Dmitri Alperovitch is the co-founder and former CTO of Crowdstrike, and he’s currently the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a national security think tank. He’s also the author of the new book World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Auren and Dmitri discuss:
World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph & Flex Capital. For more episodes, visit worldofdaas.buzzsprout.com, and follow us @WorldOfDaaS.
You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Dmitri on X at @DAlperovitch
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)
Dmitri Alperovitch is the co-founder and former CTO of Crowdstrike, and he’s currently the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a national security think tank. He’s also the author of the new book World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Auren and Dmitri discuss:
World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph & Flex Capital. For more episodes, visit worldofdaas.buzzsprout.com, and follow us @WorldOfDaaS.
You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Dmitri on X at @DAlperovitch
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)
Welcome to World of DaaS, a show for data enthusiasts. I'm your host, Auren Hoffman, CEO of Safegraph and GPFlex Capital. For more conversations, videos and transcripts, visit safegraphcom slash podcasts. Hello, fellow data nerds. My guest today is Dmitri Alperovitch. Dmitri is the co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike. He's also currently the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a national security think tank. He's also the author of a new book called World on a Brink how America Can Beat China and the Race for the 21st Century. And, even more importantly, Dmitri is the first second time guest on the World of DaaS podcast. So, Dmitri, welcome to World of DaaS.
Dmitri Alperovitch:I love it. Thanks so much for and love breaking records yeah exactly Now.
Auren Hoffman:you described the US China conflict as a new Cold War. Can you expand on that a bit?
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah, so I call it Cold War, roman numeral two in the book. It's not 2.0. As some people call it, it's not a continuation of the first Cold War, but it is a Cold War that actually bears a great deal of similarities to the original conflict. In fact, before I wrote the book, I was convinced that we're in a Cold War. I've been confronting Chinese malicious behavior in cyberspace and beyond for the better part of the last 15 years. But even I was shocked, in doing the research and particularly diving into a lot of the previously unknown or less known, I should say, cold War, I history how similar the two conflicts are. And let me just run you through the gamut of similarities. So, first of all, you have unquestionably a global competition for supremacy that is taking place between the two countries, just like it did between the Soviet Union and America during the first Cold War. We're competing in the economic sphere, in the influence sphere, in the diplomatic sphere, in the military sphere. We are both preparing for war. As we speak, the Department of Defense, the Indo-Pacific Command, out in Hawaii getting ready to go to war with China. I think a lot of Americans do not appreciate the state of DOD concern about this issue and how unprepared we are. And of course, chinese have been preparing for this conflict for the last 40 years. We have an economic war that's taking place, a trade war and export controls and sanctions that we're putting in place on Chinese companies. A divestiture, you know the Congress just passed and President signed the bill to force the divestiture of TikTok by ByteDance. So that's part of that competition as well.
Dmitri Alperovitch:We have an arms race, both a conventional arms race with the military buildup, and a nuclear one. Both countries, and China in particular, are modernizing their nuclear arsenal. China is increasing it almost threefold by the end of the decade. And we have a space race. I mean, one of the defining moments of the original Cold War was, of course, the 1960s and the space race to the moon. But guess what? Both countries are now racing to once again put human on the moon and later on in the next decade, potentially on Mars.
Dmitri Alperovitch:And we have an ideological struggle. It's different from the first one, it's not quite communism versus capitalism, but it's definitely authoritarianism versus democracy. And China is absolutely trying to spread that ideology to as many countries as possible to try to compete with our model system. And we have a scramble for military bases. We once again, for the first time in 30 years, putting military bases on the Philippines, where we withdrew in 1992. We're beefing up our presence in Japan and our territory in Guam and the like.
Dmitri Alperovitch:China is doing the same. It's beefing up in Cambodia and Pakistan and Djibouti and we have a spy war has called it the most acute espionage threat to the United States we've ever had, far eclipsing even during the Cold War. Most of it from China, a lot of it in cyberspace, but not exclusively so. So just on almost every level of competition we're facing the same threats that we saw in the first Cold War. There are some differences. The economic interconnectedness is obviously a huge one, although, as I talked about, in the first Cold War there were a lot of economic interdependencies, even with the Soviet Union, a lot of IP transfer that took place in the 1920s and 30s. I cite this remarkable example of the Volga limousines that some people may remember. The black limousines that the Soviet leadership would drive on Red Square during their military parades were built by a factory that was set up by who Henry Ford in the 1920s and 30s, originally designed to produce tractors for the Soviet agricultural industry. Then automobiles was nationalized and later produced these Volgas.
Auren Hoffman:On China, though, if you think of the countries on its borders, especially the countries to the east or the south of China, seem either outright hostile or maybe, at very best, neutral to them, which maybe was different from the Soviet Union. How do you think about China's position vis-a-vis its own borders?
Dmitri Alperovitch:I think China is actually weaker than the Soviet Union in almost every respect, except economics. It doesn't have the line system, it doesn't have the Warsaw Pact, it is not much more contained geographically, it does not have this benefit of the communist ideology that the Soviet Union benefited from to try to get allies. So in a lot of these areas China is much, much weaker. And you're absolutely right. China actually has had border disputes in the last decade with every single country on its land or maritime borders, every single one. Now they've patched things up with Russia a little bit where technically, in the early 2000s, they now have an agreement delineating their borders for the first time in centuries. But even now you hear on the Chinese social media that Vladivostok, one of the largest cities in the Far East Russian cities, is really an ancient Chinese city and should be given back. So that national feeling is just below the surface and doesn't quite go away.
Auren Hoffman:If we move out 50 years and look back and China's just like extremely successful in its ambitions, why would that happen?
Dmitri Alperovitch:I think taking Taiwan is really essential for them to dominate the region and ultimately establish the rules of the road for the global security order, as well as global trade order.
Dmitri Alperovitch:I don't think that they can do it without taking Taiwan, and the reason is that they are fundamentally a very weak country. Their economics are in terrible shape and particularly part because of mismanagement from Xi, who has done an absolutely terrible job over the last decade in managing the Chinese economy. But more fundamentally is they've reached that level of middle income trap about $10,000 per capita per population that many countries reach and get stagnated growth as a result. Their growth has fallen off precipitously from double digit growth in the early 2000s to now somewhere around most economists estimate 3%, similar to ours, and if that continues, I mean they will never reach us in terms of equaling our GDP. On top of that, they have the looming population collapse that is going to be the most dramatic thing we've ever seen in human history going from 1.4 billion people today to 550 million or so by the end of the century Just unbelievable.
Auren Hoffman:Why is Taiwan so important then? Because to me it seems like fixing the other things would be more important rejuvenating the economy, building alliances. Why is it so important to them?
Dmitri Alperovitch:Well, because Xi is not a great leader and is completely absorbed in his own ego, caring about his legacy and caring about making his country great again, to borrow a phrase Not unlike Putin, by the way, I believe.
Dmitri Alperovitch:As you know, I predicted the Ukrainian conflict about three months before it began and, similarly, the reasons for why I think Xi wants to move on Taiwan are basically translatable. It's their distorted view of history of both of these dictators. It's their desire to go into the history books as a great leaders and enlarge their country and did something that prior leaders could not do. It's their view of these states as essentially buffer states Ukraine, in the case of Russia, and Taiwan, in the case of China. That would allow them to establish power projection capability in their region, and both dictators don't care much about economics. Russia was in terrible economic shape before the invasion of Ukraine. The last thing it should have done, based on just realist view of its capabilities and what it needs to do, would be to launch this ruinous war. And yet it did so, because it was a decision by one man, one authoritarian leader, who cared more about his legacy, his place in history, than anything else.
Auren Hoffman:I guess the question is, in 50 years, if China is a great power and, as some people had predicted in the past, the largest GDP etc. And has built up, you just said, okay, they have to take Taiwan. I still don't understand why that's in their best long-term interest. I can see why that might be in certain peoples, but why is it in China's best interest to do it?
Dmitri Alperovitch:Absolutely so. To understand that you have to look at the geography. And if you're China right now and you look out at the map and in the book I have this map of China which is rotated so typically people see this huge landmass of China, a little speck of land 100 miles off its shore, that is Taiwan and they ask why does it matter to them or to us? And if you rotate the map, if you put China on top and you're sort of looking out at the Western Pacific, what do you see? You see yourself as completely contained by US military bases and US allies, starting in the east with the Korean Peninsula, half of which is South Korea, with significant 28,000 American troops on that peninsula. Then further down you have the Japanese islands, Marines on Okinawa and actually lots of naval presence around the Japanese islands.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Then, at the very center, as you're looking out, is Taiwan, the anchor point in what is known as that first island chain that, while we don't have significant military presence there, is viewed essentially as an outpost of US power. And then further down you have the Philippines, wrapping up that semicircle where you once again have American military presence. So if you're China, you want to be projecting your region, across that globe, you feel yourself completely contained, your Navy is completely contained, your shipping is completely contained because you have to get through those gaps in the first island chain to go anywhere, whether it's to ship goods, to import goods, to let your submarines and naval forces go through, and that is essentially right now controlled by US Navy.
Auren Hoffman:But why can't they just build a better relationship with Korea or with the Philippines, even go back and try to build a better relationship with Japan? They could put bases and they could put outposts on North Korea so they have access to the sea there. It seems like there's a lot of opportunities for them. I mean, taking Taiwan seems like one thing, but it seems like there's many, many other ways that they could play it.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Well, not really, because Korea, Japan, philippines all have mutual defense treaties with the United States. They are within US orbit. North Korea is not an ally of China. In fact it's trying to balance China against Russia. It's basically an uncontrollable state even by China, even though it supplies a lot of aid to them. There's nothing that they can do to really make it play to their tune. So they don't have any friends actually, and the more they pursue these wolf-warrior diplomacy tactics, the more they alienate even the people that are looking favorably upon them.
Dmitri Alperovitch:But Taiwan, obviously they have the, as I write in the book, erroneous but nevertheless their view historical claim to Taiwan and really important to understand the dynamics of the ocean itself. So the waters on the western side of the first island chain near China's shore, both in East China Sea and in South China Sea, are very, very shallow. Just to give you a sense, in the Taiwan Strait the depth of waters is only about 300 feet, too shallow to even put a submarine in. Very easy to detect submarines across that South China Sea and East China Sea region. You go on the other side of the island of Taiwan. It drops at 12,000. The waters in the Pacific are very, very deep.
Dmitri Alperovitch:What does that mean? So if they have Taiwan, if they build submarine bases, as the US military thinks they will, on the other side, on the western side of Taiwan, then they'll be able to project their power across an entire region, threaten Japan, threaten the Philippines, push the US Navy all the way back to Hawaii and really start dominating that region. And in fact it's not a hypothetical scenario. I've had senior leaders in the region tell me that if China owns Taiwan, regardless of how they do it, whether they invade or force it to give up that that will change everything for them. It will be like they have a new sheriff in town. The US will be kicked out of the region, will be irrelevant and they will have to accommodate China. It doesn't mean that they'll surrender, but they will let China set the global rules of trade and security in that region, the most important region of the world.
Dmitri Alperovitch:50% of the world's GDP is in Asia, most of the supply chains, most of the growth, and it will be akin to what is happening right now, let's say, in Central Asia or the Caucasus with Russia. You have all these states, whether it's Armenia in the Caucasus, whether it's Uzbekistan, kazakhstan and Central Asia. They're essentially within Russia's sphere of influence. Why Not by choice? Not because they want to be, but because they literally have no choice, because Russia is this powerful neighbor. The US is far away and cannot do anything for them, and when Russia asks to jump, they basically have to say how high Again. They don't want to do that.
Auren Hoffman:Yeah, but some of them have been able to make if you think of Azerbaijan has been able to make their own alliances.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Azerbaijan is a little different. They have oil and they have some relations with Israel to be able to balance things out. But others don't have a choice. And that would be the situation largely in Asia, where those countries will have to reorient themselves, not by choice, not willingly, but essentially realize that new sheriff in town sets the rules. We have to accommodate them to much larger extent than that we do today.
Dmitri Alperovitch:And if China achieves dominance in that most important region, it can accelerate its attempts to dominate elsewhere, whether it's in Latin America, whether it's in Africa, even in Europe, and that will mean a retreat of the United States, its power, its ability to trade with other nations to set the rules of the game.
Dmitri Alperovitch:I mean, if you trace the trajectory of American power, it really begins at the turn of the 20th century with the buildup of the US Navy, with Teddy Roosevelt sending the US Naval Expedition across the world to circumvent the world to announce that American power has arrived, which allowed us to secure the trade routes for US business, for American consumers, and really define our power. In the 20th century that could be China, if they escape out of the first island chain containment, if they dominate in Asia and then use that as a launch platform for domination. Again, not an invasion. I don't think they invade in Japan, I don't think they invade in the Philippines. This is not a Hitler regime that's intent on conquering the globe, but extending its power and power projection capability across the region and later the world.
Auren Hoffman:I've heard you say that a very and maybe I don't know if you still agree with this or not, but a very small number of motivated and trained troops could easily defend Taiwan. Taiwan is an extremely hard place to take over. Given that's the case, is the Taiwanese military themselves capable, or do they need extra help, because they have a lot of people there who are in the military? And once those are there, then it does seem Taiwan is very, very hard to take.
Dmitri Alperovitch:It is probably one of the worst places imaginable to invade. In fact, for much of its history it was basically uninvadeable. There are many countries, as I write in the book. The history of Taiwan is so fascinating. Many countries have tried to conquer Taiwan, both mainland China, the Portuguese colonials, the Spanish colonials, the Japanese finally managed to do it and conquer the whole island in 1890s and it was really the first time that anyone fully controlled Taiwan. China never fully did. And the indigenous population on Taiwan is not Han Chinese, it is Pacific Islanders. Now you've had many migrations of Han Chinese over the centuries, so now the majority population is Han Chinese, but even so they trace a lot of their bloodlines to that indigenous population through intermarriage.
Dmitri Alperovitch:But the island terrain is an absolute nightmare, I write in the book. The book actually starts out with a fictional but I think a very realistic scenario in the prologue of how China could go about conquering this island and walk that terrain. I thought extensively about if I were China, how I would do this, and the common misconception is that this would be their Normandy right D-Day Saving Private Ryan Chinese edition, and that's just not realistic. The beaches in Taiwan are not the place you want to land because they're very narrow, very small, can be fire controlled from the neighboring mountains. Getting there is very difficult because the Taiwan Strait waters are incredibly treacherous Basically half the year. It's more or less impassable to anything but huge container ships.
Dmitri Alperovitch:So the key to this is taking certain infrastructure. The port of Taipei, which the Taiwanese unfortunately built literally in the last 12 years and is facing directly opposite the Taiwan Strait, would be critical to offload huge amounts of equipment, troops and the like, and there are certain other components of the infrastructure that would be necessary for the invasion. Again, I describe it step by step of how it could take place in the book. But defending that is definitely possible. The challenge you have is the Taiwanese military is not prepared. It's actually a very small military, about 80,000 regular troops.
Auren Hoffman:It's only 80,000.
Dmitri Alperovitch:I had no idea. Yeah, it's tiny. They have a reserve component, that is, they're revamping today. They only had a four month conscription and training regiment, which most of them spent cleaning barracks versus actually training on military tactics. In fact, the training regime up until very recently was that you would only go to the range one time. A rifle would be put in front of you, you shoot it exactly 10 times and it would be taken away from you. You would not clean it, you would not take care of it which, by the way, anyone that knows guns and shotguns knows that it's not the shooting, it's the carrying for the weapon. That's much more complicated being able to strip it, being able to clean it. I mean, in the US military they drill into you day in, day out, where you can do it basically with your eyes closed, and Taiwan is a tropical island where that weapon is going to jam, and if you don't know how to clean it, you're not going to be able to do anything with it. So it was completely inadequate and for years they've underspent in their defense. They've been only recently waking up to the threat of China and starting to wrap up their defense spending, reforming their conscription.
Dmitri Alperovitch:So it's really a race against time. When would she go? When would they be ready? When would we be ready? Because we've also neglected our capabilities in that region, because we were distracted with Iraq, afghanistan, ukraine to some extent, and we're desperately trying to catch up, building up capabilities. The bill that just passed Congress Everyone focuses on $60 billion to Ukraine and some to Israel, but a lot of it also goes to A, taiwan and B our own military buildup in Guam, in Japan and Philippines and the rest of that region. So it is a race against time. It's totally doable. The problem is that we're starting from a really inadvantageous position and we're quite behind.
Auren Hoffman:And in the book you outline a time window of when you think that Chinese invasion would happen, and also somewhat based on Xi's own timeline. Walk us through that a bit.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah. So in the media you might read this year 2027 has been critical. That comes from CIA Director Burns telling us in the last year or so that we have high confidence intelligence in the US intelligence community, that she has given the order for the PLA, the Chinese military, to be ready to invade by 2027. I don't think that invasion is likely to actually take place in 2027 for several reasons. One of them is that if you look at the political calendar, 2027 is a year of basically the very likely re-election of Xi to another term, the fourth term as the Chinese leader re-election. Obviously, in the Communist Party, Chinese people don't get to vote unless you're a senior member of the party, and I think that is actually driving his 2027 order as well, because he wants to go in front of the Congress in October or November of 2027 and say look at what I achieved. I now have the capability to do this when we decide to do so. But because they'll be very distracted in the run up to the Congress and immediately following the Congress, I don't think it's an ideal time to invade and the fall-on from the Congress is to some extent a little bit analogous to our transition period in the US elections, where you have new people getting appointed to different parts of the government. You also have a new ideology that's being spread of what is our next five-year plan to just a lot of really busy activity that would make it preparing for an invasion of this scale, with those stakes, really, really difficult. You start getting past all of that in the second half of 2028, where I think the window opens up Now.
Dmitri Alperovitch:2028 is also going to be an interesting year because you have gear getting kicked off with the Taiwanese election in January of that year, a new president getting inaugurated in May, which could give Xi a casa's belly, potentially for invasion. You also have the Olympics in Los Angeles that summer, which are going to be fairly distracting, at least to us, and the second half of the year is really going to be the election. We have the 2020 elections and we now know that, given the dynamics of this election, that you're not going to have Joe Biden or Donald Trump up for reelection in 2028. They'll be term limited, not to mention a potential health issue. So you're going to have a new president potentially coming in in November of 2028. And that could give them an opportunity as well, because we'll be distracted with election.
Auren Hoffman:The loser could still be on the ballot in 2028. It's not crazy.
Dmitri Alperovitch:No, and also one of these people pass an office, the vice president makes over and they could run for reelection. So there are a few scenarios where you could have a continuation as well, but reality is that it's going to be distracting time. So I think the window opens up really in late 2028, based on dynamics in China and the rest of the world and it closes really in 2032, I think, because, at least in his mind, because it's a five year term, that's going to be the end of that fourth term. He's going to be 79 in 2032. So, unlike our system and the Chinese system, they don't tend to elect their leaders in their 80s and beyond that.
Dmitri Alperovitch:You also have mortality to think about. So, because I'm convinced he wants to do it on his watch and beyond that, you also have mortality to think about. So, because I'm convinced he wants to do it on his watch and in fact you have to just listen to him he says that you can't leave Taiwan as a problem for future generations. Well, he means himself he's going to be thinking of am I even going to get reelected in 32? And what's the likelihood I'll be alive? So for those reasons, I think you'll think about doing this sooner than 32. And that 28 to 32 window is going to be very dangerous. Got it?
Auren Hoffman:Okay, so sometime in that window you would expect something to happen. Yeah, 48 years from now, yep, okay, which does give us some amount of time. It's not like this is an imminent thing potentially happening in the next few months or something. Yeah, it's time, but it's not a amount of time. It's not like this is an imminent thing potentially happening in the next few months or something.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah, it's time, but it's not a lot of time when you think about the defense procurement issues. You order something now you'll be lucky to get it in four years and field it and make it operational.
Auren Hoffman:Now, let's say there was a very small number of crack US troops on the island, let's say a few thousand. Would that be enough to deter and to work?
Dmitri Alperovitch:on things Now. You need significant capability, significant buildup. This is a red line for China, obviously, to have significant troops on the island. We do have a small number of them. I saw them actually in the hotel I was staying at. You can always tell first of all Americans, but wearing civilian uniforms, pretty beefed up, always occupying all the equipment in the gym, crew cuts, so not exactly undercover, but they're mostly in training capacity trying to build up the Taiwanese forces. We don't have battalions on the island of Marines or anything like that defending it.
Auren Hoffman:No, I mean potentially. If you really wanna take the country in some sort of way, you could, instead of taking it by force. Maybe there is a way to where they can agree to being taken in some way or they can agree to being merged. I think 10, 20 years ago that seemed like a possibility. Now, obviously, I would say it's low in the polls in Taiwan, but could you see that changing over the next few years?
Dmitri Alperovitch:No, I don't. I think full-scale invasion is the only path to Xi achieving that goal. Let me walk you through a couple of them. So people worry about gray zone tactics, propaganda, influence, operation, coercion. I mean much of that China has been doing for the last 20 years, and all you have to do is look at the polls.
Auren Hoffman:The polls have gone completely against them In some ways, like they haven't been doing it.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Well, obviously Well first of all, xinjiang and Hong Kong don't help, because when the Taiwanese people look at those areas they're like they're not screaming. I want to be that. But two you look at the polls 7% of Taiwanese population, 7% is in favor of unification. Pretty much no one. 1% or less than 1% wants it immediately and the other six sometime in the future. So almost no one. And, by the way, like it's not even clear what these 7% want, because for a long time you did have a significant component of the Chinese population that wanted unification, but what unification meant to them is that they would take over the mainland.
Dmitri Alperovitch:That was the position that we're China, but it's our China, not their China. So not quite clear what even those 7% want, but regardless it's a tiny minority. Over the last 30 years, as China transitioned from a very brutal authoritarian dictatorship not China Taiwan of Chiang Kai-shek in the late 80s, 90s, as they transitioned to democracy, they've also built a very powerful, very strong sense of their own identity, their own history. You go to Taiwan, as I have, and you get that feeling that they're very proud of being Taiwanese, that they're Taiwanese first and Chinese second, to the extent that they're Han Chinese and small minority of them are not Han Chinese, of course, the indigenous population. And I'm actually convinced that if China were the beacon of freedom in the world, the Jeffersonian democracy that's admired by everyone, that Taiwanese would not even want to unify in that case. Because again, they have their own country that they view as their own country. Right, just like Canada is not clamoring to be the 51st state, quite the opposite, even though we think they're great.
Auren Hoffman:Yeah, or Ecuador, or whatever. These countries have a culture.
Dmitri Alperovitch:That's right, and they do have a very strong culture. It's been becoming even stronger in the last 30 years. They care about their history, which is separate from the Taiwanese history, and for all those reasons, I don't think that a voluntary unification is at all in the cards and, in fact, going absolutely the wrong way. The second scenario that people often cite is a blockade, and some people even think. And the second scenario that people often cite is a blockade, and some people even think and a number of them, unfortunately, in the Taiwanese government that a blockade is a more realistic threat. That that's what we should be focused on. The problem with the blockade scenario and I've gamed it out extensively is that it is a strategic loss for China. First of all, there's no modern precedent in history of a country, or even a city falling because of a blockade. The most egregious case, of course, was the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis in World War II. Over a million civilians died, starved to death during that two and a half year period. Leningrad did not surrender.
Dmitri Alperovitch:The Taiwanese are not going to starve. A lot of people don't appreciate this because they sort of look at the trade statistics and Taiwan imports a lot of their food, most of it meat products. A lot of it is meat products from the United States, but they have a very robust agricultural industry that produced a ton of rice, a ton of vegetables, a ton of fruit. They fish a lot. They're not going to starve to death. They may not be eating Wagyu beef, but you can survive just on rice alone if you had to. They import a lot of energy and obviously their economy would be devastated by a blockade, but they're not going to freeze to death, unlike the Ukrainians, because it's a tropical climate. So even if you can't heat your homes, you're going to be okay. So there's not going to be this mass starvation and decimation of the population because of a blockade.
Auren Hoffman:Also, as you mentioned, it's very tough to do a blockade with those waters.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Well no, because they would basically declare that any civilian ship heading for Taiwan. I mean, they wouldn't even have to enforce it, they would just say we would sink it and that trade would stop. But if you're blockading, you're not invading, because you're not amassing an armada of ships and infantry to take the island. So you have a situation where you could blockade Taiwan. You can destroy its economy. You can certainly do that. 70% of Taiwan's GDP is dependent on exports. But you would also destroy your own economy and the world's economy, because we're all dependent on Taiwan. They produce 90% of the world's chips.
Auren Hoffman:Plus, I assume you'd have sanctions immediately. You'd have all these other types of, so it would be tough for China to survive that as well.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Well, that's another thing that Taiwan could actually blockade China, because you have five of the top Chinese ports that are within range of Taiwanese missiles. So Taiwan can say any ship heading to Chinese ports, we're gonna sink. And then you have global depression across the world instantaneously and the pressure on China to end this blockade both domestic pressure and international pressure is gonna be immense. And then Taiwan could declare independence, which Domestic pressure, international pressure is going to be immense. And then Taiwan could declare independence, which would change the status quo, the thing that they've never done and you could see China basically losing its blockade of Taiwan. Not taking Taiwan and having Taiwan declare independence. I mean complete disaster that could actually end up with Xi losing power. So it's not to say that he won't attempt it. History is certainly full of people doing really dumb things but if he wants to have a chance of taking Taiwan, I think that invasion is really the only path to go, and I think they know that because they haven't attempted to blockade Taiwan up till now.
Auren Hoffman:A lot of this is tied in with things like semiconductors, and both the US and China are trying to ramp up domestic semiconductor production right now. Where do you see that heading over the next few years?
Dmitri Alperovitch:Nowhere. So this is one of the biggest misconceptions about the CHIPS Act, which I support and I think is a great thing. But the CHIPS Act is not about building independent chips industry in the United States. That is never going to happen. It is about stabilizing the gradual decline of the US chips industry. We invented this industry, we produced most of the chips for the first couple of decades and then we decided to outsource it to Asia, to Taiwan, to Korea, to Japan and other places, and largely because of labor costs, they pay $25,000 a year to engineers in Taiwan that work in these chips shops. Find me a place in the United States where you're going to match that for like masters and PhDs, not to mention regulatory environment. 10x in the US. Yeah, so the Chips Act if everything goes well which is a big if, by the way, anytime you do industrial policy but if everything goes just absolutely perfectly, we will go from producing about 12% of the world's chips to maybe 20% at most. Taiwan will still produce the overwhelming amount of chips and feed the world in terms of its chips hunger. So that is not changing anytime soon, not in the next 10, 15 years. Certainly the time period that we're talking about impossible to predict afterwards, but for the period that matters to us. So that's on Taiwan and, in particular, the advanced chips.
Dmitri Alperovitch:I think TSMC is likely to lead, because TSMC's leadership on advanced chips also is not well understood. They only got into this game in the late 2000s and there was one company that was absolutely essential to them getting into the manufacturing of advanced chips from foundational chips that they produced mostly before then, and that company is called Apple. Okay, so Apple, when it decided to get off the Intel chips and design their own chips, needed a manufacturing partner. It wasn't going to be Intel. They don't produce. Only now they're starting to get in producing other people's chips. But before they produced only their own chips and the biggest producer of chips were Samsung. Can't do that, that's a competitor Produces their own phones and TSMC.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Now TSMC did not produce advanced chips and Apple basically came to them and said we're going to help you, let's work together. There are like 3,000 Apple engineers in TSMC fabs in Taiwan that are helping them advance their chips industry and Apple gets first dibs on any 3 nanometer or 5 nanometer products that TSMC produces. It first goes into Apple products and then everyone else benefits from it. That's been key to TSMC's dominance. Well, it's very unlikely that Apple is going to use Intel competitor. It's very unlikely they'll use Samsung. So I think there's going to be a continued dependency on TSMC. Now Apple has been instrumental in helping to push TSMC to build a fab in Arizona, but that fab is not going to have enough capacity to even satisfy Apple alone, much less the rest of the world. So the dependency on Taiwan is going to be there.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Now the big question mark is China, though.
Dmitri Alperovitch:We've managed to curtail China's ambitions largely in the advanced chip market by a couple of years ago that anything below 18 nanometers, any equipment that's used to produce chips below 18 nanometers cannot go to China.
Dmitri Alperovitch:The problem is that there are some loopholes because you can use a lot of dual use equipment equipment you would use to produce chips at 40 nanometers. You could MacGyver to also produce some more advanced chips, and in fact that's exactly what China has done. When they announced their their seven nanometer chip last summer for Huawei, it was built with ideal use equipment and most people in the chips industry think that they can even go to five nanometers with that equipment, probably not below that. That's where you're going to need to really use that ASML extreme ultraviolet machine to get to three to two and so forth. But they're trying, but by and large we've been able to curtail their ability to produce a lot of those chips. But what are they doing now? They're saying, okay, well, advanced market, really, really tough export controls are impacting us. Let's dominate the majority of the chips industry, which is actually not advanced.
Auren Hoffman:Yeah, this stuff that's been made in the 80s and 90s and just making it cheaper.
Dmitri Alperovitch:It's actually a misnomer, so they're often called legacy or mature chips. I prefer the term foundational that I've coined, that the industry is now starting to adopt, because they're actually fairly advanced, even though nanometers are large you're talking 40 nanometers, 100 nanometers, 160 nanometers. Nanometers is not the only way to determine if something is advanced. It's just one parameter, and there's a lot of innovation that happens in those chips and those chips are actually essential for everything. So you take a look at this phone. There are only three advanced chips in this phone. There's the CPU, the processor memory, and the Qualcomm chip for the baseband. Everything else that controls the screen, the camera, the power, the Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth, gps. It's all these foundational chips.
Auren Hoffman:Assume in your car it's the same Most of them, almost everything is just fine.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Almost all of them in your car are foundational chips In your laptop, same thing. We talk about GPUs that you need to train AI models. Well, what controls the networking and the power for those computers, servers that are running those GPUs? Foundational chips they're in everything. It's sort of like saying, well, advanced chips are like carbon fiber, this advanced material that's more durable, that's fantastic. And foundational chips are steel and aluminum. Well, you can't build anything without steel and aluminum.
Auren Hoffman:Yeah, concrete.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah Right, you still need it and China is trying to dominate that place. They'll need it and China is trying to dominate that place and unless we stop them with trade measures, we'll achieve dominance probably in the next two to three years, where they're engaging in overcapacity and producing a ton of those chips and dumping them at reduced prices on our markets and driving everyone out. In fact, tsmc has made noise that they want to get out of the foundational chips game entirely because it's so hard to compete with China and it's great to focus on just advanced, better margins there and China is not allowed to compete because of US export controls.
Auren Hoffman:Is that inevitability? Or are there other countries slash companies around the globe. Who can compete? Is there things in Vietnam? Are there things in Mexico? I don't know other places that can compete there.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah, so there's lots of companies that produce foundational chips. Tsmc produces a lot of them, texas Instruments is one of the big players, and many others but they're going to be essentially driven out of that business if China is dumping that product below market prices at which you can't compete, and this is something that China has a lot of experience with and 100% success track record. They've done this in steel, they've done this in solar panels, they're now doing this in AVs, they've done it in batteries. So you dump it on the Western markets, you drive everyone out of business and then you establish effectively a monopoly.
Auren Hoffman:So that's what they're trying to achieve with chips. But so, historically, when they've dumped it, do then they raise prices when everyone gets out, or do they keep prices low? They keep it low to prevent you from so, in some ways, they're not necessarily dumping it, they're just figuring out ways to lower the price.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah, the problem is it's subsidized by the Chinese state, right, so you're not operating with a market economy. And again, they want leverage as opposed to just monopoly pricing power, because, at the end of the day, they're trying to get us to sing to their tune, whether it's on issues like Taiwan or other things that matter to China. So having us buy our privates effectively is more important to them.
Auren Hoffman:Is it just that they give their companies forgivable loans? What are they doing to lower the price essentially? What are they doing to put their weight on the scale?
Dmitri Alperovitch:It's an entire cottage industry in China. It could be preferential loans from state-owned banks. Some of these are state-owned companies so they don't even concern themselves with profits. Grants to help with overcapacity.
Auren Hoffman:In some ways the CHIPS Act is like that for us. We're trying to do the same thing.
Dmitri Alperovitch:We're giving grants to companies, but we're not pushing them to lower prices on their products and dump them on other markets. That's the big difference.
Auren Hoffman:Yeah, okay, but also they can't because it's too expensive, like we don't have the ability. Maybe they would if we could.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah, the workforce is very expensive and it's just very hard for us to build in this country, unfortunately A lot of regulations, high labor costs and just the lack of trades. I was talking to one fab manufacturer in the US and they said they're trying to expand, they're getting Chips Act money and they said to build a new fab we literally have to bring in welders from Taiwan because there's not enough high-end welders in the United States that we can find to build these vacuum, essentially clean rooms that you need to manufacture chips. So we just don't have even a lot of that expertise here.
Auren Hoffman:For a while it looked like the Chinese economy was almost certainly going to overtake the US economy. That was consensus, and now their growth slowed significantly. I think they've been like the worst performing stock market in the last five years. What's going on there, just on the high level economic front?
Dmitri Alperovitch:They've learned that gravity exists and no one escapes. It is the short answer. And they've really hit that middle income trap where you get to $10,000 per capita and you saw it in Japan, you saw it in Korea, you saw it in Taiwan and all these other places and growth starts to stagnate. And that's what they're experiencing today. And, on top of that huge mismanagement by Xi, the real estate bubble that they have there, which they're not managing very well. So all of that is just contributing to really negative sentiment 15% youth unemployment, foreign direct investment pulling out as well, in part because of the trade wars, in part because of the overall geopolitical situation, in part because of the crackdowns by Xi on the technology industry, arresting Western businessmen, shutting down access to data in the market.
Dmitri Alperovitch:All of those things have contributed and made a situation that was probably inevitable much, much worse. And then you've got the population collapse that is coming, that you're probably gonna experience 10, 15 years from now. It's already begun in terms of just the population reduction, but you still have the population from the rural areas of China migrating to the cities and contributing to productivity growth. That is going to come to an end in 2030s and 40s and that's when they're gonna hit a wall, and that's going to be really something that there's nothing they can do about, because only two ways to solve the population collapse improve birth rates. No one's been able to figure that one out. Everyone except Africa is experiencing a decline in birth rates. And to immigration? Well, pretty unlikely that anyone is going to want to immigrate to China, particularly under the current regime. In fact, the Chinese are trying to come here and cross the border in huge numbers. No American is jumping over the North Korean fence into China, trying to get into China.
Auren Hoffman:I was talking to a well-known executive the other day who used to go to China all the time and hasn't been there for a while. And when I asked him why don't you go anymore? He said he's actually afraid there's some small chance he might get detained. And he's like you know, I probably won't get detained forever, but he just doesn't want to. He's like I'm not Tim Cook level famous, so being detained, even if it's in a nice hotel for six months, is it my idea of a good time? So he just chooses not to go. Yeah, and that's a lot of executives.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Is that a reasonable fear? It is because they've been arresting Australian executives, Canadian executives.
Auren Hoffman:Right, they haven't yet done it for the US one, but he didn't want to be the first.
Dmitri Alperovitch:You never know. And certainly the Biden administration is aggressively prosecuting Chinese espionage. Certainly, the Biden administration is aggressively prosecuting Chinese espionage. We actually lured, under the Trump administration, a senior Chinese intelligence officer to Belgium and arrested him in Belgium and extradited him in the US, where he's now sitting in an Ohio jail. He was convicted for enabling hacking into Western companies to steal intellectual property. So at what point does China do what Russia is doing, which is hold hostages and try to exchange them for people that we arrest? That's something that Putin has really mastered. We haven't seen a lot of that from China. Probably the most clear case of that was actually the CFO of Huawei, daughter of Huawei, that we managed to detain in Vancouver when we were prosecuting Huawei for evading sanctions on Iran, and they arrested two Canadians to try to pressure Canada not us to release her, but they haven't done it to the US.
Auren Hoffman:Let's talk a little bit about Ukraine. You said that both the EU and Ukraine have no definition of really what victory looks like, and just from an outsider who doesn't know anything, I don't even know what anything looks like in the next five years in that conflict. What do you think any side would settle for right now? That's reasonable.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah. So the tragedy of this war is that it's being fought in a very devastating way over territory that is not the most important thing to either side, and let me explain what I mean by that. So, at the end of the day, what Putin really wants is control of the country. He doesn't actually care that he's having this very tiny incremental progress of taking this village or that village that most Russians can't even find on the map. We're talking about these cities of Bakhmut Avdiyevka. I guarantee you 99% of Russians have never even heard of them until you had them as battle space for these really horrifying stormtrooper assaults on these fortified positions. So he wants to control the country, but he's inching and incrementally increasing assault on Ukrainian territory in a way that doesn't actually get him any closer to Kiev, which is where he really wants to be.
Dmitri Alperovitch:For Ukraine, territory matters and even more than the land itself, they want to liberate the people that the Russians have occupied, that have tortured, stolen their children.
Dmitri Alperovitch:I mean just horrendous war crimes that they're committing in those occupied territories.
Dmitri Alperovitch:It's really, really important, but in my conversations with folks in Ukraine, it's very clear that what they want the most and they would actually even potentially cede some of the territory for is security.
Dmitri Alperovitch:They want to make sure that, once they've suffered this unimaginable cost in lives and destruction of their economy and infrastructure in this battle with Russia, that Russia can never do this to them again. That's the most important thing, and they're not going to achieve it by taking back Bakhmut or taking back Avdiyavka. And that's really the tragedy of this war is that neither side is prosecuting in a way that actually gets their ultimate goals achieved. And for Ukraine and I've been saying that for many months now the only path to victory is to bring the war to Russia, to Russian elites sitting in Moscow and St Petersburg that do not feel this war. They're sipping coffee in coffee houses of the Capitol, going to five-star restaurants, and really have no idea that anything's going on with this war, because they're ignoring the news and their kids are not going to get mobilized, so to them this doesn't really matter. I mean, the most impact maybe they've had if they're tied to.
Auren Hoffman:Maybe they can't travel as much or they can't go to their Can't travel to Europe.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Maybe some of their villas and yachts have been seized Not great but not existential and you've got to change that dynamic. You've got to impact Russian infrastructure, russian economy, and that's what you're starting to see Ukraine do with these strikes on oil refineries, which the Biden administration does not like because obviously it can impact oil prices and potentially affect the November election. But it is absolutely vital for Ukraine and they have to continue that. They have to strike military bases in Russia. They have to bring the war to Russia itself. They can't do it through land forces, obviously, but they can through these long range strikes, not with our weapons, not with Western weapons. We will not permit them, because of escalatory concerns, to use ours. So they have to build indigenous capability. They're starting with drones, they're trying to extend the range of their own digitally produced missiles, which is what they really need.
Auren Hoffman:It's so hard for me to even fathom a reasonable end that people are somewhat satisfied with. I don't even know what we could ever end with where the Ukrainians would be satisfied. I certainly don't know what we could end with where the Russians would be satisfied At some point. Just people just have to get tired and stop, or is there actually a way of making this?
Dmitri Alperovitch:happen. Well, this is a war of attrition, right? So the Russian strategy is to wear the Ukrainians down, and particularly to wear the West down in supporting Ukraine, because if the aid stops, they can eventually occupy the country, or at least they think they can. And the Ukrainian strategy needs to be the opposite of trying to wear the Russians down where most Russians don't care about this war, don't want to see it prosecuted. So when they're hitting their gasoline storage facilities and diesel storage facilities and the price of the gas pump goes up, for Russians that's not great, that's not something the population wants to see. So over time and this is a multi-year strategy the hope would be that they would get tired of it, like they got tired of Afghanistan, where they lost so many people and it was a drag on the Soviet economy, and they finally pulled out that they would pull out of Ukraine. But that's really the only hope you have.
Auren Hoffman:It's not a sure thing and it's a multi-year strategy, unfortunately, because even if the Russians basically just say a unilateral ceasefire, we're not going to do any more stuff in Ukraine tomorrow. Like Ukraine doesn't still feel any safer. They want to get into NATO, they still hold Crimea, they still have these other types of things. I don't see any scenario where things are good for Ukraine in the future.
Dmitri Alperovitch:I don't think, unless things get really dire, that Ukraine accepts any ceasefire, because it would be strategic loss. So if Russia wants to declare unilaterally, ukraine, say great, we'll keep hitting you. Thanks so much. But the goal would be to try to make life as difficult as possible for the Russians in Russia, in Crimea, and get to the negotiation table where you have at least some leverage. Right now it doesn't make any sense to negotiate with Putin, because he's got all the leverage. He's on the offensive. What are you negotiating? You need to build some leverage before you can negotiate.
Auren Hoffman:And depending if there's a change in US administration or something like that, or just other changes around the world, or people just getting tired. It seems like he's got time on his side. Well, he thinks he does, he does. Obviously things might change. He, at least, is not going to stop in 2024. Maybe 2025 something happens, but 2024, it seems very unlikely that they'll slow down. It seems very unlikely that they'll slow down.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Well, as you know, I've always felt that this would be a long war. I mean, in some ways, this war has been going on for 10 years, since 2014. It can go on for another 10, potentially. We hope not. But the Russian economy is also not doing great. I think a lot of people look at superficial numbers GDP growth. A lot of it is because this military kineism that they've engaged in, which is very artificial and can be sustained, where so much of their GDP is going into military production and being destroyed in Ukraine it's not even military production for the export market. Most of the export markets, except in Iran and North Korea, have been shut off to them. So they're not in a fantastic shape and it will get much worse in the outlying years. And it all is contingent on oil prices. Oil prices go down, they're going to be in a world of hurt, so their position is not very enviable.
Auren Hoffman:How do you grade the US foreign policy establishment? It seems like many of the big things. Over the last 25 years we've gotten many of the big things wrong. How do you grade us and what do you think we need to do internally to build our own capabilities or our own changes of thinking, et cetera?
Dmitri Alperovitch:A lot of this is this book. The book argues that we are in a Cold War II with China and we need to refocus our efforts on winning this Cold War in a similar way to the way we thought the first Cold War and had that singular focus. It does not mean we do nothing else, because certainly in the first Cold War we did plenty of things some smart, some not so smart around the world, and this is not an argument for banning Ukraine or banning Israel or anything of the sort, but it does talk about prioritization and trying to avoid distractions to the extent you can. You can't avoid them all. You have certain commitments to allies in South Korea, for example, philippines, et cetera, but you need to start focusing on winning this Cold War, both in the military sense and in the technology sense.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Even if Taiwan did not exist, if we did not have this flashpoint over which we could go to war with China, potentially you would still have a Cold War with China, much less likely to go hot, but you still have this technological Cold War that drives the economic Cold War, and I believe that there are four technologies and we can debate this. They're absolutely essential to the domination of the century AI and autonomy. That's sort of self-explanatory. I'm sure your audience gets that. Biotech and synthetic biology, I think really, really important, not just in the medical science space, but what it can do for revolutionizing material sciences and creation of new materials for manufacturing and all kinds of applications. I think space is absolutely critical. You look at what Elon is doing and Amazon in lower Earth orbit from communications perspective, navigation, surveillance, intelligence reconnaissance absolutely remarkable. We're leading in those three areas. And then the fourth one is green energy, sort of the next gen energy, that's batteries, evs, wind, solar, nuclear. That's where we're losing value In every sense. China is dominating and that is a disaster.
Auren Hoffman:Maybe fracking is the one thing we're doing well in, or something there.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah, well, everyone's moving off fossil fuels, so batteries are going to be essential. China's dominating batteries. Evs they have the best TVs in the world and the cheapest, unfortunately and nuclear. We have some really interesting companies trying to do next gen nuclear, but all gen nuclear it's China, it's France, it's Russia, it's not us. So if we're transitioning off fossil fuels as I think we should, because carbon emissions are not great, we can transition to energy that is supplied by China. That would be absolutely the worst possible thing you could do from a national security perspective, and we got to get our butts into gear and prevent their dumping in those areas, incentivize our own companies.
Dmitri Alperovitch:That is a major point of weakness. And then, beyond that, you have two components that are driving these four technologies chips, and where you talked about what we need to do there and the other one is critical minerals, which includes rare earths, but not exclusive to rare earths. It's lithium, it's cobalt, it's nickel, it's all of those different things that you need for energy, for advanced manufacturing, for all sorts of reasons. And there China again dominates because, a they have a lot of mining concessions around the world that they've secured in part by bribing officials and so forth, but, more importantly, they process a lot of this stuff. They process about 90% of the world's rare earths, as one example, and there's nothing particularly rocket science about processing. We can do it here on a small scale. We do, but we haven't wanted to invest in that area.
Auren Hoffman:It's dirty. You need environmental issues.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Yeah, next-gen stuff is actually very clean. I talk in the book about this company called MP Materials that owns the only rare earth mine in North America that's been in operation since 1949 in California, right on the border of Nevada, called the Mountain Pass Mine, and it has enough reserves to last us at least a century, maybe more, of rare earths. They've been exporting them to China for processing, but in the last couple of years they've set up their own processing facility. It doesn't yet have enough capacity to process everything, but I visited that facility. It doesn't yet have enough capacity to process everything, but I visited that facility. It is clean as a whistle. It is not emitting, not pollutive. It was very easy for them to get permitting in California.
Dmitri Alperovitch:The biggest problem they face is actually Chinese dumping of those processed rare earths and magnets on the US market and trying to drive them out of business. So if you give them fair trade, they can actually compete. Fair trade in this case is tariffs. Tariffs, yes, and potentially even sanctions against some of these Chinese companies that are not trading fairly. They'll get attractive funding. It's a public company. They can get it from public markets, from private markets. They will get more funding to increase that capacity if they can compete on a level playing field.
Auren Hoffman:Now, last question. You just released this book World on the Brink. For those of us who have never written a book, what would a random person not understand about this weird process of actually writing a book?
Dmitri Alperovitch:Oh my God. It's the most archaic industry and as a tech founder, I was shocked at how this industry has not been disrupted in the last couple of decades. The timelines are so long. So, first of all, you set a publication date way in advance, a year plus in advance, because they have to order paper printer. Time just in time does not exist in this world and because of that timeline you have to pretty much be locked in almost nine months in advance. I finished the manuscript for this book in August. It comes out on April 30th.
Auren Hoffman:Things change quite a bit, especially if you're writing about a current event.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Exactly. This is a current affairs book. I was able to make some changes tiny ones, through January, where it's like change of work here or there, but not compact the layout, and I had to do that because I referenced Kissinger. Obviously, this is a China book. You can't not mention Kissinger. He passed away in October. I had to change everything to past tense as a result of that. In February, the strategy where Navalny died, maybe killed in Russia, and I had a momentary panic. Obviously it was an incredibly sad situation. I was actually at a conference where his wife was out in Munich when it happened. But also I was thinking, oh my God, did I actually talk about Navalny in the book? I didn't, but at that point it's locked in so you can't change anything and it's literally just because of the printer.
Auren Hoffman:obviously, on the e-copy can be easily changed, it's just the printer can't move around, or something.
Dmitri Alperovitch:It's the hardcover printer stuff and the whole industry is just archaic in terms of promotions, that it has to be a certain week, a certain month when we promote it with the bookstores and everything else.
Auren Hoffman:That's because you still want to get on this ex-bestseller list and all these other things and stuff.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Well, yeah, you go through one of the main publishers, my publishers an imprint of Hachette, one of the big four publishing houses in the world. It's called Public Affairs, that focuses on this specific area. But I mean they've been fantastic to work with. I have no complaints about them whatsoever. But it's just the whole industry has been a rude awakening where, when tech, things just happen and here you're waiting nine months for the book to publish, so that's been probably the biggest revelation to me is just the process, how difficult it takes. Also the levels of intensity. You spent first year writing it, submitting the manuscript, and then nothing happens for like two months and then you get back the manuscript and they're like you have three weeks and you're like in a mad rush to get all the changes done, respond to all the edits, submit it again and nothing happened.
Auren Hoffman:And then I assume, once it comes out, you're just on 7,000 podcasts and stuff, including this one.
Dmitri Alperovitch:But yes, promotion is a whole different thing. Maybe you'll have me on a third time and we can talk about what that's been like, but I'm just getting going with that.
Auren Hoffman:Oh, this has been great. Thank you, Dimitri Aparovic, for joining us on World of DAS. I follow you at D Aparovic on Twitter and I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there. This has been a ton of fun to engage with you there. This has been a ton of fun.
Dmitri Alperovitch:Thanks so much. Hope everyone checks out the book World on the Brink how America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century. If you like it, please review it. If you don't, don't bother.
Auren Hoffman:I definitely like it. I definitely encourage our listeners to read it as well. So thank you, yeah, you got an early copy. I was very, very fortunate an early copy from you. Thank you again, Dimitri. Thanks so much, Aaron. If you're a super data nerd, go to worldofdascom. That is D-A-A-S. You can subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or anywhere. You get your podcasts and also check out YouTube for videos. You can find me at Twitter, at at Oren. That's A-U-R-E-N, Oren, and we'd love to hear from you. World of DAS is brought to you by Safegraph. Safegraph is geospatial data for physical places. Check it out at safegraphcom. And by Flex Capital. Flex Capital invests in data companies like those we talk about at World of DAS. Check it out at flexcapitalcom.