[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West. You are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. Everybody in tech went to China. So did President Donald Trump. They didn't take me, though. Don't know what's going on. Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans. Sam Bushman with hard-hitting news the network's reviews to use. It all starts now.
[00:00:33] Riding shotgun on the broadcast today. Mr. Dr. Scott Bradley with me. freedomsrisingsun.com, his website. You can check out his award-winning collegiate series for homeschoolers and more called To Preserve the Nation. It's all available. freedomsrisingsun.com. Also, his weekly webinars every Thursday night. Get your ticket to ride at freedomsrisingsun.com. They did not have the webinar last night, though. So it's my turn to ask the good doctor a question and get his response.
[00:01:02] We'll do that in the second half hour of the show. But Dr. Bradley with me, we've also got our guest, Josh Phillip, award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and host of the incredible Epoch Times broadcast called Crossroads. Josh is an expert on U.S.-China relations and what's happening in Beijing. And since Trump went to China, we want to get Josh Phillip to break that down for us.
[00:01:31] Josh, welcome back to Liberty RoundTable Podcast, sir. Always a pleasure being here. So catch me up. You didn't go to China either, did you? No, it would be a one-way trip for me. They wouldn't let you leave, would they? They'd probably let me in, you know. Yes, they would. They'd let you right on into the... Yeah, yeah. Right to the gulag. Yeah, right to the gulag. There you go. All right. So let's talk about this for a little bit, though. President Trump went to China. He literally took everybody in tech with him, didn't he?
[00:02:01] All the major figures, yeah. Elon Musk, the whole nine yards head of NVIDIA. Also some key figures with finance, BlackRock, Blackstone. Trump really went there trying to get investment in the United States. But, you know, my whole take on this, it was a bit of a meeting of frenemies.
[00:02:21] And one thing that went over a lot of people's heads, the CCP, Xi Jinping himself, actually invoked, said it directly, the Thucydides trap, which, you know, in military jargon refers to great powers competition and the inevitable war between great powers. They believe that China will rise. They're going to destroy the United States. And Xi actually said that during this meeting when he invoked that. Did Trump understand any of that, do you think?
[00:02:51] I personally don't think Trump understood that part. Don't you think we need to have somebody sit down with Donald and tell him? Well, you'd think, right? On that point, though, I do think Trump is doing pretty well when it comes to taking apart the CCP's global networks. When he took out Maduro, China actually was trying to spark a war in Latin America. Maduro was about to raid. They were about to start a war with Guyana right when Trump did that. They were probably maybe less than a month away from doing it.
[00:03:19] Brazil was going to work with Venezuela to take Guyana, which is also one of the largest oil reserves in the world, just offshore there. When it came to Iran, of course, when Trump killed the leadership there, we also watched all the major Chinese weapon systems fail. The air defense systems, the hypersonic missiles, none of it worked. And so that really sent some shockwaves through China. And I believe Trump is working to kind of push the CCP out of a lot of places.
[00:03:47] But he's tiptoeing a little bit because I think he understands he can't break away immediately, or at least that's his take. Which is why I think we saw some deals, although very cautious, done. Well, we saw a big oil tanker roll through the Straits of Hormuz. That was kind of interesting for one. Chinese tanker, they're getting a bunch of oil. The other interesting thing to me about this is that on one hand, you know, we have this blustering by President Trump around the world.
[00:04:13] And I'm not here to attack Trump, but I'm just saying when you talk that big all the time, at some point people just think you're a hegemonist nation and don't like it. At the end of the day, if we push too hard on Cuba, too hard on Venezuela, we continue on Iran. At some point, China is just going to say, might as well take Taiwan. You know, Russia made their move and we'll make our move, too. And, you know, can that be stopped? They even warned Trump about that in the meetings that came out in the news, right? They did.
[00:04:41] One of my disappointments with the meeting, China actually made different requirements that Trump and the people with him had to follow. They were not allowed to talk about human rights, which it seems they did not talk about human rights. They didn't talk about slavery or organ harvesting. Shame on that, though, by the way. I personally had an issue with that. I think I really hope I really wish they would have done that. The CCP also said they were not allowed to talk about Taiwan. It seems they did talk about it anyway, at least in closed door meetings.
[00:05:10] They were not allowed to challenge or talk about the CCP's system, which means communism. And they were not allowed to talk about the goals of the CCP, which goes again to the thing I mentioned earlier, where the CCP and Xi Jinping even said it during the meeting. They believe that it's like their destiny to become the world leader and that America is going to fall. And they weren't allowed to question that either. Well, and at the same time, we had an arrest of a guy trying to run a Chinese police station in the United States at the same time.
[00:05:38] So if that doesn't double down on the point, what does? He got found guilty. He got found guilty. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't that make a point, though? I mean, that's clear as a bell. It was good timing. Yeah. So one of the leaders of these secret Chinese police stations was found guilty in New York City. And, you know, I've been investigating those organizations since 2008. That's one of my wheelhouses. Those networks, they run through what's called the United Front.
[00:06:02] The secret police stations themselves, it's through an agreement with the Ministry of Public Security in China, which is like their international, which is like their police force, kind of. But these networks are massive. And, you know, Jamestown Foundation just had reported they identified more than a thousand front organizations of the United Front working in the United States. They got the leader of one of them. And then you've got to wonder about how many are around the world, too, and partner in friendly countries and everything else. Dr. Bradley, you have a little bit of experience here. What do you think of this?
[00:06:32] Oh, man, there's so many things I'd like to ask Joshua. I mean, you know, I was going to sit here and relax and listen and stuff like that. There's so many different reports that are out there, Joshua. I mean, maybe somebody in Trump's organization kind of did a quick read of Sun Tzu or something like that.
[00:06:52] Because this always seems to be at play, the way their ancient traditions in war and, you know, competition between nations has got to be playing out. But, you know, you wouldn't know who read it or anything like that. But a couple of two or three things, you know, we talk about people that go out and slap people in the face around the nations and the worlds.
[00:07:15] One of the reports, or maybe it's been bantered about from many different sources, Marco Rubio had been banned from China, you know, while he was in the Senate. And they actually did a workaround by changing the spelling of his name, according to some reports. There's that thing. If you're in a world stage and you're constantly stepping on people's toes, sometimes there's some deflection.
[00:07:41] But the other thing was there's some reports that are talking about how the United States withdrew some of the defensive missiles from Taiwan in pursuit of this Iran war. And I don't know if you've got any background on those things, but I think a lot of those things can still be in play while, you know, these leaders talk and have tea and cupcakes or whatever they're eating. And this in the background is still pretty serious business, it seems like.
[00:08:09] So, man, I'd be interested in hearing some of your comments. Yeah, so a few points on that. Yeah, Marco Rubio was actually blacklisted from China and the CCP, because Trump says, I'm going to bring him along with us. In my take, Rubio really does understand the CCP. He's very clear in it, I believe. He was probably one of the stronger voices when it comes to that, in fact. The CCP did not have the, let's say, the face to just let him in.
[00:08:37] So they changed his name while keeping him blacklisted. So they did like a bureaucratic workaround. I didn't hear anything about the U.S. pulling weapons out of Taiwan. We're still selling weapons to them. The big question is, would we defend them? That's the big question now. And the other big question is, will China really make their move? And if so, when, right? Well, you know, this is something big that not a lot of people know about.
[00:09:04] So it's something I've been talking about, but you're not going to hear a lot of people who can tell you the history of this. The CCP actually did have a plan to invade Taiwan that was very far along. They probably would have done it within the next couple of years. For the most part, that plan has been kind of blown out of the water. So back in 2016, one of the main advisors to Xi Jinping, a guy named Jin Kanrong, wrote this whole plan. And they wanted to drag America into four different wars prior to the invasion of Taiwan.
[00:09:33] The thinking of it was America's military can fight a two-front war. So they needed four wars, and then plus Taiwan, so five total. They wanted a war with Russia, which they got. And notably, even though we're not directly involved, we're using so much of our armaments, giving it to Ukraine, that we can't even resupply ourselves with ammunition. They wanted a war in Latin America. We almost got that when Maduro was going to invade Guyana. That was avoided when Trump captured Maduro. They wanted a war with a terrorist group.
[00:10:02] We got that with Iran and Hamas, although that's transformed into more of a trade war at this point. I think the actual shooting war is mostly over for the most part. And they also wanted chaos in American streets. We got that with this Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based billionaire, funding all the far-left organizations running these protests here. And that was the precursor for the invasion of Taiwan. They don't quite have everything yet.
[00:10:31] A lot of this has been, I think, effectively disabled. So I don't know if they're still going to try to invade or not at this point. Well, you know, I have a question in regards to, you know, blockades. And that's a pretty serious thing in an international world. And the fact that the U.S. Navy is blockading out the Persian Gulf right now. And we've called it different things.
[00:10:54] You know, it was like some kind of, I don't know, a way of just interdicting without causing war when they did it in Cuba. But I wonder somehow if that will play into this somehow in the Straits of Formosa. You know, it's kind of like, well, you guys are doing it in Persia. What's the deal? How come you're having so much of a heartburn over this thing with Taiwan?
[00:11:23] And I'm wondering how, what's your read on where these blockades and if there's been a dynamic that's changed since this Iranian advancement or degradation, however people look at it? Yeah. Well, you know, I think what's interesting here is they've seen something, which is America can completely win the shooting war. We can fight a war, but we had like one plane shot down. We rescued the pilot.
[00:11:52] We decimated their entire Air Force, their entire Navy, most of their military. Yeah, we also gave them a ton of our technology and capability knowledge along the way, right? We did also. We showed our hand. But what they found is this. They found that you can effectively win the shooting war, but an economic war can actually bring you to the negotiating table. And so they lost.
[00:12:19] I mean, in any conventional terms, they massively lost the war. But their economic lockdown is so effective that they actually might bring us to the table and make us agree to things we don't want to agree to, to the point where Trump had to put pressure on China, which I think was the purpose of his counter blockade. Because that really only blocked the Chinese ships that Iran was letting through. About 90% of Iran's oil goes to China, of course. And so, you know, that has been shown to be very effective.
[00:12:49] And to your point also, Dr. Bradley. Yeah. You know, there are different trade choke points. You mentioned Formosa, like Taiwan. A lot of trade goes through there also. China has what's called the string of pearls. Over the past, you know, decade plus, they've been building military bases and economic infrastructure at all the major trade choke points in the world. And so they could enact something like we see in the Strait of Hormuz, like globally if they wanted to.
[00:13:18] And I think that's also something that's kind of coming front and center behind the scenes right now. Well, that's kind of one of the takeaways that I had of it was that we have demonstrated our willingness to take this up a notch, if you will, with blockades and how that sits in the world stage. And in a way, it might be, you know, they got out of jail free card and said, well, you guys can do it. We can do this.
[00:13:46] And I think, as you point out, they probably have a lot of strategic choke points in terms of trade. They may not be little narrow passageways that happen between, you know, belligerent nations. But the fact of the matter is, they do have a huge footprint in the deep blue sea.
[00:14:05] And, in fact, they have a much larger, you know, navy than we've got, if you consider all of the nation owns, in terms of being able to travel the world's oceans. So I'm just, you know, sometimes you have to wonder what's going through their mind as we pull things, if it's a one-upmanship that we just gave them permission in a way.
[00:14:30] Well, if we gave them a one-upmanship is the question, but then the question two becomes a timing issue. They've already documented 66 ways from Sunday their intentions. That is, to get in a war and crush the United States. I mean, they've been blatant and in your face about that over many, many years. Most people don't realize it, but it's true. So the only real question is timing, right, Joshua? It is timing. And that's the other thing, too, is they did believe it was their time.
[00:14:58] When Xi Jinping invoked the Thucydides trap, which he said during his introductory speech, that's what he was referring to, is great power competition. And, you know, he believed the inevitable rise of China, the inevitable fall of the United States. Like, he said this, you know, right in front of Trump, to Dr. Bradley's point, too. Yeah, so the strategy the CCP has for this, like the denial of passage. In the defense community, they call this A2AD. It's anti-access area denial.
[00:15:28] It's what they've been trying to establish in the South China Sea, basically, with these, you know, they've been building artificial islands, militarizing the islands. Using those as bases. And the concern is they could lock down entire regions using the same tactics as Iran. And maybe more effectively. The same thing we do as cities in terms of controlling traffic, they're doing on a global across-the-sea basis, right? Oh, exactly. And they've seen now how effective that is.
[00:15:56] You know, it seems like, I don't know, maybe I'm just trying to read too much into everything. That may be what an old curmudgeon does. But the fact of the matter is that if he was so bold in his opening remarks to kind of drop the gauntlet, if you will, it seems to me that they seem almost emboldened from everything. I mean, there's none of this bowing and scraping that you often get.
[00:16:25] There's a little bit more up front. I don't know how things went behind the scenes and closed doors and everything. But to be that bold in a world setting seems to me like they're kind of feeling their oats a little bit. I don't know. I just don't think that anybody's crawling to the table on this thing. Except us maybe. They were acting very belligerent. Yeah. Yeah. But no offense. Why wouldn't they?
[00:16:54] We babbled around the world and told everybody that we're king of the, we can do whatever we want to. Nobody can stop us. And yet they're basically here to say not so. And factually, they've got a lot of the cards, whether we want to admit it or not. I do think it's a question of timing. I think it's a question of circumstance. What do you think we do now? Or what should we be doing now understanding this stuff, Josh? But Joshua, before you go with that, you can maybe weave into your answer a little bit.
[00:17:21] But behind the scenes, I mean, you're somebody that's kind of got your finger on this pulse a lot. But China behind the scenes has been putting together their transportation systems, you know, their roads and rails and all those kind of things. And there's a pretty strong indication that they've got alternative transportation capabilities.
[00:17:44] They don't have to go on this high-risk, oceanographic kind of trip every time. And this is, I'm just wondering what you think about the strength of where they are right now with the alternative transportation systems they've got. And if that doesn't strengthen them to the point that they can be a little bit more affrontive.
[00:18:12] So, sorry to interrupt, but man, there's so many things I'd love to talk to you about. We just probably don't have time. And I apologize for that. Yeah. So, my take is this. The big issue is we think about war in a very two-dimensional way, a very shallow way through a lot of lenses. You know, when America talks about war, we talk about going and blowing guys up and blowing ships out of the water and counting bodies like we did in Vietnam and that kind of thing.
[00:18:39] China, when they talk about war, they're talking what they call unrestricted warfare. 72 categories of non-military warfare, transmilitary warfare, and unconventional warfare. Economic war, business war, culture war. General Flynn would call that fifth-generation warfare, right? Exactly. Psychological warfare, the warfare narratives. They're talking about factories. They're talking about choke points. They're talking about, you know, shutting down trade if they need to in a key point.
[00:19:07] And drug warfare, like them doing money laundering and supplying the drug cartels, for example, killing more Americans every year than the war in Vietnam, by the way. You know, for them, that's war. And we're not thinking of war like that. And the other side, too, is, you know, when it comes to, for example, what we're seeing right now with Iran basically bringing the world to a standstill and nearing a real economic and maybe even a food crisis when oil is cut off.
[00:19:35] They've also seen that they can put political pressure on the United States during an election season because they know that one party will fold if it means they're going to lose at the polls because people are paying too much for food and gas. So they're leveraging political warfare, economic warfare, and information warfare really in a way that's just as effective as a shooting war or arguably more effective in some ways.
[00:20:05] Yeah, I would say that looking at all the dynamics, all the moving parts, if you will, we're losing this war. And that sounds like a really kind of dramatic thing to say. But I don't think that we have the vision of this that this ancient country has had, as I mentioned Sun Tzu. I think that they're playing all their pieces. And people say, well, Trump's playing fifth dimension or fifth dimension dimension. I don't know what it is. Fifth dimension chess or something. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:34] Yeah, 4D chess, whatever. I personally do not believe that the United States has the connectivity that's needful to address all the issues that are at play right now. And so I'm a little bit disturbed and maybe even fearful that we as a nation have become a little bit complacent thinking that we can blow people up and win things.
[00:21:01] Whereas, as you point out, Iran's winning in so many ways because they're choking off a lot of other things that are important to a lot of other people. There probably will be a real dynamic in this upcoming midterm.
[00:21:14] So people, it seems to me, need to take their blinders off and start looking at all the pieces on the board instead of just some of these things like we've got a real kinetic energy we can unleash. And if something else slips through the cracks that they missed, it could be serious. Yeah. I want to dig into this timing, though. So is this World War III? We're never going to stop being at war then? Are we really just in a hot war?
[00:21:43] We just don't know it, Josh? So this is where things get interesting. We're already in a war by every mean other than direct shooting war. We're already in a full-scale war with China in their interpretation, in their own writings, in fact. It's just happening through other means. So the Chinese Communist Party is waging war through economics.
[00:22:07] They're waging war through the United Front, which is to capture the civil society, meaning bribing, blackmailing, or influencing journalists, business leaders, investors, and members of government. They're exporting their police system through the Ministry of Public Security. They're running, according to Jamestown Foundation, over 1,000 front organizations in the United States. Marxism taught seize the means of production. Well, that means factories, natural resources, and logistics.
[00:22:37] And who took the factories? We gave it to them, which is really concerning. They've influenced the schools and universities to such an extent that even Trump is saying he's not going to kick out the 500,000 Chinese who are working through organizations like the CSSA, Chinese Student and Scholar Associations, which are operated by the Chinese consulates and even funded by them. And so we're not fighting back on the grounds that really matter.
[00:23:04] If I can give one criticism of the way this whole meeting went, I think, again, we got some investment from China. It's in issues that are not related to national security, meaning they're tiptoeing a little bit. But the CCP put a requirement in place that America was not allowed to even talk about human rights. They told Trump he was not allowed to talk about human rights. And it doesn't seem they did.
[00:23:31] They didn't talk about the persecution of Christians, which is expanding massively right now. They didn't talk about the slave camps of Uyghurs. They didn't talk about the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. They didn't talk about human rights abuses that the world is, I mean, on a scale, the world might have never even seen before. You know, 100 million Christians persecuted, 100 million Falun Gong practitioners persecuted. And we're trading with them. Like, what do we stand for on that front?
[00:23:59] And now we're bringing tech there to increase trade and not willing to talk about any of the core underlying reality. So basically, we're funding the military that has declared war on us. There's a real upshot gun. And it's concerning. You know, they call it, you know, selling the news to hang yourself. I do hope they're very cautious about this. I hope that they walk some of it back. But we'll have to wait and see. Josh Phillip, everybody. He's with the Epoch Times.
[00:24:26] Check out his award-winning articles and TV shows. Crossroads is his show. It's incredible. Keep an eye on the Epoch Times. Thanks, Josh. We'll have you back soon. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Josh Phillip, everybody. I'm Sam Bushman. I've got Dr. Scott Bradley with me. Full card news straight ahead. LibertyRoundTable.com. FreedomSrisingSun.com. We're available everywhere. We're available everywhere. Thank you.