Alaska’s Strategic Importance for the Indo-Pacific

The United States faces a multidimensional challenge in the Indo-Pacific, but Alaska offers numerous solutions. Alaska’s wealth of natural gas can help the US meet the Indo-Pacific’s rapidly growing energy needs. The state’s location and military bases will be strategically important in the event of a regional contingency. Finally, Japanese and allied investment in Alaska helps to grow America’s relationships in significant, material ways.

Hudson’s Japan Chair will welcome Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) to give a keynote speech on Alaska’s strategic importance to the free and open Indo-Pacific. Following his address, the senator will sit down for a fireside chat with Hudson Japan Chair Kenneth R. Weinstein to discuss Alaska’s role in energy security, national security, and foreign direct investment as well as how the next administration should approach these issues.

Event Transcript

This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Good morning and welcome to Hudson Institute. I’m Ken Weinstein Japan chair here at Hudson. I am delighted, honored to welcome Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska to Hudson Institute today. There’s no one better able to discuss today’s topic of Alaska’s strategic importance to the Indo-Pacific. The senator from the 49th state was first elected in 2014. He is in the middle of his second term before he was elected to the US Senate. He is known as a man fully dedicated to public service, 25 years as a US Marine Corps veteran, the only US on active duty as a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

He’s also the former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Energy and Business Affairs. And a former commissioner of natural resources in his home state of Alaska. He’s known as a strong bipartisan voice on issues of national security, trade, energy and the environment. And we have him here this morning because he’s the leading policy architect of an extraordinary policy proposal, one recently endorsed by President Trump on Truth Social just the other day that would build a pipeline from the northern slope of Alaska to allow for LNG to be shipped from Alaska to the Indo-Pacific, to Japan, to South Korea, to Taiwan, to our allies who badly need energy security.

And this proposal is going to be the centerpiece of a major new Hudson Institute paper that will Chou and I have just about finished up that’s going to look at the best ways to promote the free and open Indo-Pacific in the new Trump era. So without any further ado, it’s my honor, my pleasure to welcome Senator Sullivan to Hudson Institute.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Thank you, Ken. Thank you Ken, and good morning everybody. It’s great to see some of my Alaskan friends, Mead Treadwell and others who have been working on these topics for a long time. Ken, great to see you again. We saw each other in Japan earlier in the year. Little correction to the bio, I just retired after 30 years in the Marine Corps, so I’m no longer serving. The military guys here, you understand. We have a system where it’s when you hit 30, if you’re not a brigadier general, you’re out. And after two attempts, the Marine Corps. . . Two attempts at being selected as a one-star General of the Marine Corps told me politely, “Get the hell out.” So I’m retired now. But thanks for that.

Anyways, I love the Marine Corps and they didn’t love me that much, but it was a great honor to serve for 30 years in the US Marines on the active duty and reserve side. So I wanted to talk about the strategic importance of Alaska in terms of Indo-Pacom, but I really just to not beat around the bush, I think strategic importance to the world. And I’ll begin with this slide. A lot of you guys have seen this and the quote from Billy Mitchell who’s the father of the US Air Force. It was actually at a Senate Armed Services hearing in the mid ‘30s where he talked about the most strategic place in the world. And whoever holds Alaska holds the world and we’re in confirmation season. Hopefully some of you have seen every SecDeg who comes in front of the Armed Services Committee.

I say, “Hey, there was a quote that was made here many years ago by the father of the US Air Force.” He said that this place is the most strategic place in the world. “Mr. Secretary Designate, what place is he talking about?” Now, the less smart members of the committee look at me and they’re a little confused and, “Alaska?” “Good, that’s a great answer.” So we’re going to make sure all the Trump nominees know that quote and stand by it. I will be asking that many, many times. But what’s going on in Alaska can often be out of sight, out of mind because we are a little bit far away for policy makers.

And so part of our job, and I want to thank Hudson for the great work that they do on so many topics, but part of our job is to do this, is to come explain, talk about what’s going on because there’s a lot going on in Alaska right now, and it’s not always appreciated. If you want to go to the next slide. We, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, the Biden administration, the Obama administration, they don’t view us as strategic, they view us as something else. Let me give you a couple examples. One of my first hearings in the Senate in 2015 was with Secretary Ash Carter, President Obama’s Secretary of Defense.

And I held up the 11-page Obama Arctic strategy for the Department of Defense. Some of you might remember this strategy. And I literally slammed it on the dais, looked at the secretary, and I said, “This is a joke. This is a joke. You’re not serious, Mr. Secretary.” This is 13 pages, six of which were pictures. Climate change was mentioned like five times, and Russia was mentioned once in a footnote. These guys weren’t serious.

So what we’ve been trying to do in the Senate in my tenure here is make the Department of Defense and other agencies figure out that the Arctic is something that’s really important, that the northern Indo-Pacom region is really important and they don’t always get the message. One of the strategic advantages of Alaska to America is our incredible natural resource wealth, and I’m going to talk about that. But this is a chart that I’ve shown. It’s actually got a front and back slide to it. I don’t think we have the back slide to it.

But the back part of this chart, which I’ve given to everybody from President Biden on down is the 68 executive orders and executive actions issued in four years by the Biden administration singularly focused on shutting down Alaska. 68 executive orders from our federal government to crush my state, which is of course bad for Alaska, but it’s really bad for America because of what we have in our state.

So that’s part of the challenge is that particularly with democratic administrations, not only do they not get Alaska, they want to put us in what we call the snow globe syndrome. They put us in a little snow globe, they shake the snow globe, there’s snow that comes down, it looks all pretty, and that’s what they want to lock up Alaska. Well, we don’t think that’s good for Alaska. We don’t think that’s good for America. But I’ll tell you this, our adversaries, if you want to go to the next slide, they know how important Alaska is.

So anyone who’s paying attention, and again in the lower 48, sometimes it’s hard to get attention. We have had in the last few years very aggressive military actions by our adversaries. And what’s really disturbing and unprecedented is this military action is now joint military action, joint between Russia and China. They don’t do that much, but up in the Alaska region and the Arctic region, they are doing it. We had, if you look to the left there, that was this summer, we had a joint strategic Bomber Task Force that came into our ADIZ. Joint, Russian, Chinese strategic bombers with armed fighter escorts coming into the Alaska ADIZ. That’s never happened in America anywhere. A joint strategic Russian, Chinese Bomber Task Force. That’s the US and Canadian, that’s a Canadian F-A team that went and intercepted these. That’s a Chinese strategic bomber.

We had some very aggressive Russian intercepts that we did just about a month ago. Some of you may have seen that on video. That is a Russian MiG that got within seven feet of a US F-22 that was intercepting one of their Russian strategic bombers. And then we’ve had these joint Russian, Chinese Naval Task Force that are coming into our EEZ. That’s a picture below there of a Russian sub and a Russian destroyer that were off the coast of Point Hope, Alaska.

So they’ve been doing that jointly where we had Chinese Naval Task Force in our waters this summer, two summers ago, a big 12 ship joint Russian, Chinese Naval Task Force. So our adversaries understand Alaska. Our military response in terms of the aviation assets, our men and women do a great job of intercepting these aircraft professionally and then turning them out of our ADIZ. In the naval sphere. We need a little bit more action, right? Two summers ago we had a seven ship Russian, Chinese Naval Task Force. We sent 150 foot Coast Guard cutter. I love the Coast Guard, but that’s not the kind of presence you want.

So I let the Indo-Pacom commander and the Northcom commander know that that was unacceptable, that if this were a seven ship Russian, Chinese Naval Task Force off the East coast, we’d probably have two carrier strike groups to greet it. So we don’t need to do that anymore. Last summer, as I predicted, they came back now with a 12 ship task force. That’s a big task force folks. Fortunately we were ready, we had four US Navy destroyers and P-8 submarine hunters ready to meet this force with force.

But we need to do a lot more because this is going to continue in Alaska in America, by the way, and we need to be ready. And of course, historically we know that our adversaries are then adversaries. Imperial Japan invaded and occupied the Aleutian Islands during World War II. So sometimes what the policymakers in DC don’t understand or don’t follow the rest of the world is following. So again, the title here, and Ken thank you very much, is talking about Alaska’s strategic importance to Indo-Pacom and really the world. I want to provide three areas where we do have very, very much strategic importance for the United States. Touch on each of these and again, welcome the Q&A.

The first is our huge military importance because of our strategic location. If you want to go to the next slide. I like to say that Alaska constitutes three pillars of America’s military might. We are the cornerstone of missile defense for the entire nation. By the way, I’ve talked to President Trump about this. His whole concept that we are working on with him right now of an iron dome for America, well, a lot of that’s going to be based in Alaska, simply because of where we are strategically.

In terms of missile defense, all the ground-based missile interceptors protecting our country are in Alaska with the exception of four that are at Vandenberg Air Force Base. All the major radar systems that protect the entire United States, whether it’s New York City, Miami, Chicago, they’re all based in Alaska. So that is a key component of who we are, what we provide in terms of military importance to our country.

The second area is we are the hub of air combat power for the Indo-Pacific region and the Arctic. One example is we have over a hundred fifth-generation fighters now headquartered in Alaska. That’s F-35s and F-22s, supersonic stealth fighters. There’s no place in the world that has that fifth-generation combat power. Those are owned by Admiral Paparo you see there in terms of who has operational control of those. And that is a huge asset for the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.

And finally, we are a strategic platform because we’re so close to everything for expeditionary forces that can launch from Alaska with our airlift assets to anywhere in the world in the Northern Hemisphere within six to seven hours. The Army a couple years ago understood this and they stood up the 11th Airborne Division. So the Army now has two airborne divisions. Again, it does make a lot of press. They got the 82nd down in lower 48, they got the 11th Airborne Division based in Alaska. That is a airborne unit ready to go at a moment’s notice, and it can get anywhere, anywhere very quickly. It’s a great Arctic train unit.

So that is one of the huge areas of strategic importance to Alaska. The next, if you go to the next slide is for our military and the militaries of our allies, we have literally the best training in the world, what we call JPARC, which is the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex that has literally some of the best training on the planet. We do that with all services, we do that with our allies. And just to make a couple examples, it’s really, really big training. If you go to the next slide that gives you a little bit of sense of what we call the crown jewel of American military training ranges is at JPARC.

Those little boxes look small, but you look at the size of Alaska superimposed on the United States, those are giant boxes, okay? Our JPARC airspace is actually about the size of Florida. Our training ranges for ground combat operations is bigger than Virginia. Our naval, if you look at that box in the Gulf of Alaska there, our area for operations again, is huge. So we bring Japanese, Korean, Indian, Singapore, you name it, all of our allies up to train in Alaska, and it is literally the best training on the planet, and it’s growing, right? We’re expanding these ranges. And so this is another really, really important area of strategic advantage we have, and we can do it jointly, but really importantly, we do it combined.

So we bring a lot of our allies to the red flag exercises that do incredible, incredible joint training. I’ll just give you one example of how big and important this is. I took the Indo-Pacom commander, Admiral Aquilino, who had never been in Alaska. . . by the way, he did a great job, but he needed to know more about Alaska in my view. So very early in his tenure, we went up to Alaska for what was called the Northern Edge exercise. At the end of that exercise in these different training ranges, particularly in the JPARC training areas, we had a carrier strike group up at Northern Edge. We had the 100 fifth-generation fighters up there. At one point during this final exercise, we had well over 200 aircraft up, not doing simulations, doing night fighting in this range. I mean, that is as good as it gets in terms of training.

And even Admiral Aquilino, who was a great fighter pilot in the Navy, was stunned by how impressive this was. So let me get to the third area, and Ken mentioned it, and if we can go to the next slide of Alaska’s strategic advantage for Indo-Pacom, but really America and it’s our very abundant natural resources. As Ken mentioned, I previously served as the commissioner of natural resources in energy in Alaska. I had my team do a analysis, if Alaska were its own country, which a lot of us think we should be, but that’s a whole other topic. If we were our own country, what would we look like in terms of our critical minerals in oil and gas?

And we were in the top 10 of any country in the world. If Alaska was its own country, our resources were top 10. This is critical minerals, this is oil, this is gas, top 10 in the world, one state in America, right? That’s how much we have. So I’m not going to talk too much about the critical minerals, but we need those. We’re too dependent on China. They use that very aggressively against us and our allies, and we need to develop the critical minerals that we have in Alaska, and we have them in a massive abundance.

Similar, we have massive oil reserves. We’ve been developing that really since Prudhoe Bay, well, actually since Cook Inlet, when we discovered oil in the mid-1950s. We have enormous, enormous continuing oil resources. But the one that I really wanted to focus on for the remainder of my remarks as Ken highlighted, is natural gas. You see there that the numbers that we have in terms of natural gas, this is known conventional. This is not even talking about fracking. This is conventional gas that comes out of the ground when we produce oil. These numbers are literally off the charts. And we have enough natural gas to supply Alaskans, which is really important for us, first and foremost, but our allies in Asia for 50 to a hundred years. I mean, it’s not even a close call.

I like to always provide one example, at Prudhoe Bay, that’s our big oil field that’s been producing oil for over 40 years, associated gas comes out of the ground with the oil that comes out of the ground. We’re very, very environmentally responsible in Alaska. We have the highest environmental standards of any place on the planet earth. Go look at the environmental standards of China and Iran as they’re producing natural resources compared to us, which is another reason why it’s just a head scratch or why Biden and his team, and Obama and his team always want to shut down Alaska. You’re like, “Wait, we have the highest environmental standards of the world. You’re going to go get it from Venezuela, our enemy who don’t give a about their environment?” I’m digressing.

So we don’t flare our gas in Alaska, we reinject the gas in Alaska, okay? That’s the environmentally responsible thing to do. But at one oil field at Prudhoe Bay, when the associated gas comes out of the ground, when we reinject that, it’s about 8.59 BCF, billion cubic feet of gas per day that gets reinjected into one. . . from one oil field. That is a ton of natural gas. That’s about as much natural gas as Canada uses as a country every day from one oil field in Alaska. So you look at those numbers, they are through the charts, and as we discover and produce more oil, like at the Willow field that ConocoPhillips is developing right now, that’s a $10 billion oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska. That’ll be max production, about 200,000 barrels a day. They’re going to find a ton more gas too. We just know that.

So we have incredible unlimited resources. And with regard to Japan, if you go to the next slide, we have incredible strategic advantages to be Japan and Korea and Taiwan’s top LNG supplier. Now, again, a lot of people don’t know this. We Alaska, were the original place in the world to start exporting LNG to Japan. We started exporting LNG to Japan in the late 1960s. Nowhere else was doing that anywhere in the world. This is from the Cook Inlet oil and gas basin right near Anchorage. We had a perfect, unblemished record of over 50 years of delivering LNG to Japan, never miss one cargo shipment. You don’t have the issue with Russia. With Putin wakes up, he’s in a bad mood. He’s going to cut off your energy supplies. We are Japan’s most reliable supplier for over 50 years.

So what’s happening now? Well, we have another project, a big LNG project that we have made a lot of progress on in terms of permits, in terms of proximity, in terms of strategic advantages. But when you look at where our Asian allies get their energy, the advantages, strategic advantages of Alaska makes so much sense. Just this map is one example where it shows the different advantages. That’s a six to seven day cargo shipment from Alaska to Japan and Korea.

As I’ve told our Japanese friends, this is like a virtual pipeline that you would have from our state to your country. There’s no choke points, you look at all the different choke points if you’re shipping LNG from Australia, if you’re shipping LNG from the Gulf of Mexico, the Panama Canal in particular, if you’re shipping LNG from Qatar, for the life of me, I don’t understand why big American energy companies aren’t just doubling down, they’re tripling down on more LNG from Qatar. It’s a very dangerous neighborhood.

If the Iranians, which really don’t like the fact that Qatar is draining their shared gas field, that’s just a lot of risk and it makes no sense. Why are allies, why are energy companies triple down the Qataris, they’re dual players, right? They’re using some of these resources to fund Hamas, and you don’t have those issues with Alaska. You don’t have those issues with getting LNG, clean burning, Alaska LNG from America. So we are excited, very excited about the opportunities that LNG presents to our allies, particularly Japan and Korea in Asia.

I was just over in Japan and Korea with a seven-member Senate CODEL led by Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, former ambassador to Japan. And we did a trilateral meeting that Senator Hagerty has been leading between the United States, Japan, and Korea. But very high-level meetings with prime ministers and presidents and METI ministers and others. But I will say that all of my colleagues were touting the strategic importance of American LNG, particularly Alaskan LNG to our allies. We have been pressing our allies to get off Russian oil and gas. And it’s one thing to go to your allies in Asia and Europe and say, “Hey, get off Russian oil and gas,” after they invaded Ukraine.

It’s another thing for them to say, “Well, where am I going to get it?” We have the answer. Now, look, the Biden administration, like they do on most stuff, has been sending mixed messages. John Kerry literally has been going over to Asia saying, “Don’t buy American LNG.” Right? I mean, I know that for a fact. You wonder who side this guy’s on sometimes, right? That’s like a great message from Xi Jinping, “Don’t buy American LNG.” Why is John Kerry saying that? Who the hell knows?

But it makes so much strategic sense because when you look at things like the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, what could be a great alternative to that? Having Japan as a LNG strategic hub to get energy to countries in Southeast Asia, other countries throughout Asia and being supplied by the unlimited, most reliable supplier of LNG in the world and that is Alaska.

And I really hope, and I’m looking forward to Hudson’s study on this, but we think that in terms of a strategic approach, that this is going to make all kinds of sense for the United States, for Japan to help counter the influence of China in the Indo-Pacific region. And we do it through the private sector, through partnerships, through energy that helps the environment, helps jobs, helps reduce trade tensions between our countries. If Japan, Korea, Taiwan and others, India as well, are importing American LNG, Alaska LNG. And I think it’s a really exciting time in that regard. So we have more work to do on all this, but I would say that help is on the way, certainly.

If you go to the next slide. I’ll just give you some examples of some of the things that we’re working on in terms of going back to the military. Look at that, that’s Adak, Alaska. We used to have a military US Navy base here, a submarine base, a naval air station, surface warships. You have the Chinese in the Russians doing these naval and bear bomber movements into our ADIZ. We need to put together a US Navy base back in Adak.

Look at how strategic that is. You have Chinese and Russians coming into our ADIZ with ships and aircraft. You could launch from Adak, get right behind them. You could be flanking China. That is a really strategic air base, sub base, navy base. And I am very focused on getting our military to wake up and say, “By the way, as we’re building up forces in the Indo-Pacific region, go look at what our Indo-Pacom commanders. . .” Many of whom I have a lot of respect for Admiral Paparo, Admiral Aquilino.

But one thing, and I’ve told them directly, including a meeting with Admiral Paparo very recently, just a couple weeks ago, the imagination of our military is not very good. Right now the default position of our military in Indo-Pacom, you’re going to put new forces in Indo-Pacom, “Put them on Guam, put them on Guam, put them on Guam.” That’s not very smart strategically. We’re concentrating way too many forces on Guam. This is where we should be putting forces to spread it out and create strategic dilemmas for our adversaries, particularly Russia and China.

But let me give one final thing where help is on the way if you turn to the next slide. President Trump put this statement out recently, and when I was talking about how a lot of people don’t get it, don’t understand Alaska, I will tell you that this individual, he’s not one of them. He gets it. He understands us. His grandpa spent a lot of time in Alaska, started a hotel up there during President Trump’s first term, I, our governor, we work very closely together. Pretty much every major Alaska issue on resource development, on energy on the military that we work directly with the president on and his team, we had no better friend in terms of understanding Alaska, wanting to work with Alaska.

And if you look at his statement about what he did for Alaska in his first administration, what he’s focused on during his second term, he says, “During my second term, we’ll continue to fight for Alaska like never before. We will ensure the gas line,” that’s the LNG project, “gets built to provide affordable energy to Alaska and our allies all around the world. We will maximize Alaska’s mining potential. We will ensure Alaska gets even more defense investment as we rebuild our military, especially as Russia and China are making menacing moves in the Pacific.”

So our incoming president gets it, and we are looking forward to working with him on making sure that the strategic advantages that Alaska brings to America’s power and those of our allies will be focused on and implemented during the second term of the Trump administration. So we’re excited right now. It’s an exciting time, very appropriate time to be talking about these issues. So Ken, thank you very much for doing this. Thanks for everybody for attending, and I look forward to your questions. Thanks a lot.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Thank you, Senator, for those excellent and very thought-provoking remarks. It’s funny, as you were coming in this morning, I was thinking normally at Hudson when we have leaders from overseas come in, we normally have their country’s flag, and I thought, “Where’s our Alaska flag?” And now that I know that you guys are a top-10 nation for minerals, resources, we’ll make sure the next time you’re back here, we’ll have the Alaska flag.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

We would love to see the Alaska flag.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Good, good, good. Look, let me know one thing. Let me just turn to the last slide you had about President Trump. I think when you talk to leaders around the world about the kinds of things that President Trump would love, I don’t think there would be anything more in his wheelhouse than a photo op once this pipeline, LNG pipeline get the idea of him being among these hard hats with you, with the governor, with also with Senator Murkowski there to sort of launch this pipeline. I can’t imagine anything that would mean more to the president who wants to develop resources, who gets the critical importance of Alaska, gets the critical importance of energy security. And it’s something that really becomes a possibility now, quite a shift from the remarks that Special Envoy Kerry was making. Certainly.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Oh my gosh, it’s just amazing. Well, look, I couldn’t agree more with you. And you can tell the Trump administration understands they got one term. And so there’s a lot of energy. It’s almost like President Trump is running America’s foreign policy right now. He’s been much more active than President Biden. But what I really like to see is the strategic way in which they’re thinking about energy. One idea in particular, which I just think is fantastic, is we have a National Security Council at the White House. We have a National Economic Council at the White House. The president wants to set up and will set up a National Energy Council at the White House. And that is a great signal that they’re going to take all of this very, very seriously.

Matter of fact, I’m meeting with a lot of the nominees that the president has put forward a meeting with Lee Zeldin today who will be the new EPA administrator. He’s going to be a key component of that National Energy Council. This will be led by Governor Burgum from North Dakota, Chris Wright, the secretary of energy who President Trump is nominated. But it’s a great group that will be very focused on energy, not just for Americans, which is what the priorities should be, Alaskans, but for our allies as well. And they understand that and they’re ready to get to work.

So that statement by President Trump, but the actions that he is already indicating that they’re going to be ready to move out on day one, we think is really important. And to be honest, it’s really exciting. It’s really exciting because again, you look at a project like the Alaska LNG project, it’s such a win-win-win. This would be one of the biggest construction projects ever. It would employ tens of thousands of people, great paying jobs.

It will reduce global emissions dramatically because as you get our Asian allies off coal, that dramatically reduces emissions and it will strengthen the United States tremendously, but it will also strengthen our relationship with our allies, and it will be a huge counter to China, the Belt and Road Initiative. So there is no downside to this. And the fact that they get that, the president clearly gets it as team does is really exciting.

And the fact that we’re kind of ushering off stage, the Biden administration who failed in this regard, and literally. . . It is shocking that you have the so-called Special Envoy, and I confronted him directly on this going to Asia and saying, “Hey, don’t buy American LNG.” I know that for a fact he said that, he’s telling Japanese officials, and it caused great confusion over in Japan. And again, you wonder who the hell’s side this guy’s on sometimes. But that’s going to change and the American people want this change. That’s why the election was so overwhelming for President Trump.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

One of the key things, one of the interesting things about President Trump’s support for LNG and energy is I think it’s changing in perception now of the critical role of data centers and AI to the strategic competition and the notion that LNG can power data centers and the president’s also changed his positions, as I understand it, president-elect has changed his position now on small modular reactors and it’s been talked about all this in the announcement of the National Energy Council. This is critical to the strategic competition with China, and it’s another area clearly this pipeline and American Natural Resources can provide as we’re trying to face the threat of, you can imagine Huawei powered data centers with Chinese using various Chinese resources and the like.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Well, you’re right. It was directly mentioned by President Trump when they talked about the establishment of this National Energy Council and how being energy dominant, as he likes to call it, helps in so many other ways. As I mentioned, helps with jobs, helps with the environment, it helps with national security. But to your point, Ken, it helps with data centers in the race with regard to AI and China, and we have to win that race.

I mean, I’ve been very involved in the AI discussions, and the one thing that is clear is that we cannot let China dominate that space. That would be so dangerous for our national security, for our military, for their ability to spread their authoritarian model. And I want to give a big shout-out to our governor, Mike Dunleavy, he was just in town yesterday. Some of you may have seen, we lit the Capitol Christmas tree yesterday, which came all the way from Alaska. It was a great ceremony. The Speaker of the House did it.

We had a young fourth grader from Kenai, Alaska who read this poem, but the governor was there, our congressional delegation was there. Governor Dunleavy have been working closely with him. But we have a great potential with this energy, with this natural gas to have Alaska as a really important AI data center hub. And the reason is you think about what these data centers need.

They need land, check, we got a lot of that in Alaska. They need water, check, we got a lot of that in Alaska. They need cold weather, double check on that. And they need energy. And if we can set up. . . So I’ve been in discussions with a number of the top tech executives and so is the governor, and they are really, really interested because here’s the final point, you’re seeing the news pretty much everywhere in America where these tech centers are showing up in the communities. The communities don’t like them.

They don’t like them because they suck up so much energy that they’re driving up the cost of energy. “Hey, Google puts a tech center, a data center near my hometown, and all of a sudden I’m paying double the electricity bills.” People aren’t going to like that. That’s happening. What we’ve been saying in these tech companies come up to Alaska, you can help us with regard to our own energy challenges. We’re starting to run out of natural gas in Alaska. Once we get the pipeline built, we will have unlimited supplies of natural gas for Alaskans, but the more base users we have, the lower the cost of energy is.

So when these data centers show up in Alaska, people are welcoming them because it helps solve our own energy challenges. In the lower 48 people are saying, “Hey, we don’t want those guys here because it’s going to drive up our energy costs.” So the dynamic is very much flipped in Alaska, and our governor has been doing a really good job of trying to focus on this, get these companies up there, but it’s going to help us with regard to the financing and building of this pipeline.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Excellent. Let me ask you, in terms of the financing and building the role that the Japanese, that the South Koreans and others can play.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Yeah, well look, they can play a really important role. I will tell you that this idea of. . . In Alaska, we now have this idea of what’s called a phased approach where the state with base users, and that includes the military data centers and our own needs will work to build and finance the first phase of this, which is the pipeline.

So as I mentioned, we already have enormous supplies of gas on the North Slope that are coming out every day we reinject them in the ability then to finance that through our own base demand that would include these data centers. Finance the pipeline, is really important but having long-term contracts from Japan, from Korea, from Taiwan, as you know, can help finance it because then we can bring in big investors.

I just had a phone call and they’ve been quite interested for some time with Larry Fink of BlackRock. They have a lot of money to invest, they’re longterm investors on energy infrastructure projects. This is one that they see as really, really promising, particularly if we can get longer-term contracts with the Japanese and Koreans. And so that all goes into the package of financing.

And my last trip, as I mentioned, that’s my fourth trip as a US senator to Japan and Korea just in the last two years. There was a lot of interest on this because strategically they understand the stakes. They got to get off Russian oil and gas. I mean, I love our friends and allies in Japan, but they’re still buying, and even in some ways financing these Arctic LNG projects with Russia. That’s the wrong answer. That is the wrong answer. And they need to get off Russian oil and gas. Same with Korea, same with Taiwan.

But when they say, “Well, where do we get it from?” The answer isn’t John Kerry’s answer, which is, “I don’t know, but don’t get it from America.” The answer is America and we will help. We can all work on this together. And my last trip to Asia was the most promising. And I’ve been doing this with Mead and others for well over a decade, well before my time in the Senate. So I think it’s a big project. The time has come. We’re going to have great support from President Trump and his team and the other strategic elements of this, not just the counter to the Belt and Road, but winning the AI race with China. Those are all the stakes. And that’s why it’s so important.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

I’m going to open it up to questions for the audience. I have a ton more for you, but when you talked about the critical importance of strategic imagination, and I would’ve loved to ask you about Arctic and other things, but we’ll turn it over to the audience. This project and your leadership honor a prime example also on Adak, this is the kind of strategic imagination we need that we really have lost. And it’s something I firmly believe, and I know you do. President Trump and his team are focused some way.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Yeah. Look, some of the things we are going to go through the confirmation period, right? We’re meeting with cabinet officials. One of the things as a senator, I take the advice and consent role in the Constitution for the US Senate very seriously. I’ve met between the Obama administration, first Trump administration, Biden administration. I try to meet with of course, all the cabinet secretaries, but the deputies, the undersecretaries, the assistant secretaries. I try to meet with as many as possible. And part of that is consent. That means are you going to vote for their confirmation? But part of that is advice, right? And I give a lot of advice.

And when people bristle at that, I’m like, “Hey, it’s too bad. The founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington thought someone like me should be giving someone like you advice. So deal with it.” But a lot of it is education. And I love our military, 30 years in as a Marine, but you would be shocked, and I still am shocked, and how many admirals and generals wearing four stars on their shoulders don’t understand the strategic location of Alaska? Don’t understand that if you had forces in Adak, how much closer they are to China and Japan and Korea. How just the JBER forces in Alaska right now are much closer to Korea and Japan than our forces in Hawaii. Admirals and generals in the United States military have been in for 30 years, have no clue about this.

And part of our job is to educate them and call it out, when you think that. . . And I’ve seen this, all the forces that are going to Indo-Pacific are going to Guam. And I told Admiral Paparo and Admiral Aquilino recently Paparo that, “Look, where’s the strategic imagination here?” We don’t want a conflict with China, but if there is one, they’re going to lob some missiles and crater all the runways on Guam. And then what are we going to do? We have 8,000 marines on Guam who have nowhere to train. This is not strategic thinking. We need to get them to Alaska and other places in the Indo-Pacific, and create a much broader dilemma for our adversaries. Oh man, I got military and submarine bases in Adak. That’s on my flank, that’s in my rear. That’s going to make people nervous, and we want to make people nervous.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Here, here, let me just open up the Q&A. Please identify yourself. Keep the question short because we’re a bit short on time, the Senator has a very busy schedule today and when we start over here.

Mead Treadwell:

Thanks-

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Let’s wait for the microphone. Thank you.

Mead Treadwell:

Thanks, Senator Sullivan. I’m Mead Treadwell I’m former lieutenant governor of Alaska. And served with Dan in state government. I guess my question is, can you comment on US-Japan cooperation in the Arctic? Japan is building an icebreaker that they’ve offered to the US to work with US scientists in the Arctic. They support the Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, and they were concluding a major methane hydrate research up at Prudhoe Bay. But in terms of getting presence in the Arctic and making sure that Russia and China are not controlling that ocean, what is the role that we should be doing with our allies?

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Well, I want to compliment Mead here who is chairman of the Arctic Research Commission. And we had a meeting probably about eight or nine months ago with the prominent Japanese Diet member on Arctic issues, and then she became the foreign minister. So that was very fortuitous. So thank you, Mead. I think there’s a huge role to be playing with regard to our allies, particularly the Japanese and others on Arctic issues. We are an Arctic nation because of Alaska, the United States, and you may have heard China is referring to itself as a near-Arctic nation, whatever the hell that means. But they’re up there and so are the Russians.

The Russians have 54 icebreakers, many of which are nuclear-powered, many of which are weaponized. And we have two and one is broken. So we are way, way behind the power curve on this. Fortunately, we are starting to wake up. I was able to get legislation passed for the Coast Guard to purchase a commercially available icebreaker as we’re starting to build icebreakers. It’s taken much too long.

By the way, this was an idea that started in the Trump administration at the end of the Trump administration. This was a direct idea from President Trump and his team, how we need more icebreakers in the Arctic. Fortunately, the Biden administration continued with that, but we need allied help. And you may have seen, and this was. . . And I compliment the Biden administration when they deserve it, they recently announced a trilateral icebreaker kind of consortium with the Canadians and Finland in terms of the ability to build icebreakers. That’s really important.

But shipbuilding is so important, Navy shipbuilding, and I think we can learn a lot from our Japanese and Korean allies on naval shipbuilding, on icebreaker shipbuilding. So Mead, to your question, there’s a huge role for our allies to be playing in terms of research, in terms of energy, in terms of natural resources, but also in terms of presence. And we need much more presence. We’re seeing the Russians and the Chinese understand presence in the Arctic. We need to counter that and understand it. And a strong icebreaker fleet is a key component of that.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Thank you. Okay, two more questions. Yeah.

Jack Ferguson:

Yeah. I’m Jack, Ferguson last name. I’ve done a lot of work with the state and date back to the days of Don Young and Ted Stevens when I worked in the Congress with them, of course. My question has to do, I was telling John about your role in getting the F-35 deployed out of Fairbanks and that it wasn’t really part of the plan initially. And you called a general down and said, “Explain this to me.” And one of the tools you used was the five-year planning document that the Department of Defense is supposed to present to Congress, and was it in there or not? But how do they present it to you and how does that become part of the NDAA?

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Well, Jack, it’s a really important question. And this goes to civilian oversight of our military. That’s what we have in the Constitution. And look, I always say the admirals and generals, 90 percent of the time they got it right. And the Congress of the United States is behind, but not always. And the communities in Alaska in particular did a great job during the Barack years when they were going to shut down Eielson to fight against that.

And then there was no plan for the Air Force to base F-35s at Eielson in the communities, particularly in the interior and Fairbanks and North Pole Alaska and our delegation and it was everybody came together and said of the Air Force, “Hey, look, what are you doing? Right? Look how strategic we are. You’re going to shut these bases. You’re not going to put F-35s here. We want you to do that.”

So we can influence that. We can influence that. I’ve done that through the NDAA process. And we can also influence it through the confirmation process. I’ll give you another example. I mentioned the 11th Airborne Division. Right when I got elected to the Senate my first month, the Obama administration announced that they were cutting an additional 40,000 active duty army troops. Okay? This is in 2015. This is strategic lunacy, but that’s what they did.

They were going to cut 40,000 active duty troops, including the 5,000 man Airborne Brigade Combat team at JBER. That was back then called the 425, the fourth brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, the only Airborne Brigade Combat team in the entire Asia Pacific, the reserve force for a contingency on the Korean Peninsula and the Obama administration was going to get rid of it.

So that was a big challenge to me as a brand new senator would’ve crushed the economy of Anchorage, but more importantly, it was strategically stupid. So I put a hold on General Milley, he was up to be chief of staff of the Army. I put a hold on, Eric Fanning, he was up to be Secretary of the Army. And I told my staff, “Hey, anyone else who can fog a mirror who has anything related to the Army’s decision, I want to put a hold on them.”

So I put a, hold on probably five or six people all related this decision and said, “I want an explanation. Why in the hell are you getting rid of the only airborne brigade combat team in the entire Indo-Pacom, the reserve force for a contingency on the Korean Peninsula? What are you doing? I want answers or you’re not going anywhere.” And this was a standoff. Fortunately, we had just retaken the Senate. John McCain was chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He backed me, which was important to have the chairman of that committee back. And they didn’t have a good answer.

I mean, some of the stuff we got was some of East Coast two-star General wanted all his airborne units on the East Coast. Well, that was really stupid and it wasn’t strategic. So when the final decisions were made, Obama cut 35,000 active duty army forces, and they kept the 425, which became the cornerstone of the 11th Airborne Division. So you can influence policy decisions during the confirmation process as well. And I certainly plan to have discussions with incoming Trump administration officials on a lot of these topics, including Adak and the reopening of Adak. We’re going to focus on that a lot. Wake the Navy up, and we’ll have leverage to do that during the confirmation process.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Great. We have time for one last question. Great. In the back there.

Speaker 5:

Senator. Thank you for your support for Taiwan. I’m former legislator and also current fellow at Hassan. I echo your thoughts on LNG and to address this critical energy security Taiwan bases. One challenge we are now dealing with is the attack on this LNG terminals around the North Coast of Taiwan. So if we work with Alaska, and would the terminals also be built by Alaska and also obviously could be a joint venture opportunities for Taiwan as well, and how would that look like in terms of infrastructure robustness? Thank you.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Well, look, I’ve spent a lot of time in Taiwan. I just led a CODEL out there to greet the new president on his election in the spring. Back in my military career my first deployment as a US Marine was to the Taiwan Strait during the what’s now referred to as the third Taiwan Strait crisis when Taiwan was having its first presidential election and China was aggressively trying to coerce the citizens of Taiwan against doing that.

They moved the PLA up to the Taiwan Strait, they started shooting missiles over Taiwan very aggressively. And President Clinton, to his credit, sent two carrier strike groups, two carrier strike groups. That’s a lot. That’s a show of American commitment and resolve and a Marine expeditionary unit, part of what they call a marine amphibious ready group. That’s three ships. And I was on one of those. As a matter of fact, my ship actually went into the Taiwan Strait during that time, and that was a commitment that we made.

I’ve worked with the Taiwanese government on a whole host of initiatives during my time in the Senate. But I actually think to your point, and it’s a really good point, the energy crisis that you’re seeing in Taiwan needs to be resolved with LNG as a big component of that. I think that makes sense for a whole host of reasons, but I really think it makes sense for Taiwan to look to Alaska because just to be frank, if you’ve got Alaska LNG ships coming from Alaska to Taiwan and China’s thinking about a blockade of energy, they’re going to think a little bit harder if it’s a Alaskan LNG ship from America versus a Qatari ship or even an Australian ship.

So I think it ties our countries strategically even closer. So we’re going to be working soon, my team, to be going to ask the Taiwanese, “Hey, we think this makes all kinds of strategic sense for you. It will help your economy, it will help your environment.” And if we have mutually interlocking investments, as you mentioned, in terms of terminals, in terms of shipping, I think that that makes China a little bit more hesitant to when they’re looking to do some kind of blockade, some kind of naval blockade, some kind of energy blockade.

If they’re trying to take on American ships from Alaska, that’s a whole riskier option for Xi Jinping and the PLA than it would be if it were ships from another country. So you’re raising a great point. I think it’s hopefully the Taiwanese are going to recognize that because I’ve spent a ton of time out there as a senator with their leadership, and I think this is a really good opportunity to deepen the strategic relationship and to give them some cover on energy. And I think your question raises that point, and it’s a really important question. Thanks for asking.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Senator, I want to thank you. This has really been extraordinary. The depths of your insights match the unbelievable forthrightness about which you exhibited this morning on a whole range of issues. And I especially will walk away thinking of the distinction between strategic imagination, a term I already knew, but strategic lunacy. We’ll add that to the vocabulary moving forward and really want to thank you. I want to thank also Walter Lohman, your national security advisor-

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Yeah, Walter does a great job.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

. . . for all the work.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

He’s so well-known in Asia. Whenever I go meet world leaders in Japan or Korea or Taiwan, I get there and the first thing they always do is, “Walter, it’s so good to see you.” I’m like, “Wait, who’s that guy?” I’m like, “Oh, he’s the senator, right?” So he knows everybody out there way more than I do. He does a great job.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Couldn’t agree more. And want to also thank the Hudson Institute team, and you will be one of the first to get our new paper when it comes.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Yeah, I can’t wait to see it.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Thank you so much.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Thanks for doing that. Thanks, Ken.

Kenneth R. Weinstein:

Thank you for making time.

Senator Dan Sullivan:

Thanks everybody. Thank you.