China Challenge

Keith Krach: Every shred of evidence I’ve seen about the nature of the virus and how it originated points to level 4 Wuhan lab. And I have not seen a shred of evidence that supports animal to human transmission. And usually where that’s occurred, they discover that within four to six months it’s now been 18 months. I’m no virologist. I’m a businessman, a public servant. But, you know, if I was to assess the probability of a lab leak, I’d put it at 99 percent. And I think all roads lead to the Wuhan lab. And I’d say emperor Xi has no clothes. I think the onus is on Xi to prove it didn’t come from the lab. It’s been 18 months. And he talks about the last century of shame. If he has a shred of evidence, he should show it now. Otherwise, this will be a true century of shame and history is going to judge. So this is the cover up of the century.

I’m not afraid to speak out. My family’s already been sanctioned. This small town of Ohio boy is proud to be number three on dictator Xi’s sanction list. And I got this because I served my country. I got results. Not because of what I said, but because I succeeded in building a clean network that defeated the Chinese Communist Party’s master plan for 5G communications. And you know, the other thing I’ll say, too, is that I love the Chinese people. I’m proud to fight for the one point two billion Chinese that are not members of the elite Chinese Communist Party. That especially goes for citizens in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, whose freedoms have been eviscerated. They experience the brutality of dictator Xi. And, of course, the people in Taiwan were forced to live in fear every day just to preserve those freedoms.

Maria, this is a very important bill, and we started this bill back with our global economic security strategy about a year and a half ago. We approached Senator Schumer and Senator Young. So this is one hundred billion dollars that goes to research for the ten critical national security sectors. We need this because I can tell you, as a guy who’s run multiple public Silicon Valley companies, you’re on that 90 day shot clock. These are really important technologies. This is not a bill about, you know, spending. This is about national security. Economic security is national security. And I think that’s the key thing for everybody to remember. And it’s also important to remember that the Frontier Act does not pick winners and losers, the American worker is the winner and general secretary Xi is the loser.

The reason why I came into government as Under Secretary of State was because of what I saw in China. I had been going there since nineteen eighty one. My last trip when I was running DocuSign, I saw things that were unbelievable. And I came back from that Maria, and I thought to myself, you know, the guys with the best technology, with the war. I went out to Washington. I knew no one. And then I was asked to serve the country. And I could tell you that, the citizens of the world now are waking up to this malign regime and understanding, their three Cs doctrine of coercion, cooption and concealment. And I think that the virus, the pandemic, is a perfect example of it. But from a technology standpoint, you know, I grew up welding in my dad’s factory, you know, five person machine shop in Ohio. And I saw the weapons of mass production. I was the vice president of General Motors. I saw when you build a plant in China, you’re not just giving them the blueprints. They’re taking your process engineering. You’re teaching them how to do it. I’ve had my intellectual property stolen out of when I was running the Ariba. So these guys aren’t messing around.

You know, I gathered a dinner in my home in San Francisco a year ago last January. I brought Secretary Pompeo out for four days. I hosted him. And we had 36 of the top CEOs. It was a safe environment. I had them all go around the room and tell their China horror stories. At the end of it, I stood up and I said, look, the Chinese Communist Party is not just real and urgent threat to democracy. It’s a real and urgent threat to your companies because they don’t want to just compete. They want to put you out of business. And just like we say out here in Silicon Valley, corporate responsibility is social responsibility. It’s also national security.