Silicon Valley’s progressive Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA 17) joined me this morning for a wide-ranging conversation:

Audio:

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Transcript:

HH: Congressman Ro Khanna returns. He is the member for the 17th Congressional District in California. He’s a progressive Democrat. He’s also a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and Oversight. Good morning, Congressman. Welcome back. Good to see you.

RK: Good morning, Hugh. Thanks for having me back on.

HH: Oh, I appreciate you joining me. We originally set this up, because you were objecting to some comments Vivek Ramaswamy made on my show, and I want to get there. But first, you just got back from India. And you were with [Congressman] Michael Waltz. And this is a lead-in to our conversation. What did you do, see and hear in India?

RK: Well, the trip was to strengthen the U.S. strategic relationship, which is going to be one of the most important defining relationships of the 21st Century. We visited the Navy Western Command that is in Mumbai, India, and the Indian Army is working, Indian Navy is working with our Navy to make sure that there’s freedom of the seas in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. We talked about the importance of cooperation at the Indian border where they have faced aggression in Ladakh, in Arunachal Pradesh, from China, important to discuss the importance of collaboration to deny China hegemony in Asia, and the growing defense and economic partnership.

HH: Now how many days were you there? I’ve never been to India, so I have no idea what kind of time it takes?

RK: Oh, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to go. Let me know when you want to go. We were there about 6-7 days. I mean, different people in the delegation came at different times. There, we visited everyone from Bollywood actors who are having an impact on Hollywood, to collaborative efforts with Boeing in terms of trade we do. Here’s one, Hugh, important distinction between our trade with India and China. In India, they actually buy things from us. They’re buying 200 airplanes from the United States. They’re creating millions of jobs and income for Americans, unlike the structural trade deficits with China. And one of the things I didn’t realize until I was on the trip is it’s not just America that has a trade deficit with China. Guess who else has a trade deficit with China? India, Japan, all of their Asian neighbors. And so there is a large concern not just about China’s military potential aggression, but also the unfair economic terms that China has been playing with not just with us, but with other countries in Asia.

HH: Now India has a very unusual view of the world. They are not really part, I know they’re part of the Quad, but they have remained standoffish on Ukraine in Russia. Did that come up at all, Congressman Khanna, because it’s disappointing to me. I thought they would have been with the West on this. But they’ve remained non-aligned on it.

RK: It did. We had a two-hour meeting with Jaishankar, who is their external minister. And I believe, and I agree with you that I would have hoped that India could have taken even a stronger stance against Putin’s invasion. They’ve come around to clearly condemning it. But they still are reliant on arms. Now when we pressed the matter with Minister Jaishankar, he said look, America stopped supplying us arms after 1965. And we did that, because President Nixon needed Pakistan to normalize relations with China. In that historical context, you can understand why the United States wanted to normalize relations with China to be able to counter the Soviet Union. And Kissinger and Nixon made that decision. But then, India was left with a border that was unsecure with China, with America not selling India any arms post-1965, and they had to go to the Russians to get arms both to defend themselves against China and Pakistan. And that was almost a 40-year history. Now, we’re building the defense relationship, but he said you can’t expect overnight for there to be a switch. They want a switch. They understand our stuff is better, and we need to work with that. But we did press them on can you at least make sure that you’re condemning this more clearly, more loudly, more openly, because this is a precedent for China then to go and engage in invasion.

HH: Yeah, that’s our bridge to Taiwan. Now Lord Palmerston, I think it was Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, who said “Nations have no permanent enemies or friends, only permanent interests.” Our permanent interest is in freedom of the seas. We are a naval country. We must have freedom of the seas. Does India share our concern about the Taiwan Strait and the independence of Taiwan from the Chinese Communist Party?

RK: Yes, I mean, they are very concerned that China is increasing its aggression in the South China Sea. They’re concerned about the freedom of navigation of the seas. They’re concerned about the use of potential military force to coerce Taiwan, and also other islands and other navigation in those seas. I mean, as you know, the Malacca Strait is responsible for almost 80% of the world’s trade. India’s dependent on it. Japan is. South Korea is. We have interests there. We have almost $2 trillion dollars at stake in that region, a trillion dollars invested, a trillion dollars in trade. So they share our concerns.

HH: So this got started, because Vivek was on my show a week ago yesterday, and stated that he would do away with strategic ambiguity, and defend Taiwan until they became semiconductor independent, and then pretty explicitly said he would abandon it. Now he walked that back last night on Sean Hannity. I don’t know if you’ve seen that, Congressman.

RK: Oh, I’m glad he walked it back.

HH: But what was your…

RK: I don’t understand what he was thinking. You know, here, I really don’t, because here’s the point. As I understood him saying it, he was basically saying that he was going to give a green light after 2028 for Xi Jinping to walk into Taiwan after we were semiconductor independent. And I guess I welcome him to come to my district, because here’s what he maybe doesn’t just know. We are leading the world, by far, in the design of the tools necessary to make semiconductors. I mean, by magnitudes of order, Silicon Valley is the innovation capital of the world. We’re leading the world in the design of semiconductors. No one, TSMC, no one can do the design of the tools that happens at Applied Materials. No one can do the design of the semiconductor chips. We give all of that to TSMC, and then they do the production. Now I am all for bringing that production back. That’s exactly what the CHIPS Act, which I was a co-author with Todd Young and Senator Schumer and others, it was bipartisan. McConnell voted for it. That’s exactly what we’re doing. And we’re putting a $4 billion dollar center in the heart of Silicon Valley at Applied Materials. It’s going to be the most innovative semiconductor center in the world, by orders of magnitude better than any other country. If you were to give Taiwan to China after 2028, which Vivek was implying, you’re basically handing over $800 billion dollars, if not more, of American intellectual property, of our most advanced designs of our most advanced technologies, you’re just gifting them to a platter. Even if we achieve semiconductor independence, why in the world would you want to take all of our sensitive technology, all of the export controls, and gift that, give that to China on a silver platter? I couldn’t think of anything more catastrophic to American interests.

HH: Well, Vivek is a learning machine, and so he’s tacking. It’s sort of the electric fence theory of politics. When you run into an electric fence, you go the other way. So he’s tacking, and he’s tacked back to a strategic ambiguity after 2029 last night on Sean, and I’ll explore that more with him. But Congressman, I just blame Yale Law School, because you all graduate from there thinking you know everything until someone tells you you don’t. So I just blame Yale Law School. And you are a few years old…

RK: Well, some of us, some of us, or at least I leave there thinking “Wow, there are a lot of really thoughtful, smart people in America that have made us the greatest country in the world. Maybe we should have some humility. Maybe we should study the Constitution and the Declaration and study foreign policy and know what would happen before we try to add our chapter in American history.”

HH: Yeah, it’s okay to evolve in real time, though. Now tell me, Congressman, because you work with Gallagher, you work with Waltz. And they’re both on Armed Services…

RK: Yeah.

HH: And they’re smart guys like you.

RK: They’re both smart. They’re good people.

HH: Yeah, they are, and they’re serious about this. What do you think we need to do to deter China’s cross-Strait aggression against Taiwan?

RK: Well, we first need to listen to what the Taiwanese people want. They want certain types of weapons that we should be providing them, which we have an obligation to provide them based on the Taiwan Relations Act. They want Javelins. They want Stingers. They want HIMARs. Both, all of those types of weapons will provide a deterrence. We have the 7th Navy Fleet aggressively deployed. I also, you know, heard some of Vivek’s comments about well, we want to have a destroyer in the region. We want to have the 7th Fleet. I mean, I don’t know if he knows that we already have the 7th Fleet actively in the region. He may want to just study up, because all of this is public information. I’m not telling you anything from classified settings. But we need to have an aggressive naval posture in the region. And we have to make it clear that we have the long-range missiles that were there ever a military threat to Taiwan, that the Taiwanese would have the ability to defend themselves. And that is our explicit policy under the Taiwan Relations Act.

HH: When you travel with a Green Beret like Michael Waltz for that long, do you get into the specifics of how one builds a Taiwanese military? Did you have a chance to talk with him about that?

RK: We didn’t get into the details on this trip, because a lot of our focus was on India. He did bring up that he was one of the few people who had actually served, I think, over Indian airspace in Afghanistan, or had worked with the Indian Army. I mean, he’s got a remarkable history of service to our nation. And he was very interested in the collaboration with the Indian Navy. But we should not, we should be clear-eyed about what India will or will not do. I mean, this is another important point. I mean, the idea that they’re going to block the Malacca Strait is just unreasonable to expect. And Japan and South Korea wouldn’t go along with that, and India, from the conversations we had, isn’t going to go do that, because you can bypass that through the Lombok or Sunda, and you wouldn’t get the Asian support for that. The details here actually matter. But what can we expect India to do? We can expect India to be aggressive at their border, in Ladakh and in Arunachal Pradesh so that China then has a two-front concern. They have to worry about the borderline of control with India, and not just put all of their resources into a Taiwan potential invasion, and into deterring the freedom of the seas. And so understanding what our Indian partners are willing to do, not willing to do, and where we can actually deter China is going to be critical to having a coherent foreign policy.

HH: Yeah, it’s not a game of Risk. I mean, you don’t get to move the little counters around and claim a country. It’s called diplomacy. But we’ll talk more about that. The Congressman is going to stay with me during the break and after the break, so don’t go anywhere. I’ve got a lot to cover with him, America.

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HH: I’m back now with Congressman Ro Khanna. We’re going to do some politics during the break. Congressman, you did hypos at Yale Law, right? I mean, you did lots of hypos.

RK: Sure.

HH: Yeah, so here’s my hypo. President Biden wins the South Carolina primary, and then he and the First Lady announce you know what, we’re too old for this job, and we’re just not going to run anymore. So Gavin Newsom enters, as does Roy Cooper, as does maybe Jared Polis, as does maybe Gretchen Whitmer, and of course, Vice President Harris. Would you be in favor of Gavin Newsom? Would you be endorsing the governor of California, who would be a formidable, almost impossible to beat nominee?

RK: Oh, I don’t think he’d be impossible to beat. I think we’d have a lot of other contenders.

HH: I mean a Republican. As a Republican, we couldn’t beat Gavin in the general.

RK: I disagree with that, actually. I think you’d have people like Shapiro and others would be better candidates, potentially, in the Midwest. And I think Biden is a stronger candidate in Ohio, in Michigan, in Wisconsin, and in large parts of the country.

HH: But my hypo is that he’d decided to retire, because he should. And I don’t expect you to comment on this.

RK: I figured, yeah, I think there, you know, I mean, I would consider the Governor, but I think you’d have other stronger candidates in the Midwest. I don’t, I think the key is who’s going to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and I think it’s going to take someone who can connect in those places.

HH: Well, Gretchen Whitmer’s up there, but I don’t think she can win. But I do think you’re right about, do you know Governor Shapiro? I do. I don’t think he’s a Yalie. Is he is a Yale Law…

RK: I like Governor Shapiro, and I think there’d be others. I think there’d be a number of candidates who would be in that conversation. Gavin certainly would be, but you know, I think it’s going to be important for someone to win in the Midwest, and to understand that you have to have a vision for America. And maybe he’ll be able to do it, but you know, I wouldn’t assume that he would somehow be the strongest.

HH: Okay, now in terms of that, do you rule out the President declining to run based upon just feeling his years? Do you think that’s not possible, or is that possible?

RK: I rule that out. I mean, I don’t understand why people keep underestimating President Biden. He, this is a person who’s run for president three times. He told, in some report I read, he told his future mother-in-law before marriage that he was going to be president of the United States. He is a person of steely resolve and ambition. And I would just tell my Republican friends you make a big mistake by underestimating him. I mean, he’s someone who beat Donald Trump. He’s had the resolve to run three times. He ran for the highest office after losing his son, the most unimaginable grief. What makes you think that that type of a person with that kind of steely ambition is just going to step aside?

HH: Because I, what makes me think that is it’s a shame what we’re watching in real time, in Maui and other places. And the President is infirm and old, but I don’t expect you to agree with me. Stay tuned, Congressman Khanna. I’ll be right back with you. We’re going to turn next to the question of due process and whether or not they taught that at Yale Law School. Stay tuned, America.

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HH: Continuing my conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna of the 17th Congressional District in California. I’ve got three big things to cover with you. First of all, I explained to the audience, there are many kinds of due process. There’s procedural due process, there’s substantive due process, and there’s criminal due process. I took criminal due process from a guy named Jerry Israel. It was fascinating. And I’ve only done two criminal things in my life. Did you ever represent any criminal defendants, Congressman?

RK: I did not. No, I did not in my career. I was more in technology law. I mean, it’s been a while since I took criminal law, so you’ll be testing my knowledge of what I remember from…

HH: Well, I’m just curious of your impression of the judge in the federal trial in Washington, D.C. setting the former President’s trial date for the day before Super Tuesday. What do you make of that?

RK: Yeah, here’s what I think is going to happen. I think either the former President Trump is going to be the nominee, or not be the nominee. If he’s the nominee, my guess is that there’s going to be a consideration on the, consideration for the Republican nominee to be able to campaign, and the trial dates will take that into account. And if he’s not the nominee, then the trials will move on. But I think the judges will look at this in real time to make sure that they’re not interfering in any way with the election process while still having the court calendar move away at a practical…

HH: You may have jetlag still. [Judge Chutkin] set the trial date for the federal trial in D.C. for the Monday before Super Tuesday. She did that [Monday].

RK: Well, that could be moved.

HH: Yeah, but she set it yesterday.

RK: That could be moved, right?

HH: The prosecutors wanted January, Trump said 2026. She compromised on the day before [Super Tuesday], and I just think it’s outrageous. I think it’s a terrible insult to our idea, our fundamental commitment to fair proceedings. And I wonder if it resonated with you that way as well.

RK: Well, I’m not sure that that’s going to be the actual date at the end of the day. There’s appeals, there’s an ability to move it. I mean, let’s see what happens. So, but I’m not, you know, I’m a member of Congress. It’s not for me to make the decisions on where the trial dates are going to happen. My instinct on all of this is they’re not going to have trials in the middle of something that’s going to compromise a candidate’s ability who has real traction to have a fair fight. I just don’t see that happening in our country.

HH: I don’t think he’s the presumptive nominee, but he is certainly the leader. And I am just amazed that we have four prosecutors who are Democrats running four cases in four different jurisdictions. I guess Jack Smith is one prosecutor doing two cases, and that blue America doesn’t seem to understand that red America thinks this is a complete setup job. Do you understand my concerns about this and how it looks?

RK: Well, look, I talk to, obviously, Republican colleagues, and they feel that the timing of it is one which, where Trump, where the charges are too far. I believe that you have to follow the law, and some of the conduct alleged is very, very, very serious. And you can’t just say okay, because someone was president or someone is a candidate, that you’re above the law. Everyone is under the law, and that these allegations, the evidence needs to be pursued. But what we’re discussing is the timing. And I do think we need to make sure that in the timing, if Trump does emerge as the Republican nominee, that it does not compromise the ability to have a robust campaign schedule. And I imagine that the courts will take that into consideration if he is the nominee. You know, he may not be the nominee. I mean, that’s still a, that has to be determined.

HH: Yeah, but more fundamentally, somebody’s got to go full Margaret Chase Smith, who stood up to Joe McCarthy. Some Democrat has to stand up and say due process matters for the former President, and this is out of control. Four different prosecutions in the middle of primary season, but we’ll wait. I want to get to two more things. First of all, you’re the 17th C.D. You’re Silicon Valley. John Garamendi has Solano County. A bunch of your constituents bought a bunch of John Garamendi’s constituents’ land, 85 square miles, I believe, 55,000 acres, $800 million dollars. They’re nuts. They’re never going to be able to do it. I was a land use lawyer in California for 30 years until I retired. But what do you think about that, Congressman Khanna? Have you talked to Garamendi about it, yet?

RK: He has not raised the issue with me. There’s specific issues at play there, because I, it hasn’t come, he hasn’t raised it to me. And others, it hasn’t come on my radar, yet.

HH: Okay, well I’m telling you, those guys are either planning a tax scam by upgrading it and then donating it, or they’re out of their minds. Last subject, I’m going to start it and take you for five minutes after the break. The Coming Wave is by Mustafa Suleyman, which is about AI. I had Tristan Harris on last week talking about AI. Who, and Chuck Schumer’s bringing in all the AI people, which is not my idea of the best place to arbitrate what we need to do. First of all, are you familiar with The Coming Wave and the concerns and the promise of AI? You must be. It’s your bread and butter, right?

RK: I am, yes. Should I tell you my view on it? Or do you have a specific question?

HH: Yeah, I want to know what you think we should do, because I really, I’m open to anything, but I don’t think, there’s the music, we’re going to do this off-air and then I’m going to play it tomorrow morning. Don’t go anywhere, Congressman, because he’s one of the smart guys. We’ve got to do something about this, America, and it’s got to be bipartisan, and it’s got to be smart. So we’re going to start with Ro Khanna after the break, and I’ll post it on the website and play it in the morning.
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HH: Back now with Congressman Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley. And the precipitous event is The Coming Wave, the brand new, it will soon be a bestseller in America by one of the four or five guys that John Ellis says knows what he’s talking about. Congressman Khanna, I have no predisposition on this. All I know is that we’ve got to either abandon the field to technology’s awful march, or do something. What do you think we should do?

RK: Well, first, it’s important to understand for folks listening what AI actually is. It’s basically statistics. You know, you put in a lot of data, and out comes a probability of what should come next, what, if you start a story saying once, the computer will predict that the next sentence, next word should be upon. And it’s really just a statistical machine that’s making decisions based on voluminous data. What is this mean from a positive perspective? You go to a doctor, maybe to an ER, and you have some symptoms. The doctor puts it into a handheld device, and out come three possible diagnoses, one which the doctor may not have meant, been able to see himself or herself. So you’re augmenting human ability in medicine. You’re augmenting human ability in building new factories. You want to bring steel manufacturing back to the United States, other manufacturing back to the United States, the use of AI can have massive increases in productivity, allowing us to continue to be the workshop of the world. You want to have semiconductor independence? We need the AI. So there should not be sort of just a dismissal of it. Now there are dangers to this technology. The biggest danger being we want a human check. You want human decision making. You don’t want AI just to be programmed based on statistics and probability making decisions for critical things like weapons systems or getting out of hand in terms of safety without the human check. You also want to make sure that we know what the data set is that’s going into it. When you look at our military applications of AI, it’s the cleanest, clearest data. They scrub that data. Right now, on ChatGPT, you’ve got all the internet. You’ve got a lot of bad data there as well in addition to positive data. So I think what we need is we need to get the actual technologists in there, and some of the people who’ve studied this field, and civic leaders, ethics leaders, and have a thoughtful approach to the regulation. What we don’t want to do is just copy Europe, where Europe’s not going to have a single AI startup. They don’t want to go there, because they have so overregulated, actually, the things that may not even make us safe, that they’ve, they may lead in regulation, but what’s the point of regulating when you have no companies?

HH: Well, I agree with all that. I also believe the Chinese Communist Party and the United States are engaged in an arms race about AI, and we’d better win it in order to deter the deployment of AI against us. And it is most alarming when it’s combined with biotechnology and the ability to produce pathogens and the ability to produce weaponry. My question is, you mention technologists and the civic minded. It’s actually your problem. It’s a Congressional problem. It’s got to be done by Congress. Senator Schumer’s bringing in all the big AI guns, whether it’s Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg and others to start talking to him about it. I’m not sure I’d start there. I think I’d start in the House. But what general approach appeals to you? I’ve got some ideas, but I have got no fixed star. I just don’t want to screw up the useful development of it. I don’t want to be Europe. But I also don’t want to lose the arms race to China, and I also don’t want artificial intelligence, what do they call it, escape, artificial intelligence escape so that it cannot be contained, and therefore generates its own abilities randomly, not Wargames scenario, but in the hands of other perhaps malevolent actors. What are the first steps?

RK: Well, there’s a bipartisan group of us who are about to have a meeting with Kevin McCarthy to at least begin that conversation in the House. And as you mentioned, Senator Schumer is doing it. I would have a few key principles. One, make sure that for any sensitive use of AI, you have human decision making. Second, make sure that we know the types of data, that there’s some disclosure in the types of data that’s being used for AI. And third, have some licensing. I mean, in the wrong hands, AI can be like nuclear technology, can do incredible harm. What is the licensing requirement for the handling of sensitive AI so that it doesn’t get into the wrong hands? And here, you’re going to have a tension between wanting to make AI open source so you have competition and new AI startups, versus having AI regulated and only in the hands of a few actors, which isn’t ideal, but at the same time, it has to be protected, because you don’t want this technology getting into the wrong hands overseas. So I would start with those, that broader framework. The one thing I will tell you, Hugh, is this is not partisan. I mean, there’s, it’s just, people don’t know the issue well enough yet to have a partisan position. And that’s the silver lining here, is that Congress could actually get to work, have a thoughtful framework that does our job, to make sure that we have the benefits of AI without the downside. Remember one point in my district. We are one-third of the S&P 500. There’s 30 companies in a 30-mile jurisdiction that have a $10 trillion dollar market cap. And the AI revolution is at the heat of Silicon Valley. And there are a lot of problems that technology has brought about on social media and other things. But it is also what is going to allow America to lead the 21st Century in productivity in innovation and in national security. And we want to make sure we have that lead, and that ability in both national security and the economy to be preeminent.

HH: I agree with all that. Now my only suggestion is you begin these conversations, A) I would think that the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party could easily become …And AI. Just tack it on and keep going, because it seems to me that it’s bipartisan. It seems to me that it’s working. It seems to me it has smart people on it. My first suggestion, though, is do we have visibility? Ought we to mandate visibility into every meeting, and by the NSA or DARPA into every meeting of every AI company in America? In other words, if you want to do this in America, you’re going to let us see what you’re doing, and we’re going to have the source codes? Would you agree with that, Congressman?

RK: Oh, we need to have, we definitely need disclosure on it. And I mean, I don’t know if you want to go and have the government get every single part of a private company’s proprietary data, but they need to be at least telling us what data they’re using, and what the purpose of the AI is, and what their functionality is. So there has to be sufficient disclosure without making all of these companies public companies. I mean, that’s…

HH: Well, I agree with that. I don’t want public utilities. They won’t innovate. I mean, saw in Maui and in California what public utilities do. They do not work. They do not keep the public interest in mind. But to get visibility from DARPA would require one thing, and this is what I want to end with you. We need really smart people, not just working for Meta and Google and Amazon and Palantir. We need really smart people working for the Department of Defense. And you’re going to have to pay them, Congressman. You’re going to have to pay them a lot. Do you think Congress can develop a schedule for AI scientists to come to work for us?

RK: It’s a great point. We not only need it for AI scientists, we need it for technologists, generally. I mean, you want to regulate social media? You want to regulate privacy? The tech companies are running circles around a lot of the regulatory agencies because of a lack of sufficient technological expertise. Sure, we need to pay them, just like we pay doctors at a higher schedule and some of the jobs. But it’s more than pay, Hugh. Right now, the tech person is considered the third or fourth most important person in an organization in the room, and they don’t feel like they have much authority. So if you’re a tech person and you graduated from MIT or Cal Tech, where are you going to go? Are you going to go serve in the government where you’re going to get kicked around by a bunch of lawyers and other folks? Or are you going to go to Silicon Valley where you’re going to run things and change the world? We’ve got to empower some of the technologists to have real authority and leadership, because people are motivated, they want to serve the country. They want to do something big. They want to help, but they often feel like they don’t have the ability or the power. They’re stifled in a bureaucracy. So I think it’s yes, paying them more, but also giving them more real responsibility and titles.

HH: You know, I think that is, let’s end there, because I think that is, we’re not going to be able to regulate with the existing structures in a smart way. I wish you guys could issue a standdown order to every agency, because they don’t know what they’re doing. And I say that as a regulator. I ran OPM, and I ran, I just know regulatory…they don’t know, right? They’re just, this is all new, and they’ve been in the government for 10 years. And according to Mustafa, the startups are three a week. There are three startups in AI a week. We are not going to keep up with this in the absence of smart people in the government. And I don’t know where you, I don’t think you would get an argument from the Republicans on that. So I hope you take that and maybe talk to Leader Jeffries and Speaker McCarthy about adding onto the CCP committee some additional duties other as assigned, because we’ve got to get ahead of this. And I hope you’ll come back and talk to me about this, because you might have the most interesting district in America, but your people scare me, Congressman. Your Silicon Valley people do not have all the, they’re like Vivek, right? You can’t spend 30 years doing computer science and then understand national security. It doesn’t work that way. It’s hard to do.

RK: Well, I think you need both. You need the technologists and the innovators and the entrepreneurship to allow for national security. But you know what I think, Hugh, we need a little bit more of in our country in general and in politics, is humility. There are so many people who sacrificed for this country, from the men and women who scaled the cliffs in Normandy, to Dr. King and the people who marched in Civil Rights, to our founders who built the Constitution, to the foreign policy architects who by and large preserve the peace and hand America, play a leadership role post-World War II. I have a lot of critiques of where I think the country needs to go. I think we hollowed out our industrial base. We made a mistake in not having manufacturing. We hollowed out factory towns. But we have to recognize that for 250 years, almost, there were a lot of brilliant people with courage, sweat, and tears who built America. And sometimes, I think what happens is the new person comes into Congress, the Senate, the president, and you don’t recognize that collective wisdom. And that, you know where that collective wisdom is? It’s in the American people. And this is why I fundamentally think that the cardinal sin of a politician is to think that somehow, they’re better than the American people, not because an individual may not be smart, but because our country has so much collective wisdom in it. And if we just had that humility, we would stop with all of this smugness – the red states are better than the blue states, the blue states are better than the red states. You know, one thing, I watched that Newsom and Hannity interview. Why can’t we talk about America being right, about us needing both the red states and the blue states to lead, about China being the challenge, and about learning from each other and recognizing none of us have a monopoly on the truth?

HH: Well, I will add to not only the yes, I would like, I like the fact that Governor Newsom went on with Sean. I appreciate that you come on and talk to me. There are very few Democrats who will cross over into Republican land and talk to us. And it just is a nightmare for getting anything done going forward. Let me close with this. We did not see the Korean War coming. We did not see the catastrophic escalation in Vietnam leading us into that abyss. We did not see 9/11 coming. We did not see the consequences of not executing in 1991 on Saddam Hussein. We did not see the consequences of the Second Iraq War or the Afghanistan 20-year war. We didn’t see what would happen when we assisted in Libya or in Serbia. We did not see most recently the Syrian genocide coming. We did not see Kabul. So there’s a strategic deficit in both parties, Congressman. How do you guys go, and hopefully, the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is talking through that. How do you fix that at the same time that you’re trying to keep up with AI, and we have a red/blue divide? That’s a small question to exit with?

RK: (laughing) Well, Hugh, look, you highlighted all the failures of American foreign policy. We also, you know, won World War II. We won the Cold War. They said Germany and Japan were going to be the dominant post-Cold War economies. They were wrong. It’s America. I believe our biggest mistakes, of course, in my view, were the Iraq War and getting diverted in the Iraq War, and also the hollowing out of our middle class and letting all our industry leave for China and Asia. But I think there is now a bipartisan recognition that China is a threat, and in Taiwan, and to our economic security, and that there is a readjustment to making sure we have the critical industries here, and that we’re vigilant in making sure that there’s effective deterrence. There was a time, I think, for 20 years where many of us were asleep. That’s no longer the case. And that should give some hope. There’s also a think, a recognition on both sides of the aisle that we were overextended, militarily, that we were in a number of these conflicts that weren’t advancing American interests. So we have a very messy democracy. We have a very loud democracy. But we still have, the great thing about America is we have a capacity for self-criticism. We have a capacity, even to my detriment, to have total ridicule of our politicians. You know, you want to go into politic, you go check your Twitter feed. For every one comment that’s saying something nice, there’ll be nine comments slamming you. I’m sure that’ll be the case here.

HH: Oh, I wish I got that ratio on my Washington Post columns, Congressman. I would take one out of ten.

RK: And I say this coming, I say this, though. You know, when you’re a member of Congress, you’re one of the .00001% privileged people in the world. You’re getting to determine policy for the greatest nation in the history of the world. And thank God we have a country where you can be laughed at and ridiculed and made fun of. And I think that sense of ability for self-criticism is what allows America, what you just said, all these failures, it allows us to learn from it and correct. And you know, Churchill said we do the wrong thing until we do the right thing. And eventually, we do the right thing. And I believe that. I fundamentally believe that about our country, which is why I’m ultimately very optimistic about the country’s future.

HH: Can I ask you one more question? You got time?

RK: Yeah.

HH: All right.

RK: Of course.

HH: The world today, in Hugh Hewitt’s view, is Beijing is running the bad guys in alliance with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, a few other minor players. But it’s basically China is the boss, and the underbosses are Putin and Tehran. That is the reality of the world today, and the West is up against that. Is that your understanding of the world?

RK: Yeah, I think that that is our, that China and Russia are clearly the, are two strategic challenges, adversaries. I think that’s why the relationship with India is going to be so critical in dealing with it. I think that, you know, China and Russia aren’t going to all, march lockstep, and there are opportunities there. But by and large, we should be clear-eyed about what they’re doing. I mean, Russia…

HH: Do you put Iran in that group, because I think it’s a very tightly bound…

RK: Yeah, I mean, I would add Iran. I would say that Iran is of course not the same power as China or Russia, but yes. Iran has interests antithetical to the United States and to Israel. I mean, so obviously…

HH: Oh, the Chinese just took you out, Ro. He’s gone, but we appreciated the time. He dropped.

RK: Hugh?

HH: You’re back. Okay, because I thought maybe the Chinese cut you off.

RK: No, I think I’ve got a team member was calling thinking I’ve got my next thing. But I, are we good?

HH: Yeah, let’s close where we agree on the problem facing us. Thank you for your time, Congressman. Keep coming back.

RK: Thank you, Hugh. Appreciate it.

HH: Be well.

End of interview.