U.S. Representative Neal Dunn (R) represents the 2nd congressional district of Florida and is a member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. He served in the Army as a surgeon.
Federal Newswire:
What have been your top priorities in Congress?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
I have to say when I first ran I didn't expect to become so involved with China. We're thinking a lot about healthcare, the military, and economy. There were economic problems back then when we first came. We thought we'd get the military and the economy pretty fixed up. We didn't do such a great job with healthcare, but we had a good try at it.
Now, it's all war. If you're not fighting in Ukraine, you're in the Indo Pacific. I have some background that actually helps here. I was stationed in the Pacific by the Army for a number of years and have traveled widely in the Pacific Rim. I know Oceana better than most Americans, so I get a lot of exposure there.
We've been in an economic competition with China for a long time and you'd have to say they're way ahead on points.
Federal Newswire:
Has China been waging economic warfare against us?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
They've been excelling [at it], and by the way, we are allowing them to load the deck for themselves and we're pretty guilty of giving away a lot of advantages on the front end.
Federal Newswire:
Should America undo its manufacturing reliance on China?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
The world needs us to do that, not just we need to do it. It's not just America and self-preservation. The free world really has set themselves up for a lot of trouble, a lot of dependencies on a country that isn't an ally.
Federal Newswire:
What is your perspective as a doctor on COVID?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
The “doc” caucus has more than doubled in size since I arrived, and I think it's more than doubled in influence too. We work together and we advise a lot of leadership on bills, and they seem to listen to us at this point. I think that that's become especially so with the pandemic.
Let me say that all of the doctors in Congress know that the response to the pandemic was dysfunctional. We can say good things about Operation Warp Speed and streamlining the government bureaucracy, and it deserves to be said because the government bureaucracy needed to be streamlined. But a lot of the things that came out of the playbook were absolutely contrary to everything we're taught in medical school about epidemics.
You do not lock down the population. You never use mandates because it undermines the public's confidence in public health. So there were a lot of things that we got wrong. It was Epidemic 101.
We could have paid better attention to both diagnostics and therapeutics. Interestingly, I worked in the Army biological warfare headquarters in the laboratories before it was cool. It was two years at the front end of my career. So before I was a surgeon, I was a bench scientist doing biological warfare research.
Federal Newswire:
Do you think common sense in the scientific method is a casualty of this experience?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
[Yes and] how does that happen? I have never seen any disease politicized the way SARS COV2 infection was. I was appalled to see this become a political battle.
Federal Newswire:
Do you think that Beijing is most responsible for politicizing this?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
They did it.
Federal Newswire:
Has this impacted the World Health Organization?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
They are under the spell of [China]. In spite of the fact that America provides the vast majority of the money that supports the World Health Organization, they danced to China's tune and a lot of what they put out as information was just plain lies.
Federal Newswire:
How is it possible that China spends less than us but it exerts so much influence on these organizations?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Absolutely true. China spends a lot of money bribing people, specifically parliamentarians and bureaucrats in government. That seems to be a very efficient way to deploy your resources..
Federal Newswire:
What lessons should we learn from Covid?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
We want to learn. There are some things that we need to take home, and the very first lesson, as everybody says, is we can never do this again. We shut down the economy and the world. We probably did on the order of $100 trillion worth of damage to the world's economy with these stupid lockdowns. Unbelievable damage.
On top of that, we lost. Depending on who you believe, and according to the last number from WHO, 15 million people [died due] to the disease itself and probably another 10 or 15 [milllion] to other diseases that weren't paid attention to–cancer and late diagnosis of cancer. It's still going on.
We haven't seen the end of the side effects of these lockdowns and missed medical care. It's a disaster and we should never do this again. That's the first message.
Then, let's go back and have an honest scientific debate. There's no such thing as scientific consensus. We don't believe in that stuff. Science is always [reliant on] skeptics. We test and we test and we retest.
They're still talking about it as if the general theory of relativity is true. It seems to be, but that's something we can argue about and we ought to be able to argue about coronavirus and proper treatments and proper diagnosis. These things are all fair game and we should not be censoring people, censoring doctors. We've seen doctors who've had actions taken against their license, their board certification, just because they literally are espousing factual information about coronavirus that doesn't jive with the World Health Organization line.
We [have] to be able to have free speech. We should be able to think rationally. Universities should become a place of open, honest debate and disagreement. But we don't have to turn this into censoring.
Federal Newswire:
Did China realize this authoritarian play would affect America like this?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Very authoritarian, that's right.
[As in], “You're a bad thinker, you're a wrong thinker. You must be censored. You can't work here anymore. You can't shop here.”
Really it's a thought-police thing. It's very, very authoritarian and it is communist playbook.
Federal Newswire:
Is it possible to measure the lasting impact this will have on our culture?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Very difficult thing to measure. I wish that we’d had appropriate diagnostics, which really did exist–we just didn't use them. To this day, [certain medications are] not covered by CMS. Of course, there are some beneficial therapeutics that you can take off the shelf, which we knew, and we had evidence that there were metabolic pathways in the SARS-CoV-2.
You remember the reason we called it SARS-CoV-2 is because there was a SARS-CoV-1, 20 years before. We learned some things about SARS back then. If you dust off that knowledge, you can get some pretty good ideas about what you should do for SARS-CoV-2.
Federal Newswire:
Did China willfully let it run out into the world?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Yes.
Federal Newswire:
Does China have the same attitude about fentanyl outside their borders?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
It's worth saying fentanyl is illegal in China. It's a death sentence if you get caught possessing or selling fentanyl in China to somebody else.
So they have their feelings about it, but they don't mind making the fentanyl and sending it to America via the cartels across our southern border, which is where we get 95-plus percent of all of it. So they're amused at seeing us use fentanyl, and seeing the cartels make money selling us fentanyl, and Americans dying.
Fentanyl overdose is the number-one cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45. This is a true problem. This is not like the drug problems that you and I saw for the last 50 years growing up. This isn't heroin, this isn't marijuana, this isn't all those other things. Just in the last three, four years, it's become the overwhelming cause of drug overdose deaths; and it's coming from China and it's coming through the cartels.
Federal Newswire:
Medically, what is fentanyl?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
This is, indeed, a terrible drug and it tends to be very addictive, which is why we used it only in terminal patients. In terms of its potency, the typical dose for a cancer patient would be 25 micrograms. That's 25 millionths of a gram. That's an unbelievably small dose.
Federal Newswire:
Is it possible to see that?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
You cannot. That's invisibly small, but it obviously gets diluted in medicinal form. We put it on topically. We just put it on as a skin patch. 25 micrograms, think about that, and it goes through the skin and it gives better pain relief than morphine, for goodness sake. This is a powerful drug and it is a good drug when used like that.
However, what really happens with the fentanyl that we see sold on the streets is it's an analog of fentanyl. So they've changed the chemical composition in a minor way so that chemically, it's not fentanyl. So then it becomes legal to sell. It's a chemical, some other chemical like but not exactly equal to fentanyl. So you have to write a law for each drug. No, you don't. Well, actually, we can schedule the whole class of fentanyl-related substances and make them all illegal just to get a feeling for how potent this stuff is.
One gram, just one gram of fentanyl will reliably kill a hundred people, addicts, people who are used to it, a gram. So a kilogram, a thousand grams will kill a hundred thousand people. That's amazing.
[You have to] remember, you don't have to eat it. You don't have to shoot it up. You can just touch it. You don't have to smoke it.
Every single legal drug, street drug you can think of, marijuana, upper, downer, all these drugs that you buy in the street can be laced with fentanyl just to give them a little boost. But that's how people get killed. So every single time you are using a street drug, you're playing Russian roulette with your life.
The same bag of marijuana that you smoked out of yesterday, maybe there's a stronger concentration of fentanyl-related substance in the other part of that bag. Smoke it tomorrow, die.
Federal Newswire:
Do you think this is one of the greatest attacks on American communities ever?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Ever.
Federal Newswire:
Why would China help the Mexican cartels with this?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
We're their customers, but that's not their principal view of us. They view us as their antagonist, as their competition. Or dare I say, enemy? Anything bad that happens in America makes Xi Jinping's day a little bit better. Hence the fentanyl. He doesn't care how many Americans drop dead from fentanyl. In fact, he finds that amusing.
The cartels are his tool. The cartels are really fighting against America. They want the money and boy do they make money.
If you look at every human that comes to the border, 200,000 or…it's probably 300,000, but let's just say 200,000. Multiply that times $8,000 each for the cartels allowing them to get there. Run that out over a year. You've got like $15 billion a year and that's not taxable profit. They're not paying taxes on that. That's just cash. That's before they've sold one microgram of fentanyl.
Add the drugs on top of that, they are rich beyond dreams. These cartels are making billions, tens of billions of dollars on human trafficking and drug trafficking. China is enjoying the fact that they're doing it to America. They're not doing it to China, by the way. A cartel tries to do that in China, just see what happens.
Federal Newswire:
Every other entity on the planet that engages in this kind of behavior, Americans will have a visceral negative reaction. They’re profiting in fentanyl, money laundering, and human trafficking, why haven’t our government leaders declared them to be the enemies of our country?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
This is the biggest human trafficking operation in the history of the world. You don't like slavery? Well, these people are enslaved. When they come to America, they still owe the cartels. They owe money. There's people back home that are under threat. They're still working for the cartels. If you really cared about those people that are coming to the border, you'd stop making a business model for the cartels to bring them to the border, get them across, and by the way, carry drugs with them when they come.
Federal Newswire:
Is fentanyl and the China connection on the radar of the 118th Congress?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Absolutely.
Federal Newswire:
What have you and your colleagues done to address the problem?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
One of the things that we do, I have round tables back home. I'm in Florida, and so I have a great group of sheriffs in 16 counties, and they all tell me, fentanyl's a problem. We have worked together over the course of the last year to develop a response to this. We can't just sit around and complain about it. We [have] got to do something new and different about fentanyl and the problem of overdosing.
Yes, you want to put some Narcan in all the police cars and yeah, now it's an over the counter drug. That's amazing because it's a pretty tricky drug to use properly, but dangerous too. But the alternative is unacceptable.
The key thing I thought was interesting is the police insisted we have to start teaching kids by second grade. These are seven year old kids–not high schoolers–about drugs, about not taking any street drugs, and that every single dose [could have fentanyl].
Remember when we were kids, it was, don't take candy from strangers. Now it's don't take candy from strangers because they might kill you. Every piece of candy can [contain fentanyl].
They are making fentanyl-related substances in gummy bears. This is a poison. That's the term to use. It's a poison. It's not a drug, it's a poison.
To that point, I have a bill that I've run last year and this year to make fentanyl-related substances, the whole class, weapons of mass destruction. Now, that sounds like hyperbole. No, a weapon of mass destruction is a term of legal art that actually makes it easier to police fentanyl internationally. It makes much more resources available domestically to pursue fentanyl. Making it a weapon of mass destruction on top of making it illegal, these are useful maneuvers for the government.
Federal Newswire:
What are some of the policy tools that are opened up once you get that kind of a designation?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
The cooperation with foreign governments is much more when you're dealing with weapons of mass destruction. When we say weapon of mass destruction we're thinking nuclear weapons, sarin gas, biological weapons. Your worst nightmares come out, but that's what fentanyl is. It's a poison just like that. When you have something that one kilogram will kill a hundred thousand people, good God, that's dangerous, that is a poison. You can't do that with bleach, and that's a poison.
Federal Newswire:
Is the China Select Committee focused on this?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Yeah very much so. I was sorry to miss the last field hearing they did in California, but we have some more coming up this month and we'll be doing that. Some of it's in America and some of it's with our allies, and we are trying to make this a more resilient alliance, a free world alliance. So yeah, we're going to actually be working on this.
The China Select Committee is very busy. It also has kind of a military overtone, and the reason for that is obvious, because China is threatening to invade Taiwan and that's a very real threat to everybody in the free world.
Not only is China our biggest trading partner, they're Europe's biggest trading partner, and Australia's and Japan's. They're manufacturing now…for the world, and we need to start extracting ourselves from so much dependence on them.
I think of pharmaceuticals, I'll bet you do too, because if they turn off the pharmaceuticals overnight, we're in trouble. They make probably 80% of our generic pharmaceuticals. Either the actual end product or some substrate in the process comes from China.
Federal Newswire:
Is there a danger they could use this leverage against us?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
So we're talking about cutting it off. Suppose they just put the fentanyl in the drugs that we're buying from them over there in China. It'll kill the first wave of people pretty quick.
We wargame against that sort of thing all the time.
Federal Newswire:
Under Xi Jinping, are we dealing with a different kind of communist China?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
You are looking at a real inflection point in history here. His attitude is quite different. He has, of course, installed himself in a role that looks like it's going to be for life. So this is, the autocrat takes over and changes the country. We [war] gamed a lot. We spent a lot of time when I was in the Army thinking about China and biological warfare because they have never been signatories to the international laws about biological warfare.
Federal Newswire:
Would they like to be free to play with this?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
They are free to play with it, and they do it and we know it. We read their published data on biological warfare agents.
Federal Newswire:
Is Xi Jinping decoupling from the West?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Yes, they're not very dependent on us.
Federal Newswire:
Are you familiar with the emerging doctrine of “reciprocal privilege?” Basically, what they don't allow us to do there, we shouldn't allow them to do here. So, if we can't buy agricultural land in China, then they shouldn't be able to buy ag land in the United States.
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Especially ag land right next to a military base. We saw that in my hometown. They tried to buy a paper mill that had a deep water port. It was part of the paper mill and it was one mile directly across the bay from a big air force base, and they were the first people to come in and they put a big bid on that paper mill, a little company called Nine Dragons. You'd thought they'd been more subtle.
To the city fathers’ credit, it wasn't about price. They said, “no China.” It was never a question that they were going to get that port. That was just ruled out.
Federal Newswire:
What do you think of this notion of reciprocity?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
I think it's great.
Federal Newswire:
How can we better advocate this as a cardinal principle?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
Cardinal principal of international trade? Sure, let's be allies. Let's have a fair, free market here. I won't put tariffs on you. You won't put tariffs on me. If you do, then I'm going to put countervailing dumping duties on you and that's the way free trade works. We could do that. We've done smart trade deals before. Why don't we do smart trade deals again?
Federal Newswire:
When the World Trade Organization came into being there was a big debate about whether China should be let in and what would happen if we bring China in?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
[If they’ll] become like us.
Federal Newswire:
Should we be willing to accept that this is not happening?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
You have to be willing to change your mind. I think it was a good urge at the time, but let's be honest, it didn't work out very well. They sure as heck shouldn't deserve emerging nation status to this day.
Federal Newswire:
Have you heard of these fake Chinese police stations they have established in America?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
I visited one.
Federal Newswire:
Can you tell us about that experience? Americans can't get away with this in China.
Dr. Neal Dunn:
[The] Chinese can't get away with that…in America. So they actually had government officials, law enforcement officials open up their office in New York City in Chinatown; and they were operating out of there to harass, surveil, and follow both Chinese national citizens in America– a lot of them students–but also American citizens of Chinese background.
They're threatening their families back home in China and they're threatening all kinds of things. This is genuine terror. They have actually caused–we think the number is in the tens of thousands–Chinese to go back to China against their will because of lies, harassment, and bullying. This is transnational repression, which is just intolerable. They are literally acting like police in our country, and they are police officials back home.
Federal Newswire:
What are the national security concerns with a platform and technology like TikTok?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
There are national security concerns with this, undoubtedly. We know that they have actually used [the] TikTok platform to follow individual American government officials and to extract from that intelligence. They know this person, what they do, where they are, and where they repeatedly go. That's spying right there. So that's against the law.
We know they've done it. It's been proven, it's ironclad. They've done a lot of nefarious things like that.
One of the things they do is they use misinformation and this sort of click-bait thing to poison kids. Now, I went through that as a grandfather. My son found his sons playing on TikTok, and this is several years ago…but it was long before we were talking about it in Congress. He put his foot down, there's going to be no TikTok in his house. It was really bad.
He convinced me. He talked to me about it and I said, I didn't know, but I've never ever actually looked at it. But he convinced me it was bad news.
Now we know from hearing many other countries around the world looking at this and banning it. States in America are banning it. They darn sure shouldn't be on any government phones.
I think that TikTok has behaved so badly, I think they're actually going to be out. We had the CEO of TikTok in front of our hearing for five hours. Interestingly a very bipartisan attack on TikTok. I think their days are numbered.
Federal Newswire:
If people want to track your work and these topics, where should they go to learn more?
Dr. Neal Dunn:
I have a Facebook page. It's Congressman Neal Dunn, MD. Also Twitter account @DrNealDunnFL2.
