Fox News Sunday

Interview

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Thank you, Shannon.

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Uh-huh.

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Well, I think for a long time, conventional wisdom was, the more you bring China into the world order, the more they're going to change. And that assumption was just plain wrong.

China even changed their laws in 2016 to make it explicitly clear that every company in China, their first obligation is to the Communist Party.

So, we have never had a potential adversary like China. Soviet Union, Russia, was a military or ideological. China is investing in economic areas. They have $500 billion intellectual property theft. And we are competition not just on a national security basis but on a -- on the technology basis.

That's why national security now includes telecommunications, satellites, artificial intelligence, quantum computing. Each of these domains, we've got to make the kind of investments to stay ahead.

And I think we're starting that in a bipartisan way. We did the CHIPS bill, of trying to bring semiconductor manufacturing back. We've kicked Huawei out of our telecom systems.

This week, I've got a broad bipartisan bill that I'm launching with my friend John Thune, who will be the Republican lead, where we're going to say, in terms of foreign technology coming into America, we've got to have a systemic approach to make sure we can ban or prohibit it when necessary.

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That means TikTok. It's one of the potentials.

Listen, TikTok is not only -- you have 100 million Americans on TikTok 90 minutes a day. Even you guys would like that kind of return, 90 minutes a day.

They are taking data from Americans, not keeping it safe. But what worries me more with TikTok is that this can be a propaganda tool to basically -- the kind of videos you see would promote ideological issues.

If you look at what TikTok chose to the Chinese kids, which is all about science and engineering, versus what our kids see, there's a radical difference.

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Shannon, here's again an example of what we're dealing with, with the communist party in China. If this -- if this virus had originated virtually anywhere else, we would have had world scientists there. The Chinese communist party has been totally opaque about letting an outside scientist to figure this out.

Now, you still got some parts of the intelligence community that think it originated in a wet market, other saying it could have gotten out from a lab, although I would say that one entity says it came from one lab in Wuhan, another said from another.

You know, at the end of the day, we've got to keep looking, and we've got to make sure, in terms of future pandemics, that we can have access to where the source of these diseases originate a lot earlier on in the system.

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Three and half years later, and we still don't have access to Wuhan.

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Well, I think again, this is where we've got to have that united front of countries all around the world, that there has to be consequences. There has to be consequences potentially in terms of sanctions.

It's one of the reasons why, if China moves forward to support Russia in Ukraine, I can't understand some of my colleagues who are willing to say, well, I don't really care about Ukraine, but I'm concerned about -- I'm concerned about China.

Well, China and Russia, these authoritarian regimes, are linked, and we've got to make sure Putin is not successful in Ukraine and we've got to make sure that Xi does not have -- further his expansion plans around Taiwan.

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Well, I think Xi, as Putin thought -- thought when the invasion of Ukraine, that the West would basically throw in the towel. The fact that we've not -- the fact that you've got, for example, the German chancellor in this past week, Germans dramatically increasing their defense budget, the fact that we've got, you know, nations like Finland and Sweden trying to join NATO. I think Putin made a major miscalculation.

And I do think Xi is watching the West stand up against Putin and is taking some lessons from that.

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I think it's time for -- India is a great nation. As a matter of fact, I'm chair of the India Caucus and a big supporter of India.

And India is now a major, major power, fifth largest economy in the world and a place where remarkable things are happening.

And my message for the Indians has been: we understand that you have historic ties to Russia and you still get a lot of your arms, but you cannot be a world leader and attempting to be a moral world leader without picking a side.

And in this case, I think the younger Indians get that. Some of the older generation, I think, we still got some work to do.

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Well, Shannon, let's look at this. We've allocated $113 billion to Ukraine. We have actually only given them actually less than half of that, and on the military side, about $30 billion of roughly $60 billion. We still got some runway to go there. But I think we need to keep that commitment.

And the truth is the Russian army is being chewed up by the Ukrainians. We had -- we spent $800 billion a year on defense, and most of my lifetime to prevent Russia from exploiting that. We are having Ukrainians do that right now, in a sense, for us.

And I think we need to continue that. I think we will see the vast majority of members of Congress in both parties. There are some loudmouths on both sides that are pulling back. But if we're going to keep this competition against Russia and China, Putin cannot be successful.

And at the same time, we have to realize as we look at China that national security is no longer simply tanks and trucks and guns and ships. It is also telecom and AI and quantum computing and advanced synthetic biology. We're going to have to make investments in those domains, as well, which is both an economic investment and I believe a national security investment.

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I do not -- I do not believe that. We have made it explicitly clear -- and I was just in Israel recently with a group of senators -- that we agree with Israel. Iran cannot be a nuclear power. I think that has been our policy and will continue to be our policy.

There are two steps in this process. One is the enrichment issue, and I believe we will be tougher than the Europeans. We always historically have been.

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Listen, I think -- we have all -- we already sanctioned and censured more Iranian companies by far than our European friends. But there's also the question around delivery systems.

Again, I think we and our Israeli friends are following this very closely. And again, we will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power.

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Absolutely.

First of all, the most important thing is, anyone who got sick, whatever the source was, whether they are CIA, or they're DOD, State Department officials, we owe them the world's best health care, and I think we are providing that now.

Initially, frankly, under the last administration, this whole issue was attempted to be swept under the rug. We are now making sure that health care is provided.

And I know how -- particularly the CIA, how extensive their investigation has been, and I've made very clear to them, if there are -- they need to continue that investigation, if new facts come to light, they ought to pursue that. But at this moment in time, I know how thorough they've been, and they have not found the evidence that I think perhaps they thought they would have found.

We've got to follow the facts. At the end of the day, that's what we owe these members of this intel community, who protect our nation, and that means giving them the health care. And if it ends up sensing some other source that what's been discovered so far, we have to pursue it.

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Shannon, thank you.

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