This is trend following radio where great thinking comes alive.

Nobel Prize winners, legendary traders, bestselling authors, and the pros that know what drive us irrational human beings.

I am your host, Michael Covel, not filtered, raw, honest.

That's my passion.

So we know going back in history, the term, the phrase, the Silk Road.

Well, today there is a new digital Silk Road.

Guess who's running that baby?

China.

China is wiring the world.

China is laying the infrastructure. My guest today, Jonathan Hillman, an expert on

U.S. China relations, he puts down the urgent warning shot that we all better pay attention.

Now, who knows? Maybe it won't be such a bad thing if China's running at all.

I've been to China. Okay, there's pros and cons to China.

But guess what? There's pros and cons to America.

I can look around the world right now, and I can see Western democracies beating the hell out of people.

So don't try and tell me that everybody's good or everybody's bad.

There's shades of gray.

But I love jumping into these conversations to get under the hood to find out what's really going on.

Jonathan Hillman takes us on the inside perspective as China lays down their digital Silk Road. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Let me give my best, very quick and dirty synopsis, and we're of course going to break this down more as we get going here.

But essentially China and what you are affectionately calling the digital Silk Road, China is laying the digital pipe, so to speak, the network across the world, especially in developing countries that don't have the money.

And I'm sure there's all kinds of deals that are made for this, meaning the host country, let's say,

...