U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher represents Wisconsin's 8th congressional district. He is the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
Federal Newswire:
What made you decide to run for Congress?
Mike Gallagher:
Well, I moved back to Wisconsin to work on a presidential campaign. Our governor, Scott Walker ran for president.
Each campaign usually has a national security guy, so I was the national security advisor on that campaign. Quite honestly, I was not planning on anything. That was my first introduction to politics, but I was the nerdy policy guy you lock in a room and don't let talk [about] politics. When that ended, I moved back to Green Bay, which is where I'm from.
I was embarking on a private sector career when my congressman unexpectedly retired. Some people reached out to me to see if I was interested in running.
I was very hesitant because I had no experience. I didn't know how to fundraise. I had never been in front of a camera.
But here I was, writing op-eds, criticizing the direction of US foreign policy. So I felt like this was an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. I also felt, as a younger guy running for office–I was 32 at the time–it'd be good to have a little bit of a generational shift. Then, factor in all the other things about service to [my] country, feeling like I owed a debt to that country, and my family.
Federal Newswire:
What was it like jumping from an undergraduate at Princeton into the Marine Corps and then serving in Iraq?
Mike Gallagher:
Princeton had a decent Army ROTC program. [It] didn't have Naval ROTC on campus so I went to Officer Candidate School for the Marine Corps. I think for the two years before me, nobody had gone. My class had three people. It was very small.
[When] you go to Princeton, usually you [then] go get a job on Wall Street, and then you make money. Military service at the time was not viewed as an option. I fell into it because I don't come from a military family, but I became fascinated with the Middle East.
I was in college when we invaded Iraq. I started to become interested in terrorist groups and their targeting methods. Then I changed my major during junior year to start studying Arabic. So the more I went down that intellectual rabbit hole, I started to think, "What does one do with these skills?" I thought, "I don't want to go into academia." I had no interest in going to Wall Street. I thought, "What about the military?"
The more I researched the military, the Marine Corps jumped out as this amazing challenge. It was a tough adjustment. I played sports growing up, but I had never really lifted weights. So even the physical aspect, I had to get myself ready for the physical fitness test.
I think a lot of my peers at Princeton were thinking, "What are you doing? Why would you do this? Why are you volunteering to go to Iraq right now?" But for me, I just loved the idea of the mental, physical, and leadership challenge. I loved the idea of being able to explore this intellectual interest I had in the Middle East, apply my language and regional skills in a very real way…and of being able to serve my country. It just had this romantic appeal to me.
Even though I didn't come from a military family, or even though none of my peers were really making the same decision, without a doubt, it was the best decision I made with my life.
Federal Newswire:
You have a background in military intelligence. How does that inform your approach to our intelligence services and their influence on public policy?
Mike Gallagher:
Well, I'd say two things. One is something I call the lance corporal test. I'd say to my Marines, we’re at the tip of the spear, we were in a very tactical environment in Western Iraq.
We were the human intelligence unit attached to an infantry battalion. We were in charge of doing interrogations and source operations in order to help the infantry battalion get bad guys and keep the Marines safe. It was our job to know the area and what was happening better than anyone else.
Even then, with a granular level understanding of tribal, economic, and terrorist dynamics, it was very difficult to make sense of what was going on.
I just remember we spent five months on a deployment looking for a high value individual and we just couldn't find him. Finally, through a mixture of good source work, smart Marines, and a little bit of luck, we found this guy. But it was just so murky.
I always think when people in DC make these very confident pronouncements or these high confidence intelligence assessments coming out of the DNI or CIA, I just try and apply the lance corporal test. I'm ask, "How does this filter down to the lance corporal who's actually at the tip of the spear, who's got to implement some of these policies?"
My experience with intelligence is that it's rarely certain. Really, things get exciting when you start combining multiple forms of intelligence, HUMINT, SIGINT, and imagery intelligence, which means you just need people to work together and check their egos at the door.
The other thing I'd say is that I know we've had a lot of scandals in our intelligence community in recent years. Quite honestly, a lot of those shocked me. As someone who came from the intelligence community, I'd never thought we'd see what we saw with Russiagate [or] FISA Court abuses.
I do think, however, you have to make a distinction between the leadership in some of these organizations and the rank and file. By and large, I think we have rank and file that just want to serve their country. They want to do a difficult job well. I don't think in some instances they're being served well by their leadership at present.
Federal Newswire:
If your approach to politics is to think of policy goals, is it right to say that elections have consequences because of their impact on policy?
Mike Gallagher:
You're right. That's my fundamental orientation. I came at this as a policy nerd.
I was a Marine. Then I used the GI Bill to study policy a little bit more. Then I did policy on the Hill as a staffer. However...it really started when working on the Walker campaign.
I went in thinking, "Oh, I do policy. I don't do politics." Foreign policy must be removed from politics. I get that as the ideal. But in practice, for your policy to have life and legs, it needs to be politically viable. These things have to work together. You can't entirely divorce policy.
Federal Newswire:
Is that the beauty of the system?
Mike Gallagher:
Exactly. Certainly, the essence of the system is not allowing unelected policy mandarins to control everything. The people are in charge. They elect representatives to make decisions. We have to do robust oversight of the executive branch. We've fallen away from that.
In some ways, though, I maintain my orientation as policy-first. I've gained a respect for the unique interplay of politics and policy and how important it is for me–as someone who is naturally introverted and probably more comfortable writing a white paper–to get out there and sell policy. I think it’s important in formats that people can understand, whether it's on TV, podcast, or radio.
That's something I've really had to get comfortable with. I still have to work at it every day.
Federal Newswire:
You’re the Chairman of the newly created Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party. Why was this committee formed and why does it matter?
Mike Gallagher:
Speaker McCarthy, to his credit, had the idea for creating the committee in order to ... create a sense of urgency around deterring aggression from the Chinese Communist Party before it's too late. On a practical level too, it's not a polite tennis match.
I think it's an existential competition over what life will look like over the next hundred years, if not longer, because it's a whole-of-society competition. The legislation and policy naturally transcend committee jurisdictions. No one committee is in charge of China, so you need a committee like ours to play a coordinating function.
I think about us on the committee having two roles, or two missions that the Speaker has given us. One is to explain the “why” to our colleagues and the American people. Why does it matter? Why should someone in Northeast Wisconsin or Washington DC care about the threat posed by the CCP?
Two, to be the policy coordinator, accelerator, and incubator, so that good ideas don't die in a divided Congress. The speaker has one entity he can point to and say, "I want to do X on China. Let's get it done. Let's work through all the complex inner committee egos to get stuff done in this Congress." That's what we're trying to do, elevate the issue and get stuff done, even in divided government.
Federal Newswire:
Where are we going to be a century from now relating to China?
Mike Gallagher:
I think about it as a short-term sprint and a long-term marathon, to borrow Pillsbury's very powerful metaphor.
The short-term sprint is deterring war over Taiwan in the next five years. I think things are heading in a bad direction. I think we've entered the window of maximum danger. I'm happy to talk more about that, but I think our primary goal is to deter war in the next five years. That's the short-term sprint. If you don't win that sprint, it's as if you don't even qualify for the marathon.
Over the long term, I think about what life would look like in a world dominated by China, where we're a secondary power. I don't think they have in mind this balance of power between us. I think they have in mind global dominance.
Just look at what's happening inside of China. Look at what's happening in Xinjiang. They're perfecting a model of techno-totalitarian control that they want to export, not only throughout the rest of China, but increasingly abroad.
This is a world in which you can't say what you think for fear of angering your overlords. It's a world in which various minority groups are attacked for the sake of Han supremacy. It's a world in which every aspect of your daily life is monitored by the party. It's Orwell on steroids.
I think that is the alternate model of government that we're up against here, as opposed to the free society that we're trying to protect and pass on to the next generation.
Federal Newswire:
What are your thoughts on declaring Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations?
Mike Gallagher:
The first and most obvious thing to say is the border is in total chaos right now. When I was in uniform still, I did this fellowship where I floated around different parts of the intelligence community. I spent a brief period of time at DEA, and went down to the Southern Border in El Paso, and got to survey what was happening there. At the time, it seemed like a massive problem. Compared to the present day, this is just total chaos.
What makes it frustrating is that this is a fixable problem. We have the technology. We potentially could have the manpower. What we lack is the willpower to secure the Southern Border. Perhaps you never get 100% operational control of the Southern Border, but you can get darn-near close, is my belief. If we reverse the disastrous open border policy that we have right now. That's point one.
Point two, I've actually supported legislation in the past to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations. The intent being to unlock the full suite of tools we have in the federal government to get at these organizations, which are wreaking utter havoc on American society.
The third point…and as Chairman of the Select Committee on China, is [addressing] this unholy alliance between the drug cartels and the Chinese entities that are supplying all the precursor chemicals for fentanyl.
It used to be the case that a lot of this stuff was coming directly from China through the mail, by the way, into America. But now they're sending the precursors to Mexico. They'll produce very lethal fentanyl pills. They'll traffic it across the Southern Border.
This is killing 80,000 Americans a year. Think about it as a reverse opium war on America, with the caveat that we don't know how intentional it is. I don't have evidence to say that Xi Jinping declared this war, but 80,000 Americans a year are dying at the hands of the drug cartels, and they're getting the precursor chemicals from China. That is a massive problem for American society.
We should use every tool at our disposal to get control of our Southern Border and protect American lives.
Federal Newswire:
Does Secretary Mayorkas not understand the problem?
Mike Gallagher:
I've struggled with this intellectually because it just seems so obvious to me. It's obvious to me that we don't want people to come here illegally. For people who want to come here legally, we should make it easy and transparent, I mean, based on the needs of our economy.
In terms of the leadership, or lack thereof, in the Democratic Party…maybe the most charitable interpretation is they feel like America has a humanitarian responsibility to accept all of these economic migrants who are pretending to be asylees. But the perversity of that is that a lot of legitimate asylees get crowded out in the process.
Largely, what we're seeing are economic migrants across the Southern Border. We have a totally messed up asylum process. I guess more cynical interpretations are out there, but I don't know. I think people like Mayorkas are being driven by fear of the progressive base, and the progressive base wants open borders. I don't know why they want that, but that's what they want. I mean, they don't want to have a wall.
That's my unsophisticated analysis of the whole thing. But if your concerns are humanitarian, it actually exacerbates the humanitarian crisis.
What we're seeing at the Southern Border is horrific in terms of people dying in trucks. We're basically empowering the coyotes and the drug cartels to commit horrific human rights abuses. It's actually more humane to have a tough border policy, an orderly asylum process, and transparent legal immigration.
Federal Newswire:
How does financial technology play into the operations of the cartels?
Mike Gallagher:
One thing I would say we do a poor job of, I would say the intelligence community in general, is incorporating financial analysis into traditional intelligence analysis. I still think we have relatively unsophisticated methods for tracking this complex relationship between the cartels, precursor suppliers, and money launderers. That is a very poorly understood phenomenon.
One thing I'm interested in doing in my role on the House Intelligence Committee is conducting basic oversight; pushing the intelligence community to better understand how the money is flowing across borders, how chemical suppliers get paid by drug cartels, how a drug cartel gets paid. I think, as the old saying goes, follow the money and you'll learn a lot.
I think there's been a lot of debate, too, about the role of cryptocurrency. Could it potentially be used for illicit purposes? My view is there's got to be a way to apply basic anti-money laundering–know-your-customer rules–to cryptocurrency going forward. It's not my area of expertise. I'm not on the Financial Services Committee, but there are also national security uses for cryptocurrency going forward.
You saw a lot of people leaving Ukraine use cryptocurrency to move value across borders. But by and large–and I say this with love for the rank and file in the Intelligence community that are working a hard problem– it's just not the case that your average intelligence analyst understands financial policy or how money works in the way that people on Wall Street do.
