Michael Eisenberg 

Welcome to the podcast, Invested, I'd like to ask you to introduce yourself and tell us your core value. 

Jon Pelson 

Well, Michael, it's really great to be here with you today. Core value. You know, it's not a question I typically get asked during these interviews. But, I would probably go with truth because regardless of what your political view is, regardless of the side you're advocating, if you're sticking to the truth, at least there's an opportunity to have a dialogue and respectful discussions and get to a productive answer. When you start to move away from truth for whatever reasons people may grasp, or hold on to, I think you're heading down a very bad road. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Well, we'll come back to that, because that's actually maybe a great opening. But, before I come back to ask you about truth, let me introduce you to our viewers and listeners. John Pelson spent 25 years as an executive of some of the world's largest telecom equipment makers and service providers. He helped create and market breakthrough wireless products and solutions. He was Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for Lucent Technologies, which some of us remember, and Chief Convergence Officer at British Telecom, and he drove the company's global wireless strategy. John went to China, saw their telecom equipment companies grow and become world leaders. His observation on China's use of homegrown business giants to advance geopolitical goals formed the basis for his book, “Wireless Wars, China's dangerous Domination of 5g and How We're Fighting Back”. And we'll talk a lot more about that soon. Pelson now counsels technology companies on how to better compete with China. And has advised leadership in the United States government and intelligence community on the impact of 5g competition from China. John has a degree in economics from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. I should point out, by the way, that I took out the application forms for Darden, many times, and unfortunately, never went. John lives with his family in Great Falls, Virginia. You can learn more about John Pilsen on Twitter at @JohnPelson. That's spelled J-O-N-P-E-L-S-O-N. His book. “Wireless Words” - which I have read, and I highly recommend - “China's Dangerous Domination of 5g and How We're Fighting Back” is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. John, it's a pleasure to have you here. And, you are our first guest, kind of doing this. I've had every other guest in the studio with me. And this is the first time we'll be doing it across the Atlantic. So thanks for joining.

Jon Pelson 

Well, it's great being here. I wouldn't have minded making the trip to Israel for this, but I think the technology is a pretty good second choice. 

Michael Eisenberg 

I want to go back to the core values stated, which is truth, and ask a somewhat philosophical question. Is there one truth?

Jon Pelson 

Well, you have mathematics, you have science, you have physics. So yeah, there's one truth. And you can start diverging from that as you add layers, I suppose, you get a little bit further away from pure absolute truth. But, if you don't believe there is one truth at any level, then I don't suppose you really believe in anything. 

Michael Eisenberg 

So, I want to dig for a second into kind of, you know, the book, from this vector of truth before we get to a broader discussion. So, in summary, we can say that China, embedded other telecom companies, other countries, with their 5g technology from Huawei, largely. And, that became a giant, let's call it, espionage operation. That would be the truth, as articulated in your book, the simple summary to start. Do you think China views that truth the same way?

Jon Pelson 

Well, okay, so if you want to use the word there, that's an assertion that's backed by good evidence. Now, is the gear, the 4g and 5g gear and the network's from China? Yes. That's the truth. Does it have the opportunity to send information back to China? Yes, it does. You can prove that mathematically. Are they doing it? In some cases you can show they did. In which case, I think you're getting to a point where you're saying “yes, there have been cases where they've done it”. Then you can argue “is that why they installed the gear and are they doing something nefarious with it?”. You'd have to dig for evidence, sir. But again, if you find specific examples with proof and evidence, yeah, you can show, pretty conclusively ,that there was a motive to the deployment of gear, where it went, and why it was put in. And, it was beyond just making money and installing telecom gears to serve customers. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Let me give you three minutes to describe the core thesis of your book and much of the evidence that you brought - quite convincingly my opinion, before I kind of dive in - and ask some more questions on the topic of the book and the broader policy and other implications.

Jon Pelson 

Sure. The thesis of my book got flipped on its head. When I started to write the book- I'm a telecom executive. I was gonna write about how Bell Labs and Motorola and Nortel invented cellular, went to China to make it cheaper and to sell it into a huge market. And then the Chinese companies, with government backing, were able to seize that market and put them all out of business and dominate the market. And, I had a conversation with a FBI counterintelligence officer who said, “Well, wait a minute, do you know where they've sold their gear in the US?”. And I said, “Yeah, Huawei and ZTE, they sell it in the middle of nowhere. Montana, North Dakota”. And he said, “Do you know why?”. I said “Yeah, ‘cause the big carriers AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, the government kind of leaned on them and said,” We don't recommend you put in that gear”. So that's all they could do. He said, “No, look where they deployed it”. And he had led the FBI’s Huawei team. And, I looked and they had put their cellular gear around our nuclear missile bases or Special Operations Command, the nuclear sub base. And it was no coincidence. So suddenly, the thesis flipped. This was not done by China to have an industry champion to advance that champion’s economic success around the world. China put $75 billion into Huawei, so that the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, could extend its power and influence in the world. And, a conversation with my old economics professor from Dartmouth, who's now at Duke, made clear that the economics of backing a company today with $75 billion - and you're a venture capitalist, you know this, Michael - $75 billion today, and the payoff starts in 10 or 15 years, you will never make that money back. So, the thesis became, this is an effort to advance Chinese political, geopolitical interests in the world. And, their investment in Huawei is about the same as an American investment in an aircraft carrier group. Your ROI is hard to measure in dollars. It's measured in political influence and power. That's really what happened with the Chinese telecom push through the late 90s ‘til today. 

Michael Eisenberg 

What's interesting about it, by the way, just from a venture capitalist perspective, is the Chinese investment in Huawei put Lucent, Nortel, and others out of business. That actually took a lot of acquirers out of the market. And, I think probably also, in addition to kind of extending the CCP’s power, stunted investment in telecom companies. And the companies that supplied telecom manufacturers became fewer and far between. In the late 90s, when I got started, there was tons of investment in telecom, but you see very little of it 20 years later, because the main acquirers have gone away.

Jon Pelson 

Yeah. And, people realized, also, that the carriers, the British Telecom or Vodafone, or Orange, AT&T, Verizon. They are not going to put this startup gear in their networks, because the industry dynamics became such that they're really captured by the last couple of people standing. At Nokia, you had Ericsson, you had the Chinese companies. And, they developed a lot of market power over their own customers. And, it would not have played well to hear that they were trying some new technology from some startup off in the middle of Cambridge or Silicon Valley or something. 

Michael Eisenberg 

One of the things that struck me in your book was that the first customer was Saudi Arabia. Right? And, I think there's a couple of ways to read that. One is, they have the money, although the Chinese were subsidizing this. So, the other way to think about it is, it was like a backwater market. And, they were desperate to leapfrog, which is, I think, the narrative you pursued in the book. The third way, I think perhaps, to read it is that the Chinese needed to work out the kinks in kind of an outsider market. Which wouldn't necessarily be open to US influence. So, what do you think it was about Saudi Arabia? And, how do you think they managed to kind of go from Saudi Arabia, which is not exactly the world's most advanced telecom market, to being able to take over European networks and other networks?

Jon Pelson 

I'll go with the - kind of the dumb luck on that particular one - where the Saudi prince was on his world tour. And, he made a long stop in China. And, there's the Crown Prince who went on to become king. And, he wanted to sell oil to China. He was looking for markets for his product, and he grabbed his assistant and said, “Tell AT&T [at the time Lucent] that they're in the set - [ Lucent, was my company, at the time was in a $5 billion contract to build out Saudi’s telecom network]. Tell them to pull one of the Chinese companies and tell them to pull Huawei into their next bid to us. We want to do a favor for them so that they'll keep buying our oil - start buying our oil.” And, it was just that the happenstance of that meeting that brought Huawei to the table - it was their first international bid, and I helped. I spoke with a gentleman, Colin Golder, who helped them draft that bid. Worked with the chairman, Chairwoman then, of Huawei, Madam Son [Yafang], and they lost the bid. They did not win the Saudi contract. And, I'm sure they're never again going to win any Saudi business, right? I'm sure that Huawei won't be deploying any equipment in Saudi is, as far as we can see into the future. Except, I just read, of course, about their huge deal over the past year. They did take some solace, I'm sure, that even though they lost out on that Huawei bid, they won around $200 billion of other international business over the next couple decades. So, it was a failed first effort, but it worked out pretty well for Huawei, at least. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah. So, I just got back from the UAE. I was there over the last week, there's a lot of Huawei equipment in the UAE, as you probably know. If you are now walking into one of these governments, the Saudis, UAE, European governments. What do you tell them to do? Like, here they are, they've got this massive investment in this equipment. What would you tell them to do now? And, before you answer that question, before we got on air, I said to you, “This feels” - that one of the things that was jarring about the book, it wasn't like, there were details that surprised me, per se, because you've read about it at this point, because your book and many places. But, when you read the kind of tale that you told, this was so premeditated by the Chinese from beginning to end, that it's jarring. This was a plan, it was a 2025 year plan with a lot of money behind it, and it's jarring. And, you go to some of these telecom companies in the GCC or Europe and, by the way, to their governments. And, they're clearly not thinking that long term. There's almost a mismatch here. What are you gonna tell people - and by the way, I think of the UAE as a place to plan for the long term, certainly compared to Israel.

Jon Pelson 

You know, one thing that amazes me, as a guy who is purely on the business side, and now that I find myself advising people in government and in the intelligence community. I gave a talk to a large group that included many intelligence officers, and had people come up to me afterwards and say, “Your book was terrifying”. I was thinking, “What? How did he - didn't you already know this?” I thought I just learned this, you know, all nonclassified. I don't have any clearances. The story I told, I think because of the way it was stitched together, made even the Intel officers, who had access to information I'll never see, realize this is what the plan really was. This is where, if you don't understand business, you don't understand how non-business-wise efforts really were. The technology is fine. Their business efforts are rigorous, but it's not business. You look at the UAE, deploying sensitive, sophisticated Chinese telecom equipment into sensitive networks. If they think they can go toe-to-toe with China and secure their own network against them - one senior intelligence official said to me, “If you've installed Huawei gear in your network, you don't have to worry about them putting in a back door, you've given them the front door”. And, it's true. You can encrypt your data, you can encrypt your phone calls. But, one thing about telecom networks is, there's something called metadata, first of all. And that is, when you are managing a network, you see who's making a call, to whom, when? Is it video? Is it voice? Is it data? Is it an email? You can tell because if it's 12 kilobits, it's probably an email. If it's 40 megabits, it's a video, and everything in between. You can learn enormous information. And you say, “Yeah, but there's so many calls going on at once. Who in China could sort it out?”.  You know, who could sort it out as an AI system that looks at it, detects patterns, and starts to connect the dots. You have location information on every mobile phone, which is built into the system, you can't block that from the carrier. The equipment maker, who installs the gear, never lets go of it. You can't. They have to be able to do software patches and updates, do performance improvements. So Huawei and China and the Chinese Government, CCP is in UAE’s network all day, every day, gathering every scrap of data that they can. And, as far as the idea of encrypted, I don't even believe that either. I think the conversations themselves are likely to be observed and exfiltrated to China. Now, if the UAE thinks they have no worry about that, and they don't care if China's observing, listening to everything, I think they're kidding themselves. They're - every country has got strategic value to China. 

Michael Eisenberg 

And so, what would you tell them to do? 

Jon Pelson 

Well, what I would tell them to do is take the stuff out and put in any other equipment. If they put in Nokia, or Ericsson, does that give them confidence that no one's going to be observing or listening? Well, I think they can credibly say, “All right, so maybe it's someone else is going to be spying or listening or trying to interrupt them”. But, you can't have a moral equivalence. The way China operates in the world, the way they throw their weight around, I would say is different from Sweden. It's different from Finland. You know, even if one of them is now a NATO country, they're not as willing to risk the corporate reputation and brand by participating in undesired activities than Huawei is, who has no say in the matter, they're government controlled. 

Michael Eisenberg 

I want to come back to the morals and values thing in one second, but I want to latch on to something that you said. You said, “Well, AI can understand it”. I want to make sure that we're clear on what that means. Were you saying that the Chinese government is slurping up all this data and building AI models based on it? Or, are you saying that maybe AI can help defend against these things by kind of tackling it?

Jon Pelson  

I'm saying more of the first, but a little bit different than that. What I'm saying is, if you've got a network, you've got millions of people, hundreds of millions or billions of transactions and activities, it may be hard to make sense out of it. But, if you use even a decent AI system, you can say, “Alright, let's find - these two people seem to be in the same spot, and a certain pattern, that a person would never recognize and wouldn't be able to find that needle in the haystack”. So he said, “Okay, this person is going to a place that is known for illicit activities every Thursday afternoon, okay”. And, we know that because we cross check that against police officers who also visit that place. And, by looking at movements, you know, things that seem meaningless, you can assemble them and start to infer things about your subjects, far away, with very little data, seemingly, but it's enough to draw some good conclusions. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Is there an AI defense to this?

Jon Pelson    

That's a good question. I have heard that question asked before. And, I gotta tell you, I'm constantly amazed, when I do talk to people in that business, at the things that are being done that you wouldn't have even imagined. But, I can't think of any way that AI would be helping you avoid that kind of a problem. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Interesting. Okay. So, I want to go back to what you said before about the moral and ethical differences you spent a lot of time in China, obviously. And, there's clearly a difference between Chinese and, we'll call them western values. And certainly, US values. I'd love for you to tell us what you think they are, those differences? And, how does the West kind of understand what we're dealing with?

Jon Pelson      

So the difference - are you saying, in general, between Western values and China values or-? Here's a distinction I would make -

Michael Eisenberg 

I mean, you made the point that Siemens and Ericsson wouldn't do these things. It doesn't sound like the US government would do these things. Certainly Lucent didn’t do these things. And so, I mean, your argument is that the CCP, through Huawei, is committing premeditated espionage through a government company and in doing this at a skill we don't understand.

Jon Pelson        

Yeah, so the first distinction I'll make, and I had to keep catching myself in the book, is I stopped myself from saying Western. Because, Korea and Japan are certainly not Western, but they're free countries. And so, I would go back and re edit myself and say, okay, free countries versus authoritarian or totalitarian countries, that's really what we're looking at. And, I also dismissed the idea that we're the good guys, and they're the bad guys, in some purest, absolute state. Because what that leads to is you to being vulnerable to someone saying “Yes, but didn't the US do this?”. “Didn’t France sink a Greenpeace boat?” Well, yes, they did. Did France look at itself and say what an awful thing was done there and who's responsible? As opposed to saying, “Well, now the boats at the bottom of the bay, we don't have to worry about it anymore. Well, well done mission accomplished.” I think that the differences are, when you have any society that's a free society. And there's degrees of that too, of course. You have different cultural norms and values. And China, which is an authoritarian, or some would say totalitarian society, has none of the checks or balances or constraints on it, that any society with representative government and individual liberty and choice would have. And, the entire system is built that way. So, there is no - companies don't behave for the shareholders, they ultimately behave for the government's desires. The government is not answerable to its people. So, they have none of the constraints on them. And, while you can say, “Well, the US is no angel”. I heard someone say - a senior.  I don't want to name the consulting firm, but a well known consultant from a senior partner said, on a call that I was on, “How can America criticize the Uighur internment and work camps when America has its own history of slavery?”. And, I almost fell out of my chair saying, “Well, we don't have it anymore”. See, if we still had slavery, and we said it was wonderful, you'd be right, we're just as bad. We had it 150 years ago, we lost half a million Americans fighting to end it. And, we look back on it as a great dark spot and our own history. It was immoral, it was unethical, and it was bad. Now, that's how we can judge China for currently having that kind of a system in place where they round up minorities and put them in camps. So, that thinking is what makes a moral, ethical difference. Even if one side isn't all bad, the other side isn't all good. There's a clear distinction.

Michael Eisenberg 

Right. But you're saying much more than that. I mean, the assertion in the book, and you kind of mentioned it in passing earlier, was that the Chinese took American technologies and ripped them off. Right? Which is that, you know, Lucent, and others were manufacturing and trying to bring that cost down, and the Chinese ripped them off. And so, you're alleging not just a different moral approach to listening into people, but you're alerting theft of not just intellectual property, but business and, I'd argue, national resilience.

Jon Pelson         

Yeah, it's a valid point. Here's how I see that. People I spoke, to Chinese executives, now living in America, and now living in Europe, explained to me their view, at least as far as Telecom, and technology goes.Tthey said, “If you don't secure something from your opponents, and it's seized by them, that's on you”. I said, “Yeah, but what if it's - you own the IP, and you had it in your own servers, and you had firewalls and had security?”. Well, if the other guy can get through it, then they're gonna get their hands on it. And that's your problem, not their problem. I think that can only be an acceptable ethic in a culture where, first of all, there's no brand. So, you don't have to worry about continuity, like well, aren't you the guys who did this? You’re like, “Yeah, whatever. We are who we are right now.” You don't have the capitalist concepts of a branded company that's there for its shareholders and has its own reputation and character. And, you also have - I don't know to what extent religion comes into it. But. I'm gonna go ahead - I had one person explain to me the difference between guilt and shame. So, China is more of a shame based culture. And countries with religion are more guilt based. Which is, if you do something and no one knows about it, you still feel guilty because someone's watching. And you know who that is. 

Michael Eisenberg 

That’s the Rings of Gyges. Plato's Rings of Gyges, right? 

Jon Pelson         

Yep. Whereas, if you're a shame based culture, if you get caught, that's what the problem is. And- 

Michael Eisenberg 

You're saying something - I just want to put a fine point on it. The Chinese executive who spoke to you basically said, “There's no such thing as the rule of law, there's only the rule of the strong, and in the rule of the strong, if I can do it, I will”. And therefore, law is no protection. Neither in doing business with them or doing business in China. Is that- do you feel comfortable saying that?

Jon Pelson           

Look, Chairman Mao said, and Chairman Xi, have recently repeated that the rule of law, the rules-based order, basically is a sucker's game, because he wrote the rules. Now, they don't understand, the way those rules were written wasn't by a tyrant, forcing them down. It was really a collaborative social contract that was formed for those rules. But she says we are a country of men, not of law. And they don't - that's not an accusation against them, it's kind of their self description. That its strength and power and effectiveness is what carries the day, not what's right and what's wrong. That's almost like irrelevant to the process. 

Michael Eisenberg 

As you know about me, I like to write books. My hobby is to write books at the intersection of the Bible, modern economy, modern technology- I’ve written most of them so far in Hebrew. But, you know, the biblical system, and I'd argue the Judeo Christian ethic, is based on law. Meaning, the Torah or the Bible is a book of laws. It also has narratives, but it's fundamentally a book of laws in which the law is handed down from Sinai. Right? It's not a story handed down, it's a set of laws. And these are, fundamentally, rules based societies. Why? Because our assumption is, in what you call a person based society, man against man is a wolf, or beast, to quote the great philosophers. And so, is that - we're being interrupted here. Yeah. We're hearing notifications apparently and your computer. Will. I don't hear anything. Not anything. Okay. I'm shutting everything down. We'll see if that helps.  All right. So, you know, basically the society you've described is: man against man is a beast or a wolf. And, is that your assertion? That there's an unbridgeable gap, on some level, between rule-based societies, law-based societies versus man-based societies, where the rule of law doesn't matter? 

Jon Pelson         

Well, in my mind, for what it's worth, it feels like the generation of the flood, right? Prior to God wiping out the world and the generation of the flood. You know, the Bible describes that the great lords, the lords of the land, took the women, they stole from one another, and, you know, Earth destroyed itself. If you really do see this as - I think that may be a calming and civilizing force, this idea. And of course, Jewish people don't believe in an afterlife where you're going to be going to heaven or you're going to be burning in hell. At least, in my own understanding of the religion, that's not like the - certainly the goal isn't always that you want to end up in heaven. How do you live your life, today, so that the eternity will be the comfortable one, not the toasty one? 

Michael Eisenberg 

That'll require different podcasts. That's the longest theological discussion of where Judaism is evolved like that. But yeah.

Jon Pelson           

Now, if you take not only that out of it, but take the idea of some absolute moral rectitude, what is right, what is good. Then you really are saying, whatever you can have whatever you can take, that's right and good. And, I've even heard - I spoke to some some ethicists, senior leaders and philosophers, and asked them about what several people were telling me about the differences here on ethics, and they rejected it. And so, I did not include this in the book. But, several people said, the philosophy in China - and it seemed credible - is it's unethical to not advance the cause for you or your family or your tribe or your town or whatever. So, if your competitor has left something unguarded, you're the farmer next door. And you don't take it, knowing that you can get away with it. You've been unethical, because look at - your family may starve now. How dare you just leave that? And they'd be like, “Yeah, but it's wrong”. The view was, well, no, it's wrong to not look out for your own. How is it ethical to let your family starve because their neighbor left some wheat out on the side of the road unguarded? And, I thought it was an interesting assertion. I didn't want to make it because it's a pretty big leap. And, I don't have the knowledge and the history to say “Yes, this is my own experience. I'm willing to say this, anything I said in the book I backed”. 

Michael Eisenberg 

By the way, the Talmud has a discussion between Rabbi Akiva and somebody else in which they're two people walking in the desert, and there's only one flask of water, which is enough for just one of them. And, there's a discussion there. If it's your flask of water, for example, it's John's flask of water. Can he drink the whole thing and survive the desert or does he need to split it with his friend? And, ultimately, that the Talmud says that the law is like Rabbi Akiva, that your life comes before your friend's life and therefore, John, you can drink the water, and leave me alone to die in the desert. But, there's an opposing opinion, which says you need to share it. And, I've often asked myself, “Why is it better that two people die?”. And I think, perhaps it’s better that two people die, because it shows that we're not just concerned about ourselves. And, if we want society to be successful, we need to be concerned almost to the death, almost willing to sacrifice - you're willing to sacrifice your own life about the other, and that seems to be the antithesis, this Talmudic discussion based, obviously, on Jewish law, the antithesis of what of what you're describing. But that leads me to like a big global question which is: in a world with two fundamentally different value systems, that you've just articulated, how is it possible to manage world affairs? I'll ask it even - that's a meta question asking our practical question. Would you let any company you're involved with do business in China?

 Jon Pelson            

Well, you know, yes and no. First, we can't decouple and say “no business in China, not buying anything from them, not selling anything to them”. I don't think that - that would be mutual assured destruction - 

Michael Eisenberg 

Wait, but if you had this decision back like 60 years ago, before Nixon, right? Would you have said,” Don't get involved?” if you knew what you knew now, back then, would you say don't get involved?

Jon Pelson              

Well, I either would have said that. So, that's absolutely one of the valid possibilities. Or, I would have said, anything besides t-shirts and chicken wings, do not get involved with China. If they pull the plug, and we have to walk around just wearing our dress shirts, you know, without a t-shirt underneath it, so be it. 

Michael Eisenberg 

We'll get them in Italy.

Jon Pelson              

We'll get them in Italy, they'll be softer and nicer and more expensive. But, nothing that matters. Not pharmaceuticals, not electronics, even fun stuff. Because, on the one side you're saying, we're becoming dependent on them. The extreme argument, for full decoupling, you’re saying you never want to help your enemy. And, if you come right out and say “China is an enemy”, not a rival, then, you know, the US World War II. You don't want to be buying your steel for your battleships from the company from the country that you're bombing. You don’t want to be giving money to them so they can build up their own factories and create their own weapons to attack you. So, if you look at it as true war, I have the word “war” in my book for a reason, it's not wireless rivalry, is wireless wars

Michael Eisenberg 

It’s a war, I get it.

Jon Pelson              

It's a war, they certainly think it's a war, we finally are realizing it's a war. 

Michael Eisenberg 

So, we sit down at the United Nations, at the Security Council with China, we being the United States, in this case. In countries with, what you've now described as two different value systems. One says I'm in it for me, and the other one says, I can be in it for the group of us. And, that's okay. And, I want to live at mutually beneficial outcomes with some of these countries. How's it possible to get anything done? Like, the ethical boundaries are entirely different. The moral structure is entirely different.

Jon Pelson               

Yeah, this is a tough one that I don't think we've wrestled with or had to answer yet. But, you're hitting, kind of, one of the key questions. The fact is, practically, because I've been asked this question many times, should we fully decouple? You kind of have to do business with them. And, that's kind of a lousy feeling that we're trading with someone who's, you know, credibly accused of organ harvesting of minorities in their country, to bring to wealthy elite who need, you know, a kidney transplant or something. Why would you deal with this entity? Well, because they've got a massive economy and a billion and a half citizens, and, to do otherwise, would be to cripple ourselves. We've really been lured into a financially-driven relationship with a country that has very evil rulers putting a very abusive system in place over a billion and a half people.

Michael Eisenberg 

But, you know, you used the words “we were lured into” in the context of the United States, you know, I want to think that the US leadership is not that naive. Maybe I'm wrong, by the way. But, I’d like to think that. I mean, these are mature adults who, in theory, have been in policy work and in business for a long time, and we were “lured into”. Boy, that strikes me as naive and shameful.

Jon Pelson                 

Well, here's what - the consensus was that if you can take free market decision making to China, in the form of capitalism, and they get to taste it, how do you keep them down on the farm once they've seen how wonderful it is to make business decisions for yourself? So, you're gonna want to make political and other decisions for yourself. And, this is going to liberate China. Once they have free market capitalism, they certainly can't maintain political authoritarianism. And, Bob Zoellick gave a famous speech. He was one of the people who helped bring them in. Before he was head of the World Bank, he was a US Trade Rep. And, he brought them in, saying, “Look, they're not the Soviet Union. They're not they're not trying to defeat America. They're not trying to propagandize against us. They're not seeing themselves locked in the struggle”. It all seemed to make perfect sense. Of course, it's precisely what China is doing. But, every reasonable person, myself included, thought this was gonna be the best thing, you bring capitalism to China, and even if they raise themselves up and become more powerful as a free society, who cares? I don't think Americans, I don't think Israelis, look at Korea as a horrible threat. Even as they rise as a political power, because they're a free country. Japan rose, and they kicked our auto industry’s butt. But you know, Toyota and Nissan - Honda really beat the heck out of the American car industry in Detroit. And, the end result was  that Americans got great cars. And the American car industry raised its game. This is rivalry. 

Michael Eisenberg 

And the US had naval bases, by the way, in those countries.

Jon Pelson                   

Exactly. But, I just don't see Korea and Japan or Germany, as a rising threat, even as they become powerful. And people say, “Oh, this is the rising powers inevitably go to war against each other”. I think that's nonsense. Because, as Germany becomes the economic engine of Europe, I don't see us saying, “Well, we're gonna have to stop that, we have to thwart them”. Because it's a free country. It's a free society. And that's okay. 

Michael Eisenberg 

By the way, it was a bad economy that caused Germany to go to war before World War II. I mean I don’t know  if that caused them to go to war, but it certainly was a driver. But, I want to flip this a little bit, which is, maybe perhaps it's good to keep your ideological enemies close. Maybe it's good to keep the people you don't have shared values with close, at least through a commercial relationship. Because that enables us - what’s the right way to say this? It enables us to manage potential conflict, over time.

Jon Pelson                    

There's no question, when you - this was the original argument, that trade brings interdependency and interdependency brings peace. You don't bomb the country that provides all your insulin. You know, you don't want to take out the electrical infrastructure for the company that's buying your entire farming output for that part of the world, because you're just hurting yourself. And, this is the idea that trade, globalism brings peace. And, it's true if you have a liberal worldview, that says we're all in this together. All anyone wants is to get richer and happier and healthier, and thrive. And, I'm of the belief that there's a handful of countries, literally you can count on one hand, that would rather see their own people impoverished if it gave them more geopolitical power over the rest of the world. You got China, North Korea, you got Cuba, Russia -

Michael Eisenberg 

Iran.

Jon Pelson                    

Perhaps Iran would make it towards the top of that list saying we'll lose a lot if we can achieve some ideological goal that's unconnected to the welfare of our people. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Do you think, by the way, there's a dichotomy in the cases between the leaders and the people? I'm pretty convinced that in Iran there’s a dichotomy between the leaders and the people. You know, I'm far from an expert. Do you think that there’s a dichotomy between leaders and the people? Or is it so, kind of, morally different and ethically different in China, that there's no dichotomy?

Jon Pelson                      

Now, look. There's different cultural mores in China, and values, and you'll probably be well suited to bring on an expert on China. And there's plenty of them. To talk about that specific issue. I want to be careful not to wade into those waters too deeply. But, what I will say is that all human beings, regardless of their cultural values, do have some common things they want. They want - this is totally logical. They want to have whatever they want to have. They want to be able to do what they want to do. They want to be free to make choices. Now, somebody could say, why don't they have the government make decisions for them? Well, yeah, as long as those decisions are what make them happy. And, if they don't make them happy, they can say, “Can I do something different?”. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Are you sure about that? I mean, like, I'll give you a biblical example and then I'll give you a modern example, right? So, a biblical example is that after the Israelites were set free from Egypt, many of them wanted to go back to the slavery of Egypt, because it was just easier. No mental taxation or overhead and, you know, your food is provided or whatever it is. And, even in modern times, I'll use my own co-religionists. There are many ultra-orthodox Jews who go to the Grand Rabbi and say, “Hey, tell me what to do”. And they tell him what to do in just about everything in life, and that's what they do. And, it reduces the mental overhead and, you know, I'm sure there are - I can point to other religions and other people who just prefer that, you know, decision making be taken out of their hands. So maybe they don't.

Jon Pelson                       

You know, maybe they don't, but I think it's about one generation long, that attitude. If you take a human being who hasn't been brought up in that kind of environment that's led them to a dependency and a passivity as an animal. Any person brought up will want to have what they want. Now, they may want to have government involved and take hard decisions off their hands, and do that. And some - that may be an individual - you know, everyone's on the spectrum for personal determination versus being kind of taken care of, in a way. But, I don't think anyone wants to say I'm subject to the whims of some bureaucrat somewhere in the capital city, who's going to make me study this or work here, even if I don't want to. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Milton Friedman is famous for saying that free markets create free countries, basically. That's a misquote, but that's roughly the gist of it. Do you think that's true?

Jon Pelson                        

Well, the China experiment may give the light of that. Everybody thought that - 

Michael Eisenberg 

I don’t think that’s true, for what it’s worth. For years I haven’t thought that’s true. By the way, for me, it's biblical also, in this regard. You know, until you were free from Egypt, there wasn't freedom in the world. And so, you couldn't have any free markets. But why do you think it's not true, just because of China?

Jon Pelson                        

Well, it's not just China, but it certainly is the biggest example of what has been, for the most part, a free market. And, the government's got its hand and things so on, all governments do. There's no true, true free markets. People thought, you can't have free market and have controlled authoritarian government and trying to prove, “Well, look, here it is”. You can argue about why, but you can argue about whether that's the case. And so, I think that gives the counter argument, proof to it. 

Michael Eisenberg 

I want to say something personal. I read your book, and I thought you were brave. Were you ever worried when you wrote the book, that someone would do something to you? Or, this is something that would rub a lot of people with a lot of power the wrong way?

Jon Pelson                         

Yes, and no. First of all, you know, I've had a good career, basically pursuing what I wanted to be a moral, and ethical business career. Now, don't get me wrong, I was in my career to make a salary, to advance my own role within the companies I worked for. But, I think business is a very moral and ethical thing. I took over a job at Lucent. A hundred people, the global channels department. And, on day one or two, they said, “Oh, you have 100 people, but you got to lay off 70 of them”. This is when the wheels are starting to come off. And I said, “Well, 70, it's probably 20 of them that ought to go”. And then you know, when you're cutting 70, you're gonna be laying off good, hard working, honest, people who have made their performance numbers, you can consider that unethical by management, not to do the layoff, but to get to a place where you have to do that layoff. So, I tried to do things ethically. But this was a self-directed career ahead. And, I say that compared to the people I worked with, lately, since the book, who were military and intelligence and public service people who put themselves in danger to do the right thing for good causes. So, when I wrote the book, when it became clear the turn, I thought there is some risk, there is some danger, but boy, it's trivial. Trivial, compared to the FBI officers I worked with and the special operations guys, I talk to you, who were actually having people shoot at them, all the time, everyday, knowingly. Now, China, I'll give you one other twist that gives more comfort to me. China tends to deal with foreign nationals in their own home countries through bribery, and coercion. Iran has some different approaches that they use. And, I did not write a book going after Iran, because that wasn't my topic. I tell you, if I had, there's a lot more of a pucker factor there because that's a country that's demonstrated a willingness to physically harm people all over the world. China, you know, the epilogue, you know, I don't know how many people get to the epilogue of a book. I talked about how, while I was still working on the manuscript, I got a call from a major recruiter at one of the big firms saying “Do you want to see it on the board of a Chinese state owned telecom company?”. And I'm like, okay, good. That's how you guys deal with things. Either try to get a compromising video, or you bribe somebody where you work, the ego angle, and none of those are going to work on me. But, uh, thanks for the phone call. You just made it into my book, and she's in there. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Let's talk about TikTok for a second. So, a number of countries want to ban TikTok. Our mutual friend, Jacob Helberg, has been really pushing for this in the United States. What do you think about that? And you have children, right? 

Jon Pelson                         

Yes. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Would you let them be on TikTok? Do you let them on TikTok?

Jon Pelson                           

Well, you know, as anyone who has children knows, what I let them do has very little to do with what they do. My son is 20 and my daughter is 23 now, 24. And, the funny thing is, my son is doing work with - He's still in college, but an internship with the federal government in a very secure facility. He can't have TikTok. He knows, I warned him when he first visited the place, he still had it on his phone. I said, you know, you're on a list, because TikTok tracks your location, and you got into a place that most people can't get into. And, now their AI has flagged you as one of the 100 million people that's been in that - of the 100 million people, one of the five or 10 or 100 people have been in that facility. So, he's got it off his phone. Now, my daughter, I don't think she uses it either. And, they are very wary, because it is tracking them, seeing who they meet with, where do they go. Again, this is the AI tool, and building a dossier on 350 million Americans. 

Michael Eisenberg 

And so, should America ban Tiktok? 

Jon Pelson                           

Absolutely. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Absolutely. I agree. I can't say that my kids listen to what I say either. The good news is, by the way, they don't listen to my podcasts either or read my books. So, they won't hear me saying this. That's the good news. But, I've told them all for years and years and years, do not get on TikTok. Like, I haven't invested in China either, over time, and it worries me. I think, if it's not free, you don't own it. That's why I don't invest. And I think, you know, certainly after having read your book. But, even before that, kind of different set of values there. Not judging it, it just doesn't work for me.

Jon Pelson                           

TikTok has two insidious things that it can do. One of them is that it changes who you are. And that's absolute. You can't argue that, it pushes content to you, deliberately, and with an agenda, and restricts content from you, deliberately, with an agenda. So, it is changing what you know, and who you are, and how you spend your time. That, you can't argue that. 

Michael Eisenberg 

By the way, what do you think are the most pernicious or sociological things that they're pushing on American teens today?

Jon Pelson                            

Well, you know, it's hard to say that they're making American teens vacuous. You know, it's a pretty easy thing to do. But, I think part of what they're doing is pushing such foolish idiocy. And, that's what all the old crotchety adults say, the kids today, it's such idiotic things they’re doing, back in my day, we used to, you know, be doing the frug, and you know, and whatever - 

Michael Eisenberg 

The hula hoop -

Jon Pelson                            

The hula hoop. You know, you go back to the 30s, you know, you're 23 SkiDoo or whatever. So, you know, that's back when things are normal. Now, they're weird. So, I don't want to play that game here. But the constant, constant flow of addictive vacuousness. Whereas, you know, when I was a kid, you had to wait till Saturday morning cartoons to turn off your brain, completely. And now, you can keep it in that idling mode all the time. And, I'm sure every generation would have if they had the same technology available.  

Michael Eisenberg 

Do you think they’re fomenting some of the social maladies of the United States through TikTok?

Jon Pelson                            

I think someone should be fired if they're not. Someone in the Chinese Politburo, if they're not using that tool to push people into the streets when sometimes you’re saying, “What are we here for, again? I don't know this is the bad thing that's going on, let's all go out there and turnout for it”. That has to be tapped right now by China, because it weakens America. It weakens unity, whether it's racial or class or any other divisiveness in America that weakens us as a country. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Wokeism? Like, when I heard Putin talk about wokeism, I also thought, you know, my historic term, maybe the Chinese are fomenting that too.

Jon Pelson                             

Well, if you believe - you take the country and I say, “Look, we had slavery in this country 150 years ago, it's a terrible thing”. If you believe that defines who we are today, and that we're a terrible country, who's going to go to war to defend a terrible country? Who's going to defend a place that's awful, and abusive, and racist, and sexist, and transphobic? If you believe, and the social media kind of plays this up, if you believe we're an awful place, then you're not worth defending. And, China would love nothing more than Americans thinking, you know, “We're not a great place. What are we here for?”.

Michael Eisenberg 

So for all of my career in business, we said business and politics don't mix. Or, for a large percentage of it. Right? And, now it feels, on multiple levels, that business and politics, not only do mix, but must mix. Like, technology has become so geopolitical, that it is not just inevitable, but a must. That you need to be thinking geopolitically, when you start a business. How would you respond to that?

Jon Pelson                               

Well, there is an extricable link, I think, between business and politics, and that creates a lot of problems that I wouldn't pretend to have a solution to. The fact that government has to start regulating free enterprises like this. It's true, they do. And, they're not very good at it. None of the government's are good at it. And, so it's gonna be badly done. Even if the best intentioned, best educated legislators or elected leaders of any kind, are going to screw this up. They don't understand it, they don't have the tools. So, you know, it's kind of the inefficiencies that are kind of the cost of doing business. 

Michael Eisenberg 

No, but it’s more than that right now, right? So, for example, I need to take into account, for argument's sake, if I'm Google, that part of the world market’s closed to me, China. I need to take into account if I'm one of the investors in ByteDance or TikTok, that the US may shut it down. More than that, by the way, you know, with Congress, just use US as an example, just increased interest in, now AI. Before that, social media, you know, there's real risk right now. And, you need to know the geopolitical landscape. That wasn't the case, except for antitrust, for many years. 

Jon Pelson                                

Yeah, well, you see cases - I just saw an interesting case, where Chinese are fleeing Hong Kong for the UK, using certain identity papers, not quite a passport. And, Hong Kong Shanghai Bank is blocking them from taking their money out, at the direction of the CCP. That came under attack saying “You're collaborating with this authoritarian government, that's penalizing the citizens who are trying to move into the UK, not letting take their own money out”. And the bank said, “The local law says this is the paperwork that authorizes us to release the money, and the paperwork hasn't been provided. And we can't break the law of the country we're operating in”. I say, “Okay, well, then you shouldn't operate there”. Okay, so Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, get out of Hong Kong and Shanghai. And, maybe that is the answer. But, you say “Is that really a morally horrible thing they've done?”. If the local says you have to round up the people and send them off to an internment camp, you could see them saying, “Okay, we're out of this country”. But, their government - 

Michael Eisenberg 

But what I'm saying is the government did say you're not going to release their money if they try to leave -

Jon Pelson                                

Well, that’s what the law says. So that's not some horrific violation of humanity that they're engaging in. They're following the legal laws, you know, the legal rules there about money transfers. 

Michael Eisenberg 

I want to push harder here. So, how involved should politics and politicians be in what's going on in global private digital enterprise right now? But ,I think, again, governments, the EU, Congress are leaning in hard, right? It's hard for me to understand how the EU blocked the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it doesn't fit under any real anti-trust thing - 

Jon Pelson                                

But they did. 

Michael Eisenberg 

And my sense is that, and I'll say this bluntly, we used to think of business as money, but technology is actually power. And, you see that TikTok, and you see it in Facebook, and you see it in AI, right now. And so, power is politics. And, it's geopolitics. So, have we all become, kind of state controlled or pushed enterprises, on some level?

Jon Pelson                                  

It's a pretty disturbing thought. There's definitely, I think, some truth to that. And it's, again, it's inevitable, it has to happen to some extent. And, to the extent that government gets involved in business, they destroy value, they destroy wealth, they make things worse off, but sometimes it's necessary. Because, if you don't do it, you can have some very dangerous things happening. That didn't used to be the case, people pretty much could live their own life. You go to your job, you're either producing your own food, or you're buying it from the farmer in town. And, you're working your local job. Technology has created power of corporate interests, which are sort of like government. I mean, I think Google's more powerful than all but a handful of governments in the world, in the influence they have and the information they control. And, Amazon and Microsoft, a handful of companies, have enormous power. And that's a political kind of a thing, not just economic power. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Do countries need to develop their own technology infrastructure? Like, does everyone need like a national company, like Huawei, like the Chinese did? I mean, the US doesn’t even have one now, in reality. It has, like, Cisco, a little bit. But it's the European companies, kind of, Siemens and Nokia will provide a large percentage of the, you know, Western telecom equipment. Is this a good idea?

Jon Pelson                                   

Economies of Scale mean that they can't if they try. It's not clear if the US is big enough to put together a telecom equipment manufacturer. This is the United States economy, the world's biggest economy, may not have the scale, given the presence already of Huawei, Nokia, and Ericsson, to create its own. So, you're not going to get one coming out of France, or coming out of Guyana or coming out of South Africa. It's just not going to happen, because the world can maybe competitively support half a dozen of these. And, the 10th or 20th one is going to be an inferior product at an inferior, higher price. 

Michael Eisenberg 

But communications infrastructure is critical infrastructure for countries right now. It's absolutely critical infrastructure. We wouldn't outsource our water supply. In most cases, if we could, I certainly wouldn't want to be energy-dependent. But yet, we are. The United States is, and Israel, by the way, is telecom dependent.

Jon Pelson                                     

Yeah, absolutely telecom dependent. And so, the question is, can you secure your own network? And, I think more importantly, rather than trying to secure it against a malevolent vendor, you want to go with a more trusted vendor. I don't look at the Finnish as being a real threat to world freedom and security. I don't look at the Swedes, you know, Ericsson and Nokia as that. American companies, they've done some bad things like everyone, everywhere, but they're not fundamentally there to screw people on behalf of some malevolent government authority. Every now and then, there was this program that - I think from WikiLeaks - that the NSA was intercepting shipments of servers, American private companies, and loading software hardware on them before they continued on the way out and around the world. So, they had some great eavesdropping technology, and those American companies were furious, furious about this. They weren't like, “Hey, doing our part to help America”, they're saying “You're screwing with our business, we need to be trusted. You guys really hurt us here”. And hopefully, it doesn't still happen.  

Michael Eisenberg 

You know, your view of Ericsson or Nokia, you know, the Scandinavian countries in this regard, is that they're less likely to be malevolent. Right? That is, what I would call a - can't find the word - parve, we would say in Yiddish, which is neither meat nor dairy. Which means, you know, kind of a lukewarm way to describe it. You didn't say, “Find countries with businesses that our values aligned?”. Is that because you think I can't find countries that our values aligned? Or, I can't bet on that because - and therefore we shouldn't even try? Or is it - Really, we should find countries or suppliers that our values align, but maybe we have to work hard to get there. But, you know, that'll take decades.

Jon Pelson                                      

Now, that's a good correction you're making there. And, actually, it's a much more accurate way of describing it. It's not just that you can trust, say, the Finns or the Swedes to not try to, you know, exfiltrate data against our wishes from their networks they've installed. But, the point that you're making is a great one. Their fundamental values are less offensive to us. If we find ourselves, as a result of an abuse from our network vendor, being subject to the Finnish desires and whims in the world. And, you know, they're pushing us towards eating lutefisk or something, it's much better than if it's China. I would be drinking Aquavit, sure. China, if we get pushed towards Chinese CCP values, because of the presence of their networks, that's much worse than if we are, call it when you want, abused or taken advantage of by European vendors. You don't want any of them to do it. But if there is - if the US is using these networks, for intelligence gathering, it's less worrisome, because there's not a moral equivalence. 

Michael Eisenberg 

When House Speaker McCarthy was in Israel and speaking in the Knesset, the parliament here, it was a heartwarming and actually fantastic, I thought, speech. He spent two sentences, I would say, warning the Israeli Knesset about cooperation with China and Chinese investments in Israeli infrastructure, and Chinese acquisition or investment in Israeli technology companies. If you were the Chief of Staff of Speaker McCarthy, what would you tell Israel about that? Number one. And, number two is: Why do you think, despite what the US is clearly warning countries in the Middle East, and I include Israel and the UAE, that they're still hedging their bets on China right now? 

Jon Pelson                                       

Yeah, well, there's a great allure to China. You have cheap stuff, good equipment, well supported, and you might not be able to get that from alternatives. But, what McCarthy's staff should, and from what I understand, probably did share with their counterparts in Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, is that this is not business. You think you're in a business transaction with China to buy equipment, everything there is geopolitical, in origin and intent. And, people say, “Oh, we're playing checkers, they're playing chess”, that's a bad description. We're playing chess, or checkers, or go or whatever. And they're zeroing in their mortars to take out our positions. That's how different it is. When they buy a company, they're not doing it for the return. They're doing it for the authority and the power and leverage you're going to have over a strategic entity, in this case, Israel. 

Michael Eisenberg 

By the way, would you say that about all Chinese entrepreneurs? Or, just ones where the Chinese government decides they have to be involved? Or, you think it's all just one giant Industrial Technology complex?

Jon Pelson                                         

China's involved in every company. Everyone, if you're big, you've got the big, on-site CCP office. And, I've spoken to the consultants who say “We would advise Huawei or whoever, here's what you need to do in that market”. And the business executives say, “Okay, fine, I'll go down the hall and get this approved”. And, he said, “We'd walked down the hall, there'd be a guy in an office with a picture of Mao on the wall. And, he didn't understand anything about business, but he was the guy who got to say yea or nay”. And, if you're a smaller entrepreneur, they may not have that office there. But, they see what happened to Jack Ma, the richest, most innovative successful entrepreneur in the country, maybe in the world. And, he made one speech questioning the approach to regulating digital banking. And, he's lucky they didn't cut his head off. They just banished him and ended him and they spent between half a trillion and trillion dollars to send that message canceling his IPO. And, with all the ramifications of what they did to him, every entrepreneur knows what awaits them if they don't play the game. 

Michael Eisenberg 

I want to read this to you and then get your response to it. So, over the last few years, China's kind of coming early into small deals in Israel. Later buying and controlling stake, often at exorbitant prices that entrepreneurs can't reject. They bought electric power stations from Israel Electric Corporation to China Harbor, they paid half a billion dollars, more than twice the other bidders. Israeli government officials estimate that, in Israel alone, Chinese corporations have invested in or accessed projects worth nearly $15 billion. In the last 15 years, Chinese companies purchased or won tenders on its Tnuva, Israel's largest dairy producer - they own it now, the Chinese, by the way. They dug the Carmel tunnels. They built the Ashdod and Haifa seaports and parts - it's now been stopped - of the Tel Aviv Light Rail. They tried to buy a bank and insurance company but those didn't materialize because of the government stopping it. How do you react to that?

Jon Pelson                                           

Well, you ask why is China buying these? Let me ask you a question. Why did China buy Grindr? I don't know if you know that. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah, Grindr. The Gay Lesbian app,

Jon Pelson                                             

Gay and Lesbian dating app. Why do you suppose they bought that? The CEO, the Chinese CEO is against gay marriage and didn't approve of the -

Michael Eisenberg 

A life-saving compromise. A lot of people like that, I would bet.

Jon Pelson                                               

They've got a lot of photographs of every closeted Republican congressman or executive or whatever. And, you know, they were finally forced to sell it back. But, they've got three years of every transaction. And, you know, it's on file and has been loaded into the AI systems. Why would they do that? It didn't make economic sense. Why did they buy these Israeli companies? Some of them may have been profitable in a wise purchase. But that's gravy. That's irrelevant to why this is happening. It's all strategic. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Before we wrap up with the, kind of, final questions, I want to ask two questions. In your view, how important is religion or religious basis at the, kind of, baseline of society, in order to keep society on moral tracks?

Jon Pelson                                                

Well, to kind of get back to that earlier discussion. You can be nonreligious, agnostic, or atheistic, and lead a very moral, proper, positive life. And, I don't know that there's any distinction between those who are and aren't, as far as whether they're good and moral and honest people. Societally, though, as a culture. When there's this idea of something greater, this is just in my opinion, anything greater than what you're looking at than what's right in front of you, it does create this deep-rooted obligation to do the right thing. And, this is one of those things where there's cultural values that I - People say, “Oh, this is nonsense. This is stupid. Why would you do this?” You're right. It is nonsense. This is stupid. Why do you have to do that? But, when everyone does that, somehow society seems to thrive and have a better environment. And so, I think that idea of this supreme “other” being that has a presence and sees what is happening, leads to better behavior and, I think, better societies. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Do you have religious practice in your life? 

Jon Pelson                                                 

I'm Jewish, my wife is Catholic. We raised our kids with religion, which consisted of whatever the best local house of worship was near us, who had the best preacher, pastor, or whatever it was, we would take them. And, we thought it was important for them to have some kind of a, not just spiritual, but a religious upbringing. And, they're off on their own. You know, I have a son who goes to Chabad Friday nights at his college, and was confirmed and baptized. So, he's got a pretty good range. And, I think he just likes the free wine that they provide. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Friday night Kiddush! Gotta drink the wine. What does telecom look like in 10 to 20 years? Like, play this movie forward for me. Where are we going to end up with telecom infrastructure, given where we're at right now?

Jon Pelson                                                  

I think there's some big, big changes, it's hardly a bold statement to make. But, in writing Wireless Wars, I got to interview a guy named Marty Cooper, and I actually met him recently. He invented the cell phone, you know, 70 years ago, 60 years ago, and he's 94, I think, right now. And, one of these guys sharp as a tac, you'd peg him at about 70 years old right now, if you didn't know better. And he said, “Sure, Internet of Things, that's all well and good. We need to look to the next generation where it'll be the Internet of People”. Just connect, not things to things, connect people to people. And I think what you will have, and this is not science fiction leap, I think you're already seeing it, is whatever you're thinking, whatever you're doing, will be communicated, transparently and meaningfully, to whoever you want it to be. Maybe some people you don't want it to be. And, there'll be a great efficiency gain. And, there'll be cultural and societal changes that this drives. I do think there's going to be profound improvements in network security and privacy. As I'm talking to companies, now, that have technology that looks to be unbreakable, mathematically, theoretically unbreakable. So, even quantum computing won't be able to hack it. And, we were worried, what does this mean for the world? And, I think one of the things that means is that there's going to be a personal liberty and freedom that arises from this, that you can communicate without worrying about it being intercepted and eavesdropped on. I think that'll be a great advancement. 

Michael Eisenberg 

So it'll be outside the current telecom infrastructure. 

Jon Pelson                                                  

It'll be riding on top of it, but literally unbreakable, even by the worst, most malevolent authorities who have their hands on things. 

Michael Eisenberg 

For what it's worth, we have a stealth investment in a company that, you know, kind of communicates from your brain to somebody else's. So, I hope you're right about that. I like the internet of people to people. I hope they're a little nicer to each other, when it's just people to people, than would talk on social networks.

Jon Pelson                                                    

Yeah, me too. And, maybe there’ll be some accountability too. You know, I've not been a big fan of Twitter. It's not a polite place. 

Michael Eisenberg 

I actually do like Twitter, by the way. It's not a polite place, because I learned a lot on there from people. I had Russ Roberts on here. And we were talking about that. But, I am a giant believer in meeting people face-to-face. My partner and I were sitting, talking, on Tuesday last week. And, he told me that it's hard to get people to come to board meetings in-person anymore. I mean, get your butt on the damn plane. That's the job in venture capital, and that should be our job, as people, you've got to feel people in the flesh. And, I'm sure we're not in the same studio, because that kind of belies what I just said right now. But, you got to get on a plane!. But, you and I met in person, by the way, in the Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, and this podcast would not have come about, had both of us not traveled to this meet-up at the Senate, on the US and China. And, I think we got to get people face-to-face because, to your point, there's more shame and less divisiveness in these face-to-face reactions, you get to really know people.

Jon Pelson                                                     

Humans are social creatures and pack animals. And, that's deep, deep in the DNA. You can't fix that with Zoom or any other technology. You have to physically be there to have the full human, interactive experience. I'm a big believer in that. 

Michael Eisenberg 

All right, so I'm going to ask you a few wrap-up questions. What motivates you to get out of bed every morning and kind of what's your morning ritual?

Jon Pelson                                                       

Yeah, so, what motivates me every day, now - really, this is the best time in my life - I'm helping inform and educate and drive American policymakers and businesses about this important issue with the China threat. And that is, boy, I can't tell you how happy I am doing that. Morning ritual is just, my wife and I go to the gym, about a mile away, we start every day with an hour workout. Her workout’s a lot more rigorous than mine. But you know, I put on the headphones, I listen to your book. Which is actually good to work out too. I find it's - you can think about it and when you're on the bike, and so on, and I've been enjoying that almost - 

Michael Eisenberg 

I hope it doesn't slow your pace down.

Jon Pelson                                                        

No, it doesn't. And that's how I get every day going now, it's a good way to start. 

Michael Eisenberg 

All right. What, what makes you human? Or, what makes you vulnerable?

Jon Pelson                                                          

Me personally? 

Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah.

Jon Pelson                                                          

I think I would have made a lousy soldier, because I do take things very much to heart. I am not good with human suffering and tragedy, and I find it very hard to ignore myself when I am up close and personal with that. I don't even think - even being a police officer, where you deal with human tragedy all the time. That'd be tough for me. That's definitely something I would say I’m ultra-sensitive to. 

Michael Eisenberg 

In 100 years when they write the biography of Jon Pelson, what's the title gonna be?

Jon Pelson                                                            

The biography of Jon Pelson in 100 years. That's a tough one. I had enough trouble coming up with the title to my own book, which was originally going to call it Compromised. And then, some guy named Peter Strzok at the FBI came out with his book named Compromised. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah, it has other connotations.

Jon Pelson                                                             

Exactly. I think my biography, hopefully, is going to say, here's a regular working stiff, who at 55 - This is maybe the long subtitle that you have to put on every book now, right? Actually made a difference in the way things were looked at, globally. That’s going to be a really small font to get that all in there. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah, I don't know what the title of the book is going to be, but having met you and read your book, I'll add a couple of things. I think one is, it should be called Brave Insights. For what it's worth, because I thought it was super insightful. And again, I come back to the same thing, which is that I've been reading about China - I've never invested in China for a lot of the reasons outlined in your book. But, I thought the way you strung together the narrative. And, it’s kind of daunting, as I flip, page after page, in your book saying, “Oh, my, this is premeditated. And, so well thought through”. This is three dimensional chess being played by China. And, we need to develop - and this is kind of, you know, something I want to encourage you to do - we need to develop a new cadre of CEOs and global diplomats, who are well tuned-in to how you play 3D Chess. Because, it's a complex world and, who understand technology a lot better than so many of our elected officials seem to do that. Man, if you spent the next 25-50 years of your life doing that, I think you could make the world a different place. So, you know, thank you for your service.

Jon Pelson                                                               

Well, I appreciate that. And, as I said, I feel, while there's some modicum of risk, more than in a traditional business job, I'm so happy to be doing it. And, when I meet with these guys, I'm doing it more and more, who know when they go out there for their daily jobs, I'm literally going to be shooting at them. Those are the guys that you have to admire. So, to take, you know, this one little crumb and say, “Okay, at this stage of my career, I may tick off some people. Hopefully they'll just, you know, up the offer to bribe me and I get to publish a new epilogue for my next book”. 

Michael Eisenberg 

Amazing. Well, Jon, thanks for joining. And to all our listeners, if you enjoyed the podcast, please rate us five stars on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. And, by the way, you can also find the podcast on YouTube, where you can see Jon and my smiling faces, as well, and not just listen while you're running on the treadmill. So, thanks for joining us, Jon. Thanks for being with me. 

Jon Pelson                                                               

I really love doing this Michael

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