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This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morrell.

Brought to you by Lockheed Martin. Your mission is ours.

Do you believe the case numbers that are coming out of China today?

Yeah, that's a tough question. The short answer is no. You know, my sense is it's just

stupid-fying to think that a country of 1.4 billion could have, you know, that, that few cases.

But I also don't think it's off by, you know, 10X or 20X or something like that.

You know there's got to be more than that. But it does seem in my mind that it has been very effective.

And they are ahead of the game. There's no doubt about it in my mind.

How would you characterize a couple of things? One is how she has played this politically at home.

And if this has weakened him in any fundamental way?

I think how I would characterize his sort of position is that I would say it has been

dented by the crisis. But I do not think that it fundamentally gets in the way of his willingness

and ability to both seek and get a third term.

I do think there's an Achilles heel here. In my mind, the weakness or the vulnerability he has

is at the last party congress, he told us all that China has entered this new era, right, of

socialism under his leadership. And that was supposed to bring enhanced governance,

you know, sort of smooth functioning of the country, a knowledge-based economy,

and you know, basically an asymptotic rise to super power. If you look back over the crisis,

you have to say objectively that there were certain periods and maybe even continuing where

China looked a lot more like a third world country again than rising superpower. And that I think

is a potential vulnerability of his. He's staked his consolidation of power and all these things he's

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