Federal Newswire:

After 9/11 there was a new focus on nuclear proliferation and nations like North Korea, Iran and Syria?  Did you work on any of these issues?

Anthony Ruggiero:

…In terms of North Korea, I've worked on it since 2001, either fortunately or unfortunately. But the time you're mentioning [is] when the US discovered that North Korea had a uranium enrichment program, a covert one, early in the George W. Bush administration. 

The US had concluded a limited nuclear deal in the Clinton administration in 1994 that focused mostly on North Korea's main nuclear facility. It was focused on creating the plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon. It's eerily similar to what we're dealing with in Iran today. 

Federal Newswire:

How should our leaders deal with nations like Iran or China?

Anthony Ruggiero:

Toward the end of the Bush first term, he agreed to what's called the six-party talks that were chaired by China and included North Korea, the US, Russia, South Korea, and Japan. 

In my career, after about five years as an intel analyst, I moved into the nonproliferation bureau, right around when Bob Joseph came in and took over for John Bolton. One of the first things I did [before I even went] to my new office, I was on a plane to Beijing for a round of six party talks as part of the US delegation. 

President Bush obviously made this decision…[that it] was worth trying to freeze or cap North Korea's program with the hopes that in the future we would be able to get more. I think the flaw in that thinking, at least when it comes to North Korea, was that we were playing for what we thought we could achieve versus what was really in our best national interests. 

When it comes to China, I agree the only time I've seen China actually take action against North Korea was in the 2016-2020 timeframe. At the end of the Obama administration, they realized the error of their seven years of basically ignoring North Korea. In the first two years of the Trump administration they were not willing to go after Chinese banks, companies, and individuals. 

I think for China and for North Korea to a certain extent, they had been conditioned over those past 20 years that American presidents would always back down–Republicans and Democrats. 

It goes all the way back to the first Bush Administration. With those two Presidents, one on his way out and a new one coming in, I think that really showed China that we were serious and what we saw was that the Chinese had to face a choice. Do they want to have access to the US financial system or do they really like North Korea's nuclear weapons program and want to help it? 

Not surprisingly for those of us on this side of the argument, they chose access to the US financial system.

When we talk about Chinese banks, I've had this debate outside and inside, and my sense is that there are a lot of experts and non-experts who have these conversations. Unfortunately the debate revolves around two extremes that almost do nothing. 

Maybe you'll send a strongly worded letter to China as they did in the case of the North Korea Sanctions recently.  There is definitely a middle ground. It's been proven. 

There are multiple tools that have been used, but unfortunately we don't use those and the Chinese banks know that. The Chinese regulators and the Chinese government knows that it's part of the reason why I think you see the Chinese doing certain things. 

If we actually were using the tools…that are congressionally mandated, China's behavior would be very different than it is today.

Federal Newswire:

What are your observations on the origins of Covid-19?

Anthony Ruggiero:

Maybe it's best to start with today and go backwards. I guess I would be very disappointed by the nature of the Covid origins debate. If you look in newspapers or Youtube, not the dark parts but the reality parts, it's all focused on a single article, proximal origins and arguments back and forth among scientists. 

Somehow we've lost the focus on China's hiding of covid origins. How about we spend less time arguing over slack messages and emails that come out of FOIA [requests] and elsewhere, and spend a little bit more time talking about why is it that the Chinese lab that we're so concerned about took their virus database offline in September of 2019. 

Most people now believe that the fall or even the summer of 2019 is when Covid-19 actually started. 

The other critical question we should be asking is on the natural transmission of the zoonosis, [which] I have written about. I’ve been very clear that I believe it was a lab origin, but I'm open to being wrong and switching my view. 

Maybe we should be having the debate of “did that research actually cause the pandemic?” Should we be continuing that kind of research? Should we be funding that kind of research?” 

All of that unfortunately has been lost in this…very political and quite unnecessary debate currently on Covid origins.

Federal Newswire:

We know that China allowed planes to leave the country during Covid. What are your recommendations to avoid another costly situation like this, and for dealing with China on the issue?

Anthony Ruggiero:

Mentioning the flights, I was in many of the White House task force meetings early on in the pandemic. I chaired the group that, on a near daily basis, responded to some of these issues. 

We had plans for what an outbreak might look like, but in this case it was different than what those plans said. 

A lot of the scientists and others were very data driven. That's obviously their approach, but at some level for those of us in the foreign policy field, we understand that in a lot of ways you might [know] 10% of what's really going on, or there are unknowns there that you have to make some of these decisions on. Certainly there was a full debate on [what] the right approach was. 

For me this gets into [what the] policy solution is. I've recommended–and I know others have as well–that we need a 9/11-style commission. 

I went back recently and looked at some of the timelines starting from 9/11 to when the commission was created, had its hearings, and finished. If you think as many of us do–I certainly do–that Covid started in 2019, we’re coming up on almost four years. That's beyond the timeline from when the 9/11 commission issued its final report. 

Obviously it's a little different because 9/11 was a single event. [Covid] was several years. But we certainly need to do better. The fact that the intelligence community keeps putting out reports where it sort of throws its hands up and says “we don't know, we don't know” is very concerning. 

Go back and look at January when the current World Health Organization Director General Tedros was in China praising Xi Jinping. I certainly hope he regrets that now.  Those were critical times where China was holding back information from us. Information that was useful for both diagnostics and vaccine development. Those kinds of things when it comes to disease outbreak [are important]. 

I also make the point to people that we have to remember that [the China situation], luckily, is an anomaly. Hopefully it will continue to be an anomaly–where they are not forthcoming. There are other disease outbreaks where countries are very forthcoming and are interested in US help and other help. We need that to be the norm. 

The pandemic treaty is being debated by the World Health Organization now, and is supposed to come up before a vote next May. If you're in China, you have to be laughing and pretty happy that we're just sort of pointing at ourselves. Just going after ourselves versus really shining a light on the Communist Party that brought this to our shores.

Federal Newswire:

With your North Korea experience and their record of illicit activities–from contraband cigarettes to counterfeit currencies–how does this inform us on China’s collaboration with Mexican cartels in fentanyl production, smuggling and money laundering? Are these just singular bad actors or is the CCP involved?

Anthony Ruggiero:

I remember those days well on North Korea. I spent a lot of time with the Secret Service in the counterfeit currency realm and some of these other areas. 

The fentanyl issue [has been addressed more] eloquently [by others]. I testified in April on this issue before Congress. It was really about not prejudging and tying it all together. 

This goes back to what I said earlier, which is “can we do something or are we restricted by this?” Are we going to send them a strongly worded letter, or follow these crazy people who want to start a global depression? I said that we have to incentivize the Chinese banks to do something. 

When you look through some of these cases of Chinese money launderers working on behalf of the cartels, there are a lot of advantages for the cartels because they can't just simply drive the money south of the border. 

Part of this is because our restrictions are working, our controls are working. That's the positive. The negative is it really is about sanctions and how illicit finance is a game of whack-a-mole. 

You hit something that you could develop controls on, then the bad guys adjust.

We're talking about the Agricultural Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the Bank of China. Whatever measure you use, those are some of the biggest banks in the world. 

Some people say “oh you can't really do anything about that.” But, going back to the 2016-2018 period, we don’t have a lot of examples of us actually doing something against illicit financial activities. 

In those instances, because of North Korea and its nuclear program,... [we] used a variety of tools, whether subpoenas from the Justice Department or actually going after some of these Chinese companies and individuals. 

I think we have a circumstance where potentially tens of millions of dollars are flowing through the Chinese financial system, and they have no incentive to look at it because the government is not going to ask them to do that. 

If we're really serious about it–I don't think we are currently–we should be doing more to get them to start looking at those activities.

Federal Newswire:

Is the Chinese Communist Party aware of what’s going on?

Anthony Ruggiero:

I'm always careful in these instances because I'm not a China expert, even though I've worked on China a lot. I always defer in terms of what the mindset is, but I will also say that I don't think you need to be an expert in any of these things, you just have to open your eyes and watch what they do. 

They know about these things. China [pretends] they're a responsible stakeholder. That's one of their arguments to countries as to why they should join China's way of doing things. 

Well this is part of being a responsible stakeholder. 

Given the size of their country, they really need to do more. Going back to North Korea for example, in a lot of these instances those companies were not hiding what they were doing, and they were acting essentially either as banks or some kind of person inside of China for North Korea. 

We're talking about billions of dollars in transactions. I know a lot flows through China and the Chinese financial system, but there's a question of “what do they know?” 

If they're not actually looking for these things, or they don't have an active program to root out proliferation, terrorism, and illicit finances, then they're really never going to find it.

Federal Newswire:

How can we deal with China when it hurts our national interests in this way?

Anthony Ruggiero:

We haven't even got into the IP theft and many of the other issues. 

One of the things I worked on at the NSC was the export controls process. That was certainly an area where China pops up, and in similar ways. 

Not to get partisan, but it seems the administration is moving from a competitive to somewhat cooperative relationship with China. I think we've tried that before and we know what the results are–they are not beneficial to the American people, companies and others.

It's really a question of do we have the tools? Sanctions are only one tool. There are many others.

Have we done a good enough job of developing a strategy to go after some of these areas where China is hurting our interests? I think the answer is no. 

We're starting to think about that when it comes to the Taiwan invasion, but that is probably a little bit too late if we're not sophisticated and use these tools before we get to the invasion stage. 

I think we're going to find that they're not going to be as useful if we're afraid of our own shadow when it comes to the Chinese financial system.

Federal Newswire:

How can we find a middle ground between the next World War and doing nothing?

Anthony Ruggiero:

We're afraid of doing what people claim is going to be World War on the financial side. I would say, let's have an honest debate about that and think about how to manage that correctly, internally within the US, and then of course with our partners and allies. 

We're not even willing to say things publicly that are 100% true. In a lot of ways, whether it's fentanyl or…North Korea sanctions, we don't spend enough time [on them]. This administration has not even targeted China, and its sanctions for North Korea seem like the easiest thing to do. 

In our pandemic response we seem to be holding ourselves back. I think it's more that there are people who are still afraid of how the Chinese will react as opposed to US objectives.  

What is our US interest here, and what are we trying to achieve? Let's figure out the pathway to achieve that as opposed to what our adversary wants. 

I think too often, whether it's North Korea, China, or others, we choose the path of least resistance. But it doesn't fully achieve US goals or interests.

Federal Newswire:

Where can we continue to follow your work?

Anthony Ruggiero:

Primarily at www.fdd.org which is Foundation for Defense of Democracies website. There's a page where you can see all of my writings and visuals. I'm not as active a Twitter user as I used to be, but I certainly still tweet @NatSecAnthony.