He Said No to Billions from China. Now They’re After Him | Declan Ganley

99% of global internet traffic relies upon a series of subc fiber optic cables around the world. But Chinese cable cutting incidents have shown how easily they can be sabotaged. >> I believe that they were testing response times and reactions. It would be very easy to take down the global internet by targeting those subc cables. If that happens, the last thing anybody's going to be thinking of in Pakipsky is, is Taiwan being invaded? Right now, >> telecommunications entrepreneur and robot network CEO Declan Ganley has been working on a solution. It's called the Outer, the world's first self-contained satellite-based communications network. And the Chinese regime has been trying hard to get its hands on it. It was made clear, you take the money, we launched this thing from China, we will be your partner. When I refused, they decided to launch a torrent, a tsunami of lawsuits. >> CCP Law Firer has already cost Ganley and his company over $36 million. This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Yana Kellik. Declan Ganley, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. >> Thanks for having me, Yan. >> So, over the last two and a half years, you've had to spend over $36 million on legal fees against Chinese Communist Party affiliated entities. How is this even possible? Explain this to me. The project that uh I am leading uh is to uh build and deploy uh what we're calling the outet. So it is a satellite constellation in low earth orbit that is different to Starlink, very different to Starlink. It's approximately 600 satellites in polar orbits but with uh spectrum radio spectrum that links from the ground up to the satellite and back again. um that uh has high priority. So it's important block of spectrum and a technology and an architecture that is unique. And without explaining technically um how that's done, not because I'm not willing to do it, it's just it would take too long. Um it gives it will create the world's first completely self-contained global communications network. So every other global communications network that you've ever heard of is actually a patchwork quilt of other people's stuff stitched together and you are always going through networks that are attached to other people's network. So even say if you take one web or starlink or so you're on Starlink when you're on Starlink but when you go into a ground gateway and that signal is being carried to its end destination over subc cables and everything else it's carried over the internet. So these are internet services ultimately internet networks and that data is uh carried over a kind of public highway if you will. The internet is a completely closed non-public highway that is completely self-contained that does not touch the internet and so you can join any point on the planet to any other point on the planet without touching anybody else's network infrastructure ground relay station cable etc. What that nets out to mean is that it is inherently the most secure truly global communications network that will be in existence over about 4,000 km or greater. It will be the fastest network in existence with the lowest latency and you will be able to guarantee data sovereignty. So why does any of that matter? Because if you are a government, if you are a bank, if you are a large enterprise that wants for whom ultra high speed, low latency and complete data security, so avoiding the the public internet that that matters. That's a very important and valuable capability to have and it's a capability that on a global basis you cannot get anywhere else. So it's a combination of different ingredients that creates a completely unique thing that if you're a government or a large enterprise is a gamecher. >> It's a gamecher and it strikes me that this is something that the Chinese Communist Party would be incredibly interested in. So they are, you're not wrong about that, Yan. And the And this comes back to your first question. Um, you know, why why have we had to spend $36 million defending against the Chinese? What possible interest could they have in controlling the internet? Well, the answer would be uh very significant. And they have gone to bat to try and take control of and ownership of the internet. and they've done that in a number of ways. Um, but where that has ended up is that when I refused to sell out to them to take their money and walk away, which it seems that they seem quite accustomed to people doing that. Um, they decided to launch a torrent, a tsunami of lawsuits that were baseless, that were unwininnable, that were almost cartoonish in their flakiness, but in the full knowledge that we would have to spend money to defend against these insane lawsuits. And you know, we'll we can get into the sort of the detail of how they did it and what they did, but the idea ultimately is is to make your life and your corporate life and your personal life as difficult and stressfilled as possible while at the same time dangling a carrot of saying, "You know what? We'll buy you out. We'll give you a lot of money." And this stick that is beating you on this side can be massively outweighed by this carrot that we're dangling in front of you. Take the carrot and the stick will stop. And that's ultimately what they did. So we've had $36 million of so far of stick and we're not taking the carrot >> and we will never take the carrot and they don't like that. incredible because it sounds so much like other scenarios at perhaps a smaller scale that that that I've heard about uh with respect to how the Chinese Communist Party works. Let's go back. Tell me a little bit about yourself. How is it that you came to be constructing the outer internet? >> I'm a a telecommunications entrepreneur. I've been in the wireless industry really since I was 19 years old. I'm now 57, so I've been in it for a while. And uh I have uh built a number of businesses and developed a lot of intellectual property and technology over the course of the last uh decades now unfortunately but but but it's been uh several decades. Uh I have built a team since really the mid 1990s of uh engineers, PhDs uh and people with a really unmatched track record in the wireless technology sector uh and de develop new technologies uh that are applied in areas like 5G and 6G to come. And we have had our battles with Huawei um for many many years. Uh I was one of the very early voices uh warning about the threat to western uh telecommunications networks from Chinese compromised Chinese uh communist Chinese supplied equipment. Um I feel that we were very vindicated uh I in that. Um so we had quite a lot of form. clashed with them in all over the world. Uh and then uh I I had been involved uh in the satellite industry very early on in my career. >> Stepped out of satellites to focus on terrestrial wireless technology. Then about 2005 slowly started to move back into areas that had to do with the satellite technology and then uh encountering um opportunity that was coming with new spectrum that was going to be allocated by the ITU which is the UN affiliated body that licenses >> uh satellite spectrum globally saw an opportunity to develop what is now the internet and my concern concern there was for years I was watching the concentration risk of subc cables that there were so few of these arteries that connect the internet globally and it struck me that um it would be very easy to take down the global internet by targeting those subc cables and that we needed a network that was completely independent of those subc cables and frankly the internet that would not replace it, but that would be available and would survive the internet being taken out by taking out the subc cables or a massive cyber attack or whatever else that there was no truly global data network that was an alternative if we lost the internet. So the need for that was very obvious to me and I focused my teams uh my brilliant um uh engineering uh and research teams on solving that and hey presto we came up with the alinet. >> Thank you for tuning in to American thought leaders in a world where spin and agendas dominate the headlines. I'm proud to bring you unfiltered insights from the brightest minds in America from a relative outsider Canadian perspective. To keep this possible and to access even more exclusive content, in-depth documentaries in our daily digital newspaper, consider subscribing to the Epoch Times today. It's your way to support independent journalism. Just hit the link in the description below to subscribe and unlock the full American thought leaders experience and so much more. You can try it today for just $1 a week. So just hit the link in the description below. And now back to the interview. So just very briefly before I started talking about Tik Tok possibly being a more potent weapon of the Chinese Communist Party um you know against its adversaries. Um I was talking about Huawei as being possibly the Chinese Communist Party's most potent weapon >> against everybody. What's the problem with Huawei briefly? Well, I mean the you have an entity that has to comply even if we look at what's on the surface what we know and is indisputably verifiable. They are legally required as a Chinese company to provide intelligence access and information to the Communist Party of China. They actually have no choice. That's not to suggest they're doing it unenthusiastically. I believe they're very enthusiastic in what they do. And I'm on record for years talking about this threat because once you have uh data networks that are providing regular communications for everybody, for people that are watching this show, whatever their walk of life, for businesses, for governments, uh for the in installed everyday communications base, for the internet of things, for cars, for Everything is operating over these these wireless data networks and everything from all the way out to the E- node B which is the the final cell that touches your phone wirelessly and which your phone is communicating with where that ENOB B that cell can is being patched and updated with software from China every day because the contract with the carrier allows and requires that they do this. We have handed over the keys to the kingdom. And when you have an intelligence gathering tool that operates at that level, it's going to know more about what is going on in a given place than the government of that given place can possibly know itself. Because you can get as granular as knowing how many people are in that apartment on that floor at that moment. Where did they come from? Where did they go to? Who is it? Who did they text or email while they were there or on the way or on the way back? And we're relying on encryption to protect messages that are going over these networks. But the ability of the Communist Party to decrypt these messages is immense. And then if you apply AI to that and you use AI to do the data mining, good AI will be able to answer a question like, you know, um what did John Smith uh do on the 23rd of October uh 2022? Where was he that evening? Was John Wizzy's wife or was he with somebody else? Who was it? What were they doing? I mean, the the level of information that you can extract from that data pool with using AI is we've never seen that level of information in history. There would be no Tik Tok from China if it hadn't been for the way that the West so mishandled its allocation of radio spectrum because it made carriers, mobile carriers dependent upon Chinese financing and technology because the Communist Party of China were willing to subsidize Huawei. way and other Chinese equipment to be deployed into these countries. So now you see Germany that has a 5G network and many many other countries a 5G network of Huawei equipment which um they now want to rip and replace. But that equipment was financed, it was discounted. I mean this the the Communist Party of China made sure that those networks were put everywhere but they were put everywhere because the way we allocate radio spectrum in Western countries requires massive upfront payments to governments for spectrum licenses and when those companies make those upfront payments the offer of soft Chinese financing in equipment is too irresistible. The price of a gigabyte of data in America or in Canada is up here. It's amongst the very highest and most expensive data in the world on a wireless network. Whereas in China, it is a tiny fraction of the price. So because you have a low barrier to entry to the price of data, if you're building an app like Tik Tok, young people can afford the data. And so all of these new apps get developed in China first because the price barrier to entry to using then and getting rapid scale adoption which is what you need for these apps that shifts to China and out of the United States and the Western countries. And that's what's happened. If if we had had a healthier system of how we allocate radio spectrum, Tik Tok would have been invented in the United States years ago and it would be an American innovation. >> Are you basically saying that it doesn't matter if Huawei has towers in your country or in your region or whatever, there's still these patches that you're describing are still coming in because of contracts. >> Yes. Yeah. And the governments don't even know this, right? So they the way that they the governments got suckered was up until 5G they talked about the core that the core of the network which was like the data centers the computers if you will um that ran the network the brains of the network were in one place >> or a small number of places >> and the servers that ran these networks everything was taken back to what they called the core. So they would say, well, Huawei aren't allowed to have the core. They're going to just do the edge of the network. The thing is is that in 5G, one of the great innovations of 5G and that you have in 6G is it moved the brains of the network away from the core and out to the edge of the network. Why? To improve speed and data processing. So the brain is no longer focused in the core. It's spread out across all of the network edge where and it's it's done to increase speed and efficiency of of processing and the patches for those edge uh networks are in many many cases done under contract from China. So you you have and the the sale to this to those carriers, those mobile carriers was you can reduce your overhead, you can reduce your workforce, you know, you're not going to have these these these big uh payroll bills for for doing this stuff. We can run the software updates and the patching from China. and those are sometimes subcontracts but the that that bypass reference to the core but those updates are being done daily um and they're being done uh in many cases from China itself. >> I mean that that's >> it's nuts. >> That's an astonishing >> yes >> reality. There is a story that came out a few days ago um about uh I think it was Norway and Denmark shutting down take removing um communications chips from their buses because they realized that these buses could be harnessed from China. Well, guess what? That's true for so many devices and so many things. And you know, it's one the the potential to actually harness a vehicle is one thing, but the potential to gather the information and the data is is is another. And I mean the other thing that I've just been recently through some interviews becoming aware of is that you know there's an astonishing amount of this kind of data available just in the public domain. Never mind that deeper level of penetration that you're describing. I mean I remember there's one case I believe that that one of these um you know people in the know was able to demonstrate the locations of for example Delta Force members just through you know triangulating around certain you know taking educated guesses around things like what they might be doing they were and people were shunned how and this was open source this is like you know someone that could do it with an AI um presumably they fixed that now but So um you you know about Salt Typhoon of course. >> Yes. >> Anywhere where there is Chinese and and by the way remember Salt Typhoon is in networks that aren't Huawei. >> Of course, but what strikes me I was thinking about Salt Typhoon um as you were describing these patches that are basically going into this whole edge and of the 5G network. I mean, one you could kind of imagine that the do we even know that the compromises were possibly in those patches, right? So, you could have, you know, the hackers and the and the patchers working. I mean, there's all sorts of opportunities here, aren't there? >> Yes. Yeah. I I mean, we've talked about some of them, but it's it's it's um there are more. And the there is no halfway measure or you know well what's what can we do that's enough. It's it's really you know on or it's off. There isn't a halfway measure here. You cannot allow this stuff into your country. You have to keep it out. You can't you you have to know what your supply chain is. the vulnerabilities of these networks. And by the way, how we got here is a whole other story. I touched on it a bit >> because this did not have to happen. This did not have to happen. This was >> um indolence. It was um a frankly a failure of reg a regulatory failure and regulatory capture. Um, and it was a lot of, and we're seeing it now, a lot of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. >> Let's talk about the lawfare because I think you've painted a very compelling picture of why the CCP would really want to get its hands on an outer or make sure that one doesn't exist without it having that special access that it seems to have to all the other networks. Well, I mean the the internet's a whole I mean what we've talked about is is really the internet, right? This is internet and terrestrial wireless networks. >> Yeah. >> The internet is the is the thing that survives if you take all that other stuff out and it it does um the most critical data communications it can it it can do them. And you're absolutely right. So they either want to have it or they want to make sure that nobody else has it. >> And that would be that's sort of choice number two. And we we've heard anecdotally that that's actually what they're looking for. >> But just just one thing, you know, if they were to cut those under cable, I've heard this discussed as a kind of an early, you know, if they were to make an acute military move beyond this unrestricted warfare they've been waging, but actually, you know, go into full kinetic. Yes. >> Um but wouldn't that cut them off as well? >> Yeah. But but they're ready for that, I would argue. So if you know you're going to do that and you have your own closed network in a continent that's continental uh terrestrial network and you are planning for an event like that. Um and you have stockpiled the things that you would need to have before the internet went down. um and you had transportation systems that were resilient enough to operate without the internet. Uh you could do that. And look, if the internet goes out, you know, today and it goes out globally that the approximately 550 global subc cables were cut, the internet goes down. The existing satellite systems that you've heard about go dark. they won't work because they all use ground gateways and ground relay systems that ultimately require and rely on these subc cables. So you will have this cascading domino effect where your phone your smartphone will not work. Your TV will not work because the IPbased signals that are producing that that TV show and putting it onto your TV that's going to all fail. The logistics systems that supply that the the wholesalers use to supply supermarkets will also fail. There will be no flights. Flight aircraft will be grounded because of the IPbased systems that they're relied rely upon. Gas stations will not be able to get refueled because of the supply. When that happens, if that happens, the last thing anybody's going to be thinking of in, you know, Pikipsky is, is Taiwan being invaded right now? And they're not going to think about it or care about it probably for months because they're not even going to know it happened for at least days and probably longer. The first thing that will work reliably will be a transistor radio. Um, and everybody should have one, but they're still going to there'll be guys in bootstrapping um radio stations to get them get the older tech some of the older stuff turned back on um so that they all be able to broadcast. Um, and that scenario is not some dystopian, oh gosh, it would be so hard to do. It's really like you could do I could do it for approximately, and I know I'm safe with this number, $60 million will do that job, would take out the global um uh subc cables. That's how pathetically vulnerable the global subc cable infrastructure is cuz it's just it's so big. It's so vast. You cannot protect it all. >> And it's not academic. I mean, we saw these ships, you know, basically dragging anchors and destroying these cables. We already see how it can be done. And in a taunt that was a very public taunt for those people that understand what they're looking at >> when that Chinese ship cut that cable and then couldn't be boarded afterwards cuz it stayed in international forces. They they stopped it but they were able to stop it from being boarded and inspected. At the same time, uh, they released into the public domain a patent application in China for an anchor system that was specifically designed to cut subc cables. And that was a taunt. And and what was going on there, I believe, is that they were testing response times and reactions. Who responds? They they know how many subc cable repair ships there are and there aren't many. They know who the people are that can actually fix these things. Um talking about the granularity of being able to follow data. They know where they live. They know who they're married to. They know where they work. I mean the mapping these response times. What happens when a subc cable gets cut? What happens when 20 subc cables get cut? What happens when 50 subc cables get cut? What's the point where they can't possibly fix these things in a realistic enough time to get the internet back on for a month, two months, 6 months, a year, two years. There's answers to all of those things. And the cost of doing that is frighteningly low. >> It sounds like you've been wargaming these these scenarios somehow. And and people looking at this will be, "Oh, well, look, you know, Declan Ganley's got a, you know, he's got a a dog in this fight. You know, I've got a vested interest. You know, he wants to get the alnet adopted and everything else." Yes, I do. Yeah. But what I'm saying here on camera with you, Yan, it's so much worse than what I'm saying. The vulnerabilities there. I'm not going to tell people how you do this, but we need the internet. yesterday. It's needed immediately. And that's not to say that the, you know, a determined actor like communist China could even destroy the internet, but not quickly. >> And the thing is, and and they certainly couldn't do it covertly. Uh, you would know it was them. Um, and the data network that can stay up the longest and that can survive that initial event is a highly prized thing and that's why they went to lawfare to war by use of the law which is Chinese people's liberation army published doctrine. They have published it. This isn't it's in their doctrine that you use the laws and regulatory aspects available in um other countries against those uh you thing target interests and they wanted this uh and they wanted to control it and uh we wouldn't sell it to them. So now we have 158 different legal actions and counting um all of which they lose they are willing to lose um as long as it's making us spend money. >> Well spend money and distraction. I mean that's with a little bit of experience with with lawfare it's not just the money it's also focus >> of course yeah and here we are and this is what we're talking about right and and you know the internet is a phenomenal piece of technology a remarkable piece of global infrastructure that will change the world for the better and will make uh the democracies you know much more secure than they are and and large enterprises in the banking system and the payment systems and everything else. Um, but but instead of talking about that, we're, you know, we're going to be talking about and are talking about these utterly frivolous, flaky Chinesebacked lawsuits that have had us a new, you know, post startup but but pre-revenue, largely pre-revenue, uh, company in terms of the internet anyway, uh, have to spend $36 million of cash that we have to raise from investors. this before we dive into a bit of this law fair. We're not going to be able to look at all 158 uh uh scenarios, but so we we talked about the stick here, but what about the carrot? What was the carrot? >> So, the lawfare had started almost three years ago now. Um uh we were at the um Paris satellite show which is uh one of the two main events of the space industry that happen the satellite industry that happen globally. There's one in Washington uh which happens early in the early part of the year and then there's one that happens in Paris which generally happens in September. And we Raada were there. We were we had a display. We had you our stand, podium, all the stuff that you have speaking and uh I was actually at our stand and I got approached by a gentleman um who is quite senior uh on the uh the Chinese side of things and he'd come from China and he said, "Mr. Ganley, I've come here to just to see you, just to meet you." That was on it was a Monday morning and I I said to him, "Well, that's um very nice. Um but you know, I have a very full schedule this week." And uh he said, "I will stay in Paris until I can meet you." I said, "Fine." So I decided that I would meet him uh on the Thursday. Um, and I met him uh at the uh the Plason Dome and we had a walk around and during that walk around uh he told me um how uh uh of course justified their actions and why it was necessary that they took all of these legal actions, but that it was nothing personal and nothing against me and that they think that I'm a great inventor and a wonderful person and that they really wanted to be my partner, blowing smoke at me, you know, and and and buttering me up basically. And they said that they had $7.5 billion for the project. And not only did they say that, but at the satellite show itself, they leafleted the show um and even had uh the those uh flyers put on each table at the venue of of of the hotel where where where the show was held was the Western Hotel in uh in Paris and uh saying that the funding of the 7 plus billion was avail was there and this project was going to be going ahead by them and they he said >> wait which project the >> the alternate that they were going to do um they didn't call it the out exactly >> what were you thinking of these leaflets I mean >> it was a topic of conversation because they were claiming at this time they were claiming that this was their project and that that because they had attempted a hostile takeover of a German company that had developed uh some of the the technology around this and they failed in that hostile takeover attempt and the German government ruled against them and found against them in a in a saying that a Chinese company cannot take over uh this entity but they were saying that they were doing this project themselves anyway. Um but this gentleman in our in our stroll around the plus vonome uh said that uh they would give me 50% of the equity and they would fully fund my 50%. So out of the seven >> three and a half billion >> not quite but almost a lot. Yeah. Three three plus billion dollars. Now did I believe that? No. I mean, however, he he was pressing upon me that this is what they would do. He asked if he could have a follow-up meeting. I had a follow-up meeting. And in the the the follow-up meeting, it was made clear, you take the money, you go in partnership with us, we launch this thing from China, we manufacture the satellites in China, we will be your partner, and we will be a much better partner for you than anybody else in the world could possibly be. And he said we will deliver China, Asia, Latin America and Europe. He said we will deliver those markets. And he said you he said we won't be able to deliver uh North America at the beginning but he said we will immediately be able to deliver all of those other markets as addressable markets for this project. We will be your partner. You will have the capital, you will have the equacy, you will have the equipment. We will get this thing done. You will use your team to work with us in China. You can keep some of the operations in Germany. And if you, he didn't say it as, um, bluntly as this, but that if you don't do this, um, your life will be miserable. you will the the lawfare will increase and we are going to make sure that this project will not happen. >> I mean they were ready to give you everything. >> That's what they said. >> Well and well you wouldn't I mean the the price of your soul perhaps. >> Well that's how I see it. Yeah. There were people that said well look just just do it. I mean this is this is no one's going to care. No one's going to even know. everybody else does it. And you know there are entrepreneurs who have got massive interests in China and it's never harmed them. Uh it's never far from it. It's propelled them. Um why would it be any different in your case? And for me I had taken a conscious decision many many years ago to never do business in communist China. And the reason for that is I started off as a 19-year-old going to the Soviet Union to to seek to do business there. And I saw that Ronald Reagan was right, that it was the evil empire. And I had Russians tell me that Ronald Reagan was right, that it was the evil empire. And the source of that evil was Marxism and was communism. where to be at the top of those organizations, you had to sell your soul. It wasn't an option to not do it. You had to do it. And I know what it is to deal with communists. I know. And and people say, "Well, they're not really communists." Well, yeah, maybe they're not really communists, but they are they are individuals who have sold out to be to to be able to harness the power of that communist party which only can exist by means of oppression and the oppression of the human spirit and of human freedom. And if you eng um I would say you're being naively optimistic and they it's that old saying about you know when they talked what Lenin talked about the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we shall hang them. That's what Lenin said and we have been sell not just selling the rope but giving the rope to the Chinese communists with which they are hanging us and our economies. We have transferred our industrial base to China. We have made our energy prices way more expensive than energy prices in China. We have absolutely handed them data network dominance on a plate and now they want this outet. And why do they want it? because they want the fastest network in the world, the lowest latency network in the world, the most secure network in the world. And you don't actually have to be Tom Clansancy to imagine how that could be used uh to great effect by them. >> You're just reminding me of an episode I did some time ago with John Lanchowski, one of the chief Soviet affairs adviser at the NYSE for Ronald Reagan. Um, and he very compellingly to your point explains how you don't need people to believe in communism for it to actually be operational in a society. And in fact, in some ways, it's better for them not to believe entirely because it's more compromising. I mean, this is this is my >> No, no, it's true. Because if you're not a true believer, if you're not a true zealot, if you if you aren't really a Marxist and you know it's just a means to power, you're an even more compromised individual morally and spiritually. Let's talk about a couple of these cases. um you know you've you're involved in court in Europe, in the US and frankly even in China itself which must be >> well that's a new development up until uh the last few weeks all of the hundreds of legal actions took place in all western jurisdictions for the first time they are now starting a case in China in a court in Shanghai and I I won't be traveling, but um >> and they're accusing you of IP theft, which I Well, tell me tell me what you think about that. >> Yeah. >> Um that can be broadcast. Um it is it is Alice in Wonderland. It is through the looking glass. It is the inverse and direct opposite of the truth. It is breathtaking and gling and shocks the conscience that somebody would lie by saying that black is white >> and just and would take you to court for it. And it's you the IP that has been stolen um from us is uh you know very very extensive and this is the thing it's not actually about that it's about making us have to hire lawyers and defend against a case and spend money. Can I give you an example of something in the US which is really an interesting case? So they sued the company and me personally for defamation on a zero win chance defamation lawsuit. Like just complete nonsense. And the and I I'm I'm not exaggerating. Basically they said I called them Chinese and therefore it was de defamatory. It's like but you're Chinese. I mean, it's this is who who you are is it's on your on the documents and the um the defense that we had to mount if if you're taking a if you're suing somebody for defamation or you're suing me for defamation, you would sue where you can get jurisdiction. And the best places to sue if you want to take a defamation case are London, the UK, Ireland is also a very good place because the defamation uh the the the hurdle >> to for defamation is a lower hurdle. Now the awards in the UK or Ireland are not as high as they are in America because the defamation hurdle in America is much higher. But if you win a defamation case in in America, the awards are much bigger than they would be in the UK or or or in a place like Ireland. However, they sued for defamation in America. Why? Because when you lose um a case in America, generally the co courts do not award costs automatically. If you were to sue, if if if you were to sue me, for example, in London and you lost, it's highly likely that the court will award costs against you. So, you would have to pay my legal fees. If you were to sue me here in Washington DC for defamation and you lost, you probably wouldn't have costs awarded against you. And then what you do is when you would lose, you then appeal that decision. And then when you lose the appeal, you appeal that decision. And then when you lose that appeal, you keep appealing until the courts say you are no longer allowed to do that. And that's what happened in in in the US. But interestingly in the US there was one in in in one of the appeals where there was a decision made there was one technicality where they said well there's an issue of $4,000 of some something $4,000 which you know maybe you have a point on this $4,000 issue which is just a non thing and they are now suing for the $4,000 and the cost of that case to def to take the case and to defend against it will be multitudes of that number. So, it's not about winning a case that says we have to pay you $4,000. It's about making us spend all the dollars to defend against a case where the only reason to do it is to bleed you out to to to make you spend money. you know this uh legal warfare or lawfare it's described in the book unrestricted warfare these two Chinese colonels wrote back in the day but in 2003 there were three warfares which were codified into uh Chinese warfare doctrine and as to your point I mean lawfare is is one of those sort of key three elements >> there was a hearing on the hill I I don't know the the expert that gave the testimony I've never met them and never spoke to them, but they selected our example and gave it as an example of Chinese lawfare in action. >> Okay. So, you've got a $3 billion carrot, you've got a $36 million stick ongoing, could be a lot more than that. Why do you do it? >> A number of reasons. Commercially, the value of the outer internet far exceeds any of these numbers, including their 3 billion number, far exceeds it. um the internet once it's up and turned on uh as a the the the global uh the first the world's first completely self-contained global communications network. Um as an entrepreneur I have a view of what the value of that is and it's a multiple many multiples of any of the numbers that we've talked about here. I might be completely wrong about that. Um but that's my entrepreneurial sense of what the value is. That's also my uneducated guess as well, >> right? It seems you'd think it, right? You'd think it would, you know, if it does what it says on the tin, then it really is all these things and of course it's going to be a very very valuable company in global terms. So commercially, it's worth it. I mean, 36 million compared to the value of of what that's going to be, it's, you know, relatively speaking, a drop in the bucket. But it's not a drop in the bucket where you have to raise that money from investors because you're pre-revenue uh on on the major project itself. And so killing things like this in the cradle is the place to kill them. >> And killing them with uh by offering a big carrot is the best way to kill them. But of course the donkey has to take the carrot and this donkey is not taking the carrot. And it seems that that's not something they're accustomed to. And the reason the donkey isn't taking the carrot is because I know what the internet can do. And I do not want the Communist Party of China to have the internet. I would rather burn it down than have the Communist Party of China have the internet because my children, my family, our democracies, our way of life could depend upon them not having the internet. And I think that the probability of this becoming important is at least it's probably around a 50% probability that this could be a definingly important asset. >> And I don't want them to have it. I'm not a government. I'm just a guy. Um, frankly, governments haven't been that motivated by this. But I know how dumb governments are. I saw them implement policies and regulations that allowed Huawei and China to dominate the global wireless industry and literally deploy 5G networks in Western democracies, not just under the noses of governments, but with governments welcoming them and applauding them. That's how stupid uh we can be. So, the fact that you have to wait for a long time for the penny to drop, that you can be in a bar fight with the Communist Party of China for so long without the cavalry showing up, it's no wonder so many people give in. Now the system should be better than relying upon individual entrepreneurs and business people to not take the 30 pieces of silver. Who's the cavalry here? The cavalry should be the western democracies, one or more of them that should have stepped up years ago to make sure that this thing didn't get us far. were it not for the fact that the team of people that I work with are so committed to this mission and making sure that the Communist Party of China cannot have this um this would already be theirs. This would be a fact in space today. >> It would already be there. >> What would you like to see happen next as we finish up? >> I'm executing. I am executing to the mission. We are putting the outer edet up. We will fight every lawsuit that the Chinese bring as we have done. We will win them all as we have been doing. Um we didn't get into the nitty-gritty of all these little actions. I mean, you know, they'll never sue you one time for one thing. They'll sue you three, four, or five times for that thing. And they'll try different courts, and they'll try different judges in the same court. Um, and they won't they'll they'll serve you on one. You'll beat that the the the one on the service, but they won't serve you on another one, and they'll send it. In one case, we had a a case was sent to some lawyer in in in in a jurisdiction where the lawyer said that they were receiving for us. They we never heard of that lawyer before. They didn't work for us. It was someone who was willing to risk their law license to say that they were in receipt of a suit. And because we didn't know that that action had even taken place, we had defended one. We had won it. And then we found out we had an injunction against us. It was a temporary injunction. We got it overturned in the end. But we said, "Well, hang on. No, we we beat that. We we beat that case." And they said, "Well, there is an injunction and it's from this court." And then we checked and it was a different judge. And we found out that this judge, unbeknownst to the judge, the judge didn't know, was told we had been served and had got confirmation from someone saying they had received service for us. So we beat the case in in the injunction in this uh room of the court. We lost it in another room of the same course, not even knowing that this one had been taken. And we found out about it the day after they notified us about it the day after the final day to challenge it on the simple way of challenging it. So, we had to go through a much more lengthy process to be able to challenge and then overturn that that that injunction. And look, that is one place in the weeds. And then you have things like our people being followed around where they're not hiding behind trees or wearing false mustaches. You can see you're being followed. And that's to get in your head. And that has stopped. But that went on for a while as well. And I could go on and on and on. But it's all about creating stick, creating pressure, make and they know how inept western governments are. They know how slow they are. They know how naive they are when it comes to communist China. I mean, look at this case in the UK where these these two guys that the Crown Prosecution Service wanted to prosecute for spying case has been dropped. I mean they know this and so the the number of instances where if they want to target something that somebody is going to look around and look it over their shoulders and say well do I take the money and run or do I stand and fight and you know the cavalry aren't going to show up for quite a while and actually my message here is and I pro you it's probably not a great message but understand that if you are in the private sector and you are fighting the Communist Party of China on something, the calvaryary ain't coming for a long time, if it comes at all. Um, and you are on your own and you are going to have to find it within your self um to have the spirit and the espreda core in your organization to mount that fight. But remember what we're doing it for. We're not doing it because a government tells us we shouldn't deal with the Communist Party of China. We we should be doing it because it's what we're doing is the right thing to do. Whether our government acts or doesn't act, that's the thing that we have to remember. So, and look, you see people that go and companies that go and make massive investments in China and become captured by the Communist Party of China's, you know, economy and apparatus. There's no conse there's no downside consequences for that. It is rewarded. So, this is a long this is a long march. This is a long march and we have to have the character and the spirit to make it. And if you are in the private sector and you are being targeted this way, expect that you're going to have to fight on your own. Um, and it's a lonely place uh sometimes, but eventually it will be worth it. >> The word courage comes to mind. >> It does. and courage. I don't know if you've ever watched that. There was a British show made in the 80s called Yes Minister. And of course, you know, people that are familiar with London Washington will know it very well. You know it very well. Yeah. And in Yes Minister when Sir Humphrey, the senior civil servant, the Mandarin civil servant of Whiteall, would say to his minister who then became prime minister, he the prime minister would say, "Oh, I I want to do this thing. saying, "I want to have this policy. I want to have this fight." And and and and so Humphrey would say, "That's very courageous, minister." And the minister would immediately know. Oh, he said, "Is it?" he wouldn't want to do it because he knew that the that that that symbolized recklessness and courage is something that has been devalued in the west over the last 40 years. It is not prized. It's prized in military action. It is not prized in private sector action. It is not prized in commercial action. Nobody gets thanked for being courageous. So when you hear that a business leader is being courageous on a point of principle, people hear this sounds expensive. That's a broken system, by the way, as as as you know. Um, I think that there is long-term value in courage and I think there's long-term commercial value in courage on not taking the money and running. I believe that. I also believe it's just the right thing to do because I believe you I'm a Roman Catholic and you know I think that ultimately I will be accountable to the final judge for what I do or do not do and that certainly motivates how I think about things. >> Well, Declan Ganley, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. >> It's been an honor to be on. Yeah. Thank you very much. >> Thank you all for joining Declan Ganley and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Ya Kell.