00:00General Flynn, you previously served as the commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific.
00:05Looking at the Indo-Pacific over the past few years, do you think the region in general is becoming more
00:11tense military-wise?
00:13I don't know if I would consider it tense.
00:15I think what I would say is that each of the countries here, to include the United States, are reacting
00:22to what I've described as the incremental, insidious, and irresponsible behavior of the Communist Chinese Party.
00:33Not the Chinese people, but the Communist Chinese Party and its leadership.
00:38So that's what I think is actually happening here.
00:41We know after the Trump-Xi summit, President Donald Trump has said that U.S. arms arms to Taiwan could
00:50be used as a good bargaining chip with China.
00:53What's the message sent here?
00:55You know, a lot of people can go out and debate, you know, what did he mean by this? What
01:00did he mean by that?
01:01The fact of the matter is, is that the Taiwan Relations Act is still the policy, and that we already
01:09have almost $20 billion of military sales that are in the queue and in the works right now.
01:16Other packages can be debated with our Congress, but the fact of the matter is, I think both Taiwan is
01:23showing that they're making a commitment to their military, and the United States is duly making a commitment to the
01:32security of Taiwan.
01:33Based on your observations so far, where do you see the biggest gaps between Taiwan's current defense policies, and what
01:41could actually be required in a real conflict scenario?
01:46I think Taiwan leaders and some of their units would be well served to be exposed to other exercises and
01:54other training that's going on in the region.
01:57Even if you're just sending a small cell to an exercise, there's a lot to be gained from that.
02:03The second thing is, we are learning a lot back in the United States about being able to generate scale
02:12with your commercial industry from what we're seeing in the Middle East and in Europe.
02:19And so I think the partnership between the commercial sector, the military defense sector, and the government is really important
02:29about being able to create conditions where you can scale and build and store commodities.
02:40Not just military commodities, but things like energy, fuel, water, medical supplies, ammunition, of course.
02:52All of these things are going to be really, really important.
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