Former CIA Agent Mike Baker on China's 2049 Plan

the jurogan experience i'm very excited to talk to you because i had a guy on jamie metzel yesterday a scientist who scared the [ __ ] out of me talking about china he's talking about china we were talking about china amassing naval power china's taking over tech companies and how how huge they're getting and how much influence they have over their people as opposed to the way we do it well it's not wrong yeah i can't spot the lion in what what you just said but uh i mean look i mean there's so much we can we can talk about but if you think about it just in the past handful of months there was this solar winds hack right by the russians so the russians go in they hack into a company called solarwinds that is an i. t management software company that happens to be um fairly deep into government organizations agencies treasury and a variety of others throughout the us government and they're also into parts of the intel community defense department uh in a lot of commercial sectors so anyway the russians figure this out now around about december or january um microsoft you know identified this as a problem and and i think it was the head of microsoft said this looks like the most sophisticated attack we've ever seen so this is december january time frame and they're still trying to figure out the depth of this hack by russians at the same time and going back months and months and months and months before the chinese had been engaged in a more sophisticated attack that while everyone is focused on what's going on and so fully aware that we got problems right from from nation states out there who don't like us everybody's talking about solo wins and now it's you know they've just now released information about the chinese attack against uh microsoft exchange servers uh running the exchange email systems and this thing is uh enormous and so the chinese yeah i mean we've been so focused for four years on the russians you know and they're you know they they're out there to cause us all sorts of problems so we should be focused on them but it's china that's the biggest problem and so this guy is absolutely right jamie's right it was terrifying yeah listen to what he was talking about the way he was explaining how they you know they have this plan i think he said 2049 to be the the global superpower of the world and essentially be take the place of what america used to be yeah they do it their way and do it their way which means we're going to bypass all the costs and the heavy lift of research and development over the years and which can steal everything and they've 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 perhaps this is just something relatively new or it's popped up during the previous administration of trump and honest guys truth is it's been going on for decades and they decided that that's how they're going to get to the top of the food chain is by stealing [ __ ] because it's a lot easier to hoover up everything and then reverse engineer it and the technology has made it even easier right it used to be old school they'd go out and recruit somebody they'd find some chinese-american working for a company here in the states they'd appeal to sort of you know you got to help the motherland and and they would and that was the old-school way of doing it but you know cyber theft is it's incredible what they're able to do and this latest attack while they they're still trying to sort out the mess right so when they do this so if they get into this email server are they targeting anything specific is there specific companies are they just like throwing a net out there and seeing what they catch yes is the answer to uh both of those it's it looks like what happened here was that um their their initial point of attack or the initial focus was uh intelligence right so then it branched out and it branched out very very quickly right to hit everything small companies medium-sized companies and that's kind of the mo for the the chinese the chinese regime right the uh and their intel operations uh they've got this long vision and they've also got the resources and they've got the desire to hoover up everything and then sort it out later we take as as a country we take a very sort of targeted approach right we say okay this is a piece of information that's a priority tasking for the u. s for our national security we're going to go out we're going to figure out who has access to it we're going to develop a very sort of surgical strike to figure out how do we get to somebody who's got this piece of information that's typically how we or some of our allies would operate the russians the chinese have always had a different approach i mean the russians is less elegant the russians just throw [ __ ] at the wall and see what sticks right but the chinese they've got this long view and they've also got this ability and they'll so in this particular attack that they're still trying to assess that was perpetrated by you know um chinese state-sponsored hackers based in china uh they uh they're just gonna take everything and then they'll sift through it they'll figure out what they got a lot of it's going to be just you know chafe not not of interest but they're going to find a lot of gold in there too and they're willing to do that because they've got the patience to do it they'll they'll develop a target they'll develop a potential recruit for years and years and years or they'll they'll infiltrate um a society or an organization right they'll put a student out here who's actually working for the pla for their intel operations and they'll put them out as an undergrad and then they'll go to school and they'll get good grades and they'll go to a grad school and they'll get a job and they'll get another job and then 30 years down the line it may pay off but they're willing to make that investment so all right so we should be scared well we shouldn't be scared but we said yeah uh we i don't think we should be scared but i think what we should be is is pragmatic and understand why uh for instance i mean there was a lot of you know human cry over the past four years i can't believe i just said he wouldn't cry i don't even know what that means i don't know it's old-timey is it yeah oh my golly look at me it's like the cat's pajamas um it's uh so you know four years of trump and sort of his antagonistic relationship with china and people were all ringing their hands in washington dc you know sort of the the think tankers and the traditional pundits and the diplomats of of of of the us you know the long-term people oh my god we've got this adversarial relationship with china well you know what we better right so that's not a bad thing so i'm hoping the current administration maintains to some degree and we'll see what happens they still haven't responded to the solar winds to the russian attack right they're talking about it now they're saying they're gonna they're gonna engage in several clandestine uh retaliatory acts well it's not that clandestine because they've announced that they're gonna do it um and so you know but but i'm hoping that they will take serious action uh uh against the the solarwinds russian act but they've got to with china they've got to maintain this uh posture we've got to uh make it clear and understood to the chinese regime that we're not going to put up with this [ __ ] they're going to keep doing it but we've got to make it painful for them so how do you make it painful well you know it's the old word sanctions you got to go with the sanctions because there's not much else trade wars you know i know everybody hates the trade war not everybody but um you've you you've got to find a way because the problem with with cyber uh shenanigans is that there's no real clear definition right we know if we if if a country fires a ballistic missile off uh you know we know what the retortality or retaliatory act is we know what an appropriate response is in cyberspace when you're talking about warfare coming up with a definition is very difficult and hasn't been done yet we've got cyber command right and we're still trying to sort out what are appropriate responses because it can escalate quickly right next thing you know they could shut down our infrastructure right well that's what i wanted to talk to you about supposedly what they did in india so if you could explain that to people they shut down the power grid in india allegedly they said they didn't do it but apparently there was some sort of a warning about the power going out right yeah um they've done it um i mean the russians did it famously in ukraine right i mean not that long ago and um china's ability to interfere uh in uh infrastructure here in the u.

s or in india or with our allies it's because for years now they've been probing there's been testing going on you know they're we you know we talk about um it's a good example we talk about how um in the u. s we have three grids and i think people were stunned to find out that texas has its own power grid well yeah uh but it's not so much people were like oh my god look at texas they're terrible because you know they wanted to make it a political thing right they wanted to make it sound like the reason why it's so terrible is because it's republicans and they've got they want their own independence well no all three grids are [ __ ] right the east and the west and and the texas grids are all cobbled together over the years so it's a very sort of it's like a patchwork quilt and they were never built to withstand uh physical attacks i mean you could drive by any substation right you could get close enough to pee on it and there's they they certainly were never designed to to withstand a cyber attack so over the years what goes on is essentially a mapping exercise right where whether it's the russians whether it's the chinese whether it's the north koreans using chinese capabilities whether it's the iranians whomever they're in there probing and trying to understand the weaknesses and they're drawing up a map now the reason why they're doing that is to have a game plan right and i guarantee you sitting on the desk somewhere not too far from you know g's office is a playbook that says if this thing escalates here's what we're going to do and if you think like it was bad in texas you know a couple weeks ago when you know the power was out and it was bad but think about that lasting for eight 10 12 weeks around the country right power grid shut down what happens you can't transport [ __ ] right you can't get cash fuel doesn't get to to the gas stations food doesn't get to the stores uh this you know depending on the time of year heat issues obviously water supplies uh and that's where the next big battle is going to be fought right they're going to bring it to the homeland and we will do the same thing right it's not like we're not doing it because people always say when i say something like that well the u. s does it too i think well [ __ ] yeah the u.