█ █ █ █ Jim Sciutto is CNN's Chief National Security Analyst and anchor of CNN Newsroom.

Over the course of his career, Sciutto has reported for more than 50 countries and has earned Emmy Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award.

Sciutto's latest book, "The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War," details the realities of this new post-post-Cold War era and the flashpoint of a new global nuclear arms race.

Jim Sciutto is joined in conversation by Jane Perlez, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

Perlez was a long-time foreign correspondent for The New York Times, where she wrote about China's role in the world and the competition between the United States and China.

Currently, she is the producer and host of the podcast, Face-Off, the U.S. vs China, which focuses on the growing rift between the United States and China.

Recorded at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum, this is Great Conversations, Jim Sciutto and Jane Perlez.

Jim, so nice to see you, and I feel I should say, welcome to Louisville.

Even though I'm not here, you've got 27 first cousins in Louisville.

[laughter] That's quite a few, I think.

It's a good start, right?

It's a good start.

Well, I would say, although born and bred in New York, my mother is a Louisville girl, and we came here when I was a kid, so when I come to Louisville, it feels like my old Kentucky home.

I knew.

[applause] We met just this afternoon in the lobby of a hotel, and he'd already done the rounds of many cousins and many people that he knew.

[laughter] He seemed to feel quite at home.

But we're here tonight to talk about "The Return of Great Powers," which I have to say is a totally magnificent book.

And one of the reasons that it's so magnificent is it's really deeply sourced.

That means that Jim knows everybody who's anybody in this whole situation between China, Russia, and the United States, and the world at play.

And I'm very impressed because he's not only a journalist, but he's also been a government official and chief of staff at the embassy in Beijing.

And that, I think, has given you a great insight into how China works.

And so I am very impressed also that at the start of the book, how does it begin?

It's with Jim sitting on the couch in the office of the CIA director, Bill Burns.

So, tell us about that conversation on the eve of the war in Ukraine.

Well, thank you very much for the introduction.

And I, of course, have the deepest respect for your work as well.

So, I appreciate you being across the desk here from me this evening.

So, I've dealt with the CIA for some time and managed to build relationships there.

And that takes time, and it takes work.

I do think that having served on the other side, as it were, inside government, I did a couple of years in Beijing as the chief of staff, as Jane mentioned, gives me an understanding of how it works from the inside.

I think one revelation from that time is just that, and this is not a revelation, I felt this because I've dealt with government officials in a number of capacities through the years, is that while our relationship, the media's relationship with government is adversarial by design, and it should be, I mean, they can be our friends and we can have good relationships, but at the end of the day, our job is to hold them to account.

That's what's one of our jobs.

But it becomes clear, and I'm sure you've had similar experience, that by and large, folks in these positions are doing their best with their nation's interests at heart.

They're not all perfect people, by any means, as none of us are.

They're doing their best with imperfect information to make the best decisions they can for the country, and I think there's also an impression often from the outside that everyone in government knows everything, at least in the intelligence agencies.

I certainly thought that, and I used to get wild when they wouldn't tell me everything that they knew, but I think you're right.

They don't know everything.

Well, we think -- listen, the U.S. intelligence community is the largest intelligence apparatus ever created by man.

I mean, the number of agencies, the technology at their fingertips, the satellites in the age of, in the cyber age we live in, enormous tools of technology, but also human intel sources around the world.

But even with all those eyes and ears, right?

They don't have a complete picture of the world.

So, you have imperfect people making imperfect decisions with imperfect information, doing the best they can, but that often can create bad results.

It can sometimes create great results, but most of the time it's somewhere in the middle, imperfect results.

And that was just something that was drilled home to me while I was on the inside, which has helped me, I think, in covering those agencies.

But it's interesting because when you were sitting with Bill Burns, he was more than once through the book.

He did have very good intel on Putin's intentions in Ukraine.

How come?

Tell us about that.

So, he's an interesting character because prior to being CIA director, of course, he had a long history as a diplomat, and prior to that he was based in Russia.

So, he has quite personal experience in Putin's Russia, in fact, dealing face-to-face with Putin himself.

And in the weeks and months leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I started to get wind from sources that this was brewing.

In fact, and I tell the story in the book, that in November of 2021, I was checking in with one of my best military sources about something entirely different, and he said to me, you have to start paying attention to Ukraine.

And I said, what's going on?

And he said, we are watching Russia amass the vast majority of its entire conventional armed forces around Ukraine, and we believe they're planning to go in.

This was November.

And in the weeks that followed, I began to do stories about those preparations.

And you began to see some of that intelligence, you'll remember, be declassified.

There was quite a public effort purposely.

There were satellite images that they were saying, here are the tanks on the border.

Here are the field hospitals on the border.

They are preparing for an invasion.

And it was very unusual that they did release the, that the American government did release these details.

I think it was unheard of before.

It was.

And it's part of the age of intelligence that we're in now, which is a difference that there is a public -- Another book, Age of Intelligence.

There you go.

In fact, let me just jot that down right now.

No one else take that?

[laughs] You included.

That public messaging is more of the battle than it was the past, because we live in a disinformation age, and that there's an information front to this conflict.

So, they are more likely to declassify to, well, to try to get a certain end, a goal.

In this case, the goal was Europe has to prepare for war, and we have to prepare for war.

And but wasn't it also to deter Putin, to tell him, we know what you're up to?

100%.

And Bill Burns was the man charged with going to Moscow in the weeks prior, meeting with Putin and say, "Mr. Putin, we see what you're doing.

What are you up to?

And if you plan to invade, we would take that quite seriously."

I mean, that was his message prior.

But what was interesting is that even as the U.S. intelligence community was seeing this and communicating this both publicly and to allies and leaders around the world and to Putin himself, was the disbelief.

And I think some folks here will remember that, that in Europe, in this country, even in Ukraine itself, you heard this view, Putin's too smart for that.

Putin's playing three-dimensional chess.

He's fooling you all.

He's acting like he's going to invade just to get you all riled up.

He's not going to actually do it.

The disbelief, even as you got closer and closer to that day, and when there were more tanks on the border and there were more shells lined up preparing for the invasion, the disbelief was pretty remarkable.

And of course, on February 22nd, they did go in, full scale.

And this was one of the messages of speaking to Bill Burns, is that Bill Burns was, one, sounding the alarm, but two, deeply frustrated that people didn't see the threat that was before them.

So, what's also very interesting, talking about sourcing and how you have the whole of D.C. wired, is that -- Not quite all of D.C.

I won't claim that.

Well, I get that impression, pretty much all, 99% anyway.

You got a call in the hours before the invasion from someone in Congress saying, get ready, you were in Ukraine.

How much later did the invasion start?

A few days later.

I was in Kyiv.

I got a call from a member of Congress, and his exact words, paraphrase, but it's in the book, he said, "Do you guys know what's coming?

Are you prepared for what's coming?"

He was speaking about me and CNN, in the sense that, not so much report it, we were already reporting it, but make sure you're safe.

Because their understanding as to what Russia was about to unleash, particularly on Kyiv, which is where I was at the time, was dangerous.

And I tell this story in the book, that where we were in Kyiv, it's the Intercontinental Hotel downtown, which is a favorite place for journalists to be, is unfortunately positioned between two prime targets of Russian airstrikes.

One is the Foreign Ministry, which is on one side, and across the street is the National Police Headquarters.

So, as another friend of mine told me in the days leading up, a military source, he said, listen, the Russians know you're there, but the Russians don't have very good aid.

[laughter] Well, that's not very reassuring, because they can strike you by mistake.

So, talking of that, what did you do, because you're not very valuable to CNN as a correspondent, or to anybody, if you're dead or wounded in a strike.

So, when you knew it was coming, what did you do?

So, I had quite open conversations with my bosses, which, by the way, are, and you've been there, you've been deployed to war zones, our bosses take our safety very seriously.

And we have open lines, no one's going to not pick up my phone when I call them up.

And by the way, I did call up several of my bosses after this congressman called me.

And then my Washington bureau chief then called the White House to make sure that we were sharing information, not just with the U.S. government about our safety, but with other news organizations.

And how was that accepted?

Was it kind of dismissed and saying, oh, you're alarmist, or did other people have similar information?

There were doubts inside my own organization.

That's how I got the message when I was reading that part of the book.

I didn't think you thought too much of those bosses, to be honest.

So, well, the bosses, I will say... [laughter] My bosses were listening.

And they were allocating resources and making sure our safety was insured, or not insured, it can't be insured in a war zone, but is protected as best as possible.

But I did have colleagues who like, and by the way, they're not alone, because heads of state were questioning whether Macron was meeting with Putin days before, thinking he could make a peace deal.

Significant political figures in this country were saying Putin's too smart for it.

Significant commentators in this country were saying that.

And even Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the weeks before was saying, listen, you guys are raising so much alarm, we're losing business in Ukraine.

So, the doubt was certainly not concentrated or confined to my colleagues.

But I did have colleagues who were saying to me, you know, you're swallowing at hook, line, and sinker what you're hearing from your sources.

And I said, listen, I've always felt this, like I was just saying, intelligence is not foolproof, by any means.

It's a picture, and it's an incomplete picture.

But what was different about this intelligence picture was that it was visible.

Some colleagues at the time brought up, as one would, and quite fairly, 2003 Iraq invasion, saying, well, they got it wrong that time.

I mean, the difference was, as you know, the intelligence on Saddam Hussein's nuclear plans were quite thin.

There were no stacks of satellite photos that showed the weapons systems as we saw in Ukraine.

And in addition to that, and I talk about this in the book as well, the U.S. had quite remarkably penetrated high-level communications inside Russia.

So, they had intercepts of Russian commanders speaking to Russian commanders about invasion plans.

And they had, in the years leading up, which is another story I did, as did your former newspaper, a very highly placed source in the Kremlin that was removed from Russia prior to the invasion, but that gave them an inside view of Trump -- I'm sorry, of Putin's thinking regarding Ukraine.

They are interchangeable.

[laughter] [laughs] So, their intel penetration of Russia was quite significant.

So, there was reason to find that assessment credible.

And of course, you know, on February 22nd, the tanks rolled and the first cruise missiles came in.

You asked me what we did in response.

One thing we did is we created a sort of retreat position if, as those intel -- the one thing that was wrong about the intelligence assessments was how quickly Ukraine would fall.

Because you'll remember, the assessment was that Kiev would fall in 72 hours, which didn't happen.

But we created a sort of retreat position in the western part of Ukraine, in Lviv, where we could then maintain broadcast if we lost the ability to broadcast from Kiev.

When did you lose the ability to -- We didn't, in the end.

And what's interesting is -- and this is another surprise of the war -- was that the U.S. assessments were, and understandably so, that Russia's electronic warfare would be so comprehensive that we wouldn't be able to get a signal up, a satellite signal up, or that we wouldn't be able to communicate.

So, you were afraid of a blackout.

Pretty much.

Now, there are two schools of thought as to why that didn't come to be, and both may be true.

One is that, you know, never imagine the adversary is 10 feet tall, that some of their capabilities were exaggerated.

But also that Russian soldiers and commanders depended on those communications.

So, they couldn't take out the cell phone networks because, pretty stupidly, Russian commanders were speaking to each other on cell phone lines that the U.S. was able to penetrate.

And that's one reason why they had a pretty good picture of what their plans were prior.

And you saw some of this, I mean, you would see it on social media, I mean, like soldiers posting pictures of themselves in front of their tank in, you know, northeastern Ukraine.

But given all that, given the sloppiness of the Russians, it was still believed that the Ukrainians would fold pretty quickly.

Say two weeks into the war, what did you think?

How long did you think the Ukrainians would survive?

Did you think that they would still be there, we'd still be looking at this war today?

In the early days, so the first surprise was that it didn't fall in a few days, right?

And that Ukrainians were putting up a stronger resistance.

And some of that was just clever David versus Goliath stuff.

Smaller more mobile units were striking big, slow, plodding Russian movements with enormous success.

I don't know if you remember, but there was that road to Kiev where you had a, you know, miles long Russian convoy of soldiers and tanks and APCs and so on that were stuck in a traffic jam that became open season for these smaller Ukrainian units, which made the Javelin shoulder fired missile an early star of the war to the point where they started its own social media feed called Saint Javelin, which was posting pictures of successful strikes online.

Now later, the war changed over time.

And by the way, Russia learned, I mean, Russia's not dumb, right?

And they learned and they adapted and they've had more success now than they had in the early stages of the war.

So, let's fast forward to a year from the start of the war.

Xi Jinping from China arrives in Moscow in March of 2023.

And we know that Xi Jinping and Putin are best buddies, but it's a three day visit and they seem to be the best bosom buddies you could ever imagine.

I mean, one of the theories of this war is that Xi Jinping has made sure that Putin's able to keep going in the war.

Can you tell us how China is supporting Russia's effort and why it's so important?

So, it was notable that Xi and Putin announced their no limits partnership just a few weeks before the Ukrainian invasion.

And that's been a relationship that's been developing for a number of years In 2019, when I asked folks around the world, give me your read of the relationship, their read was that they're kind of partners of convenience, that where they have shared interests, they'll work together, but they're mostly wary of each other.

And by the way, they have conflicts out in Eastern Russia and so on.

So, they're not the best of friends, they're kind of convenient friends.

But in the five years since then, or if you think 2019 to 2022, they were moving closer and closer together and calculating what they share.

And there's still a lot that they don't share, but what they share is that it's in their strategic interest to weaken the U.S. and its allies and to weaken the U.S. led international order, because in part they see that order as skewed against their interests.

But they see that the two of them together, they're stronger together than apart.

And we've seen that in the war.

Now China has not yet made the decision to openly arm Russia for its war in Ukraine, to say send Chinese tanks or Chinese soldiers.

Why do you think that is?

Why do you think they've resisted that?

It gives them everything they want without paying the price of being directly involved in that war.

You think China thinks it would give them too bad a name, a blackened name?

They would fear particularly the economic consequences of broader, tougher U.S. sanctions at a vulnerable time for the Chinese economy, because it's not particularly strong.

So, they give components for weapon systems, but not the weapon systems themselves.

And by the way, they buy a lot of Russian oil, which is to say they write the checks for the invasion.

Now, Iran and North Korea, and this is the other difference in that time span, is that you do have a contiguous axis of authoritarians, whatever you want to call it, that are deeply cooperating.

Iran is sending, as you know, very capable drones that have devastated Ukrainian cities.

North Korea now has -- 10,000 soldiers.

A nuclear North Korea has deployed forces to Europe for the largest war in Europe since World War II to fight on the battlefield.

And prior to that, of course, sent loads of shells.

They are arm in arm.

And then when you look at other conflicts, Russia is helping Iran and Hezbollah, by the way.

I note this in the book, that Russia sent Hezbollah right after October 7th, the surface-to-air missile system.

So, they're joined up, and that's part of this new world order that's threatening and worrisome.

And when you talk about, and we'll get to this, I'm sure, is Trump's view of this world and these leaders, is that a big difference between Trump's first administration and today is how close those powers are cooperating.

That's a different reality that he's going to have to deal with.

But it's quite an alarming portrait if you look at it that way, and if you look at it in terms of Xi Jinping being a strong man, Putin being a strong man, Kim Jong-Un being a strong man, who, by the way, you described in one of your earlier books, Trump trying to cozy up to Kim Jong-Un and not succeeding.

But I'm wondering, what is it about Putin and Xi Jinping that Trump admires so much?

And what do you think the differences between Putin and Xi and our new president to be?

So, I read about this in the book, and I asked several people who served Trump at very high levels in his first administration, including John Kelly and John Bolton, Matthew Pottinger, who you know, who effectively led Trump's China policy, and others.

And what they say in their words is that Trump envies their power, envies power without limits.

Not no limits, but he looks and you hear that in his public comments, right?

He will say about Xi and Putin and Kim Jong-Un, oh, they rule their countries with an iron fist.

Yes.

You have to respect them.

Trump has said that he admires Xi Jinping because he rules 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.

I mean, if there's a scary statement, that's it.

John Kelly says in the book that he would have sometimes difficult conversations with Trump explaining to him where his power ended.

For instance, I tell the story in the book of how in 2018 at the NATO summit, Trump very nearly pulled out of NATO or tried to pull out of NATO.

And in addition to cautioning him against the damage that would do to the U.S. national security and stability in Europe, Kelly and others also described to him, well, listen, this is a ratified treaty ratified by acts of Congress.

There are things you could do unilaterally.

You could send the US to war.

That's constitutional powers of the commander-in-chief.

And of course, over time, Congress has ceded the power to declare war to the executive branch.

But there's a lot of history behind that.

Regardless, that there are certain things you need Congress for and that those were often difficult conversations to convey to Trump.

You know, I really like your earlier book, Madman Theory.

Trump takes on the world.

And in there, you describe the, there's a chapter called 1 plus 2 plus 3 equals 0.

It's an amazing chapter because it describes how Trump had three meetings with Kim Jong-Un, the leader of North Korea, trying to get him to give up his nuclear weapons, which was obviously a lost cause even before he stepped foot near Kim Jong-Un.

And you were there at each of those meetings, the first in Singapore, the second in Hanoi, and the third in -- The third demilitarized zone.

-- the demilitarized zone.

Can you describe what the interaction was like?

I mean, these are very staged meetings, of course, but it would be interesting to hear the inside story of how Trump and Kim Jong-Un were together.

So, I think from those meetings and that negotiation, we can take both a positive and a negative takeaway in terms of Trump's handling of a key national security issue.

So, on the positive side, I'll just get there first.

He walked away from the table in the end, when -- But it took three meetings.

It did take three meetings.

In three different places.

But when he got to a point where his feeling was Kim was not giving enough, he said, "Okay, I'm not going to make this deal."

So there were limits.

He was not willing to, you remember his love affair with Kim.

He was not willing to let that make the decision for him.

Now, prior to that, he gave Kim enormous face by giving three face-to-face meetings with the U.S. president, which typically, as you know, you save that meeting till you already have the deal or are just about to have the deal.

The concessions have already been made and you have the outline so that you're granting that stature for something in return.

But Trump's style, and this is just his style, he believes he can negotiate anyone off a position to get them either closer to his side or to make a good deal.

And he figured that doing a meeting three times face-to-face, I could get there.

Now, ultimately, he didn't get there and he acknowledged that and he said, "Okay, I wiped my hands of it.

Let's move on."

So, listen, there are, Trump has shown he has limits with these strongmen, even as he has made very public statements praising their style of leadership.

So, it's going to be interesting to see, Trump has said he's going to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, on day one, you know, almost immediately.

Of course, that's such, that's overstatement to say the least.

But how do you think he will deal with Putin and what success can he have?

So, like with so many things, there are two schools of thought, and I try to lay them out in the book.

I asked, again, don't trust me, trust the folks who served him at the highest levels during his last administration.

I asked Kelly and I asked Bolton and I asked Pottinger and others involved what they expect from Trump regarding Ukraine in the second term?

And they all said he will end aid to Ukraine.

He doesn't see it as America's war.

He's worried about escalation.

He thinks it's basically Europe's problem.

That's their read.

Now, there is another school of thought that I hear now, particularly in the wake of the election that, and not just from people inside Trump world, that Trump will look at this and say, I don't want to lose.

And that if he sees that pulling U.S. aid will put Ukraine on a path to potentially losing the war outright, or at least making a deal that Ukraine doesn't want to make and that is clearly in Russia, to Russia's advantage, that he would then be seen as weak and therefore would see the light on Ukraine and not make that deal.

That's possible.

We don't know.

And I mean, if you look at the North Korea example in his first term, he may get there.

The other piece I hear is that, and I was speaking to a Republican about this just last week, a Republican congressman who is very pro-Ukraine aid, but also campaigned for Trump and supported Trump, endorsed him in this election.

He said that he believes that Trump will look at Ukraine and look at Afghanistan and say that the Afghanistan withdrawal was a fail, it made America look weak, it made Biden look weak, it deeply damaged Biden.

I don't want to have my own Afghanistan in Ukraine.

Now, I don't know what portion of that is hope versus cogent predictive analysis, but we'll find out soon.

I mean, there are going to be votes coming up on aid to Ukraine, which the president will either support or not support.

And he might very well reach out to Putin early on in his term and say, let's sit down at a table and see if we can come to an agreement.

Well, at the very least, he will go for a ceasefire, which, how would that work?

Just a ceasefire?

You're not going to get a treaty all of a sudden, but I mean, an end to the war, but you could get a ceasefire.

Well, that's the question.

Is it a ceasefire with concessions, with security guarantees?

And it's not clear that Ukraine would agree to a ceasefire if it doesn't get something in return on its own right.

Because for Ukraine to ceasefire, it would be stopping defending itself, right?

It's been, and I just, I try to convey this to people.

I've been to Ukraine a number of times going back to 2014.

Ukraine, and I've covered it going back to the early 2000s, the Ukrainian people have made multiple choices via democratic votes to move closer to Western Europe based on the kinds of presidents they voted for, based on enshrining in their constitution a path towards integration with Europe, that's, we talk about the constitution here.

Everybody loves to defend the constitution.

This isn't the Ukrainian constitution.

They wanna move that way, and who would blame them?

And I'm talking even prior to 2022.

When they look to what Putin's Russia has become for civil society, for journalism, for democracy, they look east and they look west and they wanna move west.

Now since then, they have 1,000 days of war where Russia has killed tens of thousands of civilians and not as collateral damage as the express intent of these strikes.

You drop bombs on civilian targets in Ukrainian cities every day.

Hospital schools included, power stations, all that's designed to punish the Ukrainian people.

So, and I say this in the book and I say this when I speak to audiences, ask the Ukrainians what they want.

They don't wanna go that way.

So, now, many Ukrainians and probably even most wanna end the war now because it's been exhausting.

They've all lost brothers and sisters and mothers and children and -- And their manpower's been depleted.

Their manpower's been depleted.

They wanna end the war, but they don't wanna end the war in such a way that they invite the next war.

And they look at Putin and they say, we're next.

And by the way, with tremendous proximity to the issue and knowledge of Putin, the Finnish president for years had the closest relationship in Europe with Putin.

Not because they were golfing buddies, but because he met with him and knew him and understood him.

So, on the good side, Europe and the U.S. have stayed very united on Ukraine for two and a half years with tremendous costs.

Germany, if you look at Germany, they completely changed their energy policy in the span of weeks.

They depended on Russian fossil fuels and natural gas.

And in the wake of the war, they virtually cut off that spigot with tremendous economic costs.

I always say to folks that the most immediate economic impact we had of the war was gas went up like a dollar a gallon for a few months.

They had to find an entirely new energy supplier with tremendous costs in a short amount of time.

And they did.

Now, we're two and a half years in.

And you have a wobbly German government.

And you have a German chancellor who's not quite as committed as some others prior.

And you have other splits as well.

You have, I describe this in the book, that in Europe, if you speak to the Eastern Europeans who are closer to Russia, feel that they are more directly threatened by Russia.

And by the way, I always remind people this, we're part of the Soviet Union like yesterday.

I've spent a lot of time in Estonia because Estonia is this tiny country of a million people right on Russia's doorstep that is one of the strongest in Europe in terms of standing up resolutely and with courage.

They got their independence in 1991.

That's like -- Not so long ago.

Not so long ago.

The Kaja Kallas, the prime minister, who I interview for the book, her father was a political prisoner.

I mean, she grew up there.

And you could say the same about all the Baltics and move a little further.

Of course, Poland, one of the most steadfast against Russia was part of the Warsaw Pact.

So, they make this judgment about Putin and a Europe dominated by Russia and what Putin's intentions are not based on fantasy, but based on direct and recent experience.

So, if you go to the West in Europe, that's where you get more of the, ah, it's not gonna be so bad camp.

And it's not black and white because the U.K. is one of the most forward-leaning in terms of supporting Ukraine.

But if you go elsewhere in Europe, they're not quite so sure.

And that's where you're seeing some of the fissures develop.

And by the way, those fissures are very clear in this country, you know.

Absolutely.

It's somewhat between parties, but within parties as well because I speak to Republicans on the Hill who are equally concerned about the Russia threat, and I speak to others, and you hear them speak publicly.

You know, I don't care about Ukraine.

That's a direct quote from the current Vice President-elect.

Maybe we should change to China, where you spent a very interesting two years inside the government while I was toiling outside as a journalist.

What kind of ideas do you think Putin's invasion of Ukraine gives Xi Jinping for maybe or maybe not invading Taiwan?

You could argue it either way.

Do you think it gives any example at all, or do you think Xi Jinping's on his own timetable?

Well, before I answer that question, I just want to share a story about Jane.

Because during my time in government when I was Chief of Staff to the U.S.

Ambassador, I remember Jane calling me about a story, which at the time was -- Very dramatic story, by the way.

Dramatic story, if you remember this.

And he wasn't very helpful.

Well, it was funny.

[laughter] And I'll tell you, this was when the U.S. took a blind dissident, if you remember the name, Chen Guangcheng, into the embassy.

He had escaped house arrest, broke his ankle escaping the house, and found his way to Beijing and asked for refuge in the U.S. Embassy.

And while I was there, and frankly, a proud moment as an American, is when the U.S. took him in, at great risk to U.S.-China relations, but they gave it.

Absolutely, I was very proud, too.

I thought it was an amazing gesture.

People in the embassy were proud.

But I remember in the midst of that story, Jane Perlez was hounding me to get to me.

[laughs] And I was, you know, how quickly, I'd been a journalist like six months before, and I was thinking, these damn journalists, they're calling me up, I'm trying to do my job.

[laughter] Who does she think she is?

But it was okay, because I had two other sources.

There you go.

Fair enough.

I was told just before he came on stage.

See, I didn't give anything to her.

So, China, let's see.

China, it's gone, our relationship with China has changed enormously, even in that last 10 years.

I remember being in the embassy at the time, still the prevailing thinking was, we can work with China, responsible stakeholder, and the folks who would raise the alarm about things that China was up to, you would hear the, you're being alarmist about what China's intentions are.

And I was one of the people in the embassy, and I'm not claiming any great wisdom, but who was saying, you know, why are we allowing this to happen?

You know, what is, how does this align with -- I agree with you.

I mean, the Chinese started to climb all over the South China Sea, and Washington was just so distracted by Iraq and Afghanistan, nothing.

And I'm hardly a warmonger, but I wasn't suggesting war, but they could have had a firmer hand.

And in The Shadow War, I talk about this, about how the U.S. got snowed on the South China Sea, that China very slowly built, and I flew on a spy plane over the Spratly Islands in the midst of this, as they were expanding these little atolls into what became, as the U.S. Navy calls them, unsinkable aircraft carriers, armed to the teeth.

And the U.S. was like, well, they're never gonna militarize.

Xi Jinping said to President Obama in the Rose Garden, I'm not gonna militarize, and they did.

We got snowed on that, they won on that.

So, China and Ukraine.

I say this in the book, that in researching this story, both in Asia and Europe and here in the U.S., there's not a single person I spoke to who did not make a direct connection between Ukraine and Taiwan, in that the view was, China is watching Russia's experience in Ukraine for lessons as to how the world would react and what the costs would be, and calculating whether it could bear those costs, and also how long the world would stay engaged on Ukraine.

And so it's still true today that China's watching.

If the world gets exhausted and backs off, China might very well calculate, that's certainly the view of the Bill Burns of the world, that it could endure the costs of invading Taiwan.

And also, in a military sense, that China is watching Russia's experience, how a smaller country defends against a larger invading neighbor.

Different circumstances in that Taiwan is an island, so it is more difficult.

But not impossible, but not impossible.

Well, it's not closer than Ukraine and Russia, because there's a common border, but Taiwan is very close to China.

90 miles.

It's a short trip.

It's a shorter trip for a missile.

Very, and much farther from the United States, for the United States to go to its aid.

So, China is absolutely, Xi Jinping is watching Russia's experience in Ukraine, and it will certainly, it doesn't mean that it does invade Ukraine, sorry, invade Taiwan, based on the outcome of the war in Ukraine, but the very confident read is that, if the cost, if it's successful for Russia, and if the costs are bearable, then it makes it more likely that China calculates it can take Taiwan, and is willing to.

And talking about the new president-elect's view of Taiwan, John Bolton, a story I recount in the book, is that when Taiwan came up during Trump's first term, Trump would sit at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, and hold up a Sharpie, a favorite tool of his, and point at the tip of the Sharpie, and say, this is Taiwan, and point at the desk and say, this is China.

To make the point that Taiwan doesn't have a prayer against China, and therefore, the U.S. has no interest in attempting to defend it.

I think Trump is, well, I think your source, Kelly, has said that Trump doesn't like war, and maybe there's this thing in him that he doesn't want to lead a country, the United States, into war.

And Kelly, first of all, enjoyed my conversations with Kelly, and Kelly, a measure of our politics today, is that someone who could serve 40 years in the military, and volunteer for the Vietnam War, at a time when many people were deliberately avoiding service, and work his way up from the enlisted ranks to a four-star general in the Marines, serve Republican and Democratic administrations, and be a gold star father, he lost one of his sons, stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan, that he could be maligned as somehow anti-American, disparaged.

It's just a measure of where we are today.

We are willing in this country to tear down so many folks for partisan reasons.

It's a shame.

So, Kelly, though, makes the point about, and this is such a fair point, and I think so important when we're having this discussion, is that no one wants a great power war.

Exactly.

Because the consequences of a great power war, and the human cost would be terrible.

And Kelly raised the question, he said, I don't think the American people, that we, in leadership, have had an honest conversation with the American people, not just about what's at stake, but also what the potential costs will be.

If you look at the war gaming of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which I describe in detail in the book, with the U.S. getting involved, the casualty, we haven't seen anything like this since World War II, and in terms of the time span, we've never seen anything like it because when they war game it, the U.S. loses, in the first few days of war, two aircraft carriers, that's 10,000 sailors.

On each one.

On each, yes, 5,000 each, typically, and dozens of other surface ships, and various U.S. bases in Asia, if you think of Guam and elsewhere, because China would, the U.S. expects that the U.S. would naturally strike other bases in the region.

And China, too, would lose tens of thousands.

So, the scale of this is orders of magnitude beyond what we've seen in decades.

Not to mention the threat of nuclear war.

And then, yes.

So, none of us wants to discuss this lightly, or imagine that any outcome here, speak about potential outcomes in anything but a serious way.

And I always say that to audiences, too, because sometimes, as I write a book like this, and talk about it, people are like, oh, you just want war with Russia and China.

And the last thing I want is war.

I have a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old, who are a minute away from draft age.

And I don't want to see them, I don't want to see them, God knows, I don't even want to say it out loud.

I don't want to see them on a carrier in the Taiwan Strait in the middle of a war between the U.S. and China.

So, I don't want that outcome.

And a good, somewhat reassuring thing I hear when I speak to people about this is that it's the U.S. assessment that Russia and China don't want a great power war, either because they calculate it would not be in their interest, and the cost would be enormous.

And they don't want a nuclear exchange with the United States.

That they are, you know, the Russians love their children, too, as it were, you know, thinking back to the Cold War days, and China, too.

Or, also, they worry about their own power.

So, that's good.

The trouble is that, you know, it's the war you don't want.

And that's another thing that Bill Burns talks about.

When I ask him, I'll always ask folks in the intel world, as I know you've asked this question, too, what keeps you up at night?

And the scenario that Bill Burns talks about is the quick escalation.

A small thing turns bigger.

He describes the example of a U.S. and a Russian jet clip wings over the Baltic Sea, and a U.S. pilot dies.

Is that an act of war?

How do you strike back?

We had this between the U.S. and China in 2000, when that Chinese jet clipped a U.S. spy plane over Hainan, and the Chinese pilot died.

And it was only resolved because we had a really good American ambassador, in my opinion, in Beijing, who knew, former naval commander Priya, who knew how to deal with the Chinese.

It was quite remarkable that the 26 American servicemen were only -- Were returned.

-- were returned.

Yeah.

And now, China's a very different country today -- Definitely.

-- than it was 24, 23 years ago.

And the U.S.-China relationship is very different.

So, you wonder, in the same circumstances, would we be able to pull out from that?

And that's why, and again, to be clear, I devote the final chapter in the book to the paths to peace, because I asked all the smart people I talked to for this story, give me ways to avoid this turning into a great power war.

And among those ways, one is direct communications, military to military, but also head of state to head of state, so that small conflicts don't turn bigger.

But also, we have to return to an age of treaties.

The sad fact of today's world is that, with Russia, we've lost two nuclear treaties, the INF Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

[crosstalk] And we may very well lose the third.

We have no nuclear treaties with China.

We have no nuclear treaty with North Korea.

Iran is this far away from being a nuclear power.

It could turn the screwdriver tomorrow.

We have entire categories of weapons, and therefore fronts in this conflict that didn't exist in the last Cold War, cyber being one of them, but also weaponization of space, that we need to get back to treaties to reapply the guardrails, to prevent small conflicts from turning larger.

Well, I think this raises the question of artificial intelligence.

I mean, you've mentioned all these different things, these new things that have come up in the last number of years, but artificial intelligence is the latest.

And there is now a discussion between China and the United States about whether humans should remain in charge of nuclear weapons, or should artificial intelligence, God forbid, be able to be in charge.

So, I think we're confronting a pretty new territory.

We are.

And I talk in the book about how AI is already infused several of these conflicts, and its role is only going to get bigger.

And there are positive sides.

If you speak to the Intel guys, for instance, I spoke to Richard Moore, who's the head of MI6, that's basically British equivalent of the CIA.

And he talked about how AI is a force multiplier for his intelligence services, particularly when standing off against China, because he said, we cannot challenge China man to man on intelligence.

They will always be an order of magnitude bigger than they just have more people, and they can devote them to it, and so on.

But he said, with AI, it allows us to force multiply, to contend in a lot of these spheres.

Now, the dangerous side is that if you give machines more power, I mean, we know the scenarios, and that's, and by the way, we're already seeing that in warfare.

Israel is using AI tools for targeting in Gaza.

Not so well, it would seem, from the results.

Well, the civilian costs are clear.

And when I give speeches about this book, and my wife will kill me because I make too many movie references, but I always say that science fiction is very good at predicting the future, usually about 20 or 30 years in advance.

And as we're talking, I'm thinking Terminator 2.

I mean, you can't help but do it.

[laughter] I mean, and there are other ones.

I talk in the book about how Russian submarines are getting quieter and quieter, and therefore, harder and harder for the U.S. to track.

And there have been instances where we've lost them.

And submarines are first-strike weapons.

And they're no-warning weapons because they can get very close to your shore and fire missiles with even less warning than an ICBM fired from Kazakhstan.

And then, of course, I'm thinking Hunt for Red October.

I'm just saying, there are a million movies.

[laughter] I'm gonna stop at two there so I don't lose the audience.

I wanna ask you this.

There's a lot of discussion in Washington, I think, about who's going to be the AI superpower, China or the United States.

Huge race on, and the United States is trying its best to stop China from having the superchips and other wherewithal that the United States has to try and stop China from winning that race.

How do you see that unfolding?

Well, if you listen to, I saw Sam Altman speak about this, and his view is whoever wins the AI war wins.

And once you've lost it, you've lost it.

That's very scary.

It is scary because it has so many applications, right, both in private sector and the military sector.

And his view is that China's ahead right now and we have to catch up.

Now, he's not, it's not, not everyone agrees with that.

Others say we might be about at the same place or maybe a little bit ahead, but no one believes the U.S. owns this space or is guaranteed to win this technology war.

And it's yet one more front.

I mean, even on simpler things like cell phones, China is coming out with an advanced cell phone that is supposed to far surpass anything we have, which is based on far advanced chips.

So, it seems like the race is really on.

Yeah, and in, you know, categories and therefore fronts in this conflict that didn't exist in the last Cold War.

And we remember how, and most folks in the audience, except my young cousins here, remember what it was like to live in the last Cold War when the prospect of a nuclear exchange was very real.

Very real.

And so, now you add fronts that didn't exist then in cyber, weaponization of space, artificial intelligence, which can work its way into all those fronts.

And it just gives you, you know, it's like whack-a-mole, right?

I mean, it gives you more kind of, you know, potential flare-ups you have to keep your eyes on.

So, I feel I have to ask you as we near the end of this amazing conversation with you, which did you prefer or which do you prefer to be in government or to be a journalist?

And what are the pluses and minuses of both?

So, I, while I learned a lot during my time in government, I did feel, and I'm sure you might have felt the same way, we're used to operating independently.

Definitely.

And putting something out every day, multiple times a way.

Government doesn't work that way.

You might even say government [crosstalk] is the opposite, right?

They used to say in the State Department in particular, process is the product, right?

Horrifying.

I mean, these are big giant, slow-moving, bureaucratic, top-down organizations, which when you're used to operating like we are, is hard to adapt to.

So, there's a reason I went back to news.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't someday think about it again, because I think there's a lot of good that you can do in government.

It's just a different way of, it's a different way of operating.

So, I'm very curious because I spent seven years in China from 2012 to 2019 as a reporter, and you were there from 2011 to 2013, I think, for two years.

How did you -- what do you think being in government, what did you learn about the country, being in government versus being a reporter?

Well, like I said earlier, I learned, or I did not know this, but it further highlighted to me that by and large, most people are doing the best they can to help our country, right, and trying to follow the rules as they do so.

Generally, that's true.

No, I meant really more, what did you learn about China?

Oh, about China, okay.

And some of this is more clear today than it was then, but that, and by the way, some of this is very public because it's been in Chinese position papers and strategic documents and public speeches and propaganda arms and newspapers for years, but that China believes it is going to surpass us and that that's where it rightfully belongs, that the aberration is the sort of mid-19th century to today, that in reality, they belong on top of the world, and part of that calculation is that we are in the midst of a Roman decline, that the West is declining, and the U.S. in particular, as the leader of the West, and that it's only a matter of time that China surpasses the U.S., and that, I've been studying China since I was in college.

It was my major, and I -- so some of this has been out there for some time, but I'm also by nature a hopeful person, and I've spent many good years in China, and I've met and befriended many Chinese nationals who have a different vision for their country, so it didn't have to be this way, but the momentum of the leadership there and the power centers and the CCP has been towards a more confrontational approach to the West with an intent of not so much taking the world over but replacing the U.S. as the primary power.

And do you think the current economic problems in China, which we all know about, will stall that effort, or do you think Xi Jinping will take China forward very fast regardless?

I believe it is stalling that effort.

I think that some of China's recent outreach to the U.S. is in part because it calculates it can't be entirely confrontational with the U.S. today because of economic weaknesses at home.

However, in the medium term or longer term, economic instability at home could both lead to accommodation or to further confrontation, because it might calculate, and China wouldn't be the only country to create a foreign crisis to ensure stability at home.

Particularly in Asia, perhaps.

Yeah.

Well, Jim, it's been a great pleasure to talk to you across this desk and in front of this great audience.

And thank you very much.

I appreciate you, and you as well.

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