david, congratulations on your

book, new cold china's rise as russia's invasion and america's ik and it's defend the west. outstanding truly a■7 masterpiee truly amazing. i fes government official someoo was inside the room, inside or on the phone with all the po■" mean, just every detail hee jumps out at you. but i ve and puts it best. michael beschloss, put it this way, a brilliant book, is a masteie of reporting, revelations and analysis. congratulati you. and also congratulations that yo times best seller list. new

well done. well done. well, thank you,auere with you. it's been we've had a lot of years over the years w your government official and of course,■$ the it's great great to be having this conversation with you was a fun book to write. inside story on so many issues. and we're going to d that. let me start with maybe the main broad que did this new coldhere? and by the way, maybe i should also, before you answer that, actually justy describes it well in. the in the cover your boo on thr the end of the cold war, the united states finds itself in a volatile rivalry with. the other two great nuclear powers, xi jinping's china and vladimir putin's more complex ad

dangeroushait was ago. so the question is how did these colda's start? well, paula, that wasn't the the plan was pretty simple. the plan was that afterhe union, the fall of the berlinal of you remember the the famous . but fukuyama was not the case, t liberal democracy was goi t reign supreme, that china and reasons because they are such very different societies, was tn national interest to rejoin or join for the first time western world trade organization or whether it was the european union. in the case of russia, there was

even discussion for a while that nato, the alliance that wsigned and bn the old soviet union, the predecessor state for russia. so the idea was that we were all going to live in this sorof fort looked like that might happen us china was on a very slow road to but certaiwa invest in its people and itne a's growth turned into the world's greatest anti-poverty ó was in halting democrancorruption, filled withl kinds ofs. but there was hope and so wh tre the five presidents i've covered back to president common beliefy

lines that the us, china and áú would find areas of common interest where they could work together, whether it was climate or nonproliferation containing iran's nuclear program to get north korea to give up its nuclear program. work together and we overinterpreted that activity as if it was a sign that they were all going to fitis western based wall system, which d no interest in doing. an after 150 pages of taking you through how werselves, thate this was going, what happened when the reality crashed into the bidenation with russia going to war in ukraine

and with china a far more areivof its old self. one that wantsdominant politica, techlogical power by the middle of this cenry book and yr recounting all of this evolution of policy over five presidential administration issues and you administrations. your engagement with thethe whi. but not only that, the intelligence a and also technology companies as part of this. so the reservoir of information that you have sed here truly is a master piece. and seriy, when i was reading it, i really felt, my gosh, i'm back in the siomor i'a

crisis. so let me go to the question. what did we what did we do wron of this, because you've said that, you know, over 30 years we we■r■■0d, abou china. what were we diluting ourselves about and what■m big signals did we miss? well, we were diluting ourselves with the general proposition that they would let their economic interests overrun their territory, real interest, their efforts at consolidating would d that an open be more productivea closed one. and this delusion was really at its most extreme with russia. so you asked signals, did we and the book tries to walk you through some of them.

with president bush in whose your administration served, i think very jeb bush, george w bush want had very much to bring russia and china into the counterterrorism program. as soon as 911 ended. and the it's in chapter one where we're in st it's early summer. so it's when the sun is, you know, doesn't set till 1030 or 11 and thebazly sets and pops right back up. bush and his wife, laura, putin and his then wife were floating the never river on this big rty yachtne by this hulking man standing in the back. rying to figure out i remembered his presence, but didn't know at the rse, we suspt

was give kenny prigozhin and my wonderful co-writer and researcher mary brookes went back and found the photos. and sure enoug prigozhin. back in the days when he's still the chef before he ran the internet research agency to try to fix founded the wagner groupa ved russia in the early days ■iand of course, before heed on moscow, during the course of river, they talked about russia j european union, bush and putin. on that trip a met russian and american sforth, yoy meetings that were between b coe than two dozen. you know■ how many there have been between joe biden and

putin? one. and there will probably never be another. it was inof of 2021, before the invasion in geneva, talking about russia and china. the number of meetings between putin and she actually i believe now the count is something like over 5050. so and there were 40 befor when was we were. but we'll come to that. we will we will come to that. so that was the early set up. me had decided to go off int the his own direction yet, but by 2007, just five years after that fluke down the river, he showed up at conference, february of 2007 and in which he said there are parts of russia, of mother russia, of the russia er great that had been wrested from us and must now

come back together. and bob gates was there, who, of course, had in as served as cia chief. by this time, he was defense secretary kerry. he would secretary for a year or two. and he stood up and said at the end of this, you know, this speech sounded like it was right out of the old cold war. and he said, i lived through the whole cold war. and frankly, i'm not eagerand as from bush on forward have said, we're not going back to the cold war. and in fact, they're right. 're not we're going into something that is a whole lot more complex. thus the■j tle new cold wars. seven was followed seven years later by the russian decision to take over crimea. it took a year, paula for the

united states and its allies to put together sanctions for that, and that only the russians shot down that airplane overrs after, he does the build up to take the rest of ukraine. so we had plenty of signals along the way which chose8n noto interpret them in the worst possible way, because the idea was you can steer putin back. so when putin did on the pentage white and thnt, the obama administration didn't wao russia. i would sit in these interviews. i was looking at the code. vthey were looking at the code. it was clearly from russian intelligence. they wouldn't say so. right. credit, began to these attacks

to either russia or china or iran, whoever they could they could attribute it to. in fact, let me inject the trump administration when it came in that december, the very first issue a a nationalecuritstrategy document. and in it, it said, we're in an era of coal, gat competition. and it focused on russia. it focused on china and the are. it biden in their national security strategy document that they've issue■ñy÷utn that we arn era of confrontation, but they focus on cooperation. so give your view on on those. how do how dthos document fit in? so the the national security strategy,ch is, you know, mostly read by, you know a community of people in washington and academics,cause'a signal to the government about

where one's priorities. when h.r. mcmaster came in as e nal security advisor to trump, he went through four. he was determined to go right. that would reorient the us government away om great power competition. what he called revisiostrevanch. now my only complaab that national security strategy is, i think it dealt with russia and china as two similar then, then, then different. but that's a small point. he was absolutely right to go steer this in a new direction. when the president went out to announce thst it's donald trump. he hadn't sat to read it because he's donald trump and he went out and he gave a speech in ro o resemblance to the strategy that he was putting out, which the

usual problem, which was that th staff work on russia and china. some of it was and the execution because the president couldn't carry through, was incredibly poor, move forward to the biden administration. they adopted a lot of that strategy. they do talk about areasation. the strategy came out before the invasionof une. they've dropped the cooperative kind of russia. ■bbut i think the overall messae ttrategies and certainly the message of new cold wars is that we are in an era now of what will probably be decadeconfrontation, that, if we lucky the colds stay cold. there is no guarantee the old ld war, you know, had a

literally ex beginning. the united states and soviet union became nuclear powers. china, in the early sixties. and then it■m how long middle ad it had this surprise ending in which our great its greatest adversary the st collapsed of its own accord. anybody who's looking a sort ofd to they're for a disappointment because one of the dre while the old cold war was primarily a military and a nuclear confrontation with one adversary, we now have china and russia coming together in a partnership that they describe bo describes it as one with serious limits, but it is a partnership nonetheless. situation.e never confronted

and we tried to major nuclear truly working together. in fact, the essence of what kissinger and nixon did in the early 70 is in the recognition of china was to keep these two apart. let me on your compare listen on the nationalurity strategy. you know during trump and then 'd make tof the one released by you is i think some might say to you that in terms of the first one, that it was execute did in terms of defense the line that reagan had, you know, peace through strength, that our defens defenses were bolstered and also the fact oe signals the establishment of actually a kind fought you will or forward deoymeconcern of russian aggresn

concrete, tangible actions that provided a deterrent. that. well, it may not have been well was executed in terms ofct not not words. there were some was said, but actions. so there were some very helpfulu suggest, building up nato, giving some defensive weapons to ukraine that the obama administration had refused to give the javelins. the javelins, which i mean, today seems pretty modest compared to what we've had to go give the ukraine. anw the problem that they ran into, paul, was that for ev forward, you know, having those that rotating group of natoroops that would go into eastern europe and poland have have a a good presence there.

you would have the president step out and undercuthe american commitment to defend europe. you know, he would not utter a reference to requires, you know, all countries to come to the aid at. and this was part of his obsess. he was right on the point. europe needed to spend more. d argue needs to spend wildly more. now than it did then. but the result was that while at the at the lower levels, they re t steps. he was under allies. and by talking about how nato nato was outdated, youw, us would would try to pull out of nato. if you read john bolton's memoir. th h of the

us, pulling out of nato on more than one occasion. hink the part was because of the money he's and the fact was doing such and shows. and as we know, every administration, republican or democrat to that point, actually tried push europe. and he it to the brink to get them to move. but let's go, mm hmm. nord stream. you have to mention nord becse e munich speech, putin's sheven m. yes, crimea. so so crimea is 2014. 9cions. then finally they come up with some modest sanctions i don't think made a whole lot of difference. 2015 is the yeatehe annexes crimea. merkel negotiates the nord stream two pipeline. it routes around ukraine does deprive the ukrainians of the they were getting from the

pipeline and she declares that russia is reliable supplier andstatement out there. so whatsaying is yeah he's all this bad stufft going's in his and that modified,willing to go do n russia. and, living in germany for a couple of months at the end last yearthe beginnii was getting the book finished. i r the times. and one of the remarkable things is i think a good number of back. at some point we're going to ■resolve ukraine one way or another, and it goes gated settlement. give and, that they

would return to this embrace of russia, get the and and that basically make russiaeg russia. i don't think that's hainagain. and neither does the german sort of elite and government officials. but they can't bring themselves publicly about the kind of money they're going to o spend on defense. i mean, we've all been discussing, you know, to percent of gdp, ic was the standard that nato's set for itself and the one that the president trump used to refer to as their dues is not quite dues anyway. setting that aside, my guess are to match going to build up in the waydeterrent, they're pry talking aboutpein or 5% of gdp, something you cannot

utter in european politics today. we still have a lot to. i want to go to your chapter the meltdown and, the focus on afghanistan, because also in terms of chronology and leading up to ukraine and what happened in ukraine. talk about what was in your terms the meltdown and what happened? so the president had made no secret when he was vice president that he thought the united states needed to reduce, if not pull out of ukrainepresid then vice president. right. then v president. in could on like two fingers a number of agreed upon but afghanistan and getting out was one of them. right. so it was pretty car the united states was going to get out. we only had at that pnt 2500 troops that were left.

the pentagon was there as a sorf early warning sysm,wire, and toe in the taliban were, how quickly they were moving back in toice's program going because is was the common enemy of the united states, russia. just think about3h t isis attack in russia a few months ago and of course, even of iran. ght. the president made a decision in april to pull out all thesed one trump taliban. and president trump,ou in his lt months in■re, declared one day in a tweet, all the troops are coming out in the next few weeks. he had no plan to do it, but he just announced got talked back frha staff.

my critique in the boo of the biden administration is that having dectded1so do that, they did not rev up a plan to those afghans who helped the united states, who had helped news organizations and help the military. they should have been airlifting them out of bagram or gathering them in a place that the taliban could not get them. and of course, when it turned out the american intelligence turned oo he afghan military collapseas clead operated way too disaster. obviy, died. gram air base early. so they had no way to sort of . and a big protected base and get them out as■ searing as i am in the book, the after reports that

written by some of the the inspectors general, ude special afghans, the general is even more searing. the one good thing that came out of it was, i think that this was there equivalent of what happened to kennedy during the bay of pigs, a mess and big eare brought together the group. and i think it helps better a fw months later in the public warns about the run up to the ukraine war. so do you think that we pushed putin to invade ukraine segueing connect what happened in afghanistan as a signal to putin. one of the signals the signal of not giving the javelins and the aid earlier then

afghanistan and then also just even when the tanks were up on the ukrainian border, that in 021, right after biden came in. correct. as said one time it was in geneva in .and that meeting was not largey about ukraine. as about colonial the ransomware attacks that were proving so devastating. remember, they had taken out anf gasoline, fu all the way up and down the east coast. there were gas lines at a plen. ukraine did come up in the meeting late on. i had some members of the administration tell me that fear is that putin came out of their geneva meeting thinking biden is so preoccupied with problems at home. january sixth the ransomware

stuff getting out of afghanistan, the economic recovery which at that time wasu know blossomed pretty lyden. but he had way of knowing that then that he would have no ! getting the united states and nato together to oppose a ukraine invasion. now, putin got that wrong. biden did rally nato to come together, found a way to do it without committing us war nato troopsnd poured a lot more resources into ukraine than i think, and intelligence and help and so forth. then putin possible. but d afghanistan contributed to putin's thought not the end get in the way here. by the way, you mentioned what happened with colonial. let me quote this you stated quote ours the war demonstrated how radically different this new era and the .

youwar could spread much more quickly and changed the dynamic, turning a war against ukraine into ast n apggao. explain that. sure. a lf that this war has been completely the ysneeeing on screen. e.t it has also been gi in fact, there's a place early in the book where i quote mark milley, th former chairman of the joint chiefs and. i'll c-span. but he bases book. i have to say, it's outstanding research, really. so milley said to me one day over lunchid, you know, david. he said, at first we thought this was going to be a cyber war. you know, becausea had gone after ukraine with cyber attacks. it turned off the power many

was world war two style tankwas a blanking world war one trench war. know, and the reality is, it's been all three. so in the days before the attacks started, the russians took out viasat, which satellite european satellite network that the ukrainians depended on. okay. and they took it out without ever attackingheellites in space. we did a pretty brilliant cyber attack. the dems on the ground that fried enoug te communications with the satellites went out. the 24 hours before the war microsoft and and book takes yo into the microsoft center just outside of dulles airport here in washington detected that the russians had activated malware that used to

basically take off line all of the ukraine and government agencies. and there was a remarkable rush by microsoft and by amazon on systems to take the ukrainian government and put it in the cloud required a legal change that happened overnight in ukraine because they realized that all of the ukrainian data and everything from pono healtho how the military communicates to communications were sitting in servers around that were sitting ducks from missile attacks and by moving it into a cloud it assured that when those centers got destroyed within ukraine could keep running. that didn't happen in the cold war. that's absolutely correct. and also the fact that you

document this in the book is so ■crucial because it's not a fact that's focused and really focused on it's not only about the tanks and, if you will, the ground warfare. but that's why i read this of yours, because it the digital war what's different in the new

cold war's? well, one of the things that sa elon musk. and we all have issues about elon. okay. i'm not a big fan what he did with twitter, but had he not bought starlink units in the ukraine. they would have no way to communicate withnq that cloud or ultimately to target it their own military■% hardware. right. they're not hitting these ships thatcrimea because they've got , you know, remarkable vision across the sea. they're doing it because they've

got the starlink communication. and it has been an amazing laboratory for the us military, which has suddenly discovered that these $5 billion satellites that we put up are more like starlink, which puts up ousands of small satellites in these constellations that can you do have some wonderful quotes in thiscú enables me to segway to the china russia first, the bill burns quote quote, who lost russia? it's old argument and it misses the point. russia was never ours. lose to starting with thathat really just on point. and then you know in do on th's interesting kurt campbell who's nowepcrety of state. he said it's not a a a, you

know, a marriage of convenience. calls it a coalition of the aggrieved. now. thatsy■im,áinteresting. there have been those that have used ali i wrote a the word a new alignment.nd u there are others who are using word alliance. how do you see it? describe how this relationship evolved. so first of all, i don't think there's in the biden administration about how russia, chinacertainly, they hae together in all kds blinken wasn china and. we've all reported and known which is the es moving huge amounts of technology, not weapons, but

al technology to russia. they are contiing ru oil. they're not the only ones the indians are buying russian oil. right. which is helping the war. they are meeting on all kinds of other strategic they're doing military exercises together. and both of have developed a relationship. iran. iran is russia with the shaheed drbeeffectively against ukraine. the there is concern that iran will already seeing the north koreans provide both artillery and, some missiles to the russians for this half them don't work because they're north an)pbut half of them do. ha■xkurt campbell's statement, they are about the

really descriptionig of what thy are. because the one thing that unifies them is their grievance about the united states and its because what our single greatest as we enter this new era of new cold wars. it is our alliance network which the russians don't have. the chinese don't hth iranians don't have. and that's the si m■l pressure. this power projectionand it usee republican as well as democrat orthodoxy. party split on the question of the value of thesee the term pap without limits is, can we expect that both areo deepen their partnership, undercut userominance?

will that continue. are we going to see that deepening? i suspect that we willit's not t tension. look in the old cold war, wh the russians showed up in china, the soviet was the top dog there. and the■: chinese were still an agrarian society. that dynamic been flipped when vladimir putin shows up to xi jinping or when she goes to moscow. it is clear that the dominant player right now is china. it's got the cash. it has the strategic reach. it's e depth. putin needs the chinese more putin.he chinese need. but putin serves enormously chinese, which is the more he keeps, the united states, tied up in he, particularly syria, the

more unitest incapable of exercising the president's bl clinton has talkedbo never realn fully executed on. so sputnik moment really fascinating chapter and let's go to this because draw you out on specifics you have actual detailed conversations with general heighton referenced in there and thisinese hypersonic e tests breathe that because it ws very i mean that just■z was the, the uin u government or the us military at the time, the supreme command that had tha watched space command. right. it was not yet the us space

force and then it became part of the strategic command. that's right. he ranat which of course runs nuclear weapons, but also has, you know, a lot of interest in the space assets. and then he became the vice chairman one day sitting in his office, he gets a phone call from the defense department's main operations center, which runs 24 seven deep underneath the pentagon. and they said, sir, we've launc. and it turned out it a missile launch. he said, well, their missile launches all the time. he says, yeah, but direction. okay. normally, launched irection mostly toward the east. this was going in theeverse and it was because it was the first detailed demonstrate nation of a chinese hypersonic capability that we did not kno existed.

they loop all the way. the earth wentited states and tn basically the hyperspace sonic vehicle managed go station itself in a place where it could then move erratic pathway, not the easy pala ofintercontinc missile. and itan china and the pentagon was this leaked out laterhe financial times and they wrote the first stories about it. an mills, this whatik moment foe united states, in other words, referring to tatlaunch that thed done, you , fifties and he was saying it shou basically bring about a reaction of some kind. i' it out to be that

way. and there is still a lot of debate in the inside the pentagon about how much effort need to put into hypersonics. but what did it make clear that the decades that we have put in the missile defenses were basically wasted because they all are based on a nice, easy parabola coming from the soviet union and the states or from north korea into the united states. missile defenses have never been able thandle more than a few missiles, but at the moment that you go hc and you can have a missile that can on an close to the ground and below radar areas and allme over for g missile defenses moment. that's right. well called it. let me ask you the question of going 30 yeak. all right. let's say that decision makers had ac analysis.

and they were on the exact same you aron now. so at that moment, first of all, picy have been then and then be? would itbepolitically and bureay feasible? so the political hard part here was that one of t democratic and republican, clinton and bush and obamaump, n the hope that you could avoid using diplomatic and trade means, having a collision with russia and china and certainly them fore that was attempting to build s relations. but you can't fault them for two things. and this isi have and i'd be inn your reaction to it, because you were in the in the state

department at the time, some first, weprice for the east for 20 years. you remember these days in the state department, if you were going to get as a diplomat, you wouldn't have to spend your time in iraq and afghanistan. that was just i mean, it was the unspoken rule in military. you certainly did, because was the only way you were going to get battle experience. and, you the the commendations the awards and so forth that would put you on a rise. so w a generation of diplomats and ularly of military leaders whose whole in managing the counterterrorism wars, which required completely different set of, ote

china or a revanchist russia th becoming ad willing to risk a full scale war in europe. and■- so the book argues one of the pric we paid for the counterterrorism wars was lack of attenti area that would become the central challenge to the united states fo the half century. and the signals that you out. so my answer would be we ignored the signals. we have been paying attention to the signals. we should have been able to do both. we, quite frankly, over over reached on the if you're going to be a superpower, you've got to be able to go maintain a regionall keep your focus and big competitors. and both. do you think it

chinese, russian? you going to use that term, the chinese. the russian happen because historic early they they, as we know, have had tensions. they have they've had a lot of them. and inevitable we'll no likely enough that we had to begin to think about how we would plan ç because now it's probably too late to way. so i mentioned before that focused on preventing this by doing the recognize asian to try and china and for nearly a century that that worked out discussed this with kissinger in the last months of hisuse i t the new york times not as long as this book, but felt like itas avarious moments fascinating life.

and he wasthis coming together . and she was undoing much of his lifetime work. in. interesting question of not the united states could have gotten in the way. i think that president trump would have told you deal that ho heavily with china would have been a way toward that. actually, don't think it would have. i thin chinese they could have their trade deals with the united states and alignment with russia. is are there things we can to exploit thoseur f interests thau mentioned? and what worry is we're not debating that in this current presidential campaign. we are so wrapped up in the the

'■i1internal of the united statn arguments over social issues. it is black lives matter or abortion. you pick your hot button issue. but, you know, if you go back to the fun experiment to the debates from 1960 so turn off the o young and who looks sweaty and listen to the conversation. it's an incredibly level sophisticated conversation about the containment of the union and how you gout doing. and they had two very different approaches. and for another episode, another time, we can argue about whose approach might have been better imagine having that conversation in the current political environment in the united states? you can't. in part of our own divisions, in part because we took a 30 year holiday strategic discussion because we didn't think it was at the time that

was the sole power out there. and now suddenlyne to do it and we've kind of lost the skills. so we have thoet back on the bicycle and learn how to ride it again. but 30 years ago, you wouldv6 sy that it was politically feasible, maybe even bureaucratically feasible. i think, yeah, it would have been politically difficult because as we were in the political difficulty is we were some early progress. we negotiated through the nunn-lugar money, the the billions of dollars that went to dismantling of the old soviet nuclear infrastructure so that that fuel was blended down and burned off in nuclear power plants in middle of the country. so people were reading their kids bedside stories at night with underhts, were basically being fueled by old soviet nuclearthat's pretty gre. but we then convinced ourselves

that that was going to be uninterrupted path of our future. so the question will xi invade iwan that's one of the questions that you actually pose for yourself in the book. will he or won't he? so we spent a lot of mary brooks and i spa loentire fherch on thi book. and we spent most of it not with the government, but at iwsemicoe island and certainlytaiwan semie producer. of 90 to 95% of all the most advanced semiconductors in the world. they're what power? ' microprocessor processor at the core of your iphone. so if china invades taiwan, don't break your iphone. ul . it's going to be really a long time before you can replace it. i had the advanta seeing those

very buildings where these chips are made. it's really great. the fabs are amazing, right? is we have consolidated so much of the world's chip making operations in these highly vulnerable buildings. so the question that we wentotaa silicon field? in other wordsthose chips as wee do, would they not invade taiwan? because cause they couldn't affordo lose taiwan semiconductor and to cut to the chase the conclusion i came to was, for now there is a silicon shld but china is working really hard to build up its capability to make those most sophisticated chips. the biden administration has executed quite well. i deprive the chinese of the equipmentchips ae

chips themselves that come out of taiwan semiconductor. and that's wh xspends most of he complaining about. the president, which tells you they've gotten under his skin with this. i think we■l]/some time. what i worry about is we're not using it well enough. you know, president biden is around the country every time there is a new semiconductor plant to go dedicated. he was just up at one in upstate new york. he's been to arizona where taiwan semiconductor and■[ intel and others are building in the southwest. we're not building our capacity fast enough that. we will not have to be reliant on taiwan or china and then another question that you do pose, and this is all cited, will the mistakes that putin made in his invasion of ukraine prove to be his undoing?

leading him to reach into his nuclear aenal? or will the u.s., you know, short attention span, signal kiev'sh]'s take the greatr arsenal part of this general milley, which wha we are faced with the nuclear paradox thathein ukraine. use, the better they do. the least likely their nuclear us that the high point of the concern t tell story in the bok came in octoberus picked up intm russian nuclear around battlefield tactical nuclear weapons and. it was clear that they were discussing moving some of these into ukraine for possiblese ukrainian military targets. it would have been the first use n wns since the day

the united states dropped a bomb onagand this sent a panic admin. it was an eveningn the new york townhouse of#zam fund raiser. some member of the murdoch family. but probably they defundraiser e murdoch familan you know, everys milling around, looking at murdoch'ectacur ar collection, is thinking to themselvthgointo be a nice evening. i can say i had cocktails with the president and he comes in and facing the closest we've ever been to a nuclear exchange since the cuban missile crisis in 1962, which was six years to the week before that, when when biden was speaking and he went on to describe but the problem that we faced i think most americans were that

we were in the middle of a nuclearsis. they did get china and india to quietly signal the to the russians to putin that there was oom for nuclear use in this conflict. of weeks, the crisis. bunyho i interviewed think that we were at a sort of 5050 point about at that moment. that's prettyhere was a nucleary thinking about using a nuclear against a non-nuclear country. we have a few minutes to go. and i just want to ask just a few a very precise question. so what's your core message for this book? summing it up in one minute. the core message for book, paula, is we are in a new similo the old cold war,much more volatile, much more

dangerous because of this combination and of russia and china and some of the outsiders who are absorbed as a body debate the strategies needed to go are so p in oureris a huge to ;er polity as there are too many count, but we have to regain our s here. and that means thinking about a future iic this of confrontations is the one we're going to have to david, congratulations. a hearty congrataton this fantastic, mean, truly, as i use before the term masterpiece repeated it a masterpiece of reporting, revelations and analysis. it really is an amazing.

david sanger as new cold war's china's rise, russia's invasion and america's struggle to defe the west. it's a terrific, terrific read. thank yo t for this interview, david. thank you, paul. great to be with■i■■8■di have 'e

better to baugul speaker with dave