In this episode of High Ground, Callie Haroche sits down with Gatestone Fellow, Gordon Chang, to unpack the China playbook, modern warfare, and the forces quietly destabilizing the West.

For decades, the West operates on the belief that trade, diplomacy, and integration will transform China. Instead, the Chinese regime uses the openness of the international system to strengthen itself while undermining the very order from which it benefits, leaving the West strategically blind to the nature of the threat it now faces.

But this conversation goes beyond China. It is about the West’s failure to understand what war looks like in the modern world. War is no longer confined to soldiers, tanks, and conventional battlefields. It is fought through trade, technology, propaganda, algorithms, bioweapons, ideological alliances, political influence, and digital warfare.

This episode explores Chinese influence inside the United States, the instability shaping the global order, and what it will take to identify, confront, and defend against the threats ahead. Gordon Chang argues that taking the high ground begins with seeing the battlefield clearly, rejecting wishful thinking, and restoring the strategic clarity needed to defend free societies.

00:05 Meet Gordon Chang
00:54 The Western Lie
02:37 The Truth About Communism
03:45 The Blood-Stained Flag
05:43 The Art of War
06:55 Cracks in China's Facade
08:31 A Hopeless Generation
10:01 Proxy Wars
10:27 The Red-Green Alliance
12:19 Name the Enemy
13:20 The Enemy Within
14:56 Bioweapons
16:52 Fighting Back
18:50 The Anti-West Axis
23:43 The Taiwan Timebomb
27:58 Buying America
29:43 The Digital Battlefield
31:49 Cutting Contact
33:14 Recognizing Evil
36:58 The High Ground