Former CIA Agent Mike Baker on China's 2049 Plan

the jurogan experience i'm really excited to talk to you because yesterday i had a guy with jamie metzel a scientist who scared me talking about

china

he's talking about

china

we were talking about china accumulating naval power china is taking over tech companies and how big they're getting and how much influence they have on their people compared to the way we do it well not bad yeah I can't see the lion in what you just said but I mean look I mean there is We can talk about a lot of things , but if you think about it, in the last few months there was an attack on solar winds by the Russians, so the Russians came in and hacked a company called Solarwinds, which is an IT management software company. that happens to be quite involved in government organizations, treasury agencies and a variety of others throughout the US government and they are also in parts of the defense department of the intelligence community, in many commercial sectors, so anyway the Russians realize this now. around December or January, Microsoft identified this as a problem and I think it was the head of Microsoft who said this looks like the most sophisticated attack we've ever seen, so we're in the December to January period and they're still trying to fix it. discover the depth of this attack by the Russians at the same time and go back months and months and months and months before the Chinese would have been involved in a more sophisticated attack than while everyone is focused on what is happening and so fully aware that we have problems directly from nation states that don't like us, everyone talks about solo victories and now you know they just released information about the Chinese attack on the Microsoft Exchange servers that run the Exchange email systems and this thing It's uh huge and so the Chinese, yeah, I mean, we've been so focused for four years on the Russians, you know, and they know that they're there to cause us all kinds of problems, so we should focus on them, but China is the biggest problem so this guy is totally right Jamie is right it was scary yeah listen to what he was talking about the way he was explaining how they know they have this

plan

.

I think he said

2049

would be the global superpower. of the world and essentially take the place of what used to be the United States, yes, they do it their way and they do it their way, which means that we are going to avoid all the costs and heavy lifting of research and development throughout of years and they can steal everything and have been doing it for decades, so people think, oh China, it's a problem, it's a pr. We've talked about this before you know this idea that maybe this is something relatively new or came up during the previous administration. from Trump and the honest guys, the truth is it's been going on for decades and they decided that's how they're going to get to the top of the food chain by stealing because it's so much easier to vacuum it all up and then reverse engineer it and technology has done it. made even easier, before it was old school, they would go out and recruit someone, find some Chinese-American working for a company here in the states, to which they would appeal, you know, you have to do it. they would help the homeland and they would do it and that was the old school way of doing it, but you know, cyber theft it's amazing what they can do and this latest attack while they're still trying to get the problem right.

So when they do this, if they go to this email server, are they going to something specific? Are there specific companies? They just like to cast a net and see what they catch. Yes, it is the answer to both. What happened here was that, um, their initial point of attack or the initial focus was intelligence, so it diversified and it diversified very, very quickly, to affect everything, small businesses, medium-sized businesses and that's the way for the Chinese, the Chinese regime is right and their intelligence operations, they have a long-term vision and they also have the resources and the desire to vacuum everything up and then solve it later, we take it as a country.

We take a kind of very specific approach, right, we say, "Okay, this is information that is a priority task for the US for our national security." Let's go out, let's find out who has access to it. We're going to develop a sort of surgical strike to figure out how to get to someone who has this information. This is how we or some of our allies would normally operate. The Russians. The Chinese have always had a different approach. I mean the Russians. It's less elegant, the Russians just throw against the wall and see what sticks well, but the Chinese have a long-term view and they also have this ability, and they will do it in this particular attack, which they are still trying to evaluate.

That was perpetrated by, you know, Chinese state-sponsored hackers based in China. They'll just take everything and then analyze it and figure out what they have. A lot of it will just be you. I know irritation is not of interest, but they will also find a lot of gold there and they are willing to do it because they have the patience to do it. They will develop a goal. develop a potential recruit for years and years and years or they will infiltrate a society or organization, put a student in here who is actually working for the PLA for their intelligence operations and expel them. as college students and then they're going to go to school and they're going to get good grades and they're going to go to grad school and they're going to get a job and they're going to get another job and then 30 years from now, they may have to pay, but they're willing to make that investment, so okay, so we should be afraid, well, we shouldn't be afraid, but we said yeah, uh, I don't think we should be afraid, but I think what we should is. pragmatic and I understand why uh, for example, I mean there was a lot of human screaming over the last four years.

I can not believe it. I just said I wouldn't cry. I don't even know what that means. Don't know. it's old, yeah, oh my gosh, look at me, it's like the cat's pajamas, um, it's uh, so you know, four years of Trump and his kind of antagonistic relationship with China and people blowing their hands in Washington DC , you know, something like that. the think tanks and the traditional experts and the US diplomats, you know, the long-term people, oh my God, we have this adversarial relationship with China, well, you know what we better be right, like this That's not a bad thing.

I hope the current administration sticks around to some extent and we'll see what happens. They have not yet responded to the solar winds to the Russian attack. Now they're talking about it. Now they say they will. We are going to engage in several clandestine acts of retaliation, well, it's not so clandestine because they have announced that they will do it, and you already know it, but I hope they take serious measures against the Russian solar winds. act, but they have to do it with China, they have to maintain this position, we have to make it clear and understood to the Chinese regime that we are not going to tolerate this, they are going to keep doing it, but we have to make it painful for them, so how do we do it? can make it painful?

Well, you know, it's the old word sanctions, you have to go along with sanctions because there's not much else, trade wars, you know, I know everyone hates trade. War is not for everyone, but you have to find a way because the problem with cyber shenanigans is that there is not a very clear definition, right, we know if if a country fires a ballistic missile, you know, we know what the response is or act of retaliation we know what an appropriate response is in cyberspace when you talk about war, finding a definition is very difficult and it hasn't been done yet we have the right cyber command and we are still trying to determine what the appropriate responses are because it can escalate quickly.

Next thing you know, they might shut down our infrastructure. Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about what they supposedly did in India, so if you could explain it to people. they shut down the power grid in India supposedly they said they didn't but apparently there was some kind of warning about the power being cut off yes they did I mean the Russians made it famous in Ukraine right? I mean, it's not that long ago and China's ability to interfere with infrastructure here in the US or in India or with our allies is because for years they've been investigating, testing has been done, you know, it's us, You know. we talked about um it's a good example we talked about how um in the US we have three grids and I think people were surprised to find out that Texas has its own power grid well yeah but it's not that much the People said, oh my God.

Look at Texas, they're terrible because you know they wanted to make it political, they wanted to make it seem like the reason it's so terrible is because they're Republicans and they want their own independence, well not all three. The grids are just to the east and west and the Texas grids are all cobbled together over the years so it's like a patchwork quilt and they were never built to withstand physical attacks, I mean you could go through any substation . you could get close enough to urinate on it and there they are, they were certainly never designed to withstand a cyber attack, so over the years what happens is essentially a mapping exercise in which whether it's the Russians, the Chinese or North Koreans. using the Chinese capabilities, whether it's the Iranians, whoever they are there, investigating and trying to understand the weaknesses and they are putting together a map now, the reason they are doing it is to have a correct game

plan

and I guarantee you that it will be they'll sit the desk somewhere not too far from g's office, you know, it's a playbook that says if this escalates, this is what we're going to do and if you think it was bad in texas, you know, ago a couple of weeks, when you knew the power was out.

It was bad, but think about it lasting eight, 10, 12 weeks across the country. The right power grid went out. What's happening? You can't transport well. You can't get cash. Fuel does not reach service stations. Not the food. I don't go to the stores, you already know this, depending on the time of year, heat problems, obviously, water supplies, and that's where the next big battle will be fought, they will bring it to the homeland and we will do the same. The truth is, it's not that we're not doing it because people always say that when I say something like that, well, the United States does it too, I think so, the United States does it, we're better, we better be prepared.

That freeze frustrates you when people say that, well, America does that too, yeah, in a sense, because and this is where I think you know personal opinion comes into play now. Look, I spent most of my adult life abroad and I like to think that I have a pretty pragmatic view on things, I admit, you know, obviously, look, I look at us and I like to think, and I've seen that in Sometimes we do many things for the right reason. sometimes we don't do it correctly we make mistakes, of course we make mistakes, but we try to correct ourselves, I guarantee you that if we are talking about the major powers, if we are talking about China and us, When we are talking about the Chinese regime, I am talking, obviously, if we're talking about the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans, we better hope that we stay up there and are able to exert influence, influence and control of the alt-right because if that's the case. it's over and over again, maybe I'm wrong here, but the Chinese don't see anything altruistically, the Chinese regime is right, it's all about self-interest and sometimes I'll tell you what's frustrating sometimes is that we seem to be the only country.

So when we act in our best interest and we do well, we are very sorry, you know we are acting in our best interest, well all the other nations do it and they don't give a yes , but shouldn't we be the moral authority of the world? I think we should. I think it's good if we do the same. They say we're sorry. Yeah, as long as we do all this, I guess. It doesn't cost anything to say I'm sorry It's not a bad thing It's not a bad thing We're setting a tone Yeah, I guess that's true As long as we're at the same time doing our best, Yeah, 'cause we gotta get back to it, we have to be pragmatic if we think that somehow you know, look at climate change, that's obviously back on the table, it's a big issue as an important political direction.

Hey, okay, cool, who doesn't want cleaning? energy, but you know you have to act like China isn't the country, you know the number one polluter is crazy, yeah that's where it gets weird, yeah it does, there's a kind of weird giant difference between the amount of particles and the amount of pollution. amount of CO2, you know, I think they've made efforts to mitigate that in recent years in particular, but do you remember when they had the Beijing Olympics, yeah, and they had to shut everything down because the air quality was so bad. that athletes you know would be really dangerous for athletesperform and compete watch new episodes of the joe rogan experience for free only on spotify watch back the jre video catalog on spotify, including clips easily switch between the video and audio experience on spotify you can listen to the jre in the background using other apps and You can download episodes to save on data costs, all for free.

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