This is John Batchel, a conversation with James Finnell, the United States Navy Captain Intelligence retired.

Now in Switzerland, he's also the author of Embracing China, America's Greatest Strategic Mistake.

Failure.

Talking about the Chinese Coast Guard, so-called.

The Navy, the Coast Guard, and the fishing fleet are all uniformly under the PLA Navy.

Bullying two research ships out of the Philippines.

More bullying in the South China Sea and what is to be done.

Gordon, my colleague, asks, is there any change that you can see from the Biden administration's

muted approach to Chinese predation?

And what the Trump administration is achieving in these days, has there been any change?

Here's James Finnell about the bullies of the

South China Sea, threatening, behaving badly in Filipino exclusive economic zone. More of this tonight.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and our State Department are having the same

approach to how we operate the presence of the USS Carl Vincent Strike Group. Operating

the South China Sea demonstrates that our presence is going to continue. I think we, you know,

as you mentioned, it's just been nine days, so we have a new Secretary of State. We have a new Secretary of Defense. So I think we, you know, as you mentioned, it's just been nine days. So we have a new

Secretary of State. We have a new Secretary of Defense. So I think, and they've already, I think,

at least the Secretary of State, I think, has made a call to Manila or there's been some

communication with Manila. So I think we're making the right signals of our intent to stay

engage. The depth and scope of that and how that lays out over the coming weeks and months is something that everyone is going to be watching for.