See the show notes for this episode: S 01 | Ep 48 Deep Dive: Navigating the Complexities of Global Power Dynamics.
0:00:00 - Alex Shevelenko
Welcome to Experience-focused Leaders! I am delighted to introduce you to Dmitri Alperovitch, founder and CTO of CrowdStrike, a leading security company with a market cap of over $84 billion. He's a Chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator and, most interestingly for today's discussion, a national best-selling author of the book called World on the Brink. Dmitri, welcome to the pod!
0:00:31 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Thanks so much for having me!
0:00:32 - Alex Shevelenko
I am so impressed with the range of your accomplishments, starting from being an entrepreneur but having come from an immigrant to the US background and having achieved tremendous success all the way to now really changing the mindset of our foreign policy establishment, ringing the bells. In a very similar way in which George Kennan's long telegram set up a policy for containment during Cold War I, you're introducing that during Cold War II. We'll come back to that in a second. Because I think the reason you're getting these insights and the reason you have the credibility in shaking things up in our establishment actually comes from that journey as an entrepreneur. So let's dive into that. Tell us how you got into information security as it was called back then, and what was the insight about adversarial threats that really undermined the success of CrowdStrike and beyond?
0:01:43 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Thanks so much for having me! So I've been involved in the cybersecurity industry really since high school. I got into it a little bit by accident because my dad got interested. He had an applied mathematics background in the Soviet Union. He got interested in encryption and elliptic curve cryptography back in the early to mid-90s. I ended up helping him out and we even started a small company together when I was still in high school. It was in the subset of the overall cybersecurity space, encryption.
But I very quickly realized that there's an inherent appeal of this whole space to me. Primarily because I love chess, these adversarial games. And cybersecurity is very much that. You're facing a sentient opponent. You're not facing nature or trying to just solve a problem that exists and once you solve it you're done. In cyber you're never done because of course, as long as there are bad people out there that wish to do harm, they're going to find a way to do that.
So that cat and mouse game I found really, really interesting and intellectually stimulating. I ended up going to college and focusing on that and being actually the first graduate out of Georgia Tech with a master's degree in what was then called information security. After that I went into the startup world and ultimately, about a decade later, ended up co-founding a company called CrowdStrike. I ended up finding that there was a big problem inside the cybersecurity industry that was not being paid attention to, which is nation-state attacks, initially from China, but then Russia, Iran, and North Korea. They were breaking into private companies for espionage purposes, for stealing secrets and intellectual property, and later on, also doing disruptive and destructive attacks.
0:03:55 - Alex Shevelenko
I'm just going to pause you for a second. I'm going to share one of your quotes which I found particularly interesting as we were doing research. This is from a few years later when you were at Silverado. Your quote, “We do not have a cyber problem. We have a China, Russia, Iran and North Korea problem.” And it sounds like that's something that is not just a recent discovery. That it was a foundational to what was behind CrowdStrike's success.
0:04:24 - Dmitri Alperovitch
I don't remember the exact date, but it was in the early 2010s, just as we were launching CrowdStrike, that I coined this term. I appreciated that this problem wasn’t just going to be solved through cyber means, and that geopolitics was at the root of this evolving issue.
Even if you look at the range of threat actors in cyberspace, including nation-states, criminals, and hacktivists, many of them come from these four countries: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Not because they have a monopoly on all offensive cyber activity, but simply because they either don't enforce, or even in many cases, encourage their non-state actors to go after Western businesses and governments, as they find that helpful in their overall confrontation with the West.
We certainly have cyber criminals in America and Europe, but they tend to get arrested, and their careers are usually short-lived. However, it’s the criminals outside of our jurisdiction—those beyond our ability to bring to justice—that tend to be the most prolific and dangerous. And then, of course, we have the nation-states, with these four being the primary actors. Geopolitics has always been at the root of cyber, at least for the last 15-plus years. And that was part of the incentives for starting CrowdStrike — realizing that this is only getting worse.
0:06:03 - Alex Shevelenko
What else would you attribute to the success of CrowdStrike? Obviously, cyber is a huge problem, partly due to some of the reasons you’ve explained. You know what's behind that. But what else was behind the original insight, and how much of it was execution? Earlier, we talked about being competitive and wanting to win. It’s a remarkable story, especially considering the pace of growth in a space with many established competitors.
0:06:37 - Dmitri Alperovitch
A lot of things have to go right to achieve huge success. Timing is really key. We started just as what was known as APT (Advanced Persistent Threat), which is really a euphemism for nation-state actors, was exploding, and no one was really focused on it. At the same time, you had the established companies, McAfee and Symantec. I was actually at McAfee before starting CrowdStrike. They were really in the process of dying. These were dinosaurs that had been around for three decades, coming down under their own weight, and their bureaucracy couldn't innovate.
Originally, before starting CrowdStrike, I wanted to pursue some of these ideas at McAfee, my employer, but there was no interest in the company pursuing them. Being a public company, it was very hard to invest in innovation because you lived quarter by quarter. One day, you would get resources, and the next day, they would be taken away from you because the company needed to ensure the numbers still looked good for Wall Street. That was just not conducive to innovation or investment. As a result, we were able to succeed and ultimately replace these companies. McAfee and Symantec are now long gone, but at the time, when we started the company, they were the main threats to us from a business perspective.
0:08:11 - Alex Shevelenko
Got it. When you look at your engagement with the government, both at McAfee, where you started the Operation Aurora initiative, when did you feel you were going to get actively involved in the policy work you're doing right now? Was it always obvious to you that this was something you wanted to be a part of as you were tackling this problem, realizing, “Hey, why are we the only ones really understanding these problems or tackling them? We need to help”? Did you feel a calling? Was it intellectual curiosity? I'm really curious because, as an entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology, the usual path would be to stay in technology, do another deeply technical startup, and continue innovating. You’ve clearly thought beyond that—obviously, you brought that technical expertise as CTO of CrowdStrike, but you’re now expanding into the communications world. How to persuade and drive policy decisions? What was behind that?
0:09:20 - Dmitri Alperovitch
I've always had a passion for international relations and foreign policy. Ultimately, I was focused on solving problems, and I guess I appreciated that technology was never sufficient.
It was often a necessary component, but it was not enough. My passion for working with the government really started very early on, right out of college, when I joined a startup focused on email security. I worked for a gentleman named Jay Chaudhry, who went on to found another huge company, Zscaler, a huge success story in cybersecurity. At the time, I was focused on the spam problem and phishing attacks, and I ended up working with the law—not just from a technical perspective, but also from a policy and law enforcement perspective. That involvement only grew as I became more engaged with technology defense, agriculture, and many other areas that are opposed to the Chinese regime. This led me to get much more involved in Washington, moving to D.C. and working closely with a number of government agencies, with a focus on policy.
0:11:38 - Alex Shevelenko
So let’s take that policy view you have now, and let’s dive into Cold War II. Let’s start with your famous prediction of the unfortunate situation in Ukraine. You predicted the Russian invasion a few months before the actual event. We’ll share the tweet you posted that received quite a lot of views in the episode later. But what was driving that insight for you? Was it connecting the dots from a general perspective, also having lived through the history of Cold War I, so to speak? Having been educated in the USSR for part of your time, did your connection and pattern-matching provide a clearer insight than many others had about what was going to happen with the invasion of Ukraine?
0:12:35 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Yeah, thanks for asking that question. Back in early December, I became convinced that Putin was not just bluffing when he was trying to mobilize his forces on the borders of Ukraine, about three months before the actual invasion took place on February 24th.
I became convinced, after closely following him for the last 25 years—his writings, his speeches—that he was really serious this time and was going to take action. There were five reasons I thought were driving him toward invasion. And, by the way, those five reasons are the same ones that I think motivate Xi Jinping to want to invade Taiwan. They have to do, first and foremost, with history—and a distorted view of history that both of these men share.
In Putin’s case, he believes Ukraine is not a nation, but rather an offshoot of the Russians, and that it should not exist as an independent country. He sees it as an aberration of history that Ukraine was allowed to exist. He blames Lenin for creating the Soviet Union and for the exit treaty of the Soviet Union that allowed the republics to separate. He also believes in both his own and Russia’s destiny to unify these lands that once belonged to the Russian Empire. He famously compares himself to Peter the Great, the czar of Russia who expanded the Russian Empire and was actually the first emperor of Russia. Putin wants to expand Russian lands, or at least retake what he feels are rightful Russian territories.
Ukraine is first and foremost in his mind, but there is also a security and geographic reason for wanting Ukraine that actually transcends Putin and has found broad support across the Russian political spectrum for a long time. This is both a defensive and an offensive way of looking at Ukraine. From a defensive perspective, Russia has, of course, weathered numerous invasions from Europe over the centuries—whether it's Hitler, Napoleon, the Teutonic Knights, the Poles, and many others—and a number of those invasions have gone through Ukraine on their way to Moscow.
Ukraine, being a huge country, has provided Russia with the strategic depth to mobilize and prepare for the defense of the capital while fighting on Ukrainian soil. But also, from an offensive perspective, Ukraine is a window into Europe. It borders Poland, it borders Slovakia, and if you want to project power into Europe, you also want to have leverage over Ukraine.
So, as he was observing NATO’s flirtations with Ukraine, even though it wasn't about to join NATO, he saw it drifting further and further away from his grasp. That was motivating some of the timing for the invasion because he thought that if he didn't act soon, he would lose Ukraine forever.
And that brings us to the fifth and probably the most important cause of the conflict: his ego. He wanted to take credit for this. He wanted it to happen on his watch. It wasn’t enough to say, "Well, some future leader of Russia will finish this off, and we can afford to wait for a long time and use gray zone tactics to try to bring Ukraine into our fold." He wanted to do it himself. By the way, I believe the same reason is driving Xi to try to invade Taiwan in his own lifetime, and it’s not an accident that both men are now in their 70s.
0:16:42 - Alex Shevelenko
So we'll come back to Xi and your prediction, as we started the book, that the invasion will happen in 2028. It's interestingly connected to the timing you've mentioned.
But let's compare notes on one other person, whom you probably don’t like, but who predicted something similar to what has happened: John Mearsheimer. He has used a much more singular lens through which he views the events—specifically, a great power politics perspective, focusing on the power struggle. He has also looked into Putin’s personality and ego, and some of the other factors you brought up, which, by the way, I probably agree with you on. He still predicted that, for some strategic reasons related to NATO expansion and its timing, it would be too late, as Ukraine was effectively becoming integrated, at least partially, into NATO activities.
So what's your take on this? What is he missing, and what is he getting right? In some ways, some of your recommendations actually align reasonably well with the realpolitik worldview of Mearsheimer, and maybe even what Kissinger would have predicted. I’d love to get your take on that, if I’m reading it correctly or not.
0:18:11 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Yeah, I actually don't agree that Mearsheimer is aligned with realpolitik thinking anymore. I actually debated him on the very issue of the Ukraine invasion a few months into the war. Look, he is focused on monocausal explanations for driving this conflict. I don't believe that, in real life or in geopolitics, there is ever a single cause for anything. Life is way too complex. So, I do not subscribe to the view that NATO expansion is the single and only cause of this conflict. I also don't believe that it has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I think it contributed to the overall desire for Putin to take Ukraine, primarily for both reasons. There is an element of seeing NATO as a threat, but more importantly, NATO membership for Ukraine represented the loss of control over Ukraine, which was really at the heart of it. If he were only concerned about NATO being on Russia's borders, then he has failed massively, because Finland just joined NATO, and it shares a huge border with Russia. He hasn't done anything to address that and, of course, hasn't invaded Finland. Sweden also joined, ensuring that the Baltic Sea is essentially a NATO lake. None of this is registering much in Russia's political discourse, so it wasn’t just about NATO.
0:19:55 - Alex Shevelenko
It was a desire to control. It was a desire to control.
0:19:58 - Dmitri Alperovitch
It was the feeling of destiny and history that Ukraine was not a nation, that it belonged to Russia. A completely false interpretation, of course.
0:20:19 - Alex Shevelenko
It was a desire to have Ukraine as part of Russia's power projection, particularly into Europe. You've highlighted in the book something that struck me: the "century of shame" for China. And you obviously bring up the same empathy for Russia, feeling vulnerable and being invaded through Ukraine multiple times in history. We know this is deeply embedded in the psyche and the education system, dating back to at least the Soviet era, with all these invasions and attempts to attack them. So this is a deeply sensitive issue. You bring up this sensitivity to the adversary, which is great.
How do we build on that tradition to potentially de-escalate the situation in Ukraine? The thought I have is about Kennedy's speech delivered at American University, well known as the "peace speech." It was unique in that it connected the American audience to appreciate that, even though the Soviet Union was an adversary, there were still things in common, areas of mutual interest. It feels to me like this is very hard to do in our world today. We're struggling to do this internally, and we're struggling to do this externally. How would you approach this particular conflict and the challenges around resolving it, given the sense of hopelessness we all feel about where we are today?
0:22:29 - Dmitri Alperovitch
I think our foreign policy since President Carter's and Brzezinski's days in the late 70s has become very moralistic. We tend to see things as good versus evil. And look, there's certainly a number of evil regimes out there. But if you have that confrontation of good versus evil and you are not looking at the path to potential coexistence with some of these countries, you're going to be fighting a lot. Even as he called the Soviet Union the "evil empire," he was, of course, engaging with Gorbachev and had numerous summits, arms control treaties, and the like. So even he appreciated that talking was important. Look, I just wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs that discusses how Taiwan is really the new West Berlin. It's interesting that you bring up Kennedy because I think that was a very pivotal moment in his administration for the entire outcome of the Cold War. It's not the Cuban Missile Crisis that everyone cites, although it was certainly important, but rather a year prior during the West Berlin Crisis.
So Kennedy had come into office intent on improving the relationship with Khrushchev and asking Khrushchev to have the summit they would end up having in June of 1961 in Vienna. He was trying to establish an early détente with the Soviet Union and find a way to coexist. The summit, however, was a total failure because Khrushchev pressed his advantage. Essentially, the Americans and other Western allies were forced to withdraw from West Berlin, and the communist forces would take over the city.
Kennedy came out of that summit shaken, realizing that we were on a path to war. In fact, he went on American television in July of that summer and told the American people that we should be preparing for war, including nuclear war. He had also asked Congress for additional appropriations to identify fallout shelters across America, to invest in identifying early Soviet launch capabilities, and more. He told the American public that we might face an existential conflict over this small piece of territory, just 100 miles away from any West German border—West Berlin.
Then, in August of 1961, Kennedy was woken up with the news that East Germans, on orders from the Soviets, were building what would become the Berlin Wall. It's interesting because the Berlin Wall, of course, became a symbol of everything that was evil about the Cold War and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. But at the time, when Kennedy was told on that Saturday or Sunday morning that the wall was being built, he celebrated. He sighed in relief and said, "Thank God, thank God he's building the wall. That means he's not invading, and that means war is less likely."
And indeed, even though we had the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, which actually grew out of the West Berlin Crisis, after that period, post-1962, there was a great deal of stabilization in the relationship.
The Cold War persisted, and of course, you had Vietnam in the 1970s, Afghanistan, and all these proxy fights around the world. However, the danger that America and the Soviet Union would confront each other, including in a nuclear conflict, diminished dramatically, which allowed for détente to emerge in the 1970s, with Kissinger and Nixon going to Moscow and building a better relationship with Brezhnev.
What I argue in this piece is that Taiwan is that West Berlin issue—existential for China, but really essential for America. If you remove that thorn from our side, you could get to a better relationship. It won't end the Cold War. There will still be global competition for supremacy between China and the United States. But the chances that we would ever go to war over some artificial island in the South China Sea or some rock in the East China Sea are essentially null.
0:27:39 - Alex Shevelenko
But we could go to war over Taiwan. Let's pause here because, as a less educated person than yourself on this topic, I'd like you to walk me through why you consider West Berlin to be existential.
0:27:57 - Dmitri Alperovitch
You mean Taiwan?
0:27:59 - Alex Shevelenko
No, West Berlin in particular. Right, because I think, if you're drawing that parallel, West Berlin is the best example. To me, the Cuban Missile Crisis feels a lot more existential from a purely American point of view than West Berlin.
0:28:14 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Remember, the Cuban Missile Crisis was 13 days, and yes, we were at high risk of war. I'm not trying to diminish the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that summer of 1961 was almost three months when the entire country was on edge and we were preparing for war. It was a lot longer and more intense than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy basically made the case that we had to make a stand in West Berlin, that this was critical to our credibility, that we had made commitments to West Berlin and the freedom of its people, and we would not allow the Soviets to push us on this.
It was essential to the containment of further communist expansion and Soviet influence in Europe that we had to make a stand. We were not going to force the liberation of Eastern Europe, but we were not going to let them take any more. And that was the symbol of West Berlin that was so critical to Kennedy, which is why he was willing to risk an existential nuclear conflict over this small piece of territory.
0:29:22 - Alex Shevelenko
Got it. So, Taiwan—why do you believe this? The stance that we take right now will not lead to confrontation if we aggressively take that stand. I think that's part of your argument: if we are aggressive and prevent the invasion, making it very unattractive to attempt, then things will somehow stabilize. They may not be pretty, and there will continue to be competition to drive the invasion. But if we make a stand right now, it sounds like that's the most principled thing we could do from a policy perspective, right? Then the competition will continue. But if we miss this moment, we may either face a bad escalation during the crisis or see the United States go into decline, with China emerging as the next superpower and leader, at least in the Asian region, but potentially globally. So, what you're saying is that the next few years—Taiwan—is the moment of truth for Cold War II.
0:30:49 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Yeah. So, first of all, we have to talk about why Taiwan matters to us. There's a very reductionist view in our political system and among the general populace that Taiwan matters to us only because of the chips they manufacture. They're, of course, a powerhouse of chip manufacturing. Ninety percent of advanced chips are made in Taiwan. About 40 percent of so-called foundational chips are also being manufactured in Taiwan, and that's really important.
I don't want to underestimate the importance of chips to our digital economy. They're absolutely crucial. I like to say that they're not the new oil, as some people describe them, because there are alternatives to oil. There are no alternatives to semiconductors, so they're much more important than oil. But nevertheless, Taiwan is much more important to us than just chips, and it has always been that way. In fact, we have a long history with Taiwan, going back to 1950, when General Douglas MacArthur referred to Formosa, as Taiwan was called at the time, as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier." To understand its importance, you have to look at the map. In the book, I have a map of China, which is a little different from the way people typically look at the map of China. Typically, you see the huge landmass of China with a little speck of land next to it—that is Taiwan. If we can pull it up right now, your map.
0:32:13 - Alex Shevelenko
So it would be, I think, here. This is from the Audible PDF that you have for the book. This is the map that you're referring to.
0:32:22 - Dmitri Alperovitch
This is a map. I wish they had done it in color, but nevertheless, you can see that Taiwan is really at the anchor point of the so-called first island chain. And if you're China, looking out at the world, this map really articulates it: you see yourself completely contained. To the east, you're facing the Korean Peninsula, half of which is South Korea, an American ally, with American bases, 28,000 American troops, radar installations, air bases, and the like.
Further down, you have the Japanese islands, where you have the headquarters of the Seventh Fleet Marines in Okinawa, with enormous military capabilities there. Right in the center, you have Taiwan, which faces most of the Chinese ports across the Taiwan Strait and nearby in the East China Sea and South China Sea. Taiwan is seen as an outpost of American power, and closing down that arc, you effectively have the Philippines, where, for the first time in 30 years, we have American military bases being established on that island—or at least existing Filipino bases being given access to American military.
You also notice the waters. The waters on China's shores, both in the East China Sea and South China Sea, are very, very shallow. In fact, in the Taiwan Strait, they're about 300 feet deep, but if you go to the other side of Taiwan, to its eastern side, they drop down to 12,000 feet, and the Pacific Ocean, of course, is the deepest ocean in the world. Why does this matter?
Well, for China to become the world's greatest power, as they believe is their rightful place, they look to their history, where they were for much of it—the most populous country on the planet, the richest, and the most powerful. It’s only in the last few hundred years, since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, that the Europeans, and later America, eclipsed them in that spot.
They see their rejuvenation, as Xi calls it, as the key to taking back that rightful place as the world’s greatest superpower. Well, if you’re the world’s greatest superpower, you can’t allow yourself to be contained by America and its allies, as you see on this map. In fact, the key to being a global superpower, which was true of American power and British power, is naval power—projection, right?
You could trace the dawn of America’s rise in terms of power to the early 1900s when Teddy Roosevelt sent the so-called Great White Fleet around the world, circumnavigating the globe to announce that American power had arrived. The rise of the U.S. Navy, able to traverse the world’s oceans and make them safe for commerce—both for American consumers and to export American goods—enabled us to build up our power and eventually become the world’s greatest superpower, eclipsing Great Britain.
While China has similar ambitions, it is investing heavily in shipbuilding capacity and is now the world’s greatest shipbuilder. It is also investing in controlling small but crucial choke points, many of which are controlled by U.S. allies and military. And it aims to create submarine bases around Taiwan and effectively eject the U.S. from the Western Pacific—pushing them all the way back to Hawaii and dominating that region. Not necessarily dominating in the sense that you might think...
I don't believe that China is going to embark on a massive, Nazi Germany-like march across Asia, invading the Philippines or Japan. But they don't have to. All you have to do is look at Russia and its ability to project influence in its near abroad, whether it's Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan in Central Asia, or even the Caucasus, with Armenia and Georgia. In most of these cases, Russia doesn’t even have to invade these countries. Simply being the big, powerful neighbor is enough to dictate the rules of trade and the security order in the region. This is what China could do as well.
0:37:04 - Alex Shevelenko
So, if China takes over Taiwan, it's effectively saying, "Hey, there's a new sheriff in town," and it will be the new hegemon in the most important region of the world.
0:37:13 - Dmitri Alperovitch
This is where you have almost 50% of the world's GDP, most of the world's supply chains, and the majority of global economic growth. So, if you dominate that region, if you eject Americans from it, you can use that as a power base to project even more influence globally—whether in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and so on. This would mean a decline in American power and, ultimately, a much worse security situation for the U.S., with a greater potential for wars, and an America that is less safe, less economically secure, with lower growth rates. That is why Taiwan matters to China and why it matters to the United States.
0:37:58 - Alex Shevelenko
Got it. But one thing that would be great to extrapolate is why you believe there will be a greater propensity to fight wars. Is it because the balance between the powers is more intense? You could argue that during Cold War I, when America and the Soviet Union were relatively close in strength at times, there was a sufficient deterrent to avoid direct wars. How do we think about the more dangerous world that emerges from this?
0:38:31 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Well, look, an America that is no longer able to enforce the global security order established since 1945, at the end of World War II, is an America that is ultimately less secure. You will see more conflicts around the world, more dangerous regimes propping up, more dictatorships, and more authoritarian regimes—something that China is absolutely trying to export globally. In fact, just in recent years, they opened a school in Africa for emerging African leaders to teach them how to build a surveillance state and an authoritarian state. So, they’re trying to export their ideology—not necessarily communist ideology, but an authoritarian ideology—around the world.
And you know there is this theory in international relations that so far has been largely proven true, that democracies don't fight other democracies. So the more democracies you have out there, the safer the world will be. Because they'll be more accountable to their people and they'll find a way to address their problems in ways other than fighting wars. Dictators and authoritarian regimes don't necessarily have those types of political pressures and are much more likely to engage in a conflict. And if China is allowed to project its power across the world, you will see more and more authoritarian regimes and an increased likelihood of conflicts arising globally.
0:40:06 - Alex Shevelenko
So, let’s consider it from the Chinese perspective and evaluate American foreign policy. You mentioned various points, so let's identify a period—perhaps starting from the Korean War and the Vietnam War. From an outside perspective, specifically from the Chinese viewpoint, America, during this so-called peaceful period, has been actively involved in enforcing its set of policies. The outcome has been favorable for America, notably due to its success in winning the Cold War. However, when reflecting on the perspective inspired by Kennedy, considering how China views the world might eventually help us find a path to compromise—if such a compromise exists, it will guide us toward it.
And, you know, consider which parts of American foreign policy frankly didn't work. I would say, for example, that I initially supported the Iraq War when it started. However, when I came to understand its impact, I was very disappointed. I realized that I had misread the data and followed the herd in that approach.
As an entrepreneur and someone who likes to think independently, how do you reconcile the fact that, while we might prefer America to generally be a nation that looks out for those in need and acts as a hegemon in the world, the reality is that it’s rare to maintain a single hegemon situation? Additionally, how do you reconcile the Chinese worldview on America's role? Has it always been positive? You mentioned countless reasons over centuries why China may feel it was promised certain things that did not materialize, so they may not view American foreign policy as benevolent in the same way you and I do.
0:42:13 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Well, look, I don't necessarily agree that America has always had a benevolent foreign policy. We certainly made mistakes and I criticize a lot our foreign policy over the last 30-plus years where we've become too enamored with our hubris and power and decided that we are going to be the world's policemen and fix problems all over the world. I believe that was a great mistake. Iraq was a mistake. Staying in Afghanistan as long as we did was also a mistake. I supported going in to address Al Qaeda, but then we experienced an inflation and expansion of goals, and suddenly it became about, you know, having girls go to school and building democracy in Afghanistan—something that was probably never attainable. Ultimately, we lost a lot of our blood and treasure pursuing goals that were destined to fail.
So, I don’t necessarily believe that we are perfect and that the rest of the world should applaud every time we act on the global stage. However, I still think we are better than China, and to the extent that we have tried to promote democratic values, free and fair trade, and human rights, that has largely—though not always—been good for the world. The same cannot be said about China. I believe we need to be much more restrained in our power projection—firstly, because we can no longer afford to act otherwise, and secondly, because it is not necessarily wise to try to impose our systems on the rest of the world.
I think we should lead by example instead of trying to enforce democracy on other countries through force and coercion. Let them reach their own conclusions about which system is better. We also face a significant problem on our southern border with uncontrolled migration, which may pose security issues. Yet it is remarkable that so many people around the world, including those from China, are coming across our border to seek a better life for themselves and their children. No one is doing that in China—no one is crossing borders to live in China. It's quite the opposite. So, we remain an attractive system, the most innovative country in the world, and I believe the world is better off with us as the world’s greatest superpower, rather than China.
0:46:20 - Dmitri Alperovitch
It should be legal immigration; it should be merit-based immigration. Nevertheless, we are attracting people from all over the world to come here, and that's just not the case with China. We have the world's greatest alliances, the world's greatest military, and the world's largest economy, which now seems very clear will likely never be eclipsed by China because their growth has subsided. So, we have enormous advantages. The book, titled World on the Brink, has a very dire title, but it’s actually quite optimistic. Hopefully, you found it that way.
So, Alex, because it discusses all the advantages we have to win the Cold War—Cold War II. The big question mark that I don’t address in the book is whether we have the political will.
0:47:03 - Alex Shevelenko
Oh, that's a whole other debate.
0:47:06 - Dmitri Alperovitch
That’s not something I weighed in on.
0:46:20 - Dmitri Alperovitch
It should be legal immigration; it should be merit-based immigration. Nevertheless, we are attracting people from all over the world to come here, and that's just not the case with China. We have the world's greatest alliances, the world's greatest military, and the world's largest economy, which now seems very clear will likely never be eclipsed by China because their growth has subsided. So, we have enormous advantages. The book, titled World on the Brink, has a very dire title, but it’s actually quite optimistic. Hopefully, you found it that way.
So, Alex, because it discusses all the advantages we have to win the Cold War—Cold War II. The big question mark that I don’t address in the book is whether we have the political will.
0:47:03 - Alex Shevelenko
Oh, that's a whole other debate.
0:47:06 - Dmitri Alperovitch
That’s not something I weighed in on.
0:47:08 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, but that's actually really interesting, right? Democracy has its own mechanisms for generating political will, and it's tough. Let’s go back to why China and Russia are succeeding in attracting these dictators, particularly in parts of Africa. Country by country, the French are being pushed out, and the Russians are coming in. The sentiment you’ve highlighted is that there’s a lot less moralizing—it’s more pragmatic, perhaps autocratic-friendly, but let’s be transparent.
America has had autocratic partners who were perhaps anti-communist but certainly not democratic. We still have such partners today; some of them even start with the letter "S," and they are very important. This is an interesting challenge because our strength lies in our moral conviction—our way of life. But it seems to sometimes get in the way. Even though there is now rhetoric from our foreign policy establishment suggesting that we won’t be preachy or prescriptive, it still feels like almost no one believes it.
0:48:32 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Well, because we do. We continue to do this, right? The Biden administration comes in and announces a Summit for Democracies, excluding not only countries like Saudi Arabia—which one might understand—but also Singapore, Bangladesh, and other countries that are not quite democracies. When you do that and frame the situation as a fight between democracies and authoritarians, you’re essentially telling all these other countries to pick a side—and it won't be ours. You’re pushing them into the arms of China, Russia, and others, which I think is a huge mistake.
Look, we have to work with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. It would be nice if everyone were a democracy, but that’s up to them, and there’s nothing we can really do to force a change in their government. We've tried that on a few occasions, and it has been a miserable failure. Let’s not repeat those mistakes. Instead, let’s work with countries that are willing to help us confront this new enemy in this new Cold War—China—and find ways to collaborate where we can, while disagreeing where we must. But let’s end this preachiness and moralizing of our foreign policy, which has not served us well.
0:49:57 - Alex Shevelenko
Great. So how do we find empathy for the opponent? I want to push on this because when we start using words like "adversary"—which, in the larger scheme of things, it is—how do we get back to the détente you’re articulating? People get caught up in the words. For example, trying to say, “Let’s find peace in Ukraine right now,” and everyone is highly escalated. Nobody wants to talk or think about that, so it ends up being drawn out. How do we avoid that from happening?
How do we bring a discourse that is sober-minded about the challenges we’re facing, but at the same time doesn’t push us into hate mode? Again, I want to go back to Kennedy, if you don’t mind. This part of his commencement address at American University resonates with me. I’ll quote him, where he compares the burdens of the Soviet Union and the United States:
“Both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interest of the Soviet Union as well as ours, and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep only those treaty obligations which are in their own interests. So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. And then he says, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures, and we all are mortal.”
So, in the context of this brinkmanship we’re approaching, particularly around Taiwan, and given the influential role Kennedy played in the Cold War, how do we apply this thinking a few years after all these crises to our policy decisions? Is it too early? Do we still need to have our—because this speech took place after West Berlin. David Schawel.
0:52:34 - Dmitri Alperovitch
The Berlin Wall, right, and, you know, a metaphorical one across the Taiwan Straits that deters an invasion of Taiwan by China. And notice that the speech you just quoted—a great speech, which I wholeheartedly agree with—was delivered in 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall was built and a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis. By that point, the risk of war had diminished dramatically, allowing us to afford discussions about arms control and better understand the Soviets and the like.
For much of our official relations with China since 1979, when we officially recognized the PRC as the representative of China, we’ve had relatively good relations because they were much weaker and did not pose a credible threat of invading Taiwan. Now, I argue that we largely took our eyes off the ball because they were militarizing for this opportunity while we were distracted by various crises, including those in the Middle East. Now, we are facing a situation where the balance of power is changing, and they are credibly threatening Taiwan.
Right, if you undo that and effectively restore the balance of power that has existed over the last 45 years, and prevent China's ability to unify with Taiwan by force, you can return to the détente we’ve had since 1979. You could have better relations. Now, I still think we’re going to have a lot of problems with China, and we need to be much stronger on issues like IP theft, overcapacity, unfair trade, and the like. But we’re not going to go to war over any of these issues. The relationship will ebb and flow. By the way, we have quite vicious trade disputes with the European Union, but we’re not going to war with them over it. The difference right now is that we are on a path to what could be a very catastrophic war, and we have to deter it at all costs.
There are basically three possibilities here. The “Goldilocks” possibility is that we deter conflict—China never invades, realizes invasion is impossible, and we go back to being not friends, but Cold War adversaries who are not on a war path but can cooperate in some areas and compete in others. The other two options are that China launches an invasion and either wins or loses. Obviously, in both these scenarios, there’s the question of whether America fights or not. But I argue that in both circumstances, whether we fight or not, it’s a disaster for the world. It means a resurgent China and likely global depression. In the case of war over Taiwan, we could see 10 trillion dollars wiped out in the first year alone. We have to avoid that option at all costs, and it’s not great for China either.
0:55:36 - Alex Shevelenko
It's a lose-lose situation, basically, what you're saying, right? Because whatever the outcome, the China trade will also be negatively affected. Even if they achieve some sort of success, the process will be detrimental to Chinese economic progress, at least in the short term. Is that accurate in your view?
0:56:03 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Well, it depends on how it goes. Xi Jinping will be focused on two things if he goes for this. He’ll focus on deterring America from intervening and on trying to take Taiwan as quickly as possible. People talk about how Putin's invasion of Ukraine was a terrible mistake, which has ended up being much worse for Russia, certainly in the medium to long term, and that's true. But it could have easily gone the other way.
If he had been able to capture Kyiv in the first few days of that invasion—and, by the way, it was very close—most people don't appreciate how close it came. We would be talking right now about Putin being the genius who was able to take Ukraine, just like he took Crimea, in a very rapid fashion. That's the option that Xi Jinping is hoping for. Whether he succeeds or not remains to be seen, but if he does, that won't necessarily be bad for China. The rest of the world will be eager to move on once Taiwan is taken, particularly once China establishes itself as a hegemon in the region, and they will continue trading with China.
0:57:16 - Alex Shevelenko
So, as you brought up, the book does not address the issue of the political will of the United States. Let's explore that a bit right now. There are obvious questions, because that is the key issue among the three major conflict areas on the table. There’s constant debate about funding and the trade-offs that need to be made. You were saying, hey, maybe these areas are not as important. This Taiwan preemptive containment is what's crucial. Can we allocate resources here effectively? That's what I see as the focus of the book, because in the larger scheme of things, this is the most important thing we could be doing.
And yet, there’s, you know, the politics in the United States, together with the economic pressures, not looking very favorable. This will be heated. How do you influence our political community on this threat, and effectively? We came from a world where communications and propaganda in the Soviet Union were a very important part of the system.
We could argue that one of the reasons the Cold War was won was that America communicated about its way of life and made it more attractive. Writing this book is an important component of alerting all stakeholders—from politicians to regular citizens, who may be listening to this podcast—about the situation. What’s your take? What’s working in breaking through the noise and driving attention toward difficult, challenging things, whether it’s going to the moon, fighting for the Berlin Wall, or defending Taiwan?
0:59:13 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Yeah, well, look, I don’t address the political situation because that’s not my job. I don’t focus on politics. We work at Silverado on a bipartisan basis with folks on both sides of the aisle.
This town, Washington, D.C., the one issue that seems to be the uniting force is China. When you look at any of the progress that has been made in the last few years, particularly on Capitol Hill—whether it’s the Chips and Science Act, which has helped restore or at least stall the decline of our semiconductor manufacturing industry, a really important bill passed on a bipartisan basis, primarily as an anti-China bill, as a way to deal with China—or the TikTok bill, forcing the vestige of TikTok, right? In a whole slew of these issues, both Democrats and Republicans found common ground, even though they don’t agree on pretty much anything else. Most members of both parties realize that China is a threat, even if they don’t want to call it a Cold War. So that gives me some hope. The book articulates a strategy for winning this Cold War, for avoiding a hot war, and I hope it’s going to resonate both in the halls of Congress and the administration, and really across America.
1:00:46 - Alex Shevelenko
So, on that note, American thinking and American communications expertise have played a role in influencing Soviet populations. We could talk about Radio Free Europe and other initiatives, as well as books commissioned by the CIA at some point about America. These efforts spread influence and had an impact. It’s not clear how much, but I think the way the Soviet Union got undone could be partly attributed to a cultural failure of the Soviet system and an awareness that the American way of life was attractive. How much of that will be seen similarly in this confrontation with China? What will be the role of propaganda, in particular, whether it’s good propaganda?
1:01:45 - Dmitri Alperovitch
I don't actually believe that propaganda had much to do with the victory in the Cold War. I think there were inherent contradictions in the Soviet system, particularly the ethnic tensions highlighted in that long telegram. His great insight was that the Soviet Union was a natural phenomenon that would one day collapse, and all we had to do was wait them out. Well, China is not collapsing.
China is not going anywhere. It’s been around for five thousand years. It may be around for another five thousand years. The Communist Party may last for a very long time. As much as it disdains us, there’s nothing we can do about that. So the goal is not the disintegration of China, and I don’t even define victory as the fall of the CCP, because if you define victory in that way—as some do—you may never achieve it. You may not have it for hundreds of years, right, because there’s nothing you can do to affect that.
In fact, you create more antagonism because they now see this as an existential conflict between you and them, since you're trying to dislodge them from power. So ultimately, I think it's up to the Chinese people to decide what system they want to live under. Again, we don’t have to tell them about the brutality of the communist regime. They know it very well. We don’t have to tell them about the attractiveness of our system. They know that very well, too, which is why you have 4,000 Chinese coming across our border every single month.
Again, I don’t necessarily welcome that, because we do need secure borders, but it does speak to the attractiveness of our system versus theirs. What I think we need to do is, again, focus on deterring conflict, making sure that Taiwan's status quo as this effectively autonomous nation remains, and then we can wait China out—not necessarily for collapse, but for the degradation of their economic advantages.
You're already starting to see that. Their real economic growth is probably around two and a half percent, maybe three at the most, which is very much in line with ours. And of course, our economy is 25% larger. So at that rate, they’ll never catch up with us. And that’s before you even take into account the dramatic demographic changes they’ll undergo over the coming decades, particularly in the late 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Today, very conservative projections state that their population will be at 550 million by the end of the century— a dramatic collapse in population that’s never been seen in world history. That will inevitably erode their economic power and, as a result, their military power. This will allow us to return to the uneasy competition we've had with them for the last 45 years, where it is not existential, where we're not planning to go to war, but we’re still the dominant economic and military power. And that's fine, right? It would be nice if the CCP collapses, but I’m not holding my breath for that.
1:05:11 - Alex Shevelenko
I love it because what you're fundamentally saying is the old truism in international relations: the opposite of war is not peace, the opposite of war is no war.
And what your book—if you don’t mind, I’ll give it another plug here—World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century—actually highlights is that we have a path forward. It’s very important to get it right in the next few years to prevent the most risky scenario where we could end up in a war, with immense human suffering.
So, I hope all of you who are interested in both getting excited about what’s great inside America, and your book is written by someone who is a fan, can see and work on those strengths, build them up, and also be aware of the new, changing world we live in. Take the right lessons from the past. I really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us, Dmitri. Anything else people who are interested can do, other than buying your book?
1:06:28 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Yeah, check out my book on Amazon or wherever you buy books. Also, check out my podcast, Geopolitics Decanted, where we dive into these issues on a roughly biweekly basis and cover conflicts like Ukraine, Taiwan, and others.
1:06:46 - Alex Shevelenko
So, we didn't get into the solution to the problem in Ukraine, but I'm sure we can explore that on the podcast.
1:06:53 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Yeah, that's a really tough one.
1:06:54 - Alex Shevelenko
That's a tough one.
1:06:56 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Things aren't going well there.
1:06:59 - Alex Shevelenko
And this is another reminder of why it's really important to avoid conflict. I think that’s fundamentally what you're addressing in the book when discussing direct escalation. The peace process after a war is much more complex and difficult than avoiding the war in the first place. Again, I hope everyone gets a chance to read the book and supports the policy decisions that drive this. Thanks so much for joining us, Dmitri!
1:07:25 - Dmitri Alperovitch
Thank you!