10/15/2024

The American Who Waged a Tech War on China

Jake Sullivan is committed to stopping China in its tracks

Jake Sullivan was standing in the middle of his office, which occupies an airy, sunlit corner of the West Wing, looking like he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. He was taking me on a perfunctory three-minute tour of the space, even though the office tour is, perhaps, the most tired trope of the magazine profile—and, I’d been warned, Sullivan is not a fan of magazine profiles. At least, not the ones that are about him.

The White House national security adviser is a most serious person and, by most accounts, always has been—a Minnesota kid who had memorized world capitals before the age of 14 and, by 35, had traveled to 112 of those countries as then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s close adviser. A former Rhodes Scholar and world-class debater, he deftly swats away questions he dislikes by challenging their premise and speaks in polished paragraphs, not unlike his old boss, President Barack Obama. One White House official I spoke to described Sullivan as having a “relentless mind."

The pageantry of the magazine profile—the part where reporters read too much into whatever the subject is drinking or wearing, which in Sullivan’s case is almost always a slightly oversize black suit with a limited rotation of solid, wide ties—can seem a little fluffy for someone who has so carefully cultivated a reputation for depth and substance. So as he walked me around the room that afternoon in May, gamely humoring me in a bit of high-speed show-and-tell, even I cringed a bit. The next day, he was headed to Saudi Arabia to discuss a pathway to Middle East peace with the Crown Prince, but had I seen the photo of the old shed behind the house where he grew up?

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.