mentioned something about price points.
So basically, dumping, like, for example, cornering the market in solar panels.
That's something a lot of people don't realize that the Chinese Communist Party has effectively cornered that entire market.
But originally, through dumping into the U.S. market and basically having all the local, and I think, I mean, I think this is globally, basically local producers of such things go out of business because they couldn't compete.
Why?
Because it was part of their industrial policy.
It was part of their national security agenda to do that, because now they can leverage that against the United States and others.
Absolutely.
And they had a lot of willful help with globalist-minded politicians inside the United States.
You mentioned solar panels.
These are, it's been shown that a lot of these solar panels are internet protocol enabled, meaning they're points on the international network, on the worldwide network.
Anything that is a worldwide point on the network can be used both ways.
It could be used for intelligence collection.
It could be used for remote access.
It can be used for remote operation in nefarious ways.
So there's nothing good that comes out of that.
And absolutely, the solar panel campaign, which also has rare earth metals, absolutely a key component of China's strategy.
Get us dependent on those solar panels.
Well, China builds coal plants at an unbelievable rate.
And on top of everything else, use massive U.S. subsidy money to do it.
Yes.
That's like, I guess, textbook unrestricted warfare or something.
Makes perfect sense.
We're funding their malign efforts.
So let's talk just very briefly about these points of conflict, because that's this world on fire.
I mean, it's very interesting because in many cases, it's not clear as we realize, like, for example, with these solar panels, it wasn't clear that this is part of the fire.
There doesn't seem to be a fire there, but there actually is some kind of fire.
Whereas what about the actual conflict zones?
Maybe you just give me an overview.
I break them up, first of all, to the home front, right here in America.
Open borders.
We had no idea who was coming across the border during the previous presidential administration.
Many of them were Chinese special operators that immediately pivoted to what when they came in?
Cannabis operations.
Muscled in on legal cannabis, cash-rich operation.
Cash can't be banked because of federal laws.
All kinds of malfeasance can be done when you have lots of cash floating around, fentanyl over the last few years.
Absolutely, 100% from China.
Chinese formulary components now assembled in Mexico by the cartels under the supervision of China, so Chinese personnel.
So right there is the home front.
But you've got to look at the Americas, the Chinese attempts to really gain control of the Panama Canal, but also Belt and Road initiatives to buy and curry favor throughout the America, including Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, other places.
So that's kind of the next front.
But you've got to look at Ukraine.
But there's a specific relationship with Venezuela, right?
There's this anarcho-terrorist.
It is.
You've got to look at Venezuela as the huge base camp in the Americas for China.
It's ungoverned space.
There's a huge footprint of Chinese operators, of Russian operators, of Iranian operators.
This is their base camp for The Americas.
Before we go international, I just wanted to mention something.
So, something we've covered on the show quite a bit is this idea of the unholy trinity of very what seemingly disparate groups working together on behalf of the CCP.
So, Chinese state security is one corner of that, wealthy business tycoons are a piece of that.
And then, of course, the triads or the organized crime are a part of that, right?
So, with these three groups working together to achieve certain outcomes, this was best first sort of best documented in Vancouver, how that was some of the earliest parts of infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party in North America.
But you can imagine how much easier that becomes, for example, when you have triads, you know, working with Trinaragua as an example, right?
Because there's kind of a natural affinity to function there.
But we just don't think in terms of, you know, well, this government is working with organized crime, is working with the wealthy businessman as one with a common goal in mind with the Chinese Communist Party at the helm directing how this is going to go down.
Yeah, absolutely.
You mentioned Vancouver, which is a case study in forward influence operations by China.
But what's enabled that is there's a high level of Chinese population, oftentimes connected with Hong Kong.
But what was brought in from Hong Kong was also the big circle gang, essentially Chinese triads in Hong Kong, established a big footprint in Vancouver.
But high-cash operation.
You bring money in one side of the casino, buy some chips, cash them in, walk out the other side.
Now you've covered your tracks on money laundering.
You got all the casinos in Vancouver, B.C., lots and lots of Chinese triads hanging around there.
But real estate purchases, another great opportunity for money laundering, making purchases in cash, manipulating the value, pocketing the difference, all these kinds of things.
This is another opportunity for money laundering coming down the I-5 corridor from Vancouver to Vancouver, British Columbia to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, spinning it through the casinos up in Washington state again to double launder it.
All kinds of trickery goes on.
The other part with this, let's call it immigration warfare that you were describing, or illegal immigration warfare or something like that.
You know, we've had, I don't know, there are some pretty high estimates of how many military-age Chinese males have come across.
How do we know that there's Chinese special operators?
Because that's a very specific class, right, are coming across in significant numbers.
Well, I spent time in Panama with Michael Yan and Van der Stiel watching the Chinese activities.
It's just obvious in a lineup who is and who isn't.
Good teeth, flat stomach, muscular military haircut.
So this is a, you know, they also have an unemployment problem, but they also are gamifying and saying, hey, go, go, go forth and do great things.
And this is one more way to take down America is immigration warfare.
And with the double bonus prize of filtering, of sneaking in Chinese special operators to be the advanced force.
Well, let's start with an obvious conflict area that we've been looking at recently, and that is Iran, Israel, and all of these various proxy groups that Iran has been working with.
Let's start with that, because it seems like a number of them have actually been, you know, I don't know, entirely removed almost.
Well, most people have a kind of a stereotype of Middle East tensions and conflict.
Oh, it's Arab-Israeli.
It's this or that.
That's not what's going on nowadays.
It's totally different.
Everybody needs to totally reframe and update their viewpoints on what's going on in the Middle East.
I call it essentially the second part of the world on fire.
The first part was Ukraine, and we'll visit that a little bit later.
But with Iran, Iran would not exist today if it was not for Chinese illegal purchases of sanctioned gas and oil moved on ghost ships from Iran at below market rates, priced in Remby.
So Iran is forced to spend all that RMB right back in China buying consumer product.
So this really is Iran is a client, a proxy state.
And then I call it the 3H club of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, which are the proxies of a proxy.
There's not much left of the 3H club.
It's about the 0.25H club.
Hamas is mostly gone.
Still, the issues there are really food weaponization of food aid, but a new form of food distribution is being used, which cuts Hamas out of the weaponization angle.
But there's also the remaining hostages.
There's also the weapons that the remainder of Hamas uses to attack the Israelis.
But there's also Hezbollah, but they've been mostly or severely decremented by the Pager assault, the brilliant Pager assault, but also very decisive and moves by Israel to create a buffer zone in the south.
So the Houthis are still annoying, still a problem.
They've been decremented also, degraded also through attacks by Israel, by the U.S. But the Houthis wouldn't have anything to fire if it wasn't for the flow of war material coming from Iran.
And a lot of these rockets and missiles that are being used by Iran, essentially they are Chinese design and/or Chinese made or made with Chinese tooling.
And a lot of the war material that is made inside of Iran, again, with Chinese tooling, is also exported to Russia.
So Iran is a proxy and again would not exist.
The viability of the regime, the three-headed regime in Iran, really led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they'd be broke if it wasn't for Chinese illegal purchases of gas and oil that's sanctioned and moved on ghost fleet ships.
Just to talk a little bit more about the region, also Syria has shifted from an Iran allegiance to, well, I think they're in the process of trying to figure out what kind of relationship they're going to have in the West, if that's even possible, given the people that basically brought al-Shara to power.
But I guess what I'm trying to say is when it comes to Iran, it seems like that part of the world of fire has been reduced somewhat in the last while.
The Israelis have very effectively, although caught off guard with October 7th by Hamas, the Israelis have rallied and shown decisive, what we call escalation dominance.
And it's just another technical term.
They've schwacked Iran over and over and over again.
So they've seriously degraded the, I can't even keep track of who's in charge of the IRGC.
It changes so often because the Israeli strikes are extremely accurate and effective.
Then you have the civilian president, then you have the Supreme Ayatollah Khomeini.
But the Israelis have shown decisive dominance.
What is of grave concern now is also this Chinese airlift.
I kind of call it a mini Berlin airlift that is ongoing, where it appears China is bringing in new air defense because the air defense has been essentially wiped out by Israeli and American activity.
And so that's what's going on.
Air defense equipment is relatively light in the spectrum of what needs to be moved as far as war material.
So the Chinese are flying in new S-300, S-400 launch units, missiles, and radars to provide new air defense, grave concern.
Are they flying in possible nuke warheads?
Don't know.
I am sure the Israelis have excellent intelligence on this.
They've shown time and again intelligence dominance.
And if that was the case, that the Chinese were flying in nukes, I think very likely some of those Chinese 747s would be shot down to send a message.
Flesh out more to me this picture of how the CCP is involved.
You mentioned Ukraine earlier.
Well, the no limits agreement with Russia and China was essentially finalized in fall of 2021.
And that was essentially an agreement with China and its proxy states, initially just Russia, but to essentially overturn the U.S.-led world system, which is primarily economic.
The dollar is the reserve currency.
But this was one thing often not understood about China and Russia, they look at the U.S. Operation Desert Storm, which I was in in 91-92, as the perfect military operation, which they study relentlessly.
And Ukraine was essentially supposed to be the desert storm for Russia.
Tactically, the Russians may have momentum.
It's not totally clear on that.
But now we're in a new era where we're going to give war material to Ukraine to help them resist.
The president wants to bring peace and bring peace to this conflict.
And so far, Putin has not been cooperative.
But that is essentially the first major conflagration in the world.
And Putin is an absolute proxy.
He would not exist in power either for the same reasons.
Sanctioned gas and oil moved out of the Baltic on ghost ships over the Arctic to China.
Totally, both countries are absolutely dependent on Chinese purchases.
Frankly, those regimes would not be in power without the purchases by China of sanctioned gas and oil.
You know, it's interesting that the president actually, you know, I think quite prominently allowed those shipments to resume from Iran to China.
I think in the geopolitical play, there might be some reason to allow that.
We don't want to see, I mean, I think the president has been clear on we're not seeking regime change.
That's not an American item of interest or on the agenda.
But I think tactically that might make some sense to allow so that there is some cash flowing so that people do not starve.
We did not inadvertently create a humanitarian crisis.
But I think that can very easily be turned off and turned around once a relook is done to what exactly that funding is going to.
If Iran is just rearming, I think that could very easily be shut off.
Well, let's kind of go back to the big picture.
You know, kind of give me a picture of how the Chinese Communist Party operates and how this would lead to this world on fire scenario that you're describing.
Well, there are many strategy documents and issuances from Chinese leaders, communist Chinese leaders, that their long-term interest is essentially establishing world dominance.
It's been very clear, but they haven't been able to, they knew it was going to be a long march to establish world dominance.
There were many factors that weren't in place.
But I think President Xi is feeling the time is right to really essentially, in many ways, go to Chairman Mao's third stage of conflict, which is open conflict coming out of the guerrilla insurgency phases.
But they've established economic dominance in many ways, as being so many U.S. jobs were lost to China when globalists felt, well, what would be wrong with that?
Well, everything.
But so now all the playing pieces are kind of in place for Xi to make his move around the world to establish China as the dominant nation state and everything else.
All other nations would be tributary vassal states, including the U.S. and how do they work?
For example, you've highlighted the importance of political and information warfare and what this Chinese Communist Party does.
Well, unfortunately, the American art form on information warfare, some people would call it psychological operations.
I think that's a little bit too dramatic.
But our art form on statecraft has really deteriorated dangerously.
Why?
Well, it's because of just the woke agenda.
It's totally poisoned the environment.
The Americans are unable to tell their story.
Unable, that's the simple part of strategic communication and information warfare from the Democratic Republic is just telling our side of the story, incapable of doing that because of the cancer of DEI, wokeism, CRT.
That's being turned around by the Trump administration.
You mean there's this element of looking at the country negatively, so you can't tell the story positively because you don't believe it yourself.
That's kind of what you're saying there.
Absolutely.
How can someone advance the American ideal or the American agenda when they actually don't believe it in their heart of hearts because of just the indoctrination of CRT DEI wokeism?
And so how does that relate to the importance of these information and political warfare operations for the Chinese Communist Party?
The Chinese Communist Party prioritizes and values what are called wolf warrior diplomats in a very aggressive information warfare campaign to not just tell their side of the story.
There's a difference between somebody telling their side of the story and just plain out lying.
There's always going to be a debate on viewpoints on why something happened.
And it's important to tell for somebody to be able to tell their side of the story.
That's different, what the Chinese are doing.
They are absolutely advancing a relentless onslaught of information warfare through their media, through their wolf warriors, to advance a Chinese communist message that just drowns out everything else.
And there's no intellectual honesty in their viewpoint.
They are never wrong, but you just look at what's going on on the home front inside of China.
It's a totalitarian system.
There are no freedoms.
The Chinese Communist Party is dominant.
And everybody else is essentially an automaton to carry out the guidance, the roles, the missions, and the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party.
A massive human rights issue with the Uyghurs, fallen gong Christians, forced organ harvesting.
You have a massive issue with youth unemployment inside of China.
Food issues inside of China.
They depended on the U.S. for food imports, energy.
So there's a whole lot of issues causing severe societal stress inside of China.
And what do totalitarians do when they're under pressure at home?
Pretty predictable in human history.
They strike outward.
So what would you explain to me what the Chinese political warfare strategy is right now?
Part of it is co-opting Western media.
And that's broadcast media, but also Hollywood.
Different Chinese interests.
I think it's Tencent Productions, for example, clearly has had a long-term campaign to essentially craft the narrative coming out of Hollywood.
It's always pro-China, questioning of the West.
Taiwan is part of China.
It's a very, very insidious activity there, but with broadcast media, but let's also take the NBA.
NBA is a poster child for what happens with Chinese influence operations.
The only place growth exists in the NBA is China.
So the NBA is very, the National Basketball Association is very beholden to what China wants to do.
Why?
Because the revenue from their teams grows because of the Chinese market.
Domestically, they have to compete with other interests of the American family or those spending money on leisure and entertainment, and it's shrinking.
So the NBA is a perfect example of shaping the narrative to conform to what the interests of the Chinese Communist Party is.
But how does that manifest?
How does the NBA behave differently?
Well, let's say Hong Kong, nobody can question when Hong Kong fell and was taken over in violation of long-standing agreements of Hong Kong.
I think it was Enos Cantor essentially lost his job in the NBA because he spoke out about that, but others too.
Clearly, there was a narrative that had to be followed by players, by teams, and if not, the person or the team was admonished and or fired.
So which states are aligned with China?
The lineup in the roster is Russia, which is severely, essentially tied down with the Ukraine war.
Iran, which has now been severely degraded.
But I think you also have to look at North Korea, which has 30,000 or so troops on the battlefield in Ukraine.
But I think you also have to put South Africa into this constellation of the axis of China.
Pakistan, Pakistan's kind of wavering, but their problem is they've allowed in a very significant Chinese footprint of advisors, of businesses.
Belt and Road is a very significant program where use of foreign aid is weaponized by the Chinese and they prey upon oftentimes countries that essentially can't afford much and the Chinese come in with very generous upfront terms and conditions that offer a lot.
But in the fine print, there's also collateral that the nation state has to proffer, whether it be a port or some other interest.
But just that's happened in Sri Lanka, in Kenya, in Pakistan, where essentially those nations have been taken advantage of by payday loan terms and conditions of foreign aid.
But they've done that.
China's done that in the Americas.
And they've taken advantage of an American vacuum where America was just really disengaged from the world and created a vacuum.
China says, perfect, fine, we'll step in and take over.
But the malign spirit, intent, terms and conditions of Belt and Road are extremely egregious, extremely abusive, and take advantage of countries that really don't know any better,
can't afford anything, and are willing to essentially surrender sovereignty for short-term a bridge, a port, something that they can't afford themselves.
Well, it seems like they've developed this network now of deepwater ports that could be accessible by the Chinese Navy.
I think that's very true.
In Peru, you have a deep water port, which you have two Mexican ports that were greatly on the Pacific coast that were greatly developed with Chinese resources as alternatives also as a land bridge to the Panama Canal, but within Panama, a lot of attention there.
The Trump administration is focusing on really essentially squeezing the Chinese out because it is onerous.
If you look at the map, what the Chinese own is the major ports on each end of the canal, which can effectively be used to shut down the canal at will.
But in Panama on the Pacific coast, the port, the Hutchinson-Wampo port, we have no idea what's going on in there.
And right, the stretch is about 1,000 feet wide at that point to get in and out of the canal.
One of those large container ships decides to have an accident and take a hard left or a hard right, the whole canal is blocked.
That would mean 50% of the U.S. Navy is off the table for responding to Western Pacific contingencies, such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
So very concerning, and it's something that needs to be addressed because we don't know what's going on inside Hutchinson-Wampo container yard and container port in Panama.
But these deepwater ports are points, they are essentially fortresses for advance outposts for China around the world.
Yeah, I am sure the United States is still pressing that issue.
President Molino of Panama is actually very pro-U.S., very pro-Western.
He's frankly, he's the one.
He's done a very good job of calling out the Chinese inside of Panama.
And previous administrations in Panama were just very subject to being taken advantage of by the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
You know, we're talking about how the Chinese Communist Party is enabling this world on fire, right?
All these different places, all the different conflicts.
Is conflict really good for China?
Does it want to be in conflicts?
Well, I think with China, they want others to be in conflict.
They're very happy to have other countries grind up and lose their own citizens and militaries.
They're very happy to watch Russia grind away and lose population with Iran.
They have no problem sitting back and watching Iran and the 3H club being severely attrited by the Israelis.
They have no problem.
So the Chinese are always wily in this method.
Do the Chinese want open warfare?
Not with themselves, but they're totally happy and encourage their satellite nations to become ensnared in violent, bloody conflicts.
So they're always very good about using other countries' populations and militaries to be ground up in conflict.
The Chinese don't have a strong military experience since their takeover in 1949.
I think in some ways they're timid, they're inexperienced.
They're growing great military force and showing it off regularly as an intent to take over Taiwan.
But the challenge is they're still, I think, a little unsure of themselves.
But this is another dimension that's very important.
And after all, this is kind of, you know, this is a big part of your background.
I mean, that military is growing fast.
Well, their Navy has surpassed the American.
It's shameful what's going on.
And under the previous presidential administration, we were spending more than ever, approaching a trillion dollars per year on the DOD budget.
And yet our military was shrinking.
We're spending more, we're getting less.
But that's an internal American problem.
Again, the drag coefficient and the cancerous nature of wokeism, DEI, CRT.
Spending more, getting less.
That's exactly what you get in a grotesquely bloated, corrupt, socialist, going communist environment.
But the Chinese have accelerated their naval, their naval forces, their missile forces.
They are on a relentless buildup.
They're nuclear force.
The American intelligence community has been lazy and complacent in counting the Chinese nuclear force.
They frankly don't know this fictitious number of 500 warheads, nuclear warheads, which has been the number for 10, 15 years for China and another 10 years.
It's always 500 is what is coming out of the American intelligence community.
If you look at the number of ballistic missiles that are on the ground-based side of the deterrent force, whether they be fixed in a silo or road mobile, if you count the number of sea-launched ballistic missiles and the submarines they have, if you count the number of bombers they have and the number of nuclear-armed cruise missiles, that's more like if those were fully deployed, that's more like 2,000 nuclear warheads right off the bat.
The math doesn't even make sense.
But that's a lazy, complacent American intelligence community that has, frankly, not been doing their job on Chinese, counting the Chinese nuclear force.
We have the worst nuclear gap we've ever faced, ever.
It's an extremely dangerous situation.
You know, one thing that makes it harder to count them is the fact that they move them.
Maybe you can speak to that a little bit because that's another thing that's not well known.
The Chinese nuclear force has characteristics that we don't even have.
They have road-mobile ballistic missiles.
Road-mobile missile prevents targeting because you're constantly moving the missile.
Another side aspect is essentially the Chinese underground wall of China, Great Wall of China, which is an extensive tunneling system throughout China.
And totalitarians love to tunnel.
And a certain amount of hardening and protection is always good, but they spend immense resources on new advanced tunnel complexes, whether it be for their missile force, whether it be for this huge, the largest underground command and control facility in human history that is being built on the western side of Beijing.
So tell me more about that.
Again, I think this is something that's not that well known.
So this new underground command center on the western side of Beijing communicates several things.
It communicates an intent to conduct and survive a nuclear exchange.
This is not just create and operate a deterrent force and then do a launch if necessary.
This is to actually conduct and win a nuclear war.
When command centers start tunneling, that means they're getting ready for conflict.
So this is a great opportunity.
Why don't you tell me a little bit about your background?
Well, thank you, Jan.
Well, I first joined the military in 1983.
It was during the Reagan buildup.
It was a great time.
It was a resurgence of American spirit.
It was exciting.
It was very simple.
We were going to win.
We were going to put the Soviets out of business.
We were going to win.
They were going to lose.
You could win the Cold War, which a lot of our elites were telling us you can never win the Cold War.
You can only manage it.
Reagan said, no, we're going to win the Cold War.
And we did.
So that transitioned to kind of call it the peace dividend era.
That's what I did a Bosnia tour and did peacekeeping in Bosnia.
And we really, it was the Francis Fukuyama era of the end of history.
You know, there is nothing.
We've accomplished everything.
There's nothing more to do here.
Oh, yes, there is.
There's always something on the conveyor belt of chaos.
And then we hit 9-11 and Islamic extremism.
And it also led to the era of the Arab Spring, the collapse of a number of friendly Arab states, and then the showdown with China.
And I lived through all of those and had roles in all.
And I'm going to get you to tell me all those, but I do want to comment because it's so Relevant to everything we've been discussing so far, right?
Because during all this chaos that was happening, China's getting permanent trade relations, China's joining the World Trade Organization, you know, the gutting of the American factories and manufacturing sector begins and happens in earnest.
All of this, basically, the U.S. enables this massive rise of communist China.
So, you know, to your point.
But please tell me more about what you did during these times.
Well, during the Cold War, I came in right at the height of 1983, but it really went to essentially the climax, which was the collapse of East Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I was in the First Gulf War also.
So that's where we, again, as we mentioned earlier, that was the model.
Desert Storm was the model of the perfect war.
And it was quite amazing to be involved in that because it was a lightning conflict where we destroyed a massive, massive Iraqi army well equipped with the latest in Soviet and Chinese weaponry.
And their tactics, their techniques, their procedures, we just totally dominated them.
And it shocked the Russians, it shocked the Chinese.
So that, but I remember one time when we got the halt, they were to halt.
And the end of combat operations, we were already about halfway to Baghdad and wasn't my call.
I was just a first lieutenant in the third armored cavalry regiment.
But talking in the squadron, said, we don't take care of this now.
We're going to be back in 10 years.
And sure enough, we were back in 10 years.
But in that interim time, I did peacekeeping operations.
We tried to figure out what was going on.
And Madeline Albright said, well, use this military for something.
Let's use them in peacekeeping operations.
And there was some merit to that, but it was also a globalist period of foolishness where we allowed the Chinese to rise and essentially, in many ways, started to step back from the playing field.
But Bosnia was, in many ways, was a battleground of things to come.
I didn't even understand part of the issue I had to deal with was watching jihadis inside of Bosnia.
I didn't even understand why Islamic extremists were in Bosnia.
But there was a long story and reason for that.
But then came the war on terror in 9-11.
And guess what?
Yes, we did.
And so I started working with the plan.
I mean, initially, worked Afghanistan.
That was the original focus, but also worked some issues in Yemen.
But then being in Iraq shortly after the initial entry to help set up governance in Iraq during the early days.
But then we kind of pivoted, we kind of became ensnared in a long, endless conflict with unclear goals and agendas that just kind of went on to perpetuity.
And that's where the Chinese really took advantage of things.
But one of the things that was really, really, we noticed was about 2013, 2014 was the beginning of island building.
And it was also a relentless Chinese cyber break into the OPM, Office of Personal Management, 22 million files out the window, which led to the roll-up of the entire CIA human network operation side of China.
Hundreds, more likely thousands, were rounded up, executed, and killed.
But that's when it got serious.
It got serious.
And I was brought into cyber in 2007 when the threat really was Russian cyber adventurism.
But by 2012, from that point onward, it was all China.
It was China.
It wasn't even close.
For every dollar Russia spent on misadventure, China spent 20.
If you just look at the difference in this.
On cyber misadventure.
Cyber, but all of these malign adventure, just if nothing else, the size of the GDP difference between Russia and China.
China's 20 times the size.
So, yeah, Russia was an ankle biter.
The real issue was China.
What did you do in cyber defense?
Well, I was brought in in 2007 by my boss, who was an NSA executive.
I was on the office of the Secretary of Defense staff, but I said, we need a planner.
We need a planner to organize this massive new U.S. cyber program called the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a huge, huge interagency program that was going to make us more secure, better protected.
But there was also other activities that went on that helped in other domains and cyber more and the offensive realm.
But this was a massive program.
And so that's why I shaped and organized that with my interagency partners, many, many, many meetings at the White House, the National Security Council.
I spent some time on the National Security Council and of Bush, beginning of Obama.
And this was really the American bulking up of our cyber capabilities.
It was also a marriage.
It became a marriage of big tech and the U.S. government, which led to a lot of unintended consequences, such as spying on Americans, such as silence and censoring Americans.
Even really was part and parcel of the buildup to essentially the coup against candidate Trump and then President Trump starting in 2016.
You know, it's interesting because I think you're telling me that this cyber buildup was essential, but it was also abused.
It's kind of two pieces to it, right?
Yeah.
What I saw time and again when we gave briefings up at Fort Meade on cyber capabilities was the intoxicating effect of this and growth of the cyber capabilities.
So when a member of Congress, a staffer, came up, received these briefings, it was intoxicating the scale and the scope of what could be done so easily.
And I saw it over and over again.
Those who were being briefed, sometimes who had questions, concerns, comments weren't convinced every time they walked out of those briefings saying, I want, not just that they liked it, they wanted a lot more of it.
What would be an example of this type of capability which would be intoxicating?
The ability to get information, whatever it was, wherever it was, get it, get it fast, and present it in a meaningful manner at cyber speed.
And I can't go into any details, but we would do live demonstrations and within seconds we had it.
It was amazing.
And that always, always compelled anybody who was visiting, a policymaker, a member of Congress.
As soon as they saw that, they said, I'm in.
Well, and so there's this ability to spy, ability to gather intelligence.
At the same time, of course, part of it was to defend against exactly that kind of activity from adversaries.
Defending was absolutely part of the equation.
It's also said oftentimes the best defense is a good offense.
So there's that aspect.
We are experiencing a relentless Chinese cyber assault in Volt Typhoon and SALT Typhoon.
I'm no longer behind the curtain of classified information, but I've done many press releases, and I know what goes on behind a press release, the staff work, the details, and everything I read during the Biden administration was effectively they had lost control, and the Chinese were essentially inside our networks, and we were not able to eject them.
The telecommunication companies were essentially almost abandoned by the Biden administration.
Why?
Because the Biden team was just incapable of finding and ejecting the Chinese malware fast enough.
So, a total, total problem with the previous administration on priorities.
And also, going back to what the DNI, Tulsi Gabber, just brought out with the absolute mischievousness of John Brennan and James Comey trying to set Donald J. Trump up for failure, trying to prevent his election and running a coup against him once he was actually inaugurated.
I'll touch on that in a moment.
As you can best tell at this moment, from the perspective of cybersecurity, offense, and defense, where are we at?
And we know how much there aren't really any actors working out of China that are not connected with the Chinese Communist Party itself.
Well, we are facing a cyber adversary that is led by China, but is not only China.
It's also Russia, it's also Iran, it's also North Korea, it's also Venezuela.
So there is a complete lineup.
The Iranians are very effective and have been very effective at cyber operations, but they are doing this under the command and control of China under the Ministry of State Security.
So this is all a coordinated cyber campaign.
I've heard this too, but how do we know that's real?
Well, I mean, the Chinese actors, you just read the Department of Justice press releases as they've gone over Iranian hackers.
It's clear that they are conducting a target set based upon Chinese priorities.
And there's also signed agreements on cyber going back multiple years between China and Iran.
So there's signed international agreements that nobody pays attention to.
Those signed agreements are pretty important because they spell out, yes, there is an absolute integration of cyber operations.
Basically, there's various different hacking units.
Some of them might be actually in the Chinese military.
Some of them might be independent operations, you know, I'll say in a quote, independent operations, but they're all basically connected and can be deployed as necessary.
And in a way, they're competing with each other for demonstrating how well they can do their hacking, what intelligence they can gather, how much money they can steal, how much classified information they can exfiltrate.
I mean, it's a very interesting system that, you know, if you become good, then you get even more, I guess, you know, benefits from the regime itself.
Can you kind of comment by this whole structure?
Well, what you're really talking about, the Chinese are very good and prioritize gamification of the operation, where just like a social credit score, your individual operators are graded.
What can they break into?
What can they exfiltrate?
What are they returning home as far as value?
So it's absolute gamification.
Everybody's gamified to compete with each other for this.
So that's absolutely what's going on here.
That's how they incentivize their different groups to conduct their cyber espionage.
But it goes across the spectrum.
It's an application of the social credit theory, the social credit program to their intelligence operations and their cyber operations.
So they absolutely are being gamified.
Now, some would say, well, they're not actually part of the Chinese government.
That's like the Chinese that have been found on the battlefield of Ukraine.
They wouldn't be there without the express knowledge and permission of China.
Now, China also has this very insidious nature of also walking away and essentially throwing under the bus its own operatives, too.
On one hand, the Chinese gamify and get their people worked into a frenzy to get the best score.
Just like us, we want to get points on our credit card, you know, achieve a higher flight status on an airline.
It's the same concept, and the Chinese do that.
But also, if you're outed, they'll walk away from you or more often actually disappear the person.
So that's one thing that was found out to be interesting: if the name of one of the Chinese hackers was released, the Chinese usually disappeared them.
For one, they've been compromised, and you can assume that the intelligence services of anybody who doesn't like the Chinese Communist Party are getting whatever they can from that person.
Bottom line, when it comes to cyber, when I look at the fact that through these volt and salt typhoon hacks, it seems like these hack Chinese regime-affiliated hackers are deep in everything.
There's access to everything.
That's the sense I have from the reality.
Have we failed in this?
How do we fix this?
Well, this is one thing I've learned from many years of working cyber operations.
Oftentimes, the answer to beat down a malign opponent who continues to break in your network is not to go after them in the cyber domain.
Oh, they poked another hole in our wall.
I'll just plug that hole.
No, no, no, no.
You want to get their attention.
You want to get them to stop misbehaving, go after something else that they value.
It's counter-value, not counter-force, counter-value.
So, with China, they have a weakness in energy.
They have a vulnerability in food.
They have great instability at home.
Those are things we can poke at.
And if they don't like it, and if they start complaining, we just say, well, they need to stop poking at us in cyber and we'll stop squeezing their energy supply.
It's as simple as that.
That's the way you get attention and response in cyber oftentimes.
Because you're going to be able to keep out the lower-level operators, but a sophisticated high-end nation that operates with no rule set is going to be able to break in regularly.
And they're focusing on critical infrastructure.
These are private companies that are operating critical infrastructure to try and make money.
They're not military intelligence or intelligence units.
They're looking at this from a profit and loss perspective.
And it's not their job to be armed with security to protect themselves.
If they're getting beat up that bad in cyber, that now becomes a U.S. government problem set because a foreign actor is beating up a U.S. critical infrastructure firm.
I saw this during the Obama days.
The Biden team probably sat around, did very little, and watched U.S. critical infrastructure get beat up.
It's a foreign adversary.
That's absolutely a U.S. government mission.
Well, so it's so interesting because the point, like the misunderstanding here has been that essentially the CCP co-opts absolutely everything in society.
And if it doesn't do it at a specific moment, everybody understands that at any moment they can be called upon to do that.
And that's, of course, expected and will be done.
Otherwise, you know, dire consequences will happen.
But that's just not something we've understood somehow, right?
We presume good intent on other actors.
I'm not saying that we have to presume everybody is out to get us, but we should be reserved.
We should be ensuring that we are not creating vacuums or vulnerabilities that other malign nations are going to take advantage of.
So the globalist elite mentality is: so what if they're ripping us off?
So what if they're conducting these malign activities?
We're actually tricking them and creating a relationship.
Well, that's not the case.
These are hardcore communists.
Their only focus is victory.
They're not going to play nicely to become part of the globalist club.
They're playing to win.
So you mentioned something about how it works in cyber, but I was thinking to myself, I think it works like that in almost every discipline.
I mean, basically, what you told me was that you have to exert leverage to elicit good behavior.
When the Chinese started island building and then simultaneously breaking into the office of personal management, the Obama administration started getting very upset and they wanted ideas.
Okay, how do we hold China accountable?
I gave them a list.
They just about passed out when they read the list.
Oh, John, we shan't be able to do that.
That would be too provocative.
Are we here to exert the American agenda?
Are we here to just take the beating?
It's funny because in early 2016, they came back to me and said, where is that list you had given to us?
We're actually interested in working on that now, you know, a year, year and a half later.
So you were actually one of the people that assessed this intelligence community assessment from the side of DOD, as I understand it, that recently we've been hearing about, that Telsey Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, publicized recently.
Yeah, I think it's page 7475 of my first book, The Nation Will Follow.
Two days after the election in 2016, I was called up on the NSA phone.
The person said, I had to be on the intelligence community assessment that was assembled to finalize the Russian narrative because we were going to prove that Trump was a Russian asset and we were going to delay or block the inauguration of Donald J. Trump for the first term.
I just couldn't believe it.
This is what you were told?
This is what I was told on the phone.
So this was a deep state coup from the beginning that it actually started in early 2016.
We went through the process in November, December.
The final product came out in the first few days of January 2017.
But bottom line, the supposed top secret review, there was nothing there to show that Russia was trying to manipulate the campaign or the outcome of the election in the favor of Donald J. Trump, that the Trump campaign was somehow colluding with Russia.
There was no evidence of anything.
So when the document, the Intel community assessment came back to the Department of Defense, because that's what happens in these reviews, the team members, the document, the final end product goes back to all the departments and agencies for review and finalization and approval.
When it came back, my recommendation was non-concur.
There was no evidence to support any of these assertions.
And I was told, John, stand down.
No, you don't need to complete the staffing.
The secretary, which is Ash Carter, who's dead now, had already signed off because Comey and Brennan were personally hands on keyboard writing this assessment.
You never have a director of CIA or director of FBI personally writing the Intel community assessment that was very brief.
It sounds, you know, even with everything we know today, it sounds kind of nuts.
It was absolutely nuts.
It was absolutely nuts.
And it was some of the most outrageous things I've ever said or heard in government service, uniformed or civilian.
This was insanity.
The voice on the other end, I know exactly who it was, and I put their name to the Durham investigation.
John, we're going to finalize the Russian narrative, prove Donald J. Trump is a Russian asset, and delay or block the inauguration.
It's never been done before in American history.
This is insane.
But it shows what was going on.
And we were starting in early 2016, we were being fed information in interagency meetings from New York, from the director of counterintelligence, who was Charles McGonagall, who's now in prison, who is being paid by the Russians to spread the rumor inside the U.S. government that Trump was a Russian asset.
I just want to touch on that for one sec since we're talking about it.
It was Russian money that was funding the rumor that the candidate Trump was a Russian asset.
That is as insane as it sounds.
Yes, the Russians were paying the FBI director of counterintelligence to spread the rumor it was the Russians that were interested in Trump, were trying to influence the election, and that there was a form of collusion going on between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Shows the bizarre nature of the Soviet-era psyche still permeating through the Russians.
The reason I mentioned that is this is just not a very well-known piece of the story.
Charles McGonagall is in prison and he's gotten scant attention.
Now, he was charged.
I gave a very long statement updated multiple times to the Durham investigation.
During the Biden years, Merritt Garland was into the quandary of they had an absolute problem with Charles McGonagall.
Now, they separated that out from the John Durham investigation, said, oh, this had nothing to do with the John Durham investigation.
Oh, yes, it did.
It had everything to do with the John Durham investigation.
They didn't want to show that Durham was successful in anything.
But Charles McGonagall really was derived out of information from various sources from the Durham investigation.
He's in prison now.
But there's also five criminal referrals out of the Durham investigation that have essentially, it's right in the document.
I think I know who three of the five are.
So before the recent South Korean election, you were there on the ground as part of an international election monitoring team.
I was at a presser where you gave some of your observations and conclusions and so forth.
So I'll read a few of them.
One of them was there were significant statistical disparities between early and same-day voting.
Another one was there were concerns about the security and transparency of the electronic vote counting systems, irregularities in ballot handling and chain of custody, obstruction of lawful citizen-led monitoring efforts, a lot of things going on that were questionable.
I just want to get you to speak to that.
Unfortunately, what we uncovered observing the election situation in South Korea is international election cartel that is intent on influencing elections.
It's really aligned with the globalists, but it's also really with China.
This is also a key part of the international election cartel because China has learned, hey, they can influence the election outcomes.
But I think some of it, I think we have to go back to the Obama days where I think it just came out, the incredible amount of money that was spent by Obama through the CIA to influence elections in Israel.
Okay, but now we've also uncovered the U.S. aid contribution to influencing elections in Brazil, where a populist Bolsonaro lost an election and is now incarcerated by the regime in Brazil, who's aligned with China.
But we just, what happened in South Korea, absolutely no question about it.
This was an international election cartel that influenced the South Korean election.
The numbers just mathematically made no sense.
There was Chinese operators at the polling stations.
You have this thing called the National Election Commission, which is an unassailable body.
It's unauditable, uninvestigatable by the South Korean government.
And also very, very problematic situation is it has members of the South Korean Supreme Court on the board of the National Election Commission.
A clear failure to separate powers between parts of the South Korean government.
So that was not a clean event that occurred on June 3rd in South Korea, and it's getting scant attention and notice.
But there's also this mysterious body called AWEB inside of South Korea, the Association of World Election Bodies, which has the U.S. aid logo all over their website.
So fortunately, we've shut down U.S. aid.
We've clawed back a lot of money.
But unfortunately, it was too late to help the situation.
South Korea, very likely, U.S. aid money went toward influencing the outcome of the election in South Korea.
But I would say South Korea, our best friend and ally, better than even our five eyes partners, is in a state of crisis right now because of the international election cartel that influenced that election.
Is this something you think the U.S. should be involved in?
I mean, there's this, you know, as you know, there's a lot less of an appetite for intervening in processes, whether it's certainly in military, but also in government processes in other countries.
Well, I'm a firm believer in America first and the Make America Great agenda, okay?
Part of this means no new wars, no endless wars, and an avoiding of foreign entanglements.
Totally support that.
However, we can't just drop a hermetically sealed dome over America and just ignore that there's a rest of the world out there.
We do have interests.
We do have initiatives we should be promoting.
We do have partners out there, trusted partners that we should be coming to the aid to, especially when they are under duress from maligned foreign influence operations led by China.
This was a Chinese operation.
South Korea is our best friend.
Are we going to just watch our best friend get mugged, robbed, and brutalized and do nothing?
Public statements from the president or other members of the administration are immensely powerful in just acknowledging the situation.
It doesn't mean we have to deploy resources, programs, units, personnel.
One thing that is extremely appreciated and has immense impact is just the words of the president or the words of a senior official from the administration showing concern.
That's step one, and that's frankly 70% of the battle.
If the South Korean Democrats knew they were under close scrutiny from this administration, things would be very different in South Korea right now.
That's what's needed, is just a statement of interest.
Interesting.
So there's still a place for U.S. soft power.
Absolutely, absolutely.
We need to spend far more time and energy on soft power.
And again, the essence of soft power is just saying something.
That's the essence of soft power.
When bad people know that they're being watched, they behave very differently.
And that's when you make a statement about bad behavior, bad activity.
It's amazing what happens.
This is just public truth-telling, basically.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
We have the instruments of national power, diplomatic, information, military, economic, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, dime fill is what it's called.
Starts with D. D is for diplomacy.
That's all part of communicating soft powers through diplomacy, but it's been absolutely atrophied and rotted out because of the effects of decades of cancerous DEI wokeism where, you know, we just, we can't tell the truth.
We can't say anything.
It has to be communicated through such dysfunctional political lenses that the outcome means nothing.
Here's a great example.
When I was spending time focusing on Panama before the American election, I always go to the website of the American embassy.
What's important is what's on the front of the website.
Panama needed a fourth bridge over the canal.
You know how many American companies responded to that offering, that request for a proposal from Panama?
Zero.
Zero.
A huge infrastructure project where we could have come in and had immense influence.
Not a single American company responded.
A lot of it was concerned over the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
They felt it was too dicey.
But so what was on the front page of the American Embassy Panama website during the Biden years?
U.S. involvement in transgender conferences in the Americas.
Look, these countries don't take us seriously when that's the form of statecraft we're communicating.
It's insanity.
It's insanity.
Panama needs bridges.
Panama needs a sewer system.
Panama needs a mail system.
And yet what do we lecture them on?
Transgenderism.
John, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation for me.
A final thought as we finish up?
Well, thank you, Jan.
I just think we need to understand what's going on around us, have situational awareness and realize there is a world on fire.
It is intentional.
These things we're seeing, even stateside, what's going on in America.
This is not accidental.
This is not coincidental.
Organized groups breaking windows didn't come out of thin air.
They expect to get paid and organized and directed.
And that's what's going on.
And so I think we need to be aware of that.
And we need America is an incredible, incredible, precious experience and experiment in human history, a constitutional republic.
Never been one like it, never will be again if those forces intent on throwing it into the trash can are successful.
So I think it's worth fighting for and worth defending.
And that's what we should do.
Well, John Mills, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you, Jan.
Thank you all for joining John Mills and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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