How the CCP and Its Proxies Created a ‘World on Fire’: Col. John Mills

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “China is surpassing American strength, whether it be naval forces or nuclear forces,” says retired U.S. Army Col. John Mills.

His four-decade career has spanned key roles from the Cold War era to the War on Terror. At the Department of Defense, he directed cybersecurity policy.

“I was brought into cyber in 2007 when the threat really was Russian cyber adventurism, but by 2012, from that point onward, it was all China—wasn’t even close,” he says. “For every dollar Russia spent on misadventure, China spent 20.”

In this episode, we dive into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) influence globally and how it has created what Mills calls a “world on fire.”

“All the playing pieces are kind of in place for [CCP leader Xi Jinping] to make his move around the world, to establish China as the dominant nation state, and everything else, all other nations, would be tributary vassal states, including the U.S.,” Mills says.

“They are absolutely advancing a relentless onslaught of information warfare, through their media, through their wolf warriors, to advance a Chinese communist message that just drowns out everything else.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Colonel John Mills, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Colonel John Mills:

Jan, thank you. It’s such an honor to be on your show with you.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’ve said that all or most regional conflicts in the world actually trace back to communist China. That’s a big statement. 

Colonel Mills:

Right now we live in a world on fire. We have multiple regional conflicts going on. When you start to break them down, every one of them traces to China, whether it’s the American home front and fentanyl, Antifa violence in the streets; it all traces to China, whether it’s Ukraine, the Middle East, the Americas, or Asia. 

Now I also like to use the allegory here that in 1939, in the summer, if you asked a group of experts whether the world was in conflict in the summer of 1939, most would harumph and say, no, we have something going on in China, we have something going on in Ethiopia, in Spain, and the rise of militarism in Germany, but there’s not a world war going on. 

Then in September, they changed their mind when the Germans crossed the border into Poland. But if you look at everything, the world was already on fire in the summer of 1939. So all of these things, we’re living in a very similar time here. There’s multiple regional conflicts. When you break down every one of them, everything traces to communist China and their focus and intent of dominating the world’s situation.

The book in 1999, “Unrestricted Warfare,” really was, I would say, in many ways, the tipping point and the articulation of the coordinated campaign of China to be the dominant world power through all measures, unrestricted warfare. Give me a few examples of how that manifests with this unrestricted warfare. I would say biological warfare is one of the basics, and that is an actual strategy that China has written. They call it the commanding heights of the showdown with America—biological warfare. You have to look at the Wuhan lab, the chaos created in 2020 by the release of the virus from the lab at Wuhan, and just the mass psychosis that China stoked and leveraged around the world, especially here in the United States.

Mr. Jekielek:

Gordon Chang says that whether or not this was an intentional release, it’s the way it was used that weaponized it one way or the other.

Colonel Mills:

Yes, I think that’s clear. I was involved in the Team B report that assessed and gave an alternative viewpoint to the virus. And, you know, in the early days, we were attacked, excoriated—anybody who questioned it. But what Gordon said is true: that regardless of whether it was intentional or accidental from the lab, it was absolutely leveraged and exploited. No question about it. That’s just one. 

But there was massive theft of intellectual property, massive takedown of market sectors in America to essentially undermine through low price points, and steal intellectual property. And then take over the whole market sector, whether it be small consumer drones or whether it be textiles. That is the Chinese strategy. It’s also a buildup of military forces, which we’ve now seen. In many cases, China is surpassing American strength, whether it be naval forces or nuclear forces. 

Mr. Jekielek:

You mentioned something about price points, so basically dumping, for example, cornering the market in solar panels—that’s something a lot of people don’t realize that the Chinese Communist Party has effectively cornered that entire market. But originally through dumping into the U.S. market and basically having all the local producers of such things go out of business because they couldn’t compete. Why? Because it was part of their industrial policy. It was part of their national security agenda to do that because now they can leverage that against the United States and others. 

Colonel Mills:

Absolutely. And they had a lot of willful help from globalist-minded politicians inside the United States. You mentioned solar panels. It’s been shown that a lot of these solar panels are internet protocol enabled, meaning they’re points on the international network, on the worldwide network. Anything that is a worldwide point on the network can be used both ways. 

It can be used for intelligence collection. It could be used for remote access. It can be used for remote operation in nefarious ways. So there’s nothing good that comes out of that. And absolutely the solar panel campaign, which also has rare earth metals, is absolutely a key component of China’s strategy. Get us dependent on those solar panels. Well, China builds coal plants at an unbelievable rate.

Mr. Jekielek:

And on top of everything else, use massive U.S. subsidy money to do it.

Colonel Mills:

Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

That is textbook unrestricted warfare.

Colonel Mills:

It makes perfect sense. We’re funding their malign efforts.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let’s talk just very briefly about these points of conflict, because that’s this world on fire. In many cases, it’s not clear. With these solar panels, it wasn’t clear that this was part of the fire. There doesn’t seem to be a fire there, but there actually is some kind of fire. Whereas, what about the actual conflict zones? Please give us an overview. 

Colonel Mills:

First of all, I break them down to the home front right here in America. Open borders. We had no idea who was coming across the border during the previous presidential administration. Many of them were Chinese special operators that immediately pivoted to what when they came in? Cannabis operations muscled in on legal cannabis cash-rich operations. Cash can’t be banked because of federal laws. All kinds of malfeasance can be done when you have a lot of cash floating around. 

Fentanyl, over the last few years, absolutely 100% from China. Chinese formulary components are now assembled in Mexico by the cartels under the supervision of Chinese personnel. So right there is the home front. But you have to look at the Americas: the Chinese attempts to really gain control of the Panama Canal, but also Belt and Road initiatives to bag and curry favor throughout the Americas, including Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and other places. So that’s the next front, but you got to look at Ukraine. 

Mr. Jekielek:

But there’s a specific relationship with Venezuela, where there is narco-terrorism. 

Colonel Mills:

You’ve got to look at Venezuela as the huge base camp in the Americas for China. It’s an ungoverned space. This is a huge footprint of Chinese operators, of Russian operators, of Iranian operators. This is their base camp for the Americas. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Before we go international, I just wanted to mention something. Something we’ve covered on the show quite a bit is this idea of the unholy trinity of very seemingly disparate groups working together on behalf of the CCP. So Chinese state security is one corner of that. Wealthy business tycoons are a piece of that. And then, of course, the triads or organized crime are a part of that. So with these three groups working together to achieve certain outcomes, this is best documented in Vancouver, how that was from the earliest parts of infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party in North America. 

But you can imagine how much easier that becomes, for example, when you have triads working with Tren de Aragua as an example, right? Because there’s kind of a natural affinity to function there. But we just don’t think in terms of, this government is working with organized crime, is working with wealthy businessmen with a common goal in mind, with the Chinese Communist Party at the helm directing how this is going to go down.

Colonel Mills:

Yes, absolutely. You mentioned Vancouver, which is a case study in forward influence operations by China. But what’s enabled that is there’s a high level of Chinese population, oftentimes connected with Hong Kong. But what was brought in from Hong Kong was also the big circle gang, essentially Chinese triads in Hong Kong, which established a big footprint in Vancouver. But it’s a high cash operation: you bring money to one side of the casino, buy some chips, cash them in, and walk out the other side. Now you’ve covered your tracks on money laundering. Did you know that all the casinos in Vancouver, BC, have lots and lots of Chinese triads hanging around there? 

But real estate purchases are another great opportunity for money laundering, making purchases in cash, manipulating the value, pocketing the difference—all these kinds of things. This is another opportunity for money laundering. Coming down the I-5 corridor from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, spinning it through the casinos up in Washington State again to double launder it—all kinds of trickery goes on.

Mr. Jekielek:

The other part with this, let’s call it immigration warfare that you were describing, or illegal immigration warfare or something like that. We’ve had, I don’t know, some pretty high estimates of how many military-age Chinese males have come across. How do we know that there’s Chinese special operators? Because that’s a very specific class, right, that is coming across in significant numbers.

Colonel Mills:

I spent time in Panama with Michael Yon and Ann Vandersteel watching the Chinese activities. It’s just obvious in a lineup who is and who isn’t. Good teeth, flat stomach, muscular, military haircut. Now they also have an unemployment problem, but they also are gamifying and saying, hey, go, go, go forth and do great things. And this is one more way to take down America: immigration warfare, and with the double bonus prize of filtering, of sneaking in Chinese special operators to be the advance force.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let’s start with an obvious conflict area that we’ve been looking at recently, and that is Iran, Israel, and all of these various proxy groups that Iran has been working with. Let’s start with that, because it seems like a number of them have actually been entirely removed. 

Colonel Mills:

Most people have a kind of a stereotype of the Middle East tensions and conflict. Oh, it’s Arab-Israeli, it’s this or that. That’s not what’s going on nowadays. It’s totally different. Everybody needs to totally reframe and update their viewpoints on what’s going on in the Middle East. I call it essentially the second part of the world on fire. 

The first part was Ukraine, and we’ll visit that a little bit later, but with Iran. Iran would not exist today if it was not for Chinese illegal purchases of sanctioned gas and oil moved on ghost ships from Iran at below market rates priced in renminbi, so Iran is forced to spend all that renminbi right back in China buying consumer products. So this really is Iran as a client, a proxy state. 

I call it the 3H club of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, which are the proxies of a proxy. There’s not much left of the 3H club. It’s about the 0.25H club, mostly gone. Still, the issues there are really food, weaponization of food aid, but a new form of food distribution is being used, which cuts Hamas out of the weaponization angle. But there are also the remaining hostages. There are also the weapons that the remainder of Hamas uses to attack the Israelis. 

But there’s also Hezbollah, but they’ve been mostly or severely decremented by the brilliant pager assault, but also very, very decisive moves by Israel to create a buffer zone in the south. The Houthis are still annoying, still a problem. They’ve been decremented also, degraded also through attacks by Israel and by the U.S. 

But the Houthis wouldn’t have anything to fire if it weren’t for the flow of war material coming from Iran. And a lot of these rockets and missiles that are being used by Iran, essentially, they are Chinese design and/or Chinese made or made with Chinese tooling, and a lot of the war material that is made inside of Iran, again with Chinese tooling, is also exported to Russia. So Iran is a proxy and again would not exist—the viability of the three-headed regime in Iran, really led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC], would be broke if it weren’t for Chinese illegal purchases of gas and oil that are sanctioned and moved on ghost fleet ships. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Syria has also shifted from an Iran allegiance to, well, I think they’re in the process of trying to figure out what kind of relationship they’re going to have in the West, if that’s even possible, given the people that basically brought al-Sharaa to power. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that when it comes to Iran, it seems like that part of the world on fire has been reduced somewhat in the last while.

Colonel Mills:

The Israelis have very effectively, although caught off guard with October 7th by Hamas, the Israelis have rallied and shown decisive what we call escalation dominance, and it’s just another technical term. They’ve schwacked Iran over and over and over again. So they’ve seriously degraded the—I can’t even keep track of who’s in charge of the IRGC. It changes so often because the Israeli strikes are extremely accurate and effective. Then you have the civilian president, then you have Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei. But the Israelis have shown decisive dominance. 

What is of grave concern now is also this Chinese airlift. I kind of call it a mini Berlin airlift that is ongoing, where it appears China is bringing in new air defense because the air defense has been essentially wiped out by Israeli and American activity. And so that’s what’s going on. Air defense equipment is relatively light in the spectrum of what needs to be moved as far as war material. 

The Chinese are flying in new S-300, S-400 launch units, missiles, and radars to provide new air defense. Grave concern: are they flying in possible nuclear warheads? I don’t know. I am sure the Israelis have excellent intelligence on this. They’ve shown time and again intelligence dominance. If that was the case, that the Chinese were flying in nukes, I think very likely some of those Chinese 747s would be shot down to send a message.

Mr. Jekielek:

How is the CCP involved? You also mentioned Ukraine earlier.

Colonel Mills:

The no-limits agreement with Russia and China was essentially finalized in the fall of 2021. And that was essentially an agreement with China and its proxy states, initially just Russia, but to essentially overturn the U.S.-led world system, which is primarily economic. The dollar is the reserve currency. But this was one thing often not understood about China and Russia. They look at the U.S. operation Desert Storm, which I was in in ’91 and ’92, as the perfect military operation, which they study relentlessly.

Ukraine was essentially supposed to be the Desert Storm for Russia. Tactically, the Russians may have momentum. It’s not totally clear on that. But now we’re in a new era where we’re going to give war material to Ukraine to help them resist. The president wants to bring peace and bring peace to this conflict, and so far Putin has not been cooperative. 

But that is essentially the first major conflagration in the world, and Putin is an absolute proxy as he would not exist in power either for the same reasons: sanctioned gas and oil moved out of the Baltic on ghost ships over the Arctic to China. Totally both countries are absolutely dependent on Chinese purchases and frankly, those regimes would not be in power without the purchases by China of sanctioned gas and oil.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s interesting that the president actually, you know, I think quite prominently, we’re going to have allowed those shipments to resume from Iran to China.

Colonel Mills:

I think in the geopolitical play there might be some reason to allow that. The president has been clear that we’re not seeking regime change. That’s not an American item of interest or on the agenda. But I think tactically that might make some sense to allow so that there is some cash flowing so that people do not starve. We did not inadvertently create a humanitarian crisis. But I think that can very easily be turned off and turned around once a relook is done at what exactly that funding is going to. If Iran is just rearming, I think that could very easily be shut off.

Mr. Jekielek:

Give us a picture of how the Chinese Communist Party operates and how this would lead to this world-on-fire scenario that you’re describing.

Colonel Mills:

There are many strategy documents and issuances from Chinese leaders, communist Chinese leaders, that their long-term interest is essentially establishing world dominance. It’s been very clear, but they haven’t been able to—they knew it was going to be a long march to establish world dominance. There were many factors that weren’t in place, but I think President Xi is feeling that the time is right to really essentially, in many ways, go to Chairman Mao’s third stage of conflict, which is an open conflict coming out of the guerrilla insurgency phases.

But they’ve established economic dominance in many ways as so many U.S. jobs were lost to China when globalists felt, well, what would be wrong with that? Well, everything. But now all the playing pieces are kind of in place for Xi to make his move around the world to establish China as the dominant nation-state and everything else, all other nations would be tributary vassal states, including the US.

Mr. Jekielek:

How do they work? For example, you’ve highlighted the importance of political and information warfare in what this Chinese Communist Party does.

Colonel Mills:

Unfortunately, the American art form on information warfare—some people would call it psychological operations, I think that’s a little bit too dramatic. But our art form on statecraft has really deteriorated dangerously. Why? It’s because of just the woke agenda. It’s totally poisoned the environment. The Americans are unable to tell their story. Unable—that’s the simple part of strategic communication and information warfare from the Democratic Republic is just telling our side of the story and capable of doing that because of the cancer of DEI, wokeism, and CRT. That’s being turned around by the Trump administration.

Mr. Jekielek:

But you mean there’s this element of looking at the country negatively so you can’t tell the story positively because you don’t believe it yourself. That’s what you’re saying?

Colonel Mills:

Absolutely. How can someone advance the American ideal or the American agenda when they actually don’t believe it in their heart of hearts, because of the indoctrination of CRT, DEI, and wokeism? 

Mr. Jekielek:

How does that relate to the importance of this information and political warfare operations for the Chinese Communist Party?

Colonel Mills:

The Chinese Communist Party prioritizes and values what are called wolf warrior diplomats in a very aggressive information warfare campaign to not just tell their side of the story. There’s a difference between someone telling their side of the story and just plain lying. There’s always going to be a debate, viewpoints on why something happened. And that’s why it’s important for someone to be able to tell their side of the story. 

That’s different from what the Chinese are doing. They are absolutely advancing a relentless onslaught of information warfare through their media, through their wolf warriors, to advance a Chinese communist message that drowns out everything else. There is no intellectual honesty in their viewpoint. They are never wrong. 

But you can just look at what’s going on on the home front inside China. It’s a totalitarian system. There are no freedoms. The Chinese Communist Party is dominant, and everybody else is essentially an automaton to carry out the guidance, the roles, the missions, and the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party. 

There is a massive human rights issue with the Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Christians, and forced organ harvesting. You have a massive issue with youth unemployment inside China, and food issues inside China. They have depended on the US for food imports and energy. So there are a lot of issues causing severe societal stress inside China. And what totalitarians do when they’re under pressure at home, as history shows, is predictable; they strike outward.

Mr. Jekielek:

What is the Chinese political warfare strategy right now? 

Colonel Mills:

Part of it is co-opting Western media, including broadcast media and Hollywood. Different Chinese interests, like Tencent Pictures, for example, clearly have had a long-term campaign to essentially craft the narrative coming out of Hollywood. It’s always pro-China, questioning the West. Taiwan is part of China. It’s a very insidious activity there. But with broadcast media, let’s also take the NBA. 

The NBA is a poster child for what happens with Chinese influence operations. The only place growth exists in the NBA is China. So the NBA, the National Basketball Association, is very beholden to what China wants to do. Why? Because the revenue from their teams grows because of the Chinese market. 

Domestically, they have to compete with other interests of the American family or those spending money on leisure and entertainment. And it’s shrinking. So the NBA is a perfect example of shaping the narrative to conform to the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Jekielek:

But how does that manifest? How does the NBA behave differently?

Colonel Mills:

Let’s say Hong Kong. Nobody can question when Hong Kong fell and was taken over in violation of longstanding agreements for Hong Kong. I think it was Enes Kanter who essentially lost his job in the NBA because he spoke out about that, but others did too. Clearly, there was a narrative that had to be followed by players and teams, and if not, the person or the team was admonished or fired.

Mr. Jekielek:

Which states are aligned with China?

Colonel Mills:

The lineup includes Russia, which is essentially tied down with the Ukraine war, and Iran, which has now been severely degraded. But I think you also have to look at North Korea, which has about 30,000 troops on the battlefield in Ukraine. But I think you also have to include South Africa in this constellation of the axis of China. Pakistan is kind of wavering, but their problem is they’ve allowed a very significant Chinese footprint of advisors and businesses. 

The Belt and Road Initiative is a significant program where the use of foreign aid is weaponized by the Chinese. They prey upon countries that essentially can’t afford much. The Chinese come in with very generous upfront terms and conditions that offer a lot, but in the fine print, there are also collateral that the nation-state has to provide, whether it be a port or some other interest. 

This has happened in Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Pakistan where those nations have been taken advantage of by payday loan terms and conditions of foreign aid. They’ve done that. China has done that in the Americas, taking advantage of an American vacuum where America was really disengaged from the world, creating a vacuum. China says, perfect, fine, we’ll step in and take over. 

But the malign spirit and terms and conditions of Belt and Road are extremely egregious, extremely abusive, and take advantage of countries that really don’t know any better, can’t afford anything, and are willing to essentially surrender sovereignty for, in the short term, a bridge, a port, something that they can’t afford themselves. 

Mr. Jekielek:

It seems like they’ve developed this network of deep-water ports that could be accessible by the Chinese Navy. 

Colonel Mills:

I think that’s very true in Peru. You have a deep-water port, and you have two Mexican ports that were greatly developed with Chinese resources as alternatives, also as a land bridge to the Panama Canal. But within Panama, a lot of attention is there. The Trump administration is focusing on really squeezing the Chinese out because it is onerous. If you look at the map, what the Chinese own are the major ports on each end of the canal, which can effectively be used to shut down the canal at will. 

But in Panama, on the Pacific coast, the port we are discussing is the Hutchinson Wampoa port. We have no idea what’s going on there. The stretch is about a thousand feet wide at that point to get in and out of the canal. If one of those large container ships decides to have an accident and take a hard left or a hard right, the whole canal is blocked. That would mean 50% of the U.S. Navy is off the table for responding to Western Pacific contingencies such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. 

So this is very concerning, and it’s something that needs to be addressed because we don’t know what’s going on inside Hutchinson Wampoa, a container yard and container port in Panama. But these deep-water ports are essentially fortresses for advanced outposts for China around the world. I am sure the United States is still pressing that issue. President Molina of Panama is actually very pro-U.S., very pro-Western. Frankly, he’s done a very good job of calling out the Chinese inside Panama. Previous administrations in Panama were just very subject to being taken advantage of by the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. 

Mr. Jekielek:

We’re talking about how the Chinese Communist Party is enabling this world on fire, in all these different places, and all the different conflicts. Is conflict really good for China? Does it want to be in these conflicts?

Colonel Mills:

With China, they want others to be in conflict. They’re very happy to have other countries grind up and lose their own citizens and militaries. They’re very happy to watch Russia grind away and lose population. With Iran, they have no problem sitting back and watching Iran and the 3H Club being severely attrited by the Israelis. They have no problem, so the Chinese are always wily in this method. 

Do the Chinese want open warfare? Not by themselves. But they’re totally happy and encourage their satellite nations to become ensnared in violent, bloody conflicts. They’re always very good about using other countries’ populations and militaries to be ground up in conflict. The Chinese don’t have strong military experience since their takeover in 1949. I think in some ways they’re timid; they’re inexperienced. They’re growing a great military force and showing it off regularly as an intent to take over Taiwan. But the challenge is they’re still, I think, a little unsure of themselves. 

Mr. Jekielek:

But this is another dimension that’s very important—their military is growing fast. This is a big part of your background. 

Colonel Mills:

Their Navy has surpassed the American. It’s shameful what’s going on. And under the previous presidential administration, we were spending more than ever, approaching a trillion dollars per year on the DOD budget, and yet our military was shrinking. We’re spending more, we’re getting less. That’s an internal American problem. Again, there is the drag coefficient and the cancerous nature of wokeism, DEI, CRT—spending more, getting less. That’s exactly what you get in a grotesquely bloated, corrupt, socialist-leaning environment. 

But the Chinese have accelerated their naval forces and their missile forces. They are on a relentless buildup. Their nuclear force, the American intelligence community has been lazy and complacent in counting the Chinese nuclear force. They frankly don’t know this fictitious number of 500 nuclear warheads, which has been the number for 10 to 15 years for China, and another 10 years; it’s always 500, according to what is coming out of the American intelligence community.

If you look at the number of ballistic missiles that are on the ground-based side of the deterrent force, whether they be fixed in a silo or road mobile, if you count the number of sea-launch ballistic missiles and the submarines they have. If you count the number of bombers they have and the number of nuclear-armed cruise missiles, if those were fully deployed, that’s more like 2,000 nuclear warheads right off the bat. The math doesn’t even make sense. But that’s a lazy, complacent American intelligence community that has, frankly, not been doing its job in counting the Chinese nuclear force. We have the worst nuclear gap we’ve ever faced, ever. It’s an extremely dangerous situation.

Mr. Jekielek:

One thing that makes it harder to count them is the fact that they move them. Can you speak to that? 

Colonel Mills:

The Chinese nuclear force has characteristics that we don’t even have. They have road-mobile ballistic missiles. Road-mobile missiles prevent targeting because you’re constantly moving the missile. Another side aspect is essentially the Chinese underground Great Wall of China, which is an extensive tunneling system throughout China, and totalitarians love to tunnel. A certain amount of hardening and protection is always good, but they spend immense resources on new advanced tunnel complexes, whether it be for their missile force or for this huge, the largest underground command and control facility in human history that is being built on the western side of Beijing. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Tell us more about that. 

Colonel Mills:

Again, I think this is something that’s not that well known. So this new underground command center on the western side of Beijing communicates several things. It communicates an intent to conduct and survive a nuclear exchange. This is not just to create and operate a deterrent force and then do a launch if necessary. This is to actually conduct and win a nuclear war. When command centers start tunneling, that means they’re getting ready for conflict.

Mr. Jekielek:

This is a good time to learn more about your background.

Colonel Mills:

Thank you, Jan. I first joined the military in 1983. It was during the Reagan buildup. It was a great time. It was a resurgence of the American spirit. It was exciting. It was very simple. We were going to win. We were going to put the Soviets out of business. We were going to win. They were going to lose. You could win the Cold War, which a lot of our elites were telling us you can never win the Cold War. You can only manage it. 

Reagan said, no, we’re going to win the Cold War. And we did. So that transitioned to what I call the peace dividend era. That’s when I did a Bosnia tour and did peacekeeping in Bosnia, and we really were in the Francis Fukuyama era of the end of history. The end of history, you know, there is nothing; we’ve accomplished everything; there’s nothing more to do here. 

Oh yes, there is. There’s always something on the conveyor belt of chaos. Then we hit 9/11 and Islamic extremism, and it also led to the era of the Arab Spring, the collapse of a number of friendly Arab states, and then the showdown with China. I lived through all of those and had roles in all of them.

Mr. Jekielek:

During all this chaos that was happening, China was getting permanent trade relations, China’s joining the World Trade Organization, and the gutting of the American factories and manufacturing sector began and happened in earnest. All of this basically enabled the massive rise of communist China. So to your point, but please tell me more about what you did during these times.

Colonel Mills:

During the Cold War, I came in right at the height of 1983, but it really went to essentially the climax, which was the collapse of East Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was in the first Gulf War also. So that’s where we, again, as we mentioned earlier, that was the model. Desert Storm was the model of the perfect war, and it was quite amazing to be involved in that because it was a lightning conflict where we destroyed a massive Iraqi army well equipped with the latest in Soviet and Chinese weaponry and their tactics, their techniques, their procedures. We just totally dominated them. And it shocked the Russians; it shocked the Chinese.  

But I remember one time when we finally got the order to halt the end of combat operations, we were already about halfway to Baghdad, and it wasn’t my call. I was just a first lieutenant in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. But talking with the squadron, I said, if we don’t take care of this now, we’re going to be back in 10 years. Sure enough, we were back in 10 years. 

But in that interim time, I did peacekeeping operations. We tried to figure out what was going on. Madeleine Albright said, well, use this military for something. Let’s use them in peacekeeping operations. And there was some merit to that, but it was also a globalist period of foolishness where we allowed the Chinese to rise and essentially, in many ways, started to step back from the playing field.  

But Bosnia, in many ways, was a battleground of things to come. I didn’t even understand part of the issues I had to deal with was watching jihadis inside of Bosnia. I didn’t even understand why Islamic extremists were in Bosnia. There was a long story and reason for that.  But then came the war on terror and  9/11. 

And so I started working with a plan. I initially worked in Afghanistan. That was the original focus, but I also worked on some issues in Yemen. But then I was in Iraq shortly after the initial entry to help set up governance in Iraq during the early days. But then we kind of pivoted. We kind of became ensnared in a long, endless conflict with unclear goals and agendas that just kind of went on into perpetuity, and that’s where the Chinese really took advantage of things. 

But one of the things that we really noticed around 2013-2014 was the beginning of island building, and it was also relentless Chinese cyber breaches, like the one into the Office of Personnel Management [OPM] where 22 million files went out the window, which led to the roll-up of the entire CIA human network operation inside of China. Hundreds, more likely thousands, were rounded up, executed, and killed. That’s when it got serious. It got serious, and I was brought into cyber in 2007 when the threat really was Russian cyber adventurism. But by 2012, from that point onward, it was all China. It was China. It wasn’t even close. For every dollar Russia spent on misadventure, China spent 20 if you just look at the difference in this.

Mr. Jekielek:

On cyber misadventure.

Colonel Mills:

Cyber, but also all of these malign adventures. If nothing else, there is the size of the GDP difference between Russia and China. China is 20 times the size. So yes, Russia was an ankle biter, but the real issue was China.

Mr. Jekielek:

What did you do in cyber defense?

Colonel Mills:

I was brought in during 2007 by my boss, who was an NSA executive. I was on the Office of the Secretary of Defense staff. But I said we need a planner. We need a planner to organize this massive new U.S. cyber program called the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a huge interagency program that was going to make us more secure and better protected. But there were also other activities that went on that helped in other domains in cyber, more in the offensive realm. But this was a massive program. 

That’s why I shaped and organized that with my interagency partners through many, many meetings at the White House with the National Security Council. I spent some time on the National Security Council at the end of Bush’s presidency and the beginning of Obama’s. And this was really the American bulking up of our cyber capabilities. It was also a marriage; it became a marriage of big tech and the U.S. government, which led to a lot of unintended consequences such as spying on Americans, such as silencing and censoring Americans, and it really was part and parcel of the buildup to essentially the coup against candidate Trump and then President Trump starting in 2016.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re telling us that this cyber buildup was essential, but it was also abused. Kind of two pieces to it, right?

Colonel Mills:

Yes. What I saw time and again when we gave briefings at Fort Meade on cyber capabilities was the intoxicating effect of this growth of the cyber capabilities. So when a member of Congress or a staffer came up to receive these briefings, it was intoxicating, the scale and the scope of what could be done so easily. And I saw it over and over again: those who were being briefed sometimes had questions, concerns, or comments, but they weren’t convinced. Every time they walked out of those briefings saying, I want—not just that they liked it, they wanted a lot more of it.

Mr. Jekielek:

What would be an example of this type of capability that would be intoxicating?

Colonel Mills:

The ability to get information, whatever it was, wherever it was, get it fast, and present it in a meaningful manner at cyber speed. And I can’t go into any details, but we would do live demonstrations. And within seconds, we had it. It was amazing. And that always compelled anybody who was visiting—a policymaker, a member of Congress. As soon as they saw that, they said, I’m in.

Mr. Jekielek:

There is this ability to spy, an ability to gather intelligence. At the same time, a big part of it was to defend against exactly that kind of activity from adversaries.

Colonel Mills:

Defending was absolutely part of the equation. It’s also often said that the best defense is a good offense, so there’s that aspect. We are experiencing a relentless Chinese cyber assault from Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon. I’m no longer behind the curtain of classified information, but I’ve done many press releases, and I know what goes on behind a press release, the staff work, the details, and everything I read during the Biden administration was effectively that they had lost control and the Chinese were essentially inside our networks, and we were not able to eject them. The telecommunication companies were essentially almost abandoned by the Biden administration. Why? 

Because the Biden team was just incapable of finding and ejecting the Chinese malware fast enough. So there was a total, total problem with the previous administration on priorities. Going back to what the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, just brought out with the absolute mischievousness of John Brennan and James Comey trying to set Donald J. Trump up for failure, trying to prevent his election and running a coup against him once he was actually inaugurated.

Mr. Jekielek:

From the perspective of cybersecurity, offense and defense, where are we at? We know there aren’t any actors working out of China that are not connected with the Chinese Communist Party itself. 

Colonel Mills:

We are facing a cyber adversary that is led by China, but is not only China. It’s also Russia. It’s also Iran. It’s also North Korea. It’s also Venezuela. So there is a complete lineup. The Iranians are very effective and have been very effective at cyber operations. But they are doing this under the command and control of China, under the Ministry of State Security. So this is all a coordinated cyber campaign.

Mr. Jekielek:

I’ve heard this too, but how do we know that’s real?

Colonel Mills:

With the Chinese actors, you just read the Department of Justice press releases as they’ve gone over Iranian hackers. It’s clear that they are conducting a target set based upon Chinese priorities. And there are also signed agreements on cyber going back multiple years between China and Iran. So there are signed international agreements that nobody pays attention to. Those signed agreements are pretty important because they spell out, yes, there is an absolute integration of cyber operations.

Mr. Jekielek:

Basically, there are various different hacking units. Some of them might actually be in the Chinese military. Some of them might be independent operations. But they’re all basically connected and can be deployed as necessary. And in a way, they’re competing with each other to demonstrate how well they can do their hacking, what intelligence they can gather, how much money they can steal, how much classified information they can exfiltrate. It’s a very interesting system where if you become good, then you get even more benefits from the regime itself. Can you comment on this whole structure? 

Colonel Mills:

What you’re really talking about is that the Chinese are very good at gamification of the operation. We’re just like a social credit score. Your individual operators are graded. What can they break into? What can they exfiltrate? What are they returning home as far as value? So it’s absolute gamification. Everybody’s gamified to compete with each other for this. 

So that’s absolutely what’s going on here. That’s how they incentivize their different groups to conduct their cyber espionage. But it goes across the spectrum. It’s an application of the social credit theory, the social credit program, to their intelligence operations and their cyber operations. So they absolutely are being gamified. 

Now, some would say, they’re not actually part of the Chinese government. That’s like the Chinese that have been found on the battlefield of Ukraine. They wouldn’t be there without the express knowledge and permission of China. Now, China also has this very insidious nature of also walking away and essentially throwing under the bus its own operatives, too. 

On one hand, the Chinese gamify and get their people worked into a frenzy to get the best score. Just like us, we want to get points on our credit card, and achieve a higher flight status on an airline. It’s the same concept, and the Chinese do that. But also, if you’re outed, they’ll walk away from you or more often actually disappear the person. So that’s one thing that was found out to be interesting was that if the name of one of the Chinese hackers was released, the Chinese usually just disappeared them.

Mr. Jekielek:

For one, they’ve been compromised. And you can assume that the intelligence services of anybody who doesn’t like the Chinese Communist Party are getting whatever they can from that person. Bottom line, when it comes to cyber, when I look at the fact that through these Volt and Salt Typhoon hacks, it seems like these hack Chinese regime-affiliated hackers are deep in everything. There’s access to everything. That’s the sense I have from this reality. Have we failed in this? How do we fix this?

Colonel Mills:

This is one thing I learned from many years of working in cyber operations. Oftentimes the answer to beat down a malign opponent who continues to break into your network is not to go after them in the cyber domain. Oh, they poked another hole in our wall. I’ll just plug that hole. No, no. You want to get their attention. You want to get them to stop misbehaving. Go after something else that they value. It’s counter-value, not counter-force, counter-value. 

With China, they have a weakness in energy. They have a vulnerability in food. They have great instability at home. Those are things we can poke at. And if they don’t like it and if they start complaining, we just say, well, they need to stop poking at us in cyber, and we’ll stop squeezing their energy supply. It’s as simple as that. That’s the way you get attention and response in cyber often because you’re going to be able to keep out the lower-level operators, but a sophisticated high-end nation that operates with no rule set is going to be able to break in regularly. And they’re focusing on critical infrastructure. 

These are private companies. They’re operating critical infrastructure to try and make money. They’re not military intelligence or intelligence units. They’re looking at this from a profit and loss perspective, and it’s not their job to be armed with security to protect themselves. If they’re getting beat up that bad in cyber, that now becomes a U.S. government problem set because a foreign actor is beating up a U.S. critical infrastructure firm. I saw this during the Obama days. The Biden team probably sat around, did very little, and watched U.S. critical infrastructure get beat up. It’s a foreign adversary. It absolutely is a U.S. government mission. 

Mr. Jekielek:

The misunderstanding here has been that essentially the CCP co-opts absolutely everything in society. Everybody understands that at any moment they can be called upon to do something, and it’s expected. Otherwise, there will be dire consequences. But that’s not something we’ve understood.

Colonel Mills:

We presume good intent on other actors. I’m not saying that we have to presume everybody is out to get us, but we should be reserved. We should be ensuring that we are not creating vacuums or vulnerabilities that other malign nations are going to take advantage of. So the globalist elite mentality is, so what if they’re ripping us off? So what if they’re conducting these malign activities? We’re actually tricking them and creating a relationship. Well, that’s not the case. These are hardcore communists. Their only focus is victory. They’re not going to play nicely to become part of the globalist club.

Mr. Jekielek:

They’re playing to win. You mentioned how it works in cyber, but it works like that in almost every discipline. They have to exert leverage to elicit good behavior.

Colonel Mills:

When the Chinese started island building and then simultaneously breaking into the Office of Personal Management, the Obama administration started getting very upset, and they wanted ideas. Okay, how do we hold China accountable? I gave them a list. They just about passed out when they read the list. 

Oh, John, we shan’t be able to do that. That would be too provocative. Are we here to exert the American agenda? Are we here to just take the beating? It’s funny because in early 2016, they came back to me and said, where is that list you had given to us? We’re actually interested in working on that now, you know, a year, year and a half later.

Mr. Jekielek:

You were actually one of the people that assessed this intelligence community assessment from the side of DOD that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, publicized recently.

Colonel Mills:

Yes, I think I put it up on the NSA phone. The person said I had to be on the intelligence community assessment that was assembling to finalize the Russia narrative because we were going to prove that Trump was a Russian asset, and we were going to delay or block the inauguration of Donald J. Trump for the first term. I just couldn’t believe it.

Mr. Jekielek:

This is what you were told?

Colonel Mills:

This is what I was told on the phone. So this was a deep state coup from the beginning that actually started in early 2016. We went through the process in November and December. The final product came out in the first few days of January 2017. But, bottom line, the supposed top secret review had nothing to show that Russia was trying to manipulate the campaign or the outcome of the election in favor of Donald J. Trump. That the Trump campaign was somehow colluding with Russia. There was no evidence of anything. 

When the document, the intel community assessment, came back to the Department of Defense, because that’s what happens in these reviews, the team members, the document, the final end product goes back to all the departments and agencies for review, finalization, and approval. When it came back, my recommendation was non-concur. There was no evidence to support any of these assertions. 

I was told, John, stand down. No, you don’t need to complete the staffing. The secretary, Ash Carter, who has passed away now, had already signed off because Comey and Brennan were personally hands-on keyboard writing this assessment. You never have a director of the CIA or a director of the FBI personally writing the intel community assessment. That was very brief.

Mr. Jekielek:

Even with everything we know today, it sounds kind of crazy.

Colonel Mills:

It was absolutely crazy. And it was some of the most outrageous things I’d ever said or heard in government service, uniformed or civilian. This was insanity. The voice on the other end, I know exactly who it was, and I put their name to the Durham investigation, John, we’re going to finalize the Russian narrative, prove Donald J. Trump is a Russian asset, and delay or block the inauguration. It’s never been done before in American history. This is insane. 

But it shows what was going on. And we were starting early 2016; we were being fed information in interagency meetings from New York, from the director of counterintelligence, who was Charles McGonigal, who’s now in prison, who was being paid by the Russians to spread the rumor inside the U.S. government that Trump was a Russian asset.

Mr. Jekielek:

It was Russian money that was funding the rumor that candidate Trump was a Russian asset.

Colonel Mills:

That is as insane as it sounds. Yes, the Russians were paying the FBI director of counterintelligence to spread the rumor that it was the Russians who were interested in Trump, trying to influence the election, and that there was a form of collusion going on between the Trump campaign and Russia. This shows the bizarre nature of the Soviet-era psyche still permeating through the Russians. The reason I mentioned that is this is just not a very well-known piece of the story. 

Charles McGonigal is in prison, and he’s gotten scant attention. Now, he was charged. I gave a very long statement and updated it multiple times to the Durham investigation. During the Biden years, Merrick Garland was in the quandary of having an absolute problem with Charles McGonigal. Now, they separated that out from the John Durham investigation and said, oh, this had nothing to do with the John Durham investigation. 

Oh, yes, it did. It had everything to do with the John Durham investigation because they didn’t want to show that Durham was successful in anything. But Charles McGonigal really was derived from information from various sources from the Durham investigation. He’s in prison now. But there are also five criminal referrals out of the Durham investigation that have essentially, it’s right in the document. I think I know who three of the five are.

Mr. Jekielek:

Before the recent South Korean election, you were there on the ground as part of an international election monitoring team. I was at a presser where you gave some of your observations and conclusions and so forth. So I’ll read a few of them. One of them was that there were significant statistical disparities between early and same-day voting. Another one was there were concerns about the security and transparency of the electronic vote counting systems, irregularities in ballot handling and chain of custody, and obstruction of lawful citizen-led monitoring efforts. A lot of things going on that were questionable. Can you speak to that?

Colonel Mills:

Unfortunately, what we uncovered observing the election situation in South Korea is an international election cartel that is intent on influencing elections. It’s really aligned with the globalists, but it’s also really with China. This is also a key part of the international election cartel because China has learned, hey, they can influence the election outcomes. But I think some of it, I think we have to go back to the Obama days where I think it just came out, the incredible amount of money that was spent by Obama through the CIA to influence elections in Israel. But now we’ve also uncovered the USAID [United States Agency for International Development] contribution to influencing elections in Brazil where a populist Bolsonaro lost an election and is now incarcerated by the regime in Brazil, which is aligned with China.

But what happened in South Korea was absolutely, no question about it, this was an international election cartel that influenced the South Korean election. The numbers just mathematically made no sense. There were Chinese operators at the polling stations. You have this thing called the National Election Commission, which is an unassailable body. It’s unauditable, uninvestigable by the South Korean government. And also, a very problematic situation is that it has members of the South Korean Supreme Court on the board of the National Election Commission. A clear failure to separate powers between parts of the South Korean government. So that was not a clean event that occurred on June 3rd in South Korea, and it’s getting scant attention and notice. 

But there’s also this mysterious body called A-WEB [Association of World Election Bodies] inside of South Korea, which has the USAID logo all over their website. Fortunately, we’ve shut down USAID. We’ve clawed back a lot of money. But unfortunately, it was too late to help the situation in South Korea. Very likely, USAID money went toward influencing the outcome of the election in South Korea. But I would say South Korea, our best friend and ally, better than even our Five Eyes partners, is in a state of crisis right now because of the international election cartel that influenced that election.

Mr. Jekielek:

Is this something you think the U.S. should be involved in? As you know, there’s a lot less of an appetite for intervening in processes, whether it’s certainly in the military, but also in government processes in other countries?

Colonel Mills:

I’m a firm believer in America First and the Make America Great Again agenda. Part of this means no new wars, no endless wars, and avoiding foreign entanglements. I totally support that. However, we can’t just drop a hermetically sealed dome over America and just ignore that there’s a rest of the world out there. We do have interests. We do have initiatives we should be promoting. We do have partners out there, trusted partners, that we should be coming to the aid of, especially when they are under duress from malign foreign influence operations led by China. 

This was a Chinese operation. South Korea is our best friend. Are we going to just watch our best friend get mugged, robbed, and brutalized, and do nothing? Public statements from the president or other members of the administration are immensely powerful in just acknowledging the situation. It doesn’t mean we have to deploy resources, programs, units, or personnel. One thing that is extremely appreciated and has immense impact is just the words of the president or the words of a senior official from the administration showing concern.

That’s step one, and that’s frankly 70% of the battle. If the South Korean Democrats knew they were under close scrutiny from this administration, things would be very different in South Korea right now. That’s what’s needed—just a statement of interest. 

Mr. Jekielek:

So there’s still a place for U.S. soft power. 

Colonel Mills:

Absolutely. We need to spend far more time and energy on soft power. And again, the essence of soft power is just saying something. That’s the essence of soft power. When bad people know that they’re being watched, they behave very differently. And when you make a statement about bad behavior, bad activity, it’s amazing what happens. This is just public truth-telling, basically. That’s absolutely right. 

We have the framework for assessing the instruments of national power—diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, which is called DIMEFIL. It’s all part of communicating soft power through diplomacy, but it’s been absolutely atrophied and rotted out because of the effects of decades of cancerous DEI wokeism, where we can’t tell the truth. We can’t say anything. It has to be communicated through such dysfunctional political lenses that the outcome means nothing. Here’s a great example. 

When I was spending time focusing on Panama before the American election, I always went to the website of the American embassy. What’s important is what’s on the front of the website. Panama needed a fourth bridge over the canal. You know how many American companies responded to that offering that request for a proposal from Panama? Zero. It was zero for a huge infrastructure project where we could have come in and had immense influence. Not a single American company responded. 

A lot of it was concern over the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; they felt it was too dicey. But so what was on the front page of the American Embassy Panama website during the Biden years? U.S. involvement in transgender conferences in the Americas. Look, these countries don’t take us seriously when that’s the form of statecraft we’re communicating. It’s insanity. Panama needs bridges. Panama needs a sewer system. Panama needs a mail system. And yet what do we lecture them on? Transgenderism. 

Mr. Jekielek:

John, this has been a great conversation. A final thought as we finish up?

Colonel Mills:

Thank you, Jan. I just think we need to understand what’s going on around us, have situational awareness, and realize there is a world on fire. It is intentional. These things we’re seeing, even stateside, what’s going on in America. This is a constitutional republic. Never been one like it, never will be again if those forces intent on throwing it into the trash can are successful. So I think it’s worth fighting for and worth defending, and that’s what we should do.

Mr. Jekielek:

John Mills, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Colonel Mills:

Thank you, Jan. 

 

This interview was partially edited for clarity and brevity.