This is

CBS I and the world. I'm John Bachelor.

I'm visiting with two authors, James Finel and Bradley Thayer.

Their new book is Embracing Communist China, America's

greatest strategic failure. Failure is important here because admitting failure is a challenge

for everyone, but especially as I learned from Jim and Brad the US Navy.

Jim I come to you because you're a veteran of intelligence

the US Navy and analysis strategic analysis and in what is to be done about

the Chinese Communist Party's aggression against Taiwan, against the Western Pacific, against the United States for world supremacy.

The first thing is to admit failure. Let's be specific, the intelligence community at the Navy to admit failure.

Are they ready to do that? Have they started walking in that direction, Jim?

Good evening.

Well, good evening, John and Brad. I think the admitting failure is a very difficult thing for the system to do.

During my time in uniform, when I was raising these issues about the threat from China

there was a lot of people that would and we had documented cases of where we

missed platforms or we missed a strategic development, a new weapon system.

And when somebody would say, how come we didn't find this?

Somebody would always stand up and say, well, you know, we did.

There was this one report that some guy wrote, and so we didn't really miss it. So there's this one report that some guy wrote and so we didn't really miss it.

So there's this institutional bias towards defending the institution.

And it's very, very difficult to say that you've admitted a mistake.

And so I think it's very difficult today for people to stand up and admit it.

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