New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

by David E. Sanger

At the end of the night, Krach told me, he laid it out for the executives: “We all believe in the free market. But when somebody doesn’t play by the rules, the market is no longer free,” he said. “If I can buy your companies but you can’t buy mine…I get access to your data but you get none of mine…and if I don’t have to obey the law or I am the law: I am going to beat you every time.” The only solution, he argued, was to band together—U.S. government and private sector alike—to protect themselves. Over the next year, Krach and other members of the administration spun out a series of new initiatives that—though no one could have known it at the time—would become the core of Biden’s approach to China a year later.