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In this interview, Dennis Wilder, senior fellow for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, emphasizes the significance of student exchanges between China and the United States and how initiatives like the multi-university program led by China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) and Georgetown can bridge cultural gaps and build empathy. He also recounts his extensive experience in national security — particularly his role in editing the president’s daily brief during his time in the White House, and his trip to the 2008 Beijing Olympics with the presidential delegation. Learn more in his conversation with James Chau, CUSEF President and Host of China-US Focus.
James Chau:
Dennis Wilder, I feel that this is a full-circle moment because you graduated from Georgetown, you teach at Georgetown and you’re here in Hong Kong because Georgetown is leading this special multi-university initiative with the China-United States Exchange Foundation to bring students into the world. How important is that — student exchanges, but also people-to-people contacts?
Dennis Wilder:
I think in this era, when the tensions are so high between the United States and China, it has become absolutely critical. If you look, there are only about 700 American students today who study in China, and an equal number of American students actually study in Hong Kong today, which tells you something. But the number of contacts has just dropped dramatically, first with COVID and now in the post-COVID period.
So what we’re doing is to try and get a new generation of Americans out into the world. To get them with Chinese students. We just had a session this afternoon where the Chinese students explained who they are, their issues; and the American students explained. We had a discussion of LGBTQ issues in the two cultures, how different their grandparents are from each other. … This is the kind of thing you cannot do without a program like the one you’re running here in Hong Kong. It gives people a feel for the other culture. You can do all the book reading, we can teach at Georgetown, we can have them read about China, but until you experience the other side, until you begin to have some empathy for the other people, it really doesn’t take. And that’s what we’re trying to do.
James Chau:
Do you think, though, in this tough environment, that the people-to-people connections you just spoke of are sustainable and will be allowed to flow freely once again?
Dennis Wilder:
I think that people are people. And that once they connect, they don't want to disconnect. So for example, in my own case, I came here to the Chinese University of Hong Kong when I was 20 years old and went to the Yale and China program. That connected me forever to Hong Kong and to the people of Hong Kong. Once people get a taste of this, once Americans get out of the American cocoon, it can change lives. It changed my life.
James Chau:
You just spoke of the American cocoon, and people do talk about the world and America’s image and how America and Americans can be America-centric.
Dennis Wilder:
It’s very easy.
James Chau:
Is there a Chinese cocoon, equally? Is there a way that they’re looking inward, not necessarily outward, when you look at them side by side?
Dennis Wilder:
Yes, I think there are parallels. I think that for young Chinese today, their parents are worried about sending them to the United States. We hear from our Chinese students that their grandmothers cry when they leave for the United States because they think they’ll get shot on the streets of Washington, or that there will be drugs. There are all kinds of things they think about the United States, and then they get there and they see it’s quite different from the image that they are getting from the media. So I think that on both sides right now, there is a very real danger that our propaganda machines, if you will, on both sides, are painting pictures of the other culture that are just horrible. It’s fear mongering, it’s scaring people about the other culture.
We’ve got to break through. And only by programs like yours, and what we’re trying to do at Georgetown, can we break through because the governments aren’t going to do it right now. The Biden administration has not restored the Peace Corps in Hong Kong or in China. The Fulbright program does not include China anymore. The Boren Fellowship Program, which was to train people for foreign languages to come into the U.S. government, they all go to Taiwan now, not to the mainland. So the government programs, at least on the U.S. side, are definitely against this kind of connection. And so schools like us, organizations like yours, we have to take over.
James Chau:
You mentioned the fear that some Chinese families have when they send their children to the States. And we all know that some American families are very, very fearful for their young people, who are really just climbing out of childhood into adulthood at 18 years old, about coming to mainland China. I always tell people this — that I’ll give them my frank opinion on something, or whether I agree or not. But I always say that we have to respect how you feel, and I’m going to try and understand what are the origins for your beliefs, right or wrong, accurate or not. What do you think is a good way for people like us working in the wider U.S.-China space to help moderate and broker that sense of emotion, because it moves beyond policy now?
Dennis Wilder:
It does. And the American polling data is shocking on China today. If you look, when I was in the White House, in the Bush administration, it was about 50-50. Fifty percent of the American people had a very positive image of China, 50 percent had a negative image. Today, only about 17 percent of the American people have a positive image of China and the rest have a negative image. We have to find a way to change that and turn that around. How do we do that? It’s about education. It’s about bringing people to see China. It’s about bringing our students here and having them interact with Chinese students and realize that they’re very much like them.
You know, we talked today about social media, for example. They all live on it. The Chinese students live on social media, and the American students share this new technology. It’s their lives, and they understand each other on that level. So you find the places of commonality and you build on that. This is what you have to do.
James Chau:
We feel it’s really important to accelerate the number and pace, but also the depth, of programs for American students in China, and also Chinese students to the United States. There’s so much they can learn once they hit the ground there. And wherever they are, when people get together, especially young people — in a respectful, protected environment with the intent and purpose set out already — they get together like you spoke of just now. They talk about their values, their ideas and their ideals, but in a way that is not necessarily threatening or that doesn’t apportion blame. I wonder what Dennis Wilder tells a young person coming into your office at Georgetown, not only as a professor but as a teacher, as a mentor, as a trusted figure in their young lives. What’s the advice that you’re giving out these days?
Dennis Wilder:
Well, first of all, I do this an awful lot. Our students are constantly coming in asking about their futures. They’re worried about their futures. They want to make the right decisions. They want to do the right internships. They want to have the right experiences. And the one thing I do tell them is follow your passions, figure out what it is that really excites you and follow it. But also get out of the cocoon, the American cocoon. Go overseas, spend a semester abroad, travel. Because one of the problems of America is we are so big, you can travel a long way in America without ever leaving America. You don’t have to learn a foreign language.
Americans, many of them, don’t learn foreign languages. They don’t need it to live in their culture. And with such a huge and pervasive American culture, it’s very easy for them to just stay within that culture. You have to decide to get out of that culture. You have to make a mental decision that I’m going to break away. I’m going to do something different.
James Chau:
But you can say the same for China. Bigger landmass; you don’t need to travel out; lots to do, lots to see. You don’t need to learn another language. That can very much create the same environment.
Dennis, speaking about China (and going now to your rich background in national security), do you think that the current U.S. national security threat claims related to China — issues like semiconductors, TikTok and others — are valid and real threats, or are they exaggerated? I don’t want you to answer this politely because you’re here in Hong Kong. Really, what do you think? Is this a growing movement to securitize almost all aspects of the bilateral relationship? Or are their real concerns? I mean, we do know there are valid concerns about social media as it is right now.
Dennis Wilder:
First of all, I have worked in national security for four decades of my life. I think I know what is a national security threat and what isn’t. I edited the president’s daily intelligence briefing book for six years. I’ve got a pretty good sense on these things. And I think that the threat from China has been exaggerated quite markedly.
Let me give you an example. The director of the FBI recently said that the Chinese are now in a position to take over the entire American electrical grid whenever they want to bring it down, and Americans will die. Now, here’s my problem with that. We heard this before the Ukraine war, that the Russians were going to take down the entire grid in Ukraine. What happened? Well, Google and Microsoft stopped them. We have the capability to stop these attacks. It isn’t that simple.
Frankly, I have a lake house in western New York. The company that does my electrical power, called National Grid, can’t get me electricity to save its life. I’d like the Chinese to take over the grid in western New York. You know, this is silly. The idea that the Chinese are going to take over our electrical systems just makes no sense. The electrical systems are so diffused in the United States, you couldn’t possibly do it.
Some areas? Yes. We know the Chinese hacking attacks against government computers, against sensitive defense industries. We’ve taken Chinese to court. We’ve caught MSS officers doing this. So there are certain areas where there’s no question this has been happening. But you’ve got to separate out these sort of free floating fears from actual attacks.
And one of the things that bothers me about TikTok — I’ve seen no evidence. Nobody has provided any evidence that TikTok has somehow been used in a nefarious fashion by the Chinese government against American citizens. I think the American government owes that to the American public, if it knows of something, to explain what it knows, rather than hiding behind secrecy. I think that’s a very dangerous thing to do.
I’ll give you another example: Chinese buying land in the United States. Florida is now actually barring Chinese citizens from buying condominiums. Tell me how buying a Palm Beach condominium is a national security threat. No, we worried about this with the Japanese in the 1980s. They were going to buy all of Hawaii. They bought Rockefeller Center. Our world was going to collapse. Well, what happened? The Japanese bought at overpriced prices; they lost money, Americans gained, and there was no great takeover by the Japanese. So I think that we will come back to our senses at some point and get rational national security.
But this over-securitization is happening on the Chinese side too — the unleashing of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, this new WeChat site they have where they tell every Chinese citizen that there is a spy everywhere. Again, this kind of fear mongering on both sides really has to stop. My phrase for this is “get over it.” We can be adults.
James Chau:
But without speaking specifically to the Florida example, you do know why many Chinese, Japanese and others buy and invest in America, don’t you?
Dennis Wilder:
I assume because they’re good investments.
James Chau:
They love being in America. They love the culture. They love the entertainment. They’re spellbound by the opportunity to thrive, to progress, to improve their lives, and their families as well — education, research, just going around and enjoying American life.
Dennis Wilder:
Do you know which foreigners own the most land in the United States?
James Chau:
Who?
Dennis Wilder:
Canadians. Are we scared that the Canadians are going to take over the United States because they own such a large swath of American territory? I don’t think so.
James Chau:
Dennis, I’ve only really known you in this part of your life, meaning the academic, Georgetown part of your life. And it must be so, so different from all the other chapters that came before that we’ve just spoken on. How different is life today for you, when you think about the White House, when you think about working for President Obama, when you think about being a senior editor for the daily presidential brief and all-around being a respected senior American intelligence figure for all those decades?
Dennis Wilder:
First of all, James, there is nothing like standing in the Oval Office, briefing the president. You feel like you are at the center of power in the world, no question about it. You realize that in that room, the kinds of decisions that are made affect millions of people all over the globe. Similarly, when you travel with the president on Air Force One, and you travel in what we call the bubble with the president of the United States, with all that security, all those armored vehicles — we call it the beast, the American limousine that the president rides in. The power, the sheer raw power of America is very evident to you.
I’ll give you just one example of this. I don’t know if you remember the Indonesian tsunami in 2004. I was on Christmas leave in Cleveland, Ohio, at my sister’s home, and I got a call. And I rushed back to Washington. The reports were that 100,000 people had died. I went into the situation room and I called a meeting, and Pacific Command comes on, A.I.D. comes on, the State Department comes on, the ambassador in Indonesia. All the players come on. And we’re looking at each other and we say, “What do we do?” And on comes the chief of naval operations. He says, “I have a carrier battle group in this harbor, Hong Kong harbor. They’re on Christmas leave. Their families are with them. But we can send the families home and we can be at sea tomorrow.” Now that carrier battle group, the Lincoln Carrier Battle Group, what did it have? Hospitals, helicopters, desalinization, body bags. They had everything that was needed by these people in Indonesia, and we sailed within two days. We had this huge machinery available for humanitarian operations with the Indonesians, it was utterly fantastic.
That’s American power. That’s the soft power side that you don’t often hear about. But when you work in the White House, that’s what you feel — that we can do almost anything if we put our minds to it, if we’re creative enough and we’re sensible enough. American power can be used in the world in all kinds of ways. And hopefully, for good.
James Chau:
Now we’ve seen and spoken about the U.S. and China and their potential for global good when they come together, especially the way that they helped to address the financial crisis in 2008, the Ebola outbreak in 2014, what they’re doing now on fentanyl and climate action, all these examples. … Is that overstated? And I want to take the assumption out of that. We always say that they can do good when they come together. But now, with so many years having passed and this relationship having declined, do they really still have that capacity to do that kind of good that you just referenced?
Dennis Wilder:
I think we do. Maybe I’m overly optimistic. But one thing, James, that we are doing with this group of students we have here in the next few days is to discuss the responsibility that the United States and China have to the Global South. Let’s just take one issue: African demographics. The population of Africa will explode in the next 20 to 30 years. And when I say explode, I mean the numbers are unbelievable.
This is going to cause all kinds of serious problems — health problems, food scarcity problems, civil unrest problems. The two greatest powers in the world had better figure out how we can work together to ameliorate that or else Africa blows up in a way we have never seen before. Terrorist problems will come out of that for Europe, for the United States, for the world. So I don’t think we have a choice. I actually think we have to find a way to work together on some of these issues in the Global South, because if we don’t, we’re both in a world of hurt. We both now have to take responsibility as the two great economic engines of the world.
James Chau:
We spoke about this briefly, but for six years in Washington, in the White House, in that bubble, you edited a daily presidential brief, which is this daily, highly classified document that’s only written for and presented to the president in the morning and for a small number of individuals that he chooses. Tell me about what you can take from that, and what we can do now in terms of communication — to inform publicly, but also communications to avert actions that are based on the wrong information and therefore lead to the wrong decision.
Dennis Wilder:
First of all, we often jokingly call this the most expensive niche publication in the world. If you think about it, the intelligence machinery of the United States costs $80 billion a year, and 20,000 analysts write for the president’s daily brief. It better be good every morning. And that was my job, to make it absolutely gold standard.
How did we make it gold standard? Number one was rigor, rigor of tradecraft, we called it analytic tradecraft. Analytic tradecraft is hugely important — precision of language, concise language, being able to separate fact from analytic judgment, from speculation.
We spend a huge amount of time ... in fact, I teach this. I teach it to groups like Eurasia Group, actually. But I teach this technique because the world is short on this technique these days. People do not understand how to separate these things out. People get stuck in conspiracy theories, and in speculative arguments, when what is needed — and what we put in front of the president every day, believe me — is very clear. Here’s what we know, Mr. President, here are the facts. Here is what we think is going on. And by the way, Mr. President, here’s what we don’t know, and we’ll try and go get more information. We’ll get our sources of information out there trying to find it out. But you need to know, Mr. President, that we don’t have the answer on this one.
So we’re very blunt in the president’s daily brief. We tell him what we know. We tell him what we think it means. We also tell him what the gaps are in our ability to make analytic judgments. We are humble in the book, we have to be. The president has to know what he’s working with, and where we can be certain and when we’re uncertain. And then he has to make judgments about what he’s going to do based on understanding, clearly, the picture that we have for him.
James Chau:
So the picture constantly changes.
Dennis Wilder:
Absolutely. And you have to change it.
James Chau:
You have to change it, and you only have a so-called full set of information at a given time. It’s a snapshot. What do you do when there is a mistake with a snapshot you’ve provided to the most powerful person in the world?
Dennis Wilder:
You admit it. Absolutely as fast as you can.
James Chau:
And that’s a trust builder in itself, isn’t it?
Dennis Wilder:
Absolutely. We are, again, brutally candid with ourselves. After 9/11, we spent months on lessons learned. How did we miss this? What did we have that we could have analyzed that we didn't analyze? Who didn’t work with whom? And what we found was there were gaps. The FBI knew of pilots, Arabic pilots, training in Arizona to fly commercial aircraft, and these were rather strange Saudi individuals. We had intelligence that somebody was going to try and use an aircraft for something. But the FBI and the CIA didn’t talk to each other. We didn't connect the dots. We didn't creatively look at the information we had. And so you go back every time you fail. We failed on Iraq WMD. We’ve gone back and we’ve said, what was wrong? Sometimes you ask the wrong question. If you ask the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer, and you won’t help the president of the United States.
So you’re constantly learning lessons. You have to learn lessons; otherwise, you’re not doing what you are called upon to do. And what you have to understand is that people’s lives are at stake. The president has to make decisions. For example, let’s just take a very simple one: We get information that the embassy in some country is about to be attacked by a terrorist group. We bring that into the Oval Office. The national security adviser has to make a decision whether to pull the ambassador out. Do you close that embassy for a while? Or do you rely on the local service to help you and find these guys and stop the attack?
I can’t tell you how many attacks we’ve stopped around the world, terrorist attacks, because we had warning and we acted on the warning. We worked with foreign governments and we kept ugly things from happening. One of the things about my work in those days was you never talked about your successes. The successes are always very quiet. Your failures are very public. So the public gets an unfair picture, because they never know what you stopped from happening. And believe me, we spend a whole lot of time stopping things around the world, working with others, working with the Hong Kong Police, working with the Hong Kong Port Authority, working with the Hong Kong Airport Authority. We work all over the world to protect not only American citizens but other citizens. It is incredibly important.
James Chau:
Sometimes the very first signal was in those briefs that you edited, the vocabulary that you chose, the narrative that you established, the language, the positioning, the questions you ask, and the way you ask them. It was also so very, very important what you did all those years.
Dennis Wilder:
Right. One example of this before 9/11, we did write a PDB that sounded like a warning. But frankly, if you look at that — and it’s unclassified now, by the way — it’s the only PDB ever unclassified, it was poorly written. And the president was on vacation at his ranch. Secretary Rice was on vacation, the national security adviser was on vacation. Sometimes you can try to warn and circumstances work against you. Then you really have to think, did I really warn? And how do I make sure I warn the next time.
James Chau:
I want to finish off on a lighter note, maybe, but also a substantive one, because you talked about the bubble and being in the heart of what maybe a handful of individuals in a lifetime ever get to experience — what you call the raw power of the United States at its best, and in other ways as well. In a very wonderful way, I remember 2008, during the Beijing Olympics. At that time I was anchoring the Olympic morning show. But you had a very, very different experience because you went with the part of that presidential delegation that went to Beijing — a city that you know well, a language that you can speak, and you went to see the greatest show on Earth, which is the Olympics, which that year was held in the Chinese capital.
Dennis Wilder:
And we had the great swimmer Michael Phelps. We had the dream team basketball team, which I watched play at the Olympics. I mean, we had some superstar American athletes at that Olympics.
James Chau:
With Paris just a few weeks away now, perhaps you could finish by giving us an inside look at what it was like to be part of that machinery, but also the family that represented a nation at a time of global humanity at the greatest show on Earth.
Dennis Wilder:
You know, this is actually a fascinating story, because what people forget about the 2008 Olympics is that there was a lot of opposition to President Bush actually going. Steven Spielberg had refused the offer the Chinese made to help with the show. The Prince of Wales had said he would not come. Angela Merkel said she wouldn’t come. A hundred and ten members of Congress wrote a letter to the president saying he shouldn’t go. Every political adviser in the White House said he shouldn’t go.
When I got on Air Force One with the president, there was me, the president and his father, who believed we should be going, and the rest of the plane was full of people who felt this was the wrong thing. Why did Bush do it? Legacy. His father and he had a legacy with China that was extraordinary — both of them. They both created relationships with Chinese leaders. Bush Sr. with Deng Xiaoping, Bush Jr. with Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. They felt that they had done something very important in the world, and this was the crowning achievement. They opened the new American embassy in Beijing. Kissinger came, I sat with Kissinger at the ceremony. You know, President Bush Sr. came to Diaoyutai. They had a grand meal there. This was a crowning achievement for the Bush family.
James Chau:
Wasn’t President Clinton there as well?
Dennis Wilder:
He was.
James Chau:
The three of them opened the embassy, didn’t they?
Dennis Wilder:
Right, they all went. So it was this very real high point in U.S.-China relations, and it was because of the belief that these two men — and I can’t stress this enough, I knew them both well. I spent a great deal of time with Bush 41 talking about China while he was in the White House, and after retirement I spent a great deal of time with Bush 43. They believed in personal diplomacy in a way that was almost religious, that you build relationships, and you keep those relationships.
So after Tiananmen, you will remember that Bush 41... knew he had to do some things, so he put some sanctions on China, but he sent [then-National Security Adviser] Brent Scowcroft secretly to Beijing to tell Deng Xiaoping this relationship is too important to allow one event to derail it. And consequently, he was able to keep the relationship going in a positive direction.
James Chau:
We’re very, very proud here at CUSEF that we have a special relationship with the year 2008. I happened to be with Mr. Tung when the Olympics were announced in 2001, seven years ahead. … We were founded in 2008, CUSEF, with the support of our honorary adviser, Dr. Kissinger, who served until his passing. And of course, there’s been a special relationship between our founder and Bush 41, who had deep care and concern for what happened here in China and the outcomes for ordinary Chinese people … that picture of him waving from the car with Mrs. Bush, and being the bicycling ambassador here as well.
Dennis Wilder:
I'll tell you one more story. The first time I met Governor Bush — when I was to do his first China intelligence briefing — I went to the ranch in Texas. I went into the ranch house, and on the wall were two cultural revolution posters. I said Governor Bush, this doesn’t fit with your image. And he said, “The world doesn’t understand me on China. I have been fascinated with China ever since I went to Beijing when my father was head of the Liaison Office. This is a country I will focus on.” And I knew at that moment that I was going to work for him, because he had his father’s instincts on China. He had learned at the knee of his father how important China was.
James Chau:
Dennis Wilder, I think we’re in the same space, where we understand how important the U.S. and China together are — really important. I want to thank you for the trust and time that you’ve given having this exchange today.
Dennis Wilder:
Well, we are just extraordinarily glad to be working with CUSEF. We are extraordinarily glad to be working with C.H. Tung and his family. It’s important work. It’s work that must continue whatever obstacles may be placed in our way.
