Bipartisan legislation surrounding tiktok. Then we will have a conversation about theinese communist party poses to the United States and how he is leading in congress to take this complex issue head on in a way that makes some progress. Congressman kevin hern represents oklahomas first district. Can i call you kevin for a minute . My mom will give me a hard time if i do that. Kevin was born on an air force base and gained early appreciation for the sacrifices that military families make. He really has a quintessential american background. He earned an architectural drafting certificate at a Career Technology school, she used to work and pay for his engineering degree. After undergrad, kevin went on to work as an sp will internati. Kevin was out of work when it rocked the industry. He saved purchases for his Mcdonalds Restaurant by operating Small Businesses writing computer programs. In 1997 he built a farm and bought his first Mcdonalds Restaurant in North Little Rock arkansas. He purchased two Mcdonalds Restaurants. He grew that organization over the next decade owning 24 Mcdonalds Restaurants that employed thousands of people in northeastern oklahoma. Congressman hearn has worked because every aisle, serving mc. He served 13 years in the National Leadership team that represented all 3500 plus. Sfran. Eight years as the she will have to tell me because i dont have it here. And charge of franchise relations. Rebeccah in addition to mcdonalds he has been a successful entrepreneur and banking, manufacturing development, multiple Technology Companies in sports publishing. This is so our topic today because the congressman really has firsthand experiences in all of these different ways that Small Businesses operateed states having really strong and sound institutions forrospace, our abo produce and make our own food on the prosperity of the american people. Really has some really interesting and diverse backgrounds. He currently serves on the ways and means committee. He is the chairman of the republicanee were members of congress agree on basic principles and then Work Together to collaborate with initiatives for the congress. Last i checked, there are 173 members of the committee. Rep. Hern 180 now. Rebeccah 180 now. ■its incredible. Its really important conservative Principal Group within the republican covers men house of representative. What lets with talking about this tiktok because you are cosponsor. Something everyone is thinking about. Can you tell rep. Hern first of all, thanks for having me. The Hudson Institute has been around since i was born. Its great what you all have done, really smart people. We have had folks speak to rc as recently as two weeks ago. You came by and talked with us about china. Very smart in that space. As a relates to tiktok, first thing we need to disp not here. We are trying to protect america and americans from, sometimes their own selves. As we saw last year when the ceo of bytedance testified to congress, one of the most poignantwas, do you allow the sa gathering where the same techniques to be used in■o china as you do in the United States. His response was sort of stuttering and saying no, then the followup question to that is, you have the algori iplace e it on. Certainly, he did not acknowledge or deny. But we are saying with tiktok is is, china, by statute of congress in 2020, china is one of the five adversarial nations. However you want to call it, it is going to use that medium tiktok to collect data with american citizens and company. We will have a part of that and thats what tits a bipartisan. I want to give a big shout out to the former speaker. Speaker mccarthy■1 triedo this e together in 2019 and Speaker Pelosi would not do it. So when he became speaker of the house last year he put this together. Its very bipartisan, led by Mike Gallagher in the work they are doing is really good. Rebeccah just on the facts, tiktok is owned by bytedance, which is then controlled by the ccc. The legislation requires bytedance to get control from the ccp. It can go any longer as a nonadversary entity controlling the app. Rep. Hern we it wednesday percent threshold. They can own to any percent. They lose control of the company at that point in time. You are hearing from bytedance is, their w essentially you get tiktok out of the nation. If thats what you believe, you must be doing something nefarious with the gather you with the data you are gathering. Rebeccah it was passed completely unanimously 500. And then the tiktok app used through its algorithms and have autton there for young people who are using the app to put in their area code and it would give them it against this particular legislation. It really shows how this can be used not just for economic benefit for china. Imagine it where to invade taiwan and could really push out information to young people and save the United States it could misinform and calvo galvanize support for interests. Rep. Hern if you look at what they are doing as far as some of the hightech they have in the things they are doing to mine data, you look at their unbelievable growth. It came out in 2012. You look at the unbelievable growth thats compared to the domestic companies. We are try to bring parity between the platforms. But we are saying is, if you will be an adversarial nation, one part of the bill you talk about today, it is a Data Collection device, one of many that they have in our and in our electric vehicles that we are putting forth, we are going to do everything to address each one of these. Rebeccah its really an Encouraging Development to see the bipartisan support for it and really just s tiktoks efforts to lobby against it and it may have backfired and hadnt affected the increase solidified support. Really encouraging. On to the republican china bill that was just introduced. Ed how comprehensive it is. Rep. Hern 357 pages. Rebeccah its really interesting. I think not even just for the legislation itself, but as a teaching guide to go through and see where china is trying to are things you can try to unwind some of it. Congressman, i kind of went through it, i did not get all the way through , but i was trying to understand the approaches. Two things came to focus for me. And that is that it look like its trying to shore up americas own strength and you could talk about that in technology and advanced tech. Trying to protect that so we can go , and then it tries to stop what china is doing in its nefarious behaviors. Those two pillars . I think what so rep. Hern i think what so different about china versus theudson ■institute founded against the ussr, the cold war and bringing the principles forward. We looked at that more as a race or a Nuclear Arms Race then more physical blunt force troops on the ground. And then we also had spying around. Throwing a little spying here and there. Today, this is a different approach. Ive often said, in my time as rnc chair, is that china wants to destroy us economically and control us militarily. And they are moving very rapidly to do so. If we think about this, they have only been on the world stage since 2001 whenwe thoughte china. Im sure at that time we had an idea that ou their economy. Their economy is important to the United States and our producers, just as our people are important to their producers. Out downed investments in the United States and we look at the tremendous growth in certain sectors, especially when it comes to areas of technology, whether it be aerospace or chip development, all of these things, nuclear proliferation, or even in looking at our genetics in some of the stuff there. All of these things we had to look at. So what we are focusing on is, first of all, are we doing what we need to do at home. Tiktok is one example. We can talk about 80 of the cranes in our ports aredevelope. We saw cellular modems where they are tracking ships and whats happening out our ports. But then you look out pound is what were doing to report and have transparency. We have some of our largest investment firms that have funds that are■e completely focused on china technology. You can invest your money directly in a Chinese Support for the aerospace programs. When you look at a day in the paper, they document 79 that theyve had around for a few years, six or seven years that they want to basically, in their words, this slaying is delete america from all the technology. Other investments in the western world. Funding their technology platforms. They are building the steel ip from our greatest Technology Companies, and then turn around saying we are going to push you out through regulatory action, not choose you as our supplier with big mainframes or our software for our government. One of our Largest Companies in the world are from 50 down to four of 5 in five to six years. So they are moving very quickly, stealing rip, and we are finding that through our Outbound Investments. Rebeccah there was a public debate about how do we use the term thats like economically assured destruction between the u. S. China, ever since we welcome china and the w. H. O. Wpo, republicans and democrats sought rep. Hern know they own the w. H. O. Rebeccah thats a different problem we have to solve. That we enrich china. So now and did their time, and now they are healthy and thats where we see a more aggressive behavior. The challenge is, how do we unwind some of this . You actually not advocating for complete decoupling from china, second largest economy in the world, 14. 14 trillion, so now the challenge is how do we look at those specific technologies to make■o sure we are not continuing to empower the country that is trying to supply the United States. Its about rep. Hern its about bringing transparency. We talked about this interview and making people aware that we are at an economic war. I dont mean it bad, thats what we do, thats what we did■ as e rose as a nation. We were competing against europe as we grew. We did this because we wanted to create better products. We wanted to treat our people well. We wanted to have good human rights. And everything that i just mentioned, china is a bad am of us. We need to expose them. What this bill does is bring all of the topics together. What weve talked about is members of leadership legislative, creators, bring this together to point out that when you bring all this together, im sure we will talk about the border, belton road, education, all of these togethet doesnt look very good. Rebeccah i think its really important that the republicans of the committee are tracking this concept that china is really a key part of how china things about technology, Civil Military fusion. Thats why your bill goes in these different sectors. Commercial or intercommercial purposes. Its directly applicable to the military. That distinction between private and civil versus military is not there. Rep. Hern i think its important for people to understand what that means. In the United States we have a complete delineation by our constitution that our commanderinchief is a civili delineation that our military is our military. We develop products and technology for military and for civilian use. China is different. They are one in the same. Any time they develop something for civilians, its with the military in mind. For military, maybe the civilians get to use it. But a perfect example of this is, theres a lot made about how difficult it is for us to get cybersecurity people in our military. Weve had many briefings on this. In china, the other day china the everyday chinese person is recruited. To test our systems, to do hacking attempts. They get paid a penitence to do that. But they are not in the military. So, their whol society, if they want to be unified, works in unification to come after the United States of america because we are in the lead. Rebeccah great. You mentioned already and i appreciated you mentioned that hudsons role, during the cold war, the work that it wasnt me, i wasnt here yet, but i was on the scene soon after. Theyre concerned about combating ussr during the cold war. So now lets tastates now in washington. Its not necessarily the case that they are objectively seeking beginning from a pro America Perspective and doing what we can to make the United States stronger in combat our enemies. The really interesting thing is about requirements, more transparency for where you are getting your money, your influence and support. So, that is another big aspect that china has been very successful at influencing not just think tanks but retired members of congress and lobbying efforts and other educational efforts. You talked about how you all thought about that particular challenge. Rep. Hern y minute ago. After the bill passed 500 yesterday, we had people call us , call our offices that there is a conservative seen on many other issues. Conservative think tank peoples who are industry people lobbyists reach out to us. Rebeccah ■ tiktok proposing te bill . Rep. Hern absolutely. These are people that should be in would be strong americans. But because it was tiktok and because they were maybe getting compensated, and these include former members that are now lobbing for the ccp, you have alluded this, china is very smart. We have been very open about our representative republic and our freedoms around the world. People look at xi jingping and he has been very. Thats his unofficial title. His official title is of the Chinese Communist people. People need to realize theyre coming after us in this way, so we want to know who is lobbyingr behalf. One of five is china. It was irand venezuela. If they are lobbying on behalf of those nations, we want to know who they are and if they want to do this because they think china has to have representation, they can do it free of charge. Rebeccah this is another thing that is remarkable, you are leading the Senate Committee to push on this because it takes me courage to say, we will not do this anymore. You could be of Congress Make sure they are lobbying on behalf of these things were being pushed by the Chinese Communist party, so its kind of timely toy stop it. I have found that every time there is an effort, it seems like there is bipartisan support to and things like i can dj a drone cover and by the ccp. Just when you think its going to happen, theres this overwhelming lobbying effort, and then it stops and suddenly goes away for a while. That is a very good and useful aspect of the bill. Rep. Hern many of our fortune 100 companies have a massive presence in china. Its a big economy. You want them to take it vantage because the more they can grow and have more production, the demand it as a free market, but also, when i look at whats happening there, i reminded often about what china is trying to do, and they want to suck a sin. To your point, when this bill wayside, a singular bill, you dont hear from these folks anymore. I dont hate china, i just love america. So i think if we had that narrative that america is first, i know that makes some people feel uncfo but we have to look at it that way because they are looking at china first. You brought up a point thats missing in the discourse which is understanding the ideological motivation. If this was a country that shared ideas about reciprocity and trade, those are the principl that they base their ideas. They would have to continue but they are not motivated about these things. They are trying to push the United States out to be the most powerful power. That means there in that means they are infringing on america freedoms. Rep. Hern they can come in and to rescue these other formations, and they are doing just that. If we had the general speak to us a few months ago regarding the unrest in the middle east and whats happening in ukraine, you have to love the guy and the knowledge he has about seeing this firsthand. He set a mistake we should not make us that we should not make the mistake to think that iran is not the center of all of this. Furthermore, we should not make a mistake to not understand that china is the one thats bankrolling all of this. So you have a proxy in iran that is using palestinian, hamas, and the list goes on, to put the money out there. China back in russia, china is back in north korea, china is in venezuela. China is, through the economic power, creating the unrest. I could talk about rebeccah i could talk about this for an hour with you. This is how this ties together. Things are not going well on the world stage. Weve got crises that you mentioned crisis russia invasios of ukraine still ongoing. Then you have chinese provocative dangerous reckless behavior in the pacific really reatening using water canyons, etc. , against the philippines. Really dangerous behavior. They are actually not unrelated. I want to just get back just to make the final point on whats going on in the red sea with iran driving all of this. And these uranian proxies are not even going to hit. So the chinese flagship will go through the red sea and the russian flagship can go through the red sea unscathed. But the who sees will continue hitting this in the red sea. Rep. Hern think about how many days that ships have to go around Southern Africa to bring product to the United States or to bring oil, gas products coming from china. If you know that your ships will never be sunk, you have no problem with dean there. You will always have lower cost goods from anybody else moving stuff out of india, southeast asia, australia or anywhere. So there is a concern about this. And then when you look at the chinese, what they are doing to bring south africa closer to south america i was just in the six fleet talking to people in africa and seaboard western seaboard of africa, china is building ports because thats the closest on ships between south africa and south america, straight to venezuela. Just recently talking with the government in lima, peru saying they are building a huge super poor, three and a half billion dollar port in china says we will build this port, you cant have customs there, you cannot have security customs there. So, thats the closest toto com. So while we live in comfort with the pacific in atlanta ing through south america and through mexico in the United States. Rebeccah thats incredibly informative, congressmen, lets talk specifically, get back over to the middle east that is a hot butt ichina, lets think about e biden administrations strategy for these problems and why its not going so well. Its a policy towards iran versus policy towards china. If you dont understand that china is the one bankrolling the iranians, you cannot come up with a coherent strategy. If you dont understand that sending drones to the russian war efforts agastin ukraine, you cannot come up with a way to get the russians back in their own country. I know this is important because we are here to talk about your china bill, but to understand why its so important to take on china and its effect on these other countries. China is buying iranian oil in defiance of u. S. Sanctions. How you are thinking about that and how it is trying to tackle the iran problem in the context of china. Rep. Hern we spent a lot of time talking abo the 6 billion released out of qatar and the president saying it will be used in blinken saying it will be used for humanitarian aid and iran and you have the clerics. Its our money, we will do what we want with it. Nobody pushed back on it. The 6 billion coming out of qatar, that actually ends up being the smallest amount of all the amounts that have been coming back and forth. Iraq was allowed to by 10 billion worth of energy from iran. China, 60 billion worth of energy from iran. Before mike pompeo and President Trump in 2020, their reserve currencies were down to 10 billion or so and they are backup approaching 100 billion plus because they have an influx of money and they turned around with the creation of unrest and economic barrel 700 billion barrels a day and its denominator from chinas dollar. A barrel of oil is denominated in u. S. Dollar. Except for the relationship between china and iran, which has been bought by thehiwhen ys happening in august, its believed, based on all the outside people looking in, that 91 percent of iranians Oil Production is about china. Then you turn around and see chinapplying iran with the chips for their drones that are going to russia. To your point, its all one big happy family. Until the people in creating the worst areas, the bad people, like iran , actually going after those sanctions, you wont ever stop it. Rebeccah would it be fair to say, this idea for republicans and conservativesas a movement,g inward and neglecting american leadership, just putting it very bluntly. It sounds to me like everything you said here would doom us. That a lot of what you are saying is a very smart u. S. Intentionality on energy policy, for instance, but on technology and collaborating with allies. I dont know how we do all that as a country without the collaboration of likeminded allies, who are really in perils because of adversaries in china, russia, north korea. Rep. Hern you mention my ckcongress six years ago, never been in politics. My whole life is been about solving problems. Its not about politics. I hate politics. Politics of america are getting in the way of our national security. Look at our southern border. But thats the same thing happening around the world. From for political statements we are not going after good policy. I was just speaking with the german finance minister about this in the reference there is, what we have seen with russian oil and energy coming to europe, and how that has decimated our energy supply, we cant allow that to happen when china invades taiwan. We have to figure out how to turn back to the United States, turned back to people who are of peace and harmony and want a stable environment. I think our western allies are starting to wake up to this, ary what china is trying to deliver. Rebeccah its a really interesting phenomenon. As these authoritarian companies are more clearly collaborating and more brazenly collaborating to undermine the United States and our allies, you are actually seeing some surprising systems increasing collaborations among life likeminded prodemocracy corporations. Let the weenie at demonstrating solidarity with taiwan. Taiwan solidarity with ukraine. Really interesting different theaters of the world. I think it will be necessary moving forward to get some of this stuff done. Ow a couple of different times, so lets talk about that, because i think the focus is on china, but china■1 chinese nationals is the largest growing demographics of people coming illegally across the southern border. So talk about how you see Border Security is related to this general problem that we have with instability abroad. Rep. Hern like our president , i have actually been to the border when theres people crossing the border. Ive seen it, i was in tucson a few weeks ago and those folks ing across in camouflage and there are lots of chinese nationals coming through. But when you look at the fentanyl crisis we have, the only place in th crisis is in te United States of america. I have talked with in your pole, dea, fbi that are in europe, they dont have a fentanyl problem. The mexican or tell are trying to get a fentanyl problem there but there is no money in it. Anvera bis probably one dollar to do dollars, whats the real purpose of sending in a fentanyl to the United States to fill 350 americans, basically the entire population on an annual basis . Its about trying to kill us from the inside out. We killed 100,000 people awith t doing anything about it. Thats what this bill is about, trying to expose every aect of chinas influence negatively on the United States of america. When you look at two ports in mexico where most free courses precursors are coming in in the■w factories to make fentanyl are only in mexico. I was just in panama, just in columbia, just in, none of those countries have a fentanyl problem. Its now flowing south, its now flowing east or west, its only flowing north into the United States of america. Rebeccah here at Hudson Institute we have been working really hard at their work with ukraine and really coming up with education efforts and clear, sound recommendations to try to end how the United States can support ukraine to end the war so that is favorable to us, nato and ukraine. I made this issue thats very complicated and confused. The republican Senate Committee i encourage you all to go look iupthey put out a budget er and it really lays out what the Republican Committee would and recommend on a variety of issues. On page 44 on the bill, you really laid out the causes of the war, putins regime was not deterred and seeks to destroy ukraine and continue his push nd undermine u. S. Influence in our line of structure in europe. The recommendations are, you give ukraine, you have a strategy and you give ukraine th and needs to execute a strategy and thats how you get to the end of the war. Is that still the view in the rep. Hern it is made up of moderate republicans. I rethe views at of them have. One common theme is everybody believes putin is a bad adversary. Hes done in ukraine is terrible. But we cant keep sending american taxpayer dollars there with no accountability on humanitarian aid. No accountability on the weapon strategy to end of this war. Its just to send us another 50 billion, we spent 113 billion so far at the twoyear mark, which is the equivalent of what we spent on a per year basis in afghanistan. At least we kind of had a strategy, here, we dont really have a strategy. Nobody believes that we will push putin out of ukraine. Nobody believes that. There has to be some kind of brokered peace. But putin doesnt want that. He wants to continue fighting and hes lost hundreds of thousands of people. We continue to push back on the administration to give oversight. Weve had ideas from state, dod, usaid. Many of us have lk to the respected people in charge of strategy and havent believe we have gotten any part of the satisfactory. We have to continue to work on this but we also know given humanitarian aid, propping it rebeccah so the focus for you conservative members of congress is if there is a strategy to empower ukraine to victory and get them the weapons they need and not necessarily more economic aid, or perhaps we could do a loan, the focus should be on weapons backed by a strategy or to implement one . Rep. Hern if you look at the first funding, it was a huge number of republicans. I actually voted for that. But then you start with, tell us strategy, we do not want an endless war, and then you lost 87 or 97 republicans, and then tell us theategy, 117 republicans, and i cannot even get the bill on the floor on the house side. So you are going to have to at some point in time as commanderchief tell us what your accountability will be and what is the strategy . I believe we will crush puritan once and for all. Rebeccah a lot of the weapons the reason i think it is hard to focus on weapons as a policy matter is investments does security because it improves our own Industrial Defense base. Rep. Hern i was talking t people of europe are helping ukraine probably because a c a dollar given to ukraine as something less than their social programs. Here, we just borrow more money. That is a joke. But to your point, all of their military industrial complexes make weapons, and we send them to ukraine, but we need strategy. Rebeccah and then having that ability to increase, bringing back your own bill, increase american innovation,weapons so p to par for essentially the new cold war we are in, notthe russe to be able to produce the weapons at scale so we can determine not just russia but also deter not just russia but also china. Rep. Hern we actually have friends who are still waiting. Rebeccah they have military scales approved, and many of them are different, and this is different from the administration. I would like to take a couple of questions from the audience. If you can just state your name and keep your questions brief. I might actually take a couple back to back so the congressman can just kind of hit both of those out of the park. Good morning. I have not read your bill yet, but one of the issues that you mentioned earlier is about restct on u. S. Investment in china, outbound restrictions have been a pot and i am wondering where you think the rsc is oncoming on corebd then we will get a microphone to you. We would like the people watching online to be able to hear your brilliant question. Good morning, thank you for being here. I and the general partner for Defense TechnologyVenture Capital firm. Thank you for leading the charge on the bill and Everything Else i would like to understand a little bit more about your thoughts on the probability of success and how r. G. Think the bill will be and how large you think the bill will be and when you think it will fit into place . We have a serious problem. China is behind everything, and the second part is, can we afford to wait on the strategy to get the arms to ukraine . I just feel like we are dithering, and ition for us as. Thank you. Rep. Hern Outbound Investment issue, the chips act, as you know, was a ban on basically communists exporting stuff, and the repercussions coming back was china says we have western companies that are supplying certain products to china, and this u. S. Particular chip company has been the sole supplier, 80 o 90 , of chips for decades, and so there is this Technology War going on, also. So it is not in a silo, and we have got to figure out how to deal with that. The first thing is transparency to find out who is doing what to support some of these that china has used basically as a weapon against our own Technology Companies. Again, there is a great article in the papers today talking about what that looks like. It is pretty emboldened what they have done in six years to really come after Technology Companies. And regarding you know, i would like to thinkadministratia whole lot of direction last night on what strategies are, and to spe to what i have seen in classified settings, but i think it is safe to say that nobody would like to 10 to be successful. What does that look like . We are seeing the eu step up quite a lot and they cannot really supply a lot of military products because they dont make anything. Maybe a little bit in france and england, but as far as a huge supplier of things that matter that have been effective against ships, tanks and aircraft and drones come from the United States, so we have to look at how this balances out, and we will see what comes forward from xt few weeks. Rebeccah great. Lets do one more back here. ■n7i thank you. My■m question pertains to china. It is almost as if they have monopolized everything for the u. S. , and when we look at the md regarding migrants coming into the u. S. And when it comes to a military stance, the numbers in the u. S. Are greater than our own military numbers, so how are we dealing with that . Rep. Er cannot very well, honestly. When i will give you an example. I was visiting with the deputy chief the chief deputy cdp agent and tucson three weeks ago, and he says, everybody sees the up next of texas and it is bad. People are coming across, and they say to agents that i would like to claim asylum. We have 256 miles of the tucson sector telling me■■ he says, by the way, when we crested the hill, every republican there was pleased to see the 22 mile■c law, 20 was president obamas. Most people in america would believe that president never built a single foot of wall. Heall because he knew it worked. The next two miles was President Trumps. It was 10 feet collar. They did a psychological survey because people were coming over the 20 foot wall, and they would get to the top and say 20 feet is not too far toand then you gf the ridge of the mountain, and there is a plow paved road, and that was president bidens law. Wall. There is no wall. The agent said 20172018, 70,000 people miles. This year, it will be close to 800,000. And there were no agents on this wall for 22il he said, we will show you the camera footage. Theyre coming to the mountains. They are camouflaged with backpacks, guns. They have carpet shoes on. Either way, main street media is now reporting on this, that is not something they would have done five years ago. We know it is a bad deal and that is why you are seeing push on give us the border to secure our nation, and we will worry more about securing ukraine. I think americans need to get their mind around it, as he said, so i appreciate you stating that because it is a■nu great dangerone other thing aroe prominent person in the government saying, we are sitting and talking with folks at the embassy and they said when china comes into a country, they dont ask whether they are going to make money or not, they just go spend the money because they are doing it for strategic purposes to be somewhere. Because of our free market and our separation between companies and government, when our Companies Come in, they have to ask, can i make money in that . I cannot just lose money. That is not what my stakeholders will allow, so it is a different dynamic, competing with the Chinese Communist people who would like to destroy our way of life. Rebeccah congressman, i you coming to talk about you cosponsoring the bill to protect american young people from the influence of the Chinese Government and sociame for thisg tool, really wonderful. It finds Bipartisan Solutions to the china walking us through the russian threats that is chronic and acute in the u. S. For our allies, the threats from and north korea. We could keep going on. It takes some willingness to get work done across the aisle, so thank you for being here. Thank you for joiningt Hudson Institute. [applause] ■