Isaac Stone Fish, CEO and founder of Strategy Risks, is the author of America Second: How America's Elites Are Making China Stronger and a member of several national security and global affairs councils. His book is a response to what he sees as discussions that parrot China’s propaganda rather than the varied perspectives of the Chinese people.
"I was so surprised at the way that American elites would talk about China because they [continued] repeating the same propaganda. It was so different from the way that Chinese people talked about China, which was quite varied," he says.
Fish critiques the widespread use of certain narratives, such as the claim that China has 5,000 years of history, has lifted millions out of poverty, and does not seek war. "All of these phrases are propaganda,” he says. “And it's not about the veracity of propaganda, it's the fact that it's propaganda," he explains.
He argues that such statements serve to reinforce the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rather than critically assess its role. "China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but China has also put hundreds of thousands of people into poverty,” he points out. According to Fish, the Communist Party in China “is less responsible for the success and more for the failure."
Fish highlights the importance of language in shaping perceptions. "The U.S. has got to stop calling it the South China Sea,” he says, because even the Chinese don't call it the South China Sea.
He makes a point that psychological warfare and propaganda are central to Beijing’s strategy and that counteracting them does not always require massive defense spending. "There are so many cheaper ways to counter Beijing."
His book delves into conflicts of interest, corruption, and self-censorship among U.S. foreign policy elites. "I got so frustrated being in D.C. and hearing people talk publicly about China or Turkey or Saudi Arabia as former government officials, and pretending that they weren't consulting,” he says.
He singles out Henry Kissinger, who, in his view, was "a businessman masquerading as a diplomat" and whose vast influence over U.S. foreign policy was never sufficiently scrutinized. "I'd argue he's the most influential foreign policy statesman of the 20th century, and people just refuse to tackle the massive, massive conflicts of interest he had, especially with China."
Fish acknowledges his own position within the same ecosystem. "I run a consulting and data business now,” he says, and also admits “it changes the way that I speak publicly." However, he calls for greater transparency. "I would like people to be a lot more explicit about their conflicts and about who they're working with and how it changes their views.”
Fish describes different policy arcs that have shaped American engagement with Beijing. "For periods of U.S.-China history, Nixon and Kissinger went to China as a kind of ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ [referring to the Soviet Union]. According to Fish, this lasted until roughly 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Union, the massacre of unarmed students on Tiananmen Square, and the sense that “we don't need China to counter the Soviet Union because that's falling apart."
The subsequent policy, Fish explains, was based on the assumption that trade would bring liberalization. "Then we can make China into a responsible stakeholder of the global system built to serve mostly U.S. interests,” he says. “Shockingly, Beijing didn’t want that."
He believes the current period is particularly fraught. "I don’t think I am being provocative to call it the pre-war period; this is a fervent time and this is a time when we’re trying to figure out can we, as a country, live with a China that could be more powerful than us?” He asks, “if not, what do we do about it?"
A major focus of his work is examining how influence campaigns shape U.S. policy in China’s favor. "Beijing’s most powerful weapon for American friends is not money–it’s ego,” he says. “Beijing gratifies ego like nowhere else in the world."
He describes how former U.S. officials are made to feel uniquely valued. "What Beijing is able to give former officials is this sense that you are at the pinnacle of power, and only you can understand the greatness and the subtlety of the Chinese nation, and only you can save this relationship."
Fish points to more direct methods of influence, such as ‘honey-trapping.’ He provides an example. "It’s an old example, but something I saw in my book is Neil Bush, brother of one president and son of another who, on going to hotel rooms in Hong Kong, would be surprised to see prostitutes sent to his door." He notes that while similar tactics used by Russia have been widely reported, China’s use of such strategies remains less exposed.
Fish argues that the U.S. needs to take the CCP’s influence operations more seriously and counter them with transparency and accountability. "There's not nearly enough concrete conversations about what a war would look like because people think if you're talking about war, it means you're pro-war,” he says. He calls this a “silly framework."
His book pushes for a more clear-eyed approach. "The message was we can do this better, and that we have to name names and the cone of silence in D.C. around foreign policy elites has to be broken."
