{"id":12926,"date":"2024-10-10T15:20:48","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T15:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12926"},"modified":"2024-10-10T15:20:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T15:20:48","slug":"the-american-who-waged-a-tech-war-on-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12926","title":{"rendered":"The American Who Waged a Tech War on China"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

There were times when even Sullivan\u2014who, despite his gravitas, occasionally dips into Midwestern aw-shucksisms\u2014couldn\u2019t believe the life he was living. His first time in the Situation Room, he has said<\/a>, he felt like there had to be \u201canother room down the hall\u201d where the real decisions got made. \u201cAnd then you realize there isn\u2019t another room,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s only us.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Obama years, Sullivan was known for his upbeat and even disposition\u2014at a going-away party for him at State, he was tagged with the moniker \u201cMr. Sunshine.\u201d He had an almost Socratic approach to navigating disagreements. Without ever raising his voice, he would turn over counterarguments until every logical flaw had been exposed and probe his sparring partners with respectful but incisive questions.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Harris, then a policy planner at State, said she would often share with Sullivan what were, at the time, \u201cheretical\u201d views about free trade and globalization. For decades, the mainstream policy wonks had said it was best for governments to take a hands-off approach to global trade\u2014let the invisible hand balance the scales. But Harris was watching China hollow out US industries by plowing money and stolen American IP into homegrown competitors. The US government, Harris argued, needed to hit back.<\/p>\n

Sullivan was one of the few people in the administration who would actually hear her out. Then, Harris recalled, he\u2019d ask her for reading assignments. \u201cHe really worries about blind spots,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But if Sullivan was open to rethinking free trade, he hadn\u2019t yet fully embraced Harris\u2019 arguments. When Clinton ran for president in the 2016 election, Sullivan joined her on the campaign trail, talking up the merits of the \u201cliberal international order\u201d and open markets. Pundits predicted he would become the youngest national security adviser in history when Clinton took office. But voters had a different plan. The morning after Trump\u2019s victory, looking drawn and despondent, Sullivan sat between Robby Mook, Clinton\u2019s campaign manager, and Huma Abedin, her closest aide, as Clinton delivered her concession speech.<\/p>\n

Sullivan balks at the suggestion that the Trump years were some period of soul-searching for him (\u201cthat\u2019s pretty existential for an Irish guy\u201d), but he did process Clinton\u2019s loss in his own way. From a new perch at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace\u2014one of many hats he wore during this time\u2014he researched, conducted interviews, and wrote extensively. Sullivan came to realize that he\u2019d had a blind spot\u2014a big one. Somewhere along the line, he and the rest of the Washington foreign policy establishment had failed to effectively make the case for how decades of globalism benefited the average American. Perhaps worse, they\u2019d failed to really grapple with the ways in which it didn\u2019t benefit regular people at all. Donald Trump had made that case, however sloppily.<\/p>\n

\n
\n