America, China, and the Tech Cold War with Chris Miller

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Set up and check out are all handled. You get to live your life, grow your business, which they help you do, too. I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I'm not that happy with them that they stole my idea, even though obviously they had it first and did the work you needed to do to make it come to fruition. So get Shopify, for God's sakes. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. Shopify.com slash TWS. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash TWS. Look, you know, I don't know when I'm going to leave this job. I don't know when I'm going to stay in this job. I don't know how these things are going to do. But when I do, you should replace me with Indeed. You should call Indeed when you're replacing me. Because, listen, this podcast, it requires skills. You need a face. You need a pie hole so that you can open your pie hole and just spout. That's that not everybody can do that. 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Indeed.com slash podcast terms and conditions apply. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. It is a lovely day. It is May 19th. It is Tuesday. I'm actually on Colbert tonight. So if any. Oh, well, this will be airing tomorrow. I'm actually on Colbert yesterday. That's a strange way to promote that. It's my sadly final appearance on the late show. And I'm I just can't wait to spend some quality time with my friend. Hopefully to the pleasure of the audience that will be watching. And so I urge all of you, if you are within the sound of my voice, please do watch. And not just that watch on Wednesday and watch on Thursday and, you know, enjoy, celebrate what has been a remarkable run of a person and remove it from the melancholy circumstances by which it occurs because his career in broadcasting and it's not over by any stretch of the imagination, but it deserves to be separated from whatever black hole of perverse corruption. Snuffed it out in the first place. And I think that's what I'll be going there to do tonight. And that's what I hope that that everyone will be doing over these next few days. Just truly a once in a lifetime broadcaster performer. And I can't wait to see him and give him a big old hug. So but on the way to that, I would be remiss if I did not also discuss. The Taiwan ship war. This may be that this may be the worst. I've ever done in the history of this program. But it is an important the president United States has just returned from his historic trip to China where he got what's the Chinese word for bupkis. We got bupkis and we don't really know. We got into a trade war with no real plan. So out of character for this administration. And we're going to see what ends up happening. And who better to help us understand the parameters? Of what might possibly happen than someone who's written about it for many years. So we're going to get to that. Our guest today is Professor Chris Miller. Ladies and gentlemen, we are delighted to be joined by a gentleman by the name of Chris Miller. He's the author of Ship War. Not Doritos, my friend. It's the fight for the world's most critical technology. An American historian, economic history, international relations. Chris, you're a professor. Yes. International history. That's right. Tufts University. That's right. Beautiful. And this is not your first go around as an author. Putnomics and the struggle to save the Soviet economy and we shall be masters. Thank you so much for being here to talk to us. You wrote Ship Wars in when? 2022? That's right. Yeah. Four years ago. And that came out. And then like a month later, ChatGBT launched. Yes. That's right. And it's been a wild ride in semiconductors since then. I mean, made it. The chips almost became even more seminal and more important to the world economy. A hundred percent. Because as we roll out AI, we need bigger and bigger data centers full of the most advanced semiconductors that we can make today. And so the basic premise of Chip Wars, it kind of, it talked about how Taiwan and in combination with, I guess, some Japanese technology and some Dutch technology became, the leading edge, the cutting edge of all of the most specialized chips that are used in this technology today. Yeah, that's right. So the key chips, they're designed still in Silicon Valley by companies like Nvidia or AMD. But when it comes to AI in particular, they're almost all manufactured by one Taiwanese firm, a company called TSMC, which has the vast majority of its manufacturing capabilities in Taiwan. Yeah. And so it's this partnership between Silicon Valley and Taiwan that makes the most cutting edge chips possible. And what is Silicon Valley? What do they give to Taiwan? Is it the software that they give to them? Well, it's really the designs of the chips. So if you take a piece of silicon, like you'd find inside of your smartphone or in a data center, they've got billions and billions of tiny switches called transistors that are etched into the silicon and different designs produce different capabilities. So an Nvidia chip is designed differently from a AMD chip. And these designs are what enables progress in the semiconductor industry. And so these design files are essentially emailed over to Taiwan and the Taiwanese do the manufacturing of these designs and put them into the silicon. I mean, it's an incredible technology with advances that take place in terms of hours, in terms of sort of epochs. So how did you read the reason that I think. I think it's important to talk today, especially to somebody with your expertise. President of the United States has just come back from China. China obviously has designs on Taiwan, an island that is very close to their mainland. They always have felt that it is part of, you know, since I don't know when it split 49, was it Shanghai check in 49? That's right. Yep. Okay. So they split off from China. China's always had designs to get it back in the same way. have grown to the point where they might now be able to succeed in doing so. If there was a war right now, nobody knows how it would play out. And that's increased concern in Washington about does China have both the intent and the capability to do something around Taiwan. And that's happened just as Taiwan has gotten more and more important as a partner enabling Silicon Valley to produce all of the chips that we need in data centers, in smartphones, in computers. And so right now, Taiwan is really at the absolute center of the AI industry and the US can't do AI without chips from Taiwan, which means that on the one hand, we've got to treat the Taiwan question very carefully to make sure that we defend Taiwan. But on the other hand, we also got to be ready for China looking very carefully at Taiwan, both in terms of achieving its long-term strategic aim of seizing Taiwan, but also in terms of realizing the more pressure China puts on Taiwan. The more pressure it puts on us and our AI industry, because we're dependent on importing chips from Taiwan too. Now is the idea, so the chips that are made in Taiwan, are they also, is that where, where does China make their chips? Well, that's a, that's a great question. China would like to import the most advanced chips from Taiwan, but the United States doesn't let them. So for the past couple of years, we've said to the Taiwanese, you can't sell the most cutting edge AI chips to China. And China can't produce these chips domestically at any scale that matters. So for cutting edge AI chips, China's in a bind. The most advanced production is in Taiwan. China thinks it owns Taiwan, but it doesn't. And the US does not let Taiwan sell to China because we want our companies to have access to the most advanced AI chips, not China. What is the relationship politically between the leaders of Taiwan and Xi of China? Is there, is there a world where this isn't a military operation, but a transactional operation where Taiwan cuts a deal with China to do just that in exchange for, for not, you know, militarily invading them? The short answer is, is no. That is the short answer. You know, the, the Taiwanese have been very clear. They've repeatedly voted for presidents that have said they don't want to, don't want to be integrated into China, that they want to be an autonomous country, ideally, even independent poll after poll of the Taiwanese population says that they think of themselves as a separate political entity. And I think what's key here is that if you did a poll a generation ago in Taiwan, in Taiwan, you would have found a lot of people who would have said they're part Chinese, but part Taiwanese. If you do that poll today, what you find is that as the generations change, Taiwanese think of themselves increasingly as a separate country, a separate society. And so there's not much interest at all in any sort of integration with China. And even economically forget about, you know, political independence or integrating in that way. They have no interest in saying to the United States, look, we love, we love your chips. We love your sweet, sweet Silicon transistors by the billions. Uh, we'd like to cut a deal with these guys economically. We think it'd be beneficial for us. We think it would ease the pressure on us, you know, uh, in terms of them threatening to invade us. Is that even a possibility? There's some more nuance there. There are some people in Taiwan, especially in the business community who make that argument and say, if we have closer economic ties with China, the political situation will be more stable. Right? I think the dominant view in Taiwan is to say, look, our population is a tiny fraction of China's. There's no hope of an equal economic relationship. And in fact, a lot of people in Taiwan worry that the closer the economic ties, the more China will smother them, uh, given its size. And so if you look at where Taiwan's been investing, uh, where Taiwan has been diversifying its trade over the last decade, it's been trying to turn away from China because it's afraid that economic ties are a beachhead for political influence. What are the other? So in Taiwan, you've got this incredible chip industry that is dominant. They are, you know, the monopoly in terms of, of this kind of manufacturing. What else do they do? Is it a Saudi Arabia, you know, oil economy situation. And now they've suddenly decided to diversify. What, what is it all electronics and circuitry? What do they do there? Yeah. There's a whole range of manufacturing from machine tools to plastics, but the electronics industry is by far the dominant player. And it's, it's not just chips. It's the chemicals that go into the chip plants. It's once you take a chip, you put it on a printed circuit board, you wire it together with other devices. Yeah. You can make almost anything electronic in Taiwan. And they're the leader, not just at the chip segment of the supply chain, but at many other segments too. And it's been a great business for them. It's why they're one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, despite that two generations ago, they were a country doing nothing but farming. It's an incredible story. Where are they getting the materials for this? Well, the, the materials are easy to dig out of the ground. There's Silicon everywhere. The challenge is getting the materials refined to the level of purity that you need. And so when it comes to manufacturing chips, you're manufacturing at essentially the atomic level. And so your materials have to be purified basically to the atomic level as well. And so in the chip industry, they talk about eight nines of purity. So 99.999, 999 is the level of purity you'll need for certain types of chemicals or gases. Well, that's like dial soap. That might be the only other substance. As pure as that. So when they talk about, because there's all these things floating around. So they say that Silicon Valley provides the silicon, which is embedded with the billions of transistors. What do the Japanese do in this supply chain? Yeah. So today, Silicon Valley doesn't do much silicon at all. They just do the designs first and foremost. Oh, so they're just doing, they're sending out blueprints. It's just, they're emailing you, here's how you want it. Here's how you want to draw your little maze. Because they seem to look like little mazes. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That is most of what Silicon Valley does today. There used to be actual silicon in Silicon Valley. That's why they named it Silicon Valley, but not anymore. And it was a valley. And it was a valley. That's right. That's right. So today it's actually the Japanese that are the world's leader in making the wafers, ultra pure silicon wafers and many of the other chemicals that you need to manufacture chips. And then what, the Dutch do something. I don't know if it's the icing. What do the Dutch bring to this process? Because that's the third leg, yes? That's right. Yeah. So if you want to pattern where each of the transistors goes on a chip, so put your design file actually into silicon. You need a tool called a photolithography tool. Oh my God. And the Dutch have the world's leading company, really the world's only company that produces the most cutting edge versions of these tools. I have to tell you, as I hear you say that, it's true. I hear it described. I can't help but feel a sense of pride for humankind that anyone, I can remember a professor, my father worked at RCA. This is in the sixties, late sixties. And he brought home in 1969, maybe 70, a calculator. And the calculator that he brought home was the size of a desk. And it added and subtracted and multiplied and divided. And we played with it for hours, but it was the size of a desk. And I imagine it's the exact same principles as what is now going into these supercomputer, AGI, chat, bot models. Is it all the same principle? It pretty much is. You're carving little circuits into silicon. And the difference is that compared to the 1960s, you're carving a billion times more circuits than was possible then. And that is what gives it the ability to make as many calculations as it does at the speed that it does. Yeah, that's right. So if you think of all your files, all of your, all your text messages, all your Instagram likes are all just long strings of ones and zeros. That's the entire digital world. And each of those has to be reflected by a switch in the silicon turning on and off. And that's why for the most cutting edge chips, like those inside of your phone, you need 10 billion or 20 billion of these tiny switches, all carved into a chip, the size of your fingernail. And doesn't this sum up the human experience? It is our expertise and scientific advancement that allows for this technology. And it is our, I want to say concededness that is that we use it for Instagram likes like this. It's almost shocking. Mint Mobile. I don't know what you want out of a phone company. What I want out of a phone company is deliver me a good product for less and don't bother me. 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what are they providing into this chain that we need them for well it's a key question if you look in terms of dollars almost all the money goes to companies outside of china u.s taiwan japan netherlands but the thing that chinese do provide are some of the basic materials that go in so rare earth elements for example are needed in certain parts of the chip making process and those are mined and processed largely in china in some cases almost exclusively in china and so for the past couple years china's been choking off the export to these critical materials which has caused problems for the entire semiconductor supply chain now the when you say rare earths because you just said silicon is the main ingredient and that's not rare that's everywhere it's sand i guess it's it's sort of it's everywhere it just needs to be purified are they actually rare or are these materials everywhere but we just haven't dug for them they are everywhere um what is rare is deposits that have enough concentration to make it economically viable to mine them and to process them what kind of materials are we talking about let's well you got to take out your periodic table and and rewind i have it hold on so they get pretty obscure pretty quickly yttrium dysprosium terbium things you would never think about but just made up words basically well you know a lot of these materials were only identified um uh in terms of how do you actually mine and process them in the last half century so they are pretty new materials in terms of how do they become critical to the entire electronic supply chain so you have detailed in your book and i think brilliantly and it's so interesting how taiwan became the leader in in these kinds of uh chip assemblages and and chip production and if we could just briefly walk us back because it was not it was not a fait accompli that taiwan was going to be the leader in that there was a gentleman from texas instruments um who had that expertise who had that expertise and took it to taiwan yes yeah that's right so the the chip manufacturing industry started in silicon valley and in texas with texas instruments being one of the key players including in the calculator industry like your like your father was working on right and for a long time it was the u.s that was the dominant manufacturer of chips but in in 1987 uh this gentleman morris chang was passed over for the ceo job at texas instruments one of the greatest mistakes in american history and he went to the taiwanese government and said i'd like to start a semiconductor manufacturing company that'd be different than uh any other company that came before it because before that point companies designed and manufactured chips in-house he did both the design and the manufacturing he said i only want to manufacture i want to be sort of like what gutenberg was for books gutenberg didn't write any books he only printed them morris chang didn't want to design any chips he only wanted to manufacture them and that's the origins of taiwan's dominant position in chip making today so he went over there to do that why was it that in the united states with this at their hand that they weren't able to do both was it that they just didn't see the future they didn't see it coming yeah i think that's that's that's the primary explanation you had these big companies like ti like intel at the time which were doing well uh they believe their existing business model of both design and manufacturing made sense and they're doing well and they're doing well and they're doing well and they're doing well and they're doing well and they're doing well and they're doing well and they're doing well and there was this pretty disruptive idea that morris chang came up with at first it wasn't clear it was going to work and it was only over the last decade or two that it became obvious it was the best possible way to manufacture chips because you can not just manufacture for yourself you manufacture for the entire industry for nvidia for amd for apple and you have these huge economies of scale that result from that how is it the story of manufacturing has always been sort of to create a production assembly line methodologies how did they not how did they miss this in such an advanced industry if if ford is the one who figured it out for automobiles so that you could democratize this process and make a product that would revolutionize travel available to people at a scale that made the pricing uh make sense how was that not obvious to everyone in this nascent uh computer industry well you know i think in hindsight it certainly looks obvious but if you go back to the time morris chang went to his colleagues at ti and said let's make what he called a foundry this company that would just manufacture not do any design and they asked well who are your customers and he said well there aren't any customers today because there weren't any companies that only design chips then you had to have your own house factory he said if i build it they will come and that was a risky bet at the time but it proved right and just as he was setting up tsmc in part because he set up tsmc you had companies like qualcomm or nvidia founded at the same time that never manufactured they just designed and sent those designs to taiwan see what i find so interesting about that professor and i don't know so if you think about the creation of the industry at large for computing it was founded on the idea that like microsoft we're not going to make the hardware we're just going to make the operating system and if our operating system is embedded in everything we have a monopoly and if that's how they were viewing software i'm surprised that they weren't also viewing that for the brain of whatever it was that they were going to create that they would they would not only own the operating system but they would own the physical brain for all of these yeah well i think the other dynamic is is financial which is that the closer you are to the customer the more you can charge and so you know you look today tsmc is a two trillion dollar business nvidia which relies on tsmc for almost every single chip manufacturers nvidia is a five trillion dollar business and so if you say would you rather be tsmc or nvidia the answer right now is clearly nvidia and that's just one of tsmc's many customers and so here's the paradox is that silicon valley made the right choice financially the u.s has by far the most valuable chip firms in the world an ecosystem that everyone is envious of but it was only possible to get that because we had this reliance on taiwan and it was a rational choice to outsource the manufacturing to taiwan the only problem is that as we were doing that china's military threat threats and capabilities were growing so who are the companies when you talk about so in silicon valley you've got chip design that's nvidia uh who else is on the cutting edge of that intel so intel is a bit of a different case because they still have some in-house manufacturing but but set set them aside okay nvidia amd qualcomm apple google amazon all these country companies design chips and manufacture almost all of them at tsmc okay see this this blows my mind because if you think about you know you're telling a story of specialization yep in silicon valley it was important for them financially and otherwise to specialize. So they're going to do that. Then you have a company like Amazon who was saying, okay, yeah, we're going to specialize in that, but we're also going to send you books and energy bars to your house. Like that almost seems antithetical to the entire premise. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been a big change the last five or 10 years is that all of the big tech firms used to just buy chips from chip designers. Now, because they're running these vast data centers, which is a new thing. It's just the last decade that Amazon and Microsoft have become these massive cloud computing companies. They've realized that if you're going to own this many chips, you're better off if some of them are specialized to the specific types of calculations that you're undertaking. And that's why today the big tech firms are among the biggest buyers of specialized chips. So now let's take it back into sort of that geopolitical arena that we're talking about earlier. You've got these firms in Silicon Valley who are absolutely crucial to the future of any technology that's going to be utilized anywhere. And they have the greatest designs and the best Silicon transistor specs, and they're sending it out to these other places. Did anybody in the government or within those companies think, but you know, we're going to need a lot of uridium and pallidium, and all these other things that we are not in any way mining or refining? None of it. It sounds crazy, but the answer is not really. Everything. I like it how it's always, in hindsight, yes, it does sound crazy. Yeah. I think, you know, two things happen. One is that companies were late to really realize how problematic they were. And I think that's a big part of it. I think that's a big part of it. and that how much of the foundation of these industries do they now control? So for certain of the rare earths, especially what's called the heavy rare earths, their processing share is almost 100%. Almost all processing today is in China. Of rare earths? Of certain types of rare earths. Everyone has a different type of processing, but certain ones, it's basically all in China. Now, that's not true for the mining in some cases, and everyone is different, but there's a literal monopoly for certain types of materials. So why in God's name would we start a trade war with them? I think the administration very clearly wasn't expecting, but should have expected China to retaliate using exactly this tool. The one tool that our most important industry is based on. What did you make of, did you follow, I thought it was really unusual that when they went to the summit, they brought basically. Our entire tech industry with them. I mean, Qualcomm, Apple, NVIDIA, Tesla, SpaceX, Boeing, and then obviously the financial guys from, I don't know, Goldman Sachs and Blackstone and all that. What did you make of the presence of those companies and individuals? Was it. I can't wrap my mind around. Was it a show of strength, or was it in some ways a show of deference? I think the dilemma we face as a country is that China is both our number one economic competitor, but also a huge market for our most important companies. And for companies, they are laser focused on keeping access to the China market. So important to their sales and financial performance, which means they're constantly pushing the US government to make sure that China policy is made. Right. With the focus on company sales in China in mind. And so most of the CEOs that were visiting, they wanted to make sure they could keep selling into China. A, that the US would let them keep selling, and B, that China would keep taking their products because they need the market. It strikes me as such a fundamentally backwards way then of demonstrating strength and leverage is to bring with you the most powerful business leaders in our country, to basically genuflect as opposed to demonstrate resolve. And China knows that it's got a really powerful tool in terms of its ability to cut off access to our companies whenever it wants to. And it's done that on a regular basis. So what was the greatest strength then for America? It's clearly now not our materials, our manufacturing process. What is it? Is it our allies? Well, even when you look at materials, I think it's a nuanced picture. So China produces a lot of the basic materials. But if you look at the high-end materials that those basic materials are based on, a lot of that R&D still happens in the United States or in friendly countries like Japan. So we're great at taking the stuff that China produces, doing R&D on top of it, and selling it for a lot more money to the rest of the world. If you look at rare earths, does China make any money off of rare earths? No, almost none. Wait, really? It's a tiny business, tiny industry. Rare earths is an industry that crucial to the technological progress of humankind is a bad business. It's a bad business. And the reason that China dominates it is because Chinese firms produce and then sell with little to no profit. And so they undercut any other company that wanted to enter the market because you can't make any money because China's producing at very low prices. So what their understanding is, this isn't a moneymaker. This is a strategic sledgehammer. And it's worth it to us. They used to call us in the business a loss leader. It's like when you'd go by the, I can't remember what it was, Hickory Farms, and they'd have the little plate with the little cheese cubes. And you'd go on and go, you're not making any money on this. You're just giving it away. And they're like, right. But we got you in the store, didn't we? Is that their methodology for this? Yeah, that's 100% right. And it's worked. It's worked. It's got us in the store. It's made us dependent on their materials. And right now, we're in a position where even our most expensive products, our most advanced chips, we can't sell them unless we can get these materials from China. Well, now let's complicate it a little more. Let's get away from, because right now, we're just talking about sort of the advantage that China might have for the very beginning of our supply chain, right? They've got the mines, they refine the materials, and then they send them out for all our brilliant engineers and technologists to make. The Dutch come in, they buff it up a little bit. The Japanese do their thing. What we've learned about manufacturing in China is they invited Apple in, let them pay workers much less, let them take advantage of the freer regulations and all that. And all they had to do was bring their expertise. But what did the Chinese have them do? Train, all of their people on their expertise. And so now they have industries that are competing with that. Are they doing the same with these chips? For a long time, the answer was yes. And they were making progress and catching up. But then in 2019, the US and the Dutch and the Japanese began restricting sale of certain of these advanced chip making tools to China. And so, right now, the ASML, the Dutch tools we were talking about, you can't sell them to China at the most advanced levels. And it's really cut off a lot of the progress that China had been making. And it's meant that for the most advanced ships, almost all of them, including all the R&D is happening outside of China, in Taiwan, in Japan, in the US, and in Europe. And it's only because of these controls that that's the case. But let me ask you, knowledge travels. I mean, it's one of the things that we're seeing now if we take it outside of a trade war and put it into a real war. It's one of the reasons why things are so fraught in Iran. We obviously have nuclear knowledge and technology that far exceeds theirs, but they're getting enough of it that they can compete and that they can make, they've got the centrifuges now, they've got the other stuff. What is preventing China from developing the kind of expertise and knowledge that they're getting? Of bringing in leaders in that industry to educate. I mean, I can't imagine that they're not planning for that. They're certainly trying, but I'd say different types of knowledge travels at different speeds. Nuclear weapons, you mentioned, nuclear weapons were invented now in the 1940s. They're so straightforward, even the North Koreans can make them. And so the level of complexity in nuclear weapons is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. Of the level of complexity in one of these Dutch tools that's used for making chips. You've got the most complex engineering ever done, hundreds of thousands of components, manufacturing happening at the nanometer scale. That's virus-sized and it's got to happen accurately every single time. And so, yeah, China's trying to copy it. Dutch media have repeatedly reported of different ways that Chinese hackers have broken into the Dutch company to try to steal the blueprints. That's all happening, but it's really hard stuff. And it's now been, almost a decade that China has been trying to copy this machine and they haven't made a lot of progress. How much of a moving target is this expertise? In other words, if they were 10 years behind and they're slowly catching up, how much more advanced are, you know, are we still disappearing past the horizon or is it a little bit more of a fixed target and they're going to be able to find their way to it? Yeah, no, that's, that's a key point. And because technology moves forward so rapidly, it's a very, very fast moving target. And the reason why you've got companies like NVIDIA or like TSMC that have this dominant market position is precisely because their R&D is so capable. Every year they're delivering a much, much better manufacturing process or a much, much better design. And so if you're sitting in China, you're not trying to catch up to 2026 level. If you hit 2026, but it's already 2030, you're light years behind. And so you've got to catch up to this moving train. It's been very difficult to do. Will it be, in your estimation, is it easier for us to catch up on the raw materials end or for them to catch up on the high-tech refinement end? I would rather have our problem than their problem. Okay. Well, that, okay. Listen, I don't know how far into the podcast we are. We could be an hour, but I just heard a glimmer of hope. I just heard a little flash of sunshine that just came out there. You'd rather have our problem. How would you attack our problem? Here's why. Here's why. First, the mining of the materials that can happen in a bunch of different countries. Not easy, but we know the materials are out there. Is it happening in a bunch of other countries? It's starting to happen. So some of these mines are starting to come online. That's right. That's right. Yep. That's the first. The second is that the processing, it gets better over time, but the rate of improvement is nowhere near the rate of improvement in chips, which means that we can figure this stuff out. And a lot of the key processing steps were invented in the US or in Japan or in Europe. So again, it's not simple, but it's not rocket science either. You're talking about the refinement of the raw materials, the rare earth metals that they're pulling out. Exactly. We actually invented that process. For certain types of them, yes, invented in the United States. And then decided, but we don't want to do it. That would be too easy. We're not going to bother with that. Yeah. Most of the key rare earth magnets, for example, these chemistries were invented in the United States, often in US military labs before we got out of the business. And so, can we learn that again? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes. Right. Now, my understanding of the trade war is, to some extent, it's being levied to force the corporations to repatriate some of the manufacturing base that we lost when China joined the WTO and globalization sort of hollowed out our base. Would that be accurate? Yeah. I think that's right. And that's how the president sees the dynamics. But I think I would say a lot has changed in the last 30 years. The way you make a car, then versus now, is totally different. Then we didn't have cars that could drive themselves. Today, we're on the cusp of autonomous driving in a big way. And so, we shouldn't be trying to rewind the clock to 1990, but we should be asking ourselves, how do we manufacture the things that we'll want to be producing at scale in 2035? And those are two very different questions. Now, is that what, when they had passed the CHIPS Act, was that intended to address the issue that you're talking about? I think partly. But I think also the CHIPS Act was laser focused on the Taiwan dependency that we started our conversation with, which is that if your entire tech sector relies on one provider and China keeps threatening to blockade or invade them, that's a huge strategic challenge too. All right, professor. This is where the rubber meets the road. I hate to come back to rubber again, vulcanized rubber, by the way, the processing of the rare materials of rubber. You have the opportunity to be Silicon Valley for our manufacturing, our manufacturing process or base in America, in the sense that I want you to think about the specs, the blueprint. If you're designing a process between government and these companies and a strategy to make America more resilient and yet still remain at the forefront of these technologies, what would you be doing to make America more resilient and yet still remain at the forefront of these technologies? What would you do? How would you design that? Here's what I'd say. Our problem is not innovation. Our problem is dependence on China for critical components. That's it. It's as simple as that. Simple as that. Our companies are the most innovative in the world. We've got no problems on that front. It's that we're too dependent on Chinese inputs for all the innovative products that we make. I think that's a problem that's solvable. Part one is to say, we've got these allies in Japan, in Canada, in Europe, in Australia. They've got great geology. They've got great manufacturing capabilities. Let's work with them, not against them. That's part one. Okay, professor. I've got some bad news for you. It's been a complicated couple of years. When we launched the trade war, you may not have noticed, we didn't do it just to China. So again, and I hate to come back to the part where my brain hurts, but the first piece of strategy, and we'll get back to the rest of the strategy, but the first piece of strategy you laid out is our strength is in the alliances we have with these other countries like Canada. And we're absolutely obliterating those relationships. I would not have put that at the start of my strategy. Totally agree. So let's say that those relationships are good. Yeah. How are you leveraging those relationships to make us stronger? So all of these countries have a similar version of the dilemma. They're becoming more dependent on China too. Every single year, China's competing with their industries. They need Chinese rare earths and other inputs. And so we ought to work with them to lock out the Chinese from our market and say, we can't have more Chinese rare earths, but we can source from among these friendly countries, whoever's got the best geology for this mineral, that mineral, whoever's got the best component for this manufactured good or that manufactured good. That ought to be the strategy is band together with your friends. Would you invest, how would you sweeten that pot for places that have, you know, for instance, in China, because they're much more focused on central planning, they look at the future and say, well, the real problem here for us is going to be electrification. So we might have the rare materials and we might have that, but if we move towards where everything is moving towards AI and cloud computing, we're also going to need in the way that, you know, they're trying to build data centers here, they're going to need giant data centers and they're going to need a ton of water. And they can just go out to the rural areas of China and go, we're, we're doing it here. And the, the, the populace can't go not in my backyard, you know, how, how are we going to, how are we going to do that? How do we, how do we incentivize these other countries keeping an eye on the electric, you know, with our, with our I think there's a lot of different tactical ways you could target this industry or that industry, but we have one superpower that we haven't used enough. And that's the size of our market. And if you add up the U S economy plus the European economy, plus the Japanese economy, you're already at two and a half times larger than China and companies where you collectively were, were, were much larger than China. The problem is we've been dividing ourselves into different parts rather than aggregating it all together. And if you're a company that has to choose, do you want access to that market or the Chinese markets? That's a small fraction. The choice is obvious. Would, how would China react to, would they see that as hostile or would they seek to come up with something that's a little bit more, would they seek a compromise in that scenario? I think they, they would see it as hostile, but they also need access to our market because their entire manufacturing base is geared towards exporting to us, to the United States, to Europe, to Japan. We're buying all the products that they're producing. And if we threaten to close that off and cause immense problems for their entire industrial base, I think it's a lot more likely that they're going to come to the table. At this point for them, they probably feel like, well, what else are we supposed to do? I mean, they're so reliant on the United States. It feels like this trade war has forced everybody to look elsewhere. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think we should be doing the opposite, forcing them to look towards us, aligning their policies with us and tackling the Chinese challenge collectively. Now, this is probably going to be outside your area of expertise, but I'm going to ask you to weigh in on it like you're an expert anyway. And I want you to talk with certainty and just say that you know you can't be wrong because you're a professor. I know you have the diplomas. Now, this is the metaphorical nuclear weapon in the conversation. So our actions, alienating our allies while not making inroads to our rivals in terms of the resilience of our supply chains has forced people to look elsewhere in the world. But our one final card to play has always been that we are the reserve currency. Whether it's petrodollars or dollars or that, that is our final weapon that we deploy. Is all of this weakening that last bullet we have in our gun as well? You know, I think it's the right question to ask, but I think the answer is not yet. Okay. First, if you look at the value of the dollar versus other currencies, you haven't seen a major move. Expect the dollar to fall in value if everyone was selling their dollars, not happening. Hasn't it fell though in the past two years? A bit, but currencies move up and down and nothing that suggests a dramatic change. Okay. Nothing that you would think is like, oh, this is a permanent change. How much of it though, besides the value of it, is the strategic play that in the way that, you know, Canada may not look at bringing BYD in as a great strategic move, but they feel like it's the strategic move. It's their only move. Do you think other countries might look at it? Like if this is the way the United States is going to behave, we have to do this. The second question is, if you're not going to buy dollars, what are you going to buy? You know, there's only so many Argentinian pesos in the world, Swiss francs, small country. Well, the Chinese currency perhaps. Well, and so this is, this is the key question because one of the reasons that Chinese, manufacturing is so competitive is that they control their currency by not allowing the free exchange of renminbi into other currencies. And if they were to ever open that up, it would create potentially significant economic problems for them. So rather than internationalizing the renminbi, they've been actually trying to lock down the flows in and out of China because they want control over that. And they, I mean, are generally accused also of manipulating the value of, and the reason why I didn't name that the Chinese currency is because I can't pronounce it. Renminbi. I always, I always add another M, renminbi. How does this in your mind result? You know, we have so many open ended conflicts that feel like we stepped into with a lack of kind of strategic vision where we're, we're fighting these different areas on different fronts. How does this unwind or are we all just white knuckling it to kind of see where, what, what incentive does China have right now to do anything other than exploit their advantage? Well, I think China is going to exploit their advantage, but I also think that if you're sitting in Xi Jinping's chair, not everything looks perfect either. You're worried about the energy shock from Hormuz. You're probably worried about your economy slowing, youth unemployment rising. You're clearly worried about your military. You've just purged all your top generals and who knows what other conspiracies are at works inside of the communist party. You're a paranoid guy. And so, yeah, on this particular issue, you look pretty strong, but I think a lot of other metrics, China doesn't look nearly as strong as it would like to look. And Xi is clearly nervous about his domestic control, his economic position. And so he's not as strong as I think. His position in rare earths might suggest. So you also obviously have a great expertise in Russia. I want to ask you, when you think about Putin and Xi, you know, we were under the mindset that if we were to engage Russia in perestroika and detente and open up their economy, that they would be leading a more peaceful and, you know, a more peaceful and, you know, cooperative and that they would join, you know, the nations of the world and we would all live in a rules-based environment. And he took that and invaded Crimea and then attacked Ukraine. So we clearly didn't understand the kinds of historical grievances that were occurring there and his vision of recreating whatever empire it is that he thinks is their birthright. How much of that can be also applied to Xi and China? It seems to me like a lot. Okay. If you look at, you know, China's foreign policy, we think of just the U.S.-China relationship. But look at the China-Japan relationship. China's caused one of its largest trading partners to turn increasingly anti-China because of the rare earth dispute in 2011 and a series of territorial issues. Look at the Korea-China relationship. Koreans have really turned against China over the last couple of years because China has been imposing economic sanctions on Korea. Look at the Philippines-China relationship. They're constantly clashing in the South China Sea with the Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippine Coast Guard ramming each other. Look at India. China launched a small war against India and the Himalayas in 2020 over some disputed territory. You look around China and you find there's a whole lot of countries that have a bad and deteriorating relationship. China has a bad relationship with Beijing and that's because China is trying to rewrite all those relationships in China's favor. Does that give us a strategic opening? And look, I know this is all complicated. I mean, clearly, you know, there was a summit between Xi, Modi, and Putin and everybody was holding hands. So, you know, you can't tell how much of it is the two of them or three of them enjoying watching the United States squander whatever international gain. So, that's a huge strategic opening for the United States. But if you were playing the odds on all this, it sounds like that's a huge strategic opening for the United States. And you've seen all of these countries take steps to build their military capabilities, to defend against China, to increasingly work together, even if they're not working with us. It's the Philippines and Japan or Japan and India working together to try to constrain China. China's rising capabilities. And so, even if we're not cooperating with them in the ways we probably should be, they're cooperating with each other to try to mitigate the impacts of China's foreign policy. If we were to rebuild those types of Western alliances that we were more accustomed to having, and then including South Korea and the Philippines, and do you think that would be a successful bulwark against whatever China's ambitions are and against whatever Putin's ambitions are, although he seems somewhat frozen in whatever quagmire he's gotten himself into? Well, I go back to where we were a couple minutes ago in our conversation. You add up the US plus China, I'm sorry, plus Japan, plus Europe, plus India, you've got a huge share of global GDP, a huge share of the economy, a huge amount of military power. China doesn't want all these countries working together. And so, how concerned are you about the Putin and Xi summit? Look, these guys have been working together closely. They've been working closely for years. They've celebrated birthdays together. They describe each other as- Have they really? Yes. Yes. Putin's birthday. What? Because according to Donald Trump, it's really a special relationship that he has with you. Is Trump, is he trying to make us them? Is he trying to create, you know, I read something today that he had said that Russia, China, and the United States should get together and end the international criminal crime. And so, why, what I don't understand about that is, why is it that Russia is trying to create a new world order? Why is it that Russia is trying to create a new world order? He seems to be, the era of trade and goodwill that we created, this world order of the past 80 years, was at our behest. The idea that any of this occurs without our patrolling of the seas and without our trade rules and without our dollar sort of being the foundation of it all. And now we're saying, no, that was exploitative of us. And so we have to become like Russia and China. a great power that takes things because we're great powers. Is that our plan now? Clearly, Trump is going to be much more transactional in relations with allies. Now, I think, you know, to his defense, it's true. Were the Germans free riding on defense? Absolutely. Was it necessary for the Japanese to spend more on defense? A hundred percent. But wasn't that, again, that was kind of our design. We're the ones who said, you're not allowed to have those things anymore. Well, I think that was the design at first. And then over the last couple of decades, a series of presidents, Democrat and Republican, have urged the Europeans to do more on defense. And they haven't done much. So I think I understand the source of Trump's frustration. But I also think that the medicine has been just as painful as what we're trying to cure. So do we now, is Europe still our greatest ally? Or are they now kind of just another rival? And maybe they are maybe the single largest liberal democracy bloc going because Trump seems much more comfortable wanting a situation more like what Putin has in Russia or what she has in China. You know, I think five years ago, the answer to the question was obvious. Today, I think both in Washington and also in Europe, there are people that really question whether the word ally makes sense. When I zoom out, though, you know, this headline or that headline, it's easy to fix it on. You zoom out and say, what are the interests? What are the interests of these blocs? And it seems to me there's still a lot aligned. Neither the U.S. nor Europe want a stronger Russia that's expanding militarily. Neither wants a China that is threatening their industrial base. And on those two core issues, I still think that there's a lot of alignment, despite all of the complicated and controversial headlines that we see. So in your mind, this isn't a game of risk where the United States of America rather than being the head of the allied powers is saying, look, there's three axis powers. There's us, there's Russia, there's China, and we're going to divide up our spheres of influence. And if that hurts, if that hurts, I don't know, the European Union or Great Britain, so be it. I think that I think the debate is really about what's the definition, what's in our interest. There's the there's the short term transaction. I want what I want. I want tomorrow. And there's the long term. Let's build a relationship that will last over decades, involve mutual trust, involve mutual development. And that's what we had built in Europe. NATO was in our interest and in Europe's interest. And we built it over time. Not every single step of the way was in everyone's interest equally. But the net benefit was good for everyone. Do you still believe in in NATO being a viable institution for kind of holding that alliance together and keeping Russia at bay? You know, I think. The it's been a complicated 18 months for sure. But the key question is, do the Russians think NATO is a viable institution? And I would say they certainly haven't tested it yet. Oh, that's interesting. So you're in your mind, they would like it not to be, but they still feel that it's got enough teeth that they don't want to push what they really do. I know this is off topic in terms of the chips and stuff, but I'm curious. And this is your obviously an area of expertise that you've written on quite a bit. But. Do you think Putin would move beyond Ukraine if he had the opportunity? Moldova and Poland and I mean, would he reconstitute. I think if the opportunity presents itself, he's going to try to maximize his power and influence over the region. Now, that doesn't mean he's going to be reckless and dive into a war with NATO. But if the door is open, he's going to walk through it. Do you think he's as vulnerable as people are talking about? He certainly thinks he's vulnerable. He's certainly paranoid. He certainly in the last couple of months, there's been a regular disconnections of the mobile Internet in Moscow. So you can't order an Uber, you can't use DoorDash, you can't check your email because the Internet's been shut down for smartphones. That's a sign of just how worried he is. So as China and the United States battle for the supremacy over the 21st century, A.I. and A.G.I. technology. Russia is deciding. To make it so you can't have an Uber like that, that it sounds like they're floundering and they're they're falling much further behind. And the Ukrainians have now fought them to a standstill. Ukraine's a third of the population of Russia. Most people would have said much, much weaker than Russia when the war started. But now it looks like on the question of who can win territory, the Ukrainians are just as strong as the Russians. And in your mind, and this is sort of like as a. Wrap up to put the whole thing, and I so appreciate your time, but also your expertise in all of these areas that it's very hard to get. What I like to think you're providing, which is a nuanced picture of all these competing dynamics that are occurring. It feels very clear that if cooler heads prevail and we get through these sort of turbulent. Waters. It's in everybody's best interest. Look, even when we talk China and Taiwan, the idea that, you know, we always say, like, oh, China will just take them militarily because they can. But as we see with countries like Iran and Ukraine, it ain't so easy. And Taiwan has certainly got the technology to produce drones and weapons and all kinds of other stuff. And if, as you said. The temperature on the island is much more nationalistic than even what it was. 20 years ago. Why would China risk putting its economic progress and technological progress at at such harm to even make that move? I think I think you're right that if you were solely focused on economic and technological progress, you'd stay away. I think where I worry is that it's not clear that's where Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership are primarily focused. Their economy has been. Slowing the last couple of years and they've let it happen because they're thinking both about economics, but also about power politics. And that's why I think it's so important that the U.S. and its allies present a united front against China and say, if you move on Taiwan, the cost will be catastrophic. And you believe they might they might they might understand that? Or is it as it was in the case with Putin and Ukraine? No, this is ours from a thousand years ago. And that's we're going to make ourselves whole, whatever the cost may be. I think if Putin had known what the cost would be, he would made a different decision in February 2022. Oh, wow. That's that's really interesting. Is he someone that is reflective enough in a way that maybe our president is not to. To to understand that, to understand that mistake. Well, I would say. And he's now four years into the war. It doesn't look like it doesn't look like. Thank you so much for joining. This has been absolutely fascinating. Thanks for all the insights. Chris Miller, author of Chip War, the fight for the world's most critical technology and obviously a historian, economic history, international relations and the professor at Tufts University. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. See store online for details. This episode is brought to you by chat GPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast. Have you guys heard about chat GPT work? It's the new way to use chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give chat GPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides and structured reports. Get started at chat GPT dot com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro. Let me tell you something about professors, you know, never bring a sledgehammer to a nuance fight. These professors, they don't want nothing to do with broad statements. Every time I jump in, they were like, and then you got, you know, how does the United States not force it? Well, to be fair. Yeah. To be fair to the United States. You know what? To be fair to China, to be fair to Trump. He was fair to a lot of people. Right. Imagine knowing so much that you have to be fair to everybody. I can't imagine that. That is no fun. Talk shit. I don't want to live in that world. Whatever happened to knowing just a little bit? And being fair to no one. Thank you. I think that's still in vogue, honestly. Not knowing very much is still happening. And I am on the leading cutting edge of not knowing enough to be fair to anybody. Somebody's got to do it. It's hard work, but somebody's got to do it. do it why we love you Who's back? Quick, quick, quick question. Who's backing down first in the, I still can't figure out the end game on any of this shit. Russia, China, none of it. Like how is it in 2010? That was the thing that blew my mind the most was, you know, they talk about, well, you can't really start mining your own rare earths. You can't really do any of that stuff because the lead time is so long. Well, in 2010, they pull the plug on rare earths in Japan. And now it's 16 years later. If we had done something, then we would not be in the position we're in today. And worse, we have a chips act that our current president thinks is horrible, horrible. He doesn't even want it. We have a plan now. We have something and he hates it. Wow. Cause it's, it was signed by auto pen. Yes, it was exactly. It's invalid. In fact. Yeah, that's right. I think some of the details that have come out about the trip make me not so sure that there is a plan. Like the idea that she gave Trump these like rose seeds and there was no real reaction to it. Wait, what did he give him? It feels like a burn. No, he gave him rose seeds. It just felt like, oh, did you just destroy your rose garden? Here's like some seeds. Oh, is that what he did? He was being shady. I don't know. Maybe I'm. Reading too much into it. But after King Charles gave him a bell, I was like, something's going on here. I think people are just making fun of him. That's so fucking funny. I did see that the People's Republic band played YMCA. Which I was like, he's so easy, you guys. Like. Did he dance? I feel like we, we should be able to manipulate this man more easily for our own purposes. I actually was reading some of that, like what some countries have done to make him feel at, at home. And I think it was Korea where they just served him steak with ketchup, a burger. I'm telling you, man, our problem is we're so disturbed by the cat that we can't do the things that would like the Republican party has no problem kind of buffering his ego to the point where they can get some of the things that they want. Like all China had to do was throw a couple of four year olds out in front of him to sing a song. He's like, this is our greatest rival. You know, and then the minute he shows, he's up there like these children, they're singing to me, whatever you need. They love me. I think you're right though, that they're, they're fucking with him. Like, I do think they're, I think the lack of respect that they all, like, I think they are all privately enjoying this. They are enjoying seeing the United States, a country that let's be honest, holds itself up in a slightly arrogant fashion as a shining, city on a hill. I think they're, they're loving seeing a little bit of schmutz on our shirt. Or even, did you see the Marco Rubio story that there were sanctions, like China had sanctions against Marco Rubio from the time he was a Senator. And then in order for him to attend this trip, they did some finagling with the transliteration of his name to overcome the sanctions so he could go on the trip. Wait, there are, there are sanctions against Marco Rubio to travel? To enter China from his time as a Senator. So they did some, some tinkering with his name. It's all hanging by nonsense. It is hanging by nonsense. Do you guys hear whistling? That's definitely the construction on my street. I'm very sorry. Wait, so the construction workers just sit outside your window whistling at you? I don't know. I feel like it's like a leaf blower or something. The sounds have been incredible. Lord knows, I have been around many construction sites in my life. Even worked on a couple. We never had a whistle machine. I'm being cat called by three stories up. Yeah. All right, Brittany, what do they got for us this week? Let's do it. John, if you had to vote for one, Nixon or Trump? Nixon, if only to get the EPA. Yeah. I mean, Nixon at this point would be considered a gay communist in today's Republican Party. Yeah, Watergate is gay now. Watergate. Yeah. Like, wait a minute. You hired a couple of guys to break into a thing. That's adorable. I mean, Nixon and by the way, Spiro Agnew. Spiro Agnew went down because of a slush fund. And it was just a little hint of a slush fund that Nixon was using to fund other things. And I think Agnew got into like tax trouble because of it. Now, I'm sure I'm mixing the realities of those things. But think about that in comparison to one point. One point eight billion dollars of taxpayer money. At least I think Nixon's slush fund was donors. All bribes. Yeah, it was all at least it was straight up bribes. At least it was bribes. This is fucking our money. I mean, it's do we even have a Congress? No. Or a court? Did you see that the the actual amount, too, is one point seven seven six. Well, it's because and they're too cute. It's it's all. Or well, it's all a fuck you troll. Everything they're doing is a fuck you troll to us. This is against the weaponization of it. And it's patriotic. They're trolling us. His entire career is a troll. What do you think is going to happen? Nothing with that fund. They're going to give it to people that sprayed mace at police officers and pretend that they're rewarding patriotism. Yeah. The list of people sent to chill. Let my spine. Yeah. By the way, it's not transparent. They don't have to tell you where they're doing it, how they're deciding it, who's getting the money. None of it. It just feels like one of the more egregious things that's happened recently. And so I guess the faith in this system still exists somewhere in my body because I'm like, this can't stand. Surely there will be a hearing at least. I don't know about that. No, you've seen those hearings. Right. You know, it'll devolve. It'll devolve into grandstanding that gets it nothing. Or they'll just bring Pam Bondi to come back with her book of slams to be like, you know, you've got a lot of nerve. You're from Delaware. The small, you know, dude, we're, we're in the upside down. And everything that you thought that there would be at some point, it really, you know what it reminds me of? You ever see those videos where like a horde of teens. Flies into like a CVS. Yeah. And just starts taking shit. Smash and grab. Smash and grab. And everybody's just standing around like, is anybody going to call somebody or are we just going to like, that's what we are. The Trump administration is a smash and grab on the American public, on the taxpayer. It is the most corrupt on just utterly unsheathed, unleashed on us. And they are just grab. Grabbing whatever they can and pretending that it's remuneration for some victimhood that they faced. That's all fictitious. It's nonsense. Wild. Smash and grab. Yeah. It fills me with white hot rage. Doesn't it? It really does. It's like this, this, this week, this news, like I, like Lauren said, it's like sort of reminds you that you still have like a barometer because you're just like. Oh my God. I guess also, yeah, like the pace of news, you wind up pairing it with other stories. So today there's also the story about how many people have dropped out of the ACA because they can't afford it and then stopped paying their premiums. Millions. And you're just watching like, we're going to hand out a billion dollars to people for fun. You know how hard we fought to get 9-11 first responders some health care for the thing? And they always told, and that was not much more. Yeah. And these guys just drop it down. And the thing that is stunning to me is like, I don't think we even know who to turn to where you see this level of corruption and this lack of transparency. And you really are looking around like, I don't even know who to call. There's no 9-1-1 for this. No one's coming to the rescue. This is all about electoral politics. These guys got to go electorally. Because it's totally legal. And the people that, the people that are supposed to be guarding us against these interests have no, have no responsibility. Congress, theoretically, when people created these laws, they thought that Congress wouldn't allow a president to take advantage of it in this way. And instead they bow at the altar of him. It's ridiculous. That's right. And you won't be able to go to the Supreme Court because they will find a way to twist. If it's, if it's based on precedent that doesn't fit, they'll make it fit. If there's a precedent that says you can't. You can't do it. They'll overturn it. They will just enable his corruption in the baldest way. He is a meme coin of a president. He is a pump and dump scheme of a president. So long as all the right people keep getting rich off it, they'll be fine with it. Amen. That's right. Yeah. Guys, in an attempt to reach for some optimism. Yes. Yes. Today is a big primary day. Midterms are coming up. New people, new. I don't know. No. No. That was one of those. I'm going to reach for some optimism. And then you just, you take the blinds and you just go. I opened the jar. It was just some dust puffing out. I feel you. What's, what's, what's the last one? All right, last question. Yeah. John, what question do you always get that annoys you? I mean, none of them. It's always nice to be asked questions. Oh. It's like, yeah. How do you get annoyed by questions? I don't, you know, I'm not asked that many. I'm trying to think. Oh, okay, okay, I've got one. I've got one. Will you make my bagel? I know who asked that one. Yeah, I get that at home. Does he live in your house? He does, sometimes. That's the only one I get where I'm like, what? They're already made. Roles are reversed. Yeah, that's exactly it. I can think of a couple for you. Yeah, me too. Oh, you got, okay, which questions do I get that annoy you? Oh, well, none of them annoy me. But I think the one you probably get the most often is, well, are you going to run for president? Oh, yeah. How do you find hope? Oh, yeah, that's it. You know. But I never get annoyed. People are, genuinely, people that ask questions are almost always invariably polite and kind, and the interactions are quite pleasant. Even amongst people, quite frankly, that very clearly are not aligned with me politically are almost always, unless they've been drinking and I'm out with my family, and then it gets a little tense sometimes. Other than that, Brittany, how do they keep in touch with us? Twitter. We are Weekly Show Pod. Instagram. Threats. TikTok. Blue Sky. We are Weekly Show Podcast. And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. Fantastic. And as always, we couldn't do it without you guys. I just want to thank producer Brittany Mamedovic, producer Jillian Spear, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, and our executive producers Chris McShane and Katie Gray. And oh, I seem to have forgotten one person, our lead producer, Ms. Lauren Walker. Lauren. Yes. It is Lauren's final episode with The Weekly Show Podcast. She is moving on to greener and greater. And I just can't tell you how much I've appreciated your expertise and experience in the world of journalism and news. I have always found so just grounding. You know, it's similar to how I feel about Professor Miller. Like, I just want to go like black and white, two-dimensional caricature, and you always bring a nuance and a shading. And an experience to the conversation that is utterly invaluable. And I thank you. No, thank you. Thank you for trusting me. It's been so nice shaping your really important work. It's an honor. And yeah, thanks for listening to my relentless opinions. That should be the title of the book, Relentless Opinions by Lauren Walker. So we appreciate it. We'll miss you. You'll stop by again for our chat. And we wish you nothing but the best. And we know that that is what's going to happen. So thank you again. And other than that, man, onward. And do we have a show next week? No. No episode next week. We're back the following. And this is the last episode of season two for us. Oh, is that the case? It sure is. Look at us. We were babies. Now we're out of the terrible twos. And we're into the terrible threes. We're into the terrible threes. All right. Very cool. We'll see you guys later. Bye-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. 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