Exploring modern geopolitical offense with CrowdStrike’s Dmitri Alperovitch. Big insights.

You've been critical of America's over reliance on deterrence. What does an effective offense look like in the 21st century geopolitical arena?

Well, look, the way we won the Cold War is by following George Kennan's insight that you need to contain the Soviet Union in all realms, economically, militarily, diplomatically, to prevent their expansionism. We basically, I believe, have to do the exact same thing in Cold War II with China. We have to contain them in the economic sphere. We have to restrict the ability to, to gain an influence all over the world. This is not just an issue for the Indo Pacific. This is not just about Taiwan. Their influence is spreading in the Middle east, in Africa, in Europe, all over Latin America, even in the Caribbean. And we have to provide alternatives for countries that don't want to be in China's sphere. And this is particularly true in the Indo Pacific, where pretty much every single one of China's neighbors, whether it's maritime neighbors or those that they share a land border with, they have disputes with. Russia is the only one that they've managed to resolve that under Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. But at the end of the day, India, Philippines, Japan, obviously Taiwan, Vietnam, all these countries have conflicts with China. India recently fought a short border conflict with sticks back in 2020. Philippines, of course, deals with South China Sea issues, with Chinese encroaching on various shoals in the South China Sea that are disputed between Philippines and China on an almost weekly basis. This is a huge problem for the region in particular, but others as well that are getting pressured by China, whether it's Australia in the aftermath of COVID whether it's countries like Lithuania that have dared to build better relationships with Taiwan, they've all faced Chinese coercion. And we need to help those countries confront China and feel empowered to, to be in our corner.