August 19, 2025
China’s Comprehensive Threat to American Security: A Conversation with Amb. Robert C. O’Brien
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Notable excerpts:
- “[The Chinese] are trying to do everything they can with massive state subsidies to get ahead in quantum, and robotics, and AI, space, cyber. You know, if they win, we lose.” (consider highlighting this quote)
- “AI is moving at such a fast speed, and it’s going to . . . Look, you know, there could be some dark corners, some rabbit holes, but there also could be great productivity gains and prosperity to our benefit, especially on the military side. It’s supposed to keep us in the game against the Chinese shipyards that can build, you know, 100 ships for every one . . . For every ship we could build, the Chinese can build 100. So how do you, you know, deal with it? You have UAVs that are, you know, programmed with AI and multiple targeting vectors, and we can deter them. But if we put our tech companies out of business, you know, our great advantage is the West is gone. And we’re going to have a very dark future. And so for the folks that say, well, we don’t like big tech, or we don’t like small tech, or we don’t like any tech, that’s fine. But without that, we’re going to be living in a very different world, a very dystopian world run by the Communist Party of China. And so, you know, we got deregulate tech companies. We got to encourage entrepreneurship. We got to encourage innovation, and support our tech companies. Make sure that they’re pulled in with us.”
- “You look at what Amazon and Google, even Apple are doing, Facebook, Meta, with cloud computing and with AI. You know, when I was National Security Advisor, the briefings that I received initially were, we’re in real trouble with AI. The Chinese are going to beat us. They’ve got more people, they’ve got more data. We can’t keep up with the Chinese. We’re now probably a year or two ahead of the Chinese in AI. And that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s moving so fast, a year is a long time. And so what will save us, and what we should have reason for optimism are the great entrepreneurs and the great tech companies that we have in this country. And that’s the secret sauce that the Chinese can’t quite replicate.”