South America in Competition Conference: Bonus Episode 1

Hi, I'm Doug Livermore, the IWI Director of Engagement, as well as the Vice President of Special Operations Association of America. And I'm Omar Ahmad Badami, the Director of IWI's Wargaming Division. This month, we're excited to provide two bonus episodes of the irregular warfare podcast based on conversations held at an event IWI coordinated in partnership with the Special Operations Association of America. The South America Competition Conference brought together over 250 researchers, practitioners, and members of industry for two days at the Karasoft headquarters in the DC area. The first day included panel discussions on irregular warfare challenges in the South America region, and the second day included a detailed war game with participation from a range of stakeholders planned by the IWI Wargaming Division. For these bonus episodes, IWI podcast host Jackie Yunta recorded seven conversations with conference participants following their panel presentations. The participants include researchers and members of industry, each asked to dig into challenges related to how the United States must address competition in South America. This first bonus episode includes four short conversations summarizing insights from the conference panels. First, Will Walker from One Brief examines whether PRC strategy in South America is coercive or benign. Next, Adam Pfeif, the CEO of Sencour, discusses Chinese debt trap diplomacy. Third, Leland Lazarus, an academic from FIU, discusses how China's economic statecraft is another form of irregular warfare. And lastly, Dr. Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American Studies at the US Army War College provides a broad overview of China's strategy in South America. We hope you enjoy these conversations from diverse stakeholders in the irregular warfare community. If you have an idea for an event or war game IWI should run, want to get involved in future events, or want to provide material support so IWI can continue these important conversations, please visit www.irregularwarfare.org and reach out to the team. Again, that is www.irregularwarfare.org. Lastly, before we start the conversations, we want to give a big thank you to the team at Parasoc for generously providing their space for the conference and support for the event, and to the Special Operations Association of America for partnering with IWI to make this event possible for the community. Without further ado, here is today's bonus episode of the irregular warfare podcast. Enjoy the conversation. We are recapping our first panel, which is covering threats to the homeland, moderated by Will Walker of One Brief. Will, thank you for taking the time today to not only moderate, but to sit with us and recap afterwards. We covered a lot, so I'm curious, what are your insights and takeaways that you've walked away from the panel today? Thank you so much, and thanks for having me. I think the diverse responses and the different domains that were covered throughout the panel so seamlessly actually speaks about the comprehensive challenge that is strategic competition in South America. The panelists did a pretty amazing job of pulling the threads into different domains, whether it be maritime strategy, whether it be infrastructure development or digital comms, what does it mean for UAV drones? It's a big talk in other areas of responsibilities or geographic AORs, but what does it mean for South America? Then, of course, the strategic intent behind it all, how do you tie it all together? I think one of the comments that I found really interesting, and this was spoke about Adam Fy, I asked him PRC influence in South America. There's a lot going on. There's developments in ports. There's digital infrastructure. There's what he called debt diplomacy, which I thought was very clever. How do we know that some of this influence or activity isn't just routine, just rudimentary, a nation trying to expand its markets, expand its influence across the world, which is what you'd expect from a global or a regional power? Then how do we know if it's coercive? It's directly intended to support the PRC grant strategy. It's directly intended to influence the regional partners in a way that's nested in that strategy. It's directly intended to undermine the United States. How do you know? His response was really enlightening because he said, he's like, well, all activity is coercive. The question actually is, when does it become coercive? Meaning that all activity by the PRC in South America, it may be nascent, but eventually it has the potential to transcend into strategic and coercive. It really reframes the way that you look at the problem in South America because there are voices out there that opine that PRC influence in some ways in South America is benign. I think if we really look at the PRC grant strategy and what their intent is, their revisionist countries and their intent is to undermine the Western liberal order, we have to assume that every state owned enterprise that's developing ports, that's running infrastructure that's working in digital comms, either already is a support in the PRC strategy or certainly has the potential to see pretty quickly down the road. That's great. I know this becomes increasingly complicated because of a lack of trip bars and indicators. Can you talk us through some of those points that touched on today? I'm curious if you have additional thoughts that you want to offer on how the US and allies can work with partners in the region to identify, educate and react to become more resilient? That's a great question. It goes back to this idea of holo government approach or I guess in the scenario, it would be a whole of hemisphere approach to the problem. A holo government approach can be a buzzword sometimes that's thrown around and you've got to think about what that means, but it's essentially that we're leveraging our economic power, we're leveraging our private industry development or technological development, medical advances, we're leveraging our influence and certainly through diplomacy, military cooperation and intelligence. We're finding a way to synthesize that influence and that data intake in a way that helps monitor the PRC's holo government approach and their influence in South America. We have to understand that the PRC, I certainly wouldn't say that they're in fact pretty over by their intentions and some of their activity, but it is true that a lot of their influence in South America is just through normal port infrastructure development. It could be as simple as that, which in the United States private company could be doing that elsewhere in the world with very good and positive intentions. But the PRC does attack everything with a holo government approach and they do that unified under Shishi Ping's strategy and the idea of a private company from China is actually a misnomer. It's not a private company at the end of the day. It has a reporting requirement and obedience requirement to the PRC government writ large. So if you're going to counter a PRC holo government approach, which we know is what they're doing in South America and in other geographic areas of responsibility, there has to be a whole of government in conjunction with our regional partners. This goes back to a whole of Western atmosphere approach to how we monitor, identify, detect, what does that data mean and then what is our counter response. The point that I'd like to bring up is holo government approach for the United States can be hard sometimes and it's hard for a really good reason in that we have Western liberal ideals. We have this idea of civil rights, corporate freedom, individual freedom that we hold dear and that we protect and it's the antithesis of how the PRC sees their revisionist world order. But because of that, working in unison as a holo government in conjunction with our partners can be a lot more slow and it can be a lot more messy sometimes. But we have to wake up to the idea that South America is not a test bed for PRC malign influence. It is a active zone of PRC malign influence. And the risk that we have here is that the Western hemisphere is no longer a safe zone and many can argue that it's no longer a safe zone today, but it is a place of revisionist power, specifically the PRC influence into our own backyard. So I think if we take that threat more seriously and what it means for our regional partners, what it means for defense of the U.S. homeland, unifying our levers of power and influence, holo government, by, with and through our regional partners, not only just their governments, but also with their industry, also with their civil populace. That is the sort of American grand strategy, if you will, to use an academic term that I think we should take seriously as we look at South America. Yeah, I know. Those are great points. And I think the democratic backside that we've seen fostered in other regions of the world and there's the same concern in South America, and that's something worth addressing through partnerships, right? Like this is built through that resilience. Overall, if you could touch on kind of your biggest takeaway today. Yeah, I think my biggest takeaway, you know, we spent a lot of time on the panel talking about the maritime domain. And I think this is an important focus point. It's certainly not the only one, and you don't want to get treated by the Tawawa and just focus on one major line of effort. But the maritime domain in South America touches on a lot of topics that were brought up on the panel today. It talks about ports of entry. It talks about digital infrastructure development. It talks about military cooperation. It talks about IUU fishing that's being used by the PRC through their naval fleets, whether those be private, para government or full government. And that is, I think, is an oversized leverage of influence by the PRC. And I think one thing that Hunter brought up that was alarming to me, frankly, is really the PRC's emphasis on their merchant marine fleet and their shipbuilding. And I think he suggested that in many ways, their industrial marine fleet, at least their emphasis and the resources that are being applied behind that, has surpassed and advanced the United States. It's certainly since after the Cold War, I think we can say that's true. And Hunter hit on a couple of times where we took our merchant marine fleet very seriously, our industrial shipbuilding fleet very seriously. And you notice that the times that he brought up were times of global war. And I think the United States, just through our role in the world, certainly since the close of World War II and the circa 1947 that sort of evolved, that certainly after the end of the Cold War, the United States role in the United States has helped us with some maturation to where I don't think that we need to be reactive anymore. I don't think we need to wait for global catastrophe or global war to be the catalyst that says, hey, we should build more industrial ships, more merchant marine. We should do more to counter the PRC, maritime influence, rather than being South America or in the South China Sea. There's probably more that we can do in order to contain, prevent, or deter catastrophe. And so I think even if you zoom out and you don't just look at maritime, but if you look at, we were talking a lot about drones during the panel and it was pretty interesting because we talked about how drones in most ways are tactical revolutions and in less ways are technological revolutions. But what are the levers in technological revolution? What are the levers in investing into our industrial base as it pertains to shipbuilding in this example? But what are the things that we can do to overmatch the ability of the PRC or at least deter them to where they don't have an outsize influence on our South American partners? Yeah, that's great. Well, well, thank you so much for taking the time today to not only moderate, excellent contributions to this panel, but also to take time and recap with us and provide this for the audience that wasn't able to make it today. Yeah, I certainly enjoyed it. Can we do it again? Awesome. Thank you. All right, thanks. So today we have Adam Fyfe here. He is CEO of Senncorb and was featured on our panel for the first panel today that covered threats to the homeland. So I want to go into pulling some insights out from the panel. Something that you brought to the table that I thought was really interesting was touching on what you describe as debt trap diplomacy. Can you give us a breakdown of what that is for some of the listeners who weren't able to come out to the conference today? Yeah, simply put, it's really the mechanism that China uses that's the central part of their playbook from an economic warfare perspective in that they offer very sizable, very cheap loans to countries to really massively accelerate their ability to build out their critical infrastructure. So again, I'm sure all the others have talked about this, but it's your telco, it's your ports, your roads, everything you need to be a functional 21st century economy. And they provide those loans very quickly. A lot of times within six months, they'll have you fully financed to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. A big part of that is the fact that they want you to utilize Chinese companies, Chinese technology and Chinese intermediaries to roll out all that critical infrastructure. And they have very forgiving payment terms, et cetera. But over time, what ends up happening, and this really is starting to play out right now in Africa and South America is kind of on the front end of where Africa was about a decade ago. What they do is they, as soon as you go in a direction, they don't want you to go. And a lot of times that's in policy and that's in rhetoric. That's really what matters more than almost anything else is they will begin to change the terms of that loan on you. And it becomes a cudgel that they use to steer a country in a direction that they need them to go so that they can effectively implement their own foreign policy within the region. Okay, so do you think the issue is a lack of clear indicators or trip buyers? I mean, from the US perspective, why do you think there's such a gap in awareness across South America, both in government circles and private sector? The challenge you've got is that the United States is a general rule, it's not going to move at the same speed as the PRC. They won't make that type of foreign aid, those types of investments in dollars available at the speed, at the interest rate, and with the repayment terms that the PRC will. They place all sorts of conditions on the dollars that they give. And the PRC upfront minimizes those conditions. Whereas we're wholly transparent when we say, okay, here's, if you borrow the money, this is what we expect in return. The PRC says, basis is here's your money. We're not going to ask for much. And then over time, they start to extract. So that's why the term debt trap diplomacy, you become so dependent on them. And the US, just as a general rule, does not operate that way from a foreign policy perspective. So I think where my question's leading is more so for an awareness perspective and to build resilience for South America, Central America, just Latin at large, to be more resilient to these types of threats, especially when it comes to economic warfare. Do you see that taking shape in some fashion that may be more successful than what we've seen to date? So I'll use an example from the Pacific, from the Philippines, Subic Bay. This is something that we've got to figure out a replicate in mass in South America. And what ended up happening is Subic Bay privately held one of the largest, think of it basically as a very large ship repair yard that the United States Navy utilizes very heavily to maintain and sustain their own fleet forward. The owners of Subic Bay were going to sell to a very large Chinese conglomerate. And it was flagged as being from a national security perspective, a huge threat that if the Chinese got ahold of this, then they could basically hold the half of the US naval fleet hostage. And so what ended up happening was there was basically a public-private partnership where Cerberus Capital stepped up to the table and purchased Subic Bay, so a very large US private equity fund, purchased it because, one, it made sense economically, and two, it was what it was in the best interest of US national security. And they benefit from the long-term contracts, et cetera, that come with it, but they were made aware of it via the US national security kind of infrastructure. And something along those lines is going to be the really, I think, the only feasible approach for South America. There's huge economic advantages to what's going on down there right now. They're massive. And we should be very actively tapping into the critical minerals and resources that they make available. The 3.5 billion that China just put into Peru, the large port they have there in Lima, I mean, it cuts their transportation time and access to those critical minerals by, I think, drives its own cost down by 32%. And the US should be replicating that. But again, the difference is there's a very, very tight connection between government and industry on the Chinese side. We lack that in a major way. And part of that is inherent to our system, but part of that also, I think, is a flaw in our system. And we've got to figure out how to correct that to allow us to move at the speed we need to move to be able to counteract what the Chinese are currently doing. How can the US commercial sector lean in, if at all? I mean, from your perspective, is there some space for it? There's always space for it. The question becomes, and we see this everywhere. This isn't just South America. When you're working with the developing world, everybody wants US technology. They do. They want US technology. But the price point at which we are able to provide that technology far exceeds what the Chinese alternative is. There are multiple reasons for that. They do legitimately build it cheaper. There are subsidies that exist on the Chinese side that allow them to build, produce, and deploy that. And so I think much of what has to happen is there has to be a version of much more effective messaging on the policy side with our partners in South America that basically help them better understand the threats that they're facing and the vulnerabilities that they are opening themselves up to by bringing in those types of Chinese technology. And then we as US producers have got to proactively find ways to deliver capabilities at a much lower rate. And so some of it is going to be a blend of, and again, the challenge you have here is that a lot of these technology companies are equity backed. They've got investors they have to satisfy. They have shareholders they have to satisfy, which then mandates a certain return. So it has to be a blend of almost good actors that are willing to step up, diminish some of their margins, and drive towards delivering a capability that enables our partners in South America to counteract and be in a position to honestly just be less vulnerable to everything that China has going on. Okay, great. So how important is it in your view for firms to think carefully about the risks of operating or partnering in regions like South America or Africa, where so much of the critical infrastructure is now built or controlled by China? Lack of awareness, yes. But also a sense of there's a lot of concern. Because when you plug in your piece of technology, your US piece of technology into a Chinese infrastructure, that becomes immediately vulnerable. And so a lot of what we spend our time on as a company is in focusing on how do you harden those communications, and how do you make it so that critical infrastructure, even if you're operating off a Huawei 5G network, how do you ensure that everything that the hardware that you're using, that proprietary US hardware, for example, how do you ensure that it's not vulnerable to the Huawei 5G network? And so there has to be real push. And again, I'll call it awareness. Every company from a pure capitalism standpoint is going to see opportunity everywhere. It's how do you translate that opportunity into actual revenue? And so it has to address what those needs are. And for us, a lot of that is in hardening those communications, ensuring that US technology can be deployed and integrated off the backbone of a Huawei 5G network while still securing all of the hardware, whatever software systems you have running from that. So it becomes a very delicate balancing act. Yeah, it's a complicated problem. And I think awareness, like you said, is that's kind of the name of the game, especially in the private sector where I don't know if it's a balance between unawareness versus turning a blind eye because of return on investment, operational. Well, I think it's safe to say that South America is like the forgotten stepchild in a lot of ways. From a foreign policy perspective, they've rarely been viewed as a critical partner. I mean, as a country, the United States tends to take it for granted and just assume a version of loyalty just because we're geographically in the same region. I think that approach is going to come back and it's going to come back to haunt us sooner rather than later. Yeah, I agree with that. Any last takeaways from the panel or any other thoughts that you wanted to share that maybe didn't surface in the panel today that you were hoping to discuss? Yeah, I mean, one of the audience members spent a lot of time talking about the electronic warfare aspect of it. And I think that's kind of the forgotten nexus that we're not seeing. We've got a project that we've worked with the Marine Corps and the focus of that project was to help them figure out how do they operate forward, like in the first island chain of the Pacific, assuming that everything from the second island chain back goes down, which you can do through all sorts of high altitude EMPs. There's all different ways that are relatively easy to knock the conus side of communications offline. Right. And so this project we worked, we were with the Marine Corps, we basically built these mobile skiffs and think of them as fair day cages, right, that harden all electronics from the electronic warfare perspective. It eliminates almost completely the vulnerability to counter majors. And the reason they had us do that is because there is a very active recognition within the Department of Defense, kind of writ large, that large portions of our own critical infrastructure are at significant risk of being taken offline in a world of electronic warfare. And South America's vulnerability to that is extreme. And so again, that's a big part of what we focused on us and organization, special operations command specifically has engaged us to provide for them, think of them as data centers that are forward. Fit within these mobile skiffs so that they can operate independent of any local communications infrastructure, whether that be in the South American AOR, the Pacific AOR, and they're working very carefully to do that. I mean, very closely with us and with the joint services to pull that off. And I would hope that special operations command specifically and others would figure out and help provide similar types of technologies from the hardening of the communication side to our partners. And there are a number of ways to deliver those types of things that are very cost effective way. And what we found is that our biggest advocate needs to be the US government. And that partnership between the US government industry is critical in delivering, quite frankly, what are low cost solutions to our partners. So that as we look ahead, as we looked at where warfare is at now where it is headed, we're prepared from a deterrence perspective to actually be able to counteract anything that the adversary in this particular case, China's will be able to do and do in very short order. Very good. That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming out being on this panel today and on behalf of IWI and SOA. Thanks for sitting down with us and talking today. Thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it. Today, we have Leland Lazarus from Lazarus Consulting with us. He was part of the second panel today, which covered economic statecraft and supply chains. So Leland, thanks for sitting down with us today and doing this post panel summary. So I'm interested to hear any insights that you had from the panel today and takeaways from the discussion. Yeah. First and foremost, thanks for having me. I think that the big issue that we've talked about was really the ways in which China's economic statecraft can be another form of irregular warfare. There's a Chinese saying, Bujian, our true enjubil, which translates to win without really fighting a shot or fighting. And what we see globally, but I think with specific examples in Latin America and the Caribbean, is other ways in which Chinese entities, whether it be private sector companies, NATO enterprises, are creating these dependencies for Latin American and Caribbean countries that later on down the line, those Latin American and Caribbean countries might not necessarily know that they are now 100% reliant on China for certain economic things, supply chains. And that reliance can be weaponized later on down the line if, or forbid, Latin American country makes a decision that Beijing is not agreeing to. And so we also talked about ways in which Latin American and Caribbean countries could potentially protect themselves from now, learning some lessons from other regions around the world, Africa, Southeast Asia, in order to make sure that doesn't happen. Interesting. So we definitely can see from examining what's happening and has happened in Africa, a lot of synergy between what's going on in South America. I think that's fair to assess. So can you talk us through what are some of these indicators and how is this starting to materialize and take shape? Are there more similarities than not? Are there other differences that are perhaps new trends that we need to be aware of? Yeah, I think that I used to work in the U.S. Southern Command. And when I was there, we consistently said that Africa today is what Latin America and the Caribbean is going to be in five to 10 years with regard to China's engagement in the region. And you're actually seeing a lot of that play out in terms of massive investments in ports that could be used for dual purpose. You're seeing that in the expansion of different space facilities. The Chinese have a space facility in Namibia. That's very similar to the space research facility that's in Argentina and that they wanted to build in Chile. You are seeing an expansion of not just Belt and Road Initiative projects, but also other projects associated with its three other global initiatives, which is the Global Security Initiative, Global Development Initiative, Global Civilization Initiative. And I think that it behooves certain Latin American and Caribbean policymakers to proactively reach out to their African partners or African counterparts now in order to get some lesson learned, to share best practices, to avoid some of the pitfalls that they might have had in years past. Yeah. And it's so one of the common themes I'd say today is partnership, right? Like everyone keeps hitting on this concept that the U.S. should be leaning in fortifying partnerships in South America to build resilience against Chinese interest in South America at large, but also to ensure democratic success, ensure stability in the region. So what are you thinking in terms of best practices that U.S. could be taking for steps forward on how to fortify those partnerships? Yeah. One of the things that I mentioned in the panel was that sometimes the U.S. isn't really the best messenger when it comes to warning our Latin American and Caribbean partners about the national security concerns around China's economic engagement. And I'll say that for two reasons. One is there seems to be a difference in the way that our Latin American and Caribbean partners interpret or define economic security and national security in the way that we define it, right? Right. And from our perspective, we consistently warn our partners don't get too over-reliant on China because that could hinder your national security or sovereignty down the line. It restricts your movement, if you will. But from a lot of Latin American and Caribbean countries perspective, basic infrastructure is national security, right? If you have a farmer out in a rural area in Argentina or Trinidad and Tobago or El Salvador, and you need to get your crop to a port for export to the global market, you need to have a paved road, you need to have an expanded port. And who are the companies doing that? Chinese Sado Enterprises for the most part, right? And it's frustrating on the part of some of our Latin American and Caribbean partners when they have a US or the EU saying, don't take money, don't do business with China when they're saying, wait a minute, this is actually providing the infrastructure that we need in order to build up our economic security and therefore our national security, right? That's one reason. The other reason is history. There is still an undercurrent in Latin America and the Caribbean of the very ugly history that the US had in this region, right? And so when the US warns about a big country employing economic coercion and military, potential military security might in order to pressure them to do things, they say, well, that sounds really similar to the United States in the 19th and 20th century under the Monroe doctrine, right? And so it comes off as hypocritical. I suggested that probably a better way to deal with this is to really empower local voices who are seeing the everyday abuses on the part of Chinese companies and then empower those local voices to say that to their countrymen. I'm thinking of investigative journalists. There are great investigative journalists who have written about the potential environmental concerns around maybe Chinese mining or Chinese infrastructure project or the issues of labor laws or bringing mostly Chinese labor and not employing local labor or the potential dual use concerns of a port or electricity grid. Peru is a perfect example. Recent acquisition of two Chinese companies made recent acquisitions, which basically has given them 100% control over Lima's electricity grid, right? It would make much more sense to provide training and funding to elevate local voices so that they're talking to their own countrymen to say, you know what, we didn't like it when the gringos came and forced us to do things we didn't want to do and imperiled our sovereignty. We certainly don't want that to happen in the 21st century under the Chinese. Yeah, that's a great, those are great points. And I think it really speaks to a regular warfare, right? It speaks to our capability of understanding that this is a spectrum, something that we don't have this well rounded definition for a reason because it's going to continue to evolve and the US needs to remain agile and leverage its resources. You get the civilian populace to understand the threats without being, leading the charge in a sense by being there on the ground necessarily and you're fortifying them and creating that stabilization by their own right. I want to touch quickly on illicit funding, these transnational organizations, criminal organizations, the other side of the coin when it comes to economic warfare. So a lot of what you discussed already is more traditional funding and maybe coercive state funding. But what about this other angle in these financial networks and how do those come into play? Yeah, first and foremost, folks want to learn a little bit more about the comprehensive nature of China's economic statecraft, the good, the bad and the ugly. I just published an article with Guido Torres just this morning about dependence or development, right? Rethinking China's economic statecraft in Latin America and the Caribbean. It really goes in a detailed way. All the levers that China has on economic standpoint, both as you mentioned, the overt and the illicit way. We've seen over the past few years arise in Chinese criminal elements operating all around the world, mostly in money laundering. The Financial Times has reported on this, Wall Street Journal, other reputable news agencies that the Chinese money laundering organizations have become the key money launderers for some of the world's biggest cartels and criminal enterprises. Think the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nova Generación in Mexico, Andrangada in Italy, some elements in Southeast Asia, certainly wildlife trafficking elements in Africa and increasingly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the past two years now, I've actually written extensively about this happening in this region. And there was two reports. One was called the triad snakeheads and flying money. The rise of the Chinese criminal underworld in Latin America. And then a second follow on report called from Fujian to Flushing, Chinese criminal networks in the Americas and beyond. And it was a way to systematically look at this phenomenon that's happening, that again, other news networks have reported on from one angle or another, but to actually look at it holistically and to say, man, these are trends that are happening Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and in Latin America and the Caribbean. And it's not just money laundering. It's also human smuggling. It is wildlife trafficking, where there's been a huge demand for illegal wildlife in order to satiate the demand for traditional Chinese medicine in China. And a lot of those wildlife have been depleted either in China or in China is near abroad. And so these illegal networks are going further and further beyond their shores in order to try to get shark fins and Jaguar skins and the totoaba fish bladders and all these other exotic animals and fish and wildlife in order to satiate the demand for Chinese criminal, sorry, Chinese traditional medicine over there. And these nodes, these networks who are in various cities in countries around Latin America and the Caribbean, they are also engaged in the same things I was mentioning before, the wildlife trafficking, the drug smuggling, money laundering and all these other networks. It's all connected. Yeah, that's really interesting. It is. And it speaks to the globalization of these criminal networks and really how these transnational organizations are transcending a number of different theaters. So what's going on in South America may be impacting Indo-Pacop like we discussed in the first panel today. So really interesting stuff. Any final thoughts for takeaways from the panel today? Anything that you maybe left on the table you want to discuss now or you were hoping to discuss? The million dollar question about the globalization of Chinese criminal networks is to what extent do these criminal networks have specific ties to the CCP? And I have not seen in open source or open reporting any direct ties. There are instances where some of these criminal gangsters or elements within a certain country that person or that group also tends to be prominent members in the local Chinese diaspora and Chinese business community in those countries. And then those business associations are tied to United Front or outreach from the Chinese embassy. And so you see some instances where some of these criminal actors get protection in some way from the Chinese embassy. Either they get a letter from the Chinese embassy saying this person is a consular liaison or this person is a prominent leader in the Chinese business community and therefore any sort of prosecutions against him or that entity is discrimination. And we also need to be thinking about the gray networks that exist within China itself and how that is being exported out in the world. Within China we know that there's a very symbiotic relationship between the state and the private sector. And we also know that there's also been some various instances of connections between the state and criminal networks like the triads and so on and so forth. And so you're seeing again elsewhere in the world, the Washington Post did a great report on this a couple weeks ago about a man named Wan Kuikui whose code name is Broken Tooth. He's the leader of the 14K triads, but he's also the leader of the Hongmen Brotherhood Association which facilitates Belt and Road Initiative projects in Southeast Asia. And so this man is, I think, an example and kind of a microcosm of what we're seeing in other areas where he has cool hats, right? He's illicit activities, but he's also a fixer and connector of connecting a state or enterprises to invest in different projects throughout Southeast Asia. And he also has cells in Uganda and South Africa. When I read that report as somebody who focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean, I said, oh my goodness, you can take out the word Southeast Asia and you can put in any Latin American and Caribbean country and you see some of the same patterns happening. And so I guess the ultimate question is why are we seeing these trends? Are they just these trends happening organically? Are these criminal networks just learning from each other organically? Or is there some form of coordination either overtly or covertly? That's a million dollar question. That's really interesting stuff. Like is it a successful business model for these guys or is it, there was something deeper there. It's really interesting. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and being part of the panel today on behalf of IWI and SOA. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are seated here today with Dr. Evan Ellis, who is the Professor of Latin American Studies at the US Henry War College. So diving right in, I'm curious if there were takeaways from the discussion in the panel that you thought were especially insightful. And if you could just get an overview of some of those points for the listeners who couldn't make it out today to the conference. Absolutely. I think the two main issues from my perspective, looking at the Chinese activities in Latin America, is number one, understanding the nature of the Chinese challenge and understanding the strategy so that you can most effectively diagnose how to respond, especially from a DOD standpoint. With respect to the challenge itself, for me, it's understanding that there is a peacetime dimension and there's a wartime dimension and that peacetime dimension has to do with the advance that comes from China's commercial engagement, but the way in which that commercial engagement can create imperatives for the United States in terms of influence that undermine the Latin American partners and a willingness to work with the United States in some cases that open up doors for the Chinese and also can impact the economic characteristics of the region that can impact specific economic sectors such as the locking up critical minerals, the supply chains, but also can dovetail into other areas. For example, the people-to-people diplomacy, which creates opportunities for influence and intelligence activities and things like that. Well, that's really interesting. Thank you for that. If you could build on that to give our listeners an idea of how the Chinese are likely to leverage this global footprint against the US, can you put that into context for us? One consideration is what could China as a potentially adversary in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific do in the Western Hemisphere because it's highly unlikely that China would, in the style of Iraq and the first Gulf War, just wait for us to come over to the Indo-Pacific with our power projection capability. Indeed, China would most likely take advantage of all of the relationships and commercial presence that they could to be able to hold the US homeland at risk, to be able to impede the US deployment, sustain the flows and other things. To that end, even without any direct Chinese alliance commitments in a military sense, what you do see is that commercial presence in the relationships gives the Chinese opportunities, for example, to be able to leverage their position in the Caribbean or in Mexico and in other places to be able to potentially observe and perhaps even disrupt some of the flows that would come out of a place like the Norfolk in time of conflict or Savanna or even critical sensitive facilities like Jacksonville or Jet of South and Enki West. Of course, you add to that the presence in places like Cuba or maybe as many as four facilities, potential other facilities such as very large embassy operations in Antigua and Barbuda. But then as you move farther south, the combination of activities that you have through their presence in Panama, through the relationships that they have through the technical knowledge, not necessarily just through Hutchison, but through others to be able to shut down the Panama Canal and the way in which that would impact our ability to get heavy forces over and sustainment and munitions over to the Indo-Pacific to support that war effort there. And of course, it even extends from there to opportunities that the Chinese have through their space operations, through access to Western Hemisphere space, not only from the big facility they operate in Bahá'u'lláh agrio Neuquén, but also in San Juan, a big radio telescope there, facilities in Bolivia and Venezuela, facilities that they're thinking about building in the Atacama Desert in Chile in a place called Ventaronas, in the new access that they have to the Alcantara launch facility in Brazil due to a project there. So some of the ways in which that could come together to give the Chinese access to Western Hemisphere space that frankly could be used to locate for later blinding or destroying US satellites in ways that could create major problems for us in the Indo-Pacific fight and major problems for space command. And so really the understanding that you have impacts with respect to Chinese influence and economic issues and other things in time of peace, but then you also have, even without alliance agreements, some very real risks that opens up if we ever had to fight a war against the PRC in the Indo-Pacific. Okay, that's great. So for our listeners who maybe don't pay as close attention to South America, in a lot of ways this has been a blind spot for folks because it's been seemingly stable. So for those who are less dialed in, it sounds as if China really has the hooks in, right? How do we begin to contend to protect the homeland, but also from a global perspective, like you've addressed in both the panel and today here on PostPanel Insights? It's a great point and it's a great question. And certainly I think one of the things in terms of just understanding what the nature of the challenge is to generally his points was very important. And one of the things that he said that I also tried to reinforce and I thought was really key and that oftentimes we get wrong is understanding the relationship between the ways in which things like organized crime and terrorism and things like that and other pressures on Latin American democracies can undercut the functionality and institutional performance of our democratic partners. And indeed in some cases even lead to the election of anti-US actors or even authoritarian states that begin with democratic processes. And oftentimes we say, that's just about politics. But at the end of the day, there's a relationship between that and China in that when Latin American counterparts don't successfully engage, whether it's the terrorist challenges of groups like the FARC or the ELN or the narcotrafficking challenges that corrupt institutions, you do get institutional failures, you do get populism. And at the end of the day, that populism leads to leaders, whether it's somebody like Ahugo Chavez or Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela or somebody who's a more just transitional figure like Agustavo Petro in Colombia, that both takes you away from a close collaboration relationship with the United States and opens up the doors, both the economic doors and sometimes the security cooperation and political cooperation doors with a country like China. So it's understanding how helping our partners to succeed and caring about what happens even if it doesn't seem to be the threat of a immediate war that is vital for our strategic position. Because at the end of the day, we are directly connected more in Latin America than any others. Our prosperity, our security is directly linked to Latin America through the geography ties of family, ties of economic infrastructure. The question then of what do you do? And part of the problem is that because the Chinese threat in the region is not explicitly economic or explicitly military, we have really gone back and forth. And indeed, that sense that when China, when Hutchison first acquired an interest in two ports on the other side of the Panama Canal, is it a military threat or is it just business? And I think now we're beginning to realize the way in which those business threats actually go to some of our strategic military equities. But for me, very quickly, the what do you do? It's something that we've understand for a while when I was actually on the policy planning staff in the first Trump administration under Secretary of State Pompeo. Some of the things that we used for the approach then, I think in many ways, were continued by the Biden administration, although we're deporting from some of those now. So number one is not to try to force your sovereign partners to not engage with a partner economically. That is going to be counterproductive and it'll probably just drive your partner into the arms of that adversary at China or somebody else. Number two, recognize that sometimes you might not have the space to compete transactionally. And when you think of the power that a country like China has over its state-owned enterprises, its financial institutions, we will always be at a disadvantage when we try to speak heard the cat, the private sector versus sometimes the best thing that we can do is to try to shape the battle space. And then frankly, there are some areas where you want to push back because a Chinese advance is so risky and so threatening. So for example, in the digital space, I think another area is working with partners. For example, in a lot of the digital solutions in certain domains, there may not be a US company that is competitive. But for example, if you look at critical minerals, South Korea with a company like Posco maybe in the space, if you look at certain telecommunications, and Ericsson or Nokia maybe in that space. So if the real goal is, if it can't be a US company, but at the end of the day, try to work with partners to make sure that it's not a Chinese company. So if the larger strategic goal is to deny the space to the Chinese for strategic reasons, working together with the partners is vital. And anything that we do to undermine those relationships with our partners, if you're actually gives a window that China's. So at the end of the day, it and I was thinking about this, not just from a perspective of peacetime, but also thinking from a perspective of wartime. So that's an excellent overview. Did you have any additional insights? We could drive home with some additional thoughts here. So I think again, for me, one of the biggest challenges, and again, having followed this for about 22 years that we often get wrong is understanding the nature of the challenge and especially the DOD contribution to the response. And what I mean by the nature of the challenge is oftentimes from a DOD perspective, we get caught up in this, okay, is there a direct military threat now or is it just commercial? And the key thing is understanding the way in which those commercial relationships lead to influence, they lead all the people in the intelligence community concerns, they lead to a potential digital threats from digital infrastructure. And so even without direct military things, understanding the nature of that. And my big hobby horse also supporting DOD my entire career is that for me, we in the defense community are really struggling to have the right strategic concept. Because what we do oftentimes is to say, okay, we're getting the instructions from leadership, so do more in countering China. But what we end up doing is essentially do more of what we're always used to doing, just more intensively and calling it counter China. And at the end of the day, no good battlefield commander would just say, well, the enemy's out there, so I'll just throw more forces on the battlefield and some infantry and from cavalry and see what happens. At the end of the day, you have to plan around what are the effects and objectives that you want to proceed and are the forces that you're employing and the concepts appropriate to that. And for me, it's thinking about what are we trying to achieve. And so I mentioned before, you know, that when democratic partners fail, that opens up spaces for populist partners that may work with us less and with the Chinese more. So at the end of the day, I think we DOD need to do more of saying, what are the strategic effects that we're trying to achieve through the military instrument? Where do we need to shift resources? Where can we do better? Where can we do worse? And do we have the right tools? And what do we need to adjust? If we don't, if you don't have the strategic concept right, then any solution will do. And so I think that's the big struggle for DOD to be as effective as possible in its contribution to the counter China fight as part of this great power competition. Wow, that's incredible. Thank you, Dr. Ellis, for coming out today for being part of this panel, part of this discussion and contributing such comprehensive thoughts for this is really immense topic that deserves quite a bit of attention. Thank you for the opportunity. IWI and SOA, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to today's bonus episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. We hope you enjoyed hearing conversations from the panel speakers at the IWI SOA, South America and Competition Conference. If you have an idea for an event or war game, IWI should run, want to get involved in future events, or want to provide material support so IWI can continue these important conversations, please visit www.irregularwarfare.org and reach out to the team again at www.irregularwarfare.org. That concludes today's episode. We look forward to seeing you next time.