Friday Feature Author Interview with Elise Cooper: Defense Protocol (Tom Clancy) by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson

Book Description

For decades, Taiwan has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. An independent nation to the rest of the world, it is considered a rogue province by the PRC. Previous governments have tried to conquer the island using economic force and diplomatic pressure, but new Chinese President Li Jian Jun is done fooling around. He’s devised a secret military operation to take the island. Only one man knows how to stop Li’s mad and bloody plan for reunification and that’s Minister of Defense Qin Haiyu. Fearing for his life and the safety of his family, Qin covertly makes contact with the CIA in Beijing and signals his desire to defect to the West.
 
To get Qin out, John Clark creates an international task force reminiscent of Rainbow Six and goes undercover in mainland China. Meanwhile, Lt. Commander Katie Ryan is deployed to the tip of the spear on the destroyer USS Jason Dunham to defend Taiwan. Threatened by an encircling Chinese armada, she’s under pressure to find a flaw in the invaders’ plan for her father to exploit.
 
For his part, President Jack Ryan may have the power of the entire US military at his disposal, but what he really needs are Li’s secret plans from Defense Minister Qin so he can stave off a war. Because America’s Defense Protocol could lead to a game of mutual destruction that could cost the lives of thousands of young soldiers, sailors, special operators as well as his daughter.

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Elise’s Thoughts

Tom Clancy’s Defense Protocol by Andrews and Wilson brings to life the whole Clancy Universe.

The new Chinese President Li Jian Jun has devised a secret military operation to conquer Taiwan. Only one man knows how to stop Li’s mad and bloody plan for reunification and that’s Minister of Defense Qin Haiyu. Fearing for his life and the safety of his family, Qin covertly contacts the CIA in Beijing and signals his desire to defect to the West. To get Qin out, John Clark creates an international task force reminiscent of Rainbow Six and goes undercover in mainland China. Meanwhile, Lt. Commander Katie Ryan is deployed to the tip of the spear on the destroyer USS Jason Dunham to defend Taiwan. Threatened by an encircling Chinese armada, she’s under pressure to find a flaw in the invaders’ plan for her father to exploit. Both she, her dad, President Ryan, and the rest of the task force must come up with a plan to prevent WWIII.

This was as good as if Tom Clancy had written it himself with an intense plot and a lot of action.

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Author Interview

Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for the story?

Brian Andrews and Jeff Wilson: After writing the last book, Act of Defiance, which was a submarine book with Russia as the antagonist, we decided to look somewhere else geopolitically. The biggest global geopolitical flashpoints that could turn into war or could shift the balance of global power was with Taiwan, one of those places that’s very high on the list. China has made no secret about their plans to take over Taiwan and have been talking about this for almost two decades. It’s not a matter of if they want to reunify Taiwan, it’s just a matter of when, and how they do it. We thought it would be right for fiction.

EC:  Does Chang have a major role in the book even though he died early in the story?

BA and JW: He was the Foreign Minister. In real life I kept seeing these articles about how these high-ranking important Chinese people would just disappear including billionaire civilians who maybe got a little too big for their britches and the Chinese would have them disappear. They would be off the radar with nobody knowing where they were. Those that do return have gone to reeducation camps. I just thought it’s amazing that this happens even with high-profile individuals. People that are known in politics, known on the world stage, and the Chinese are still doing it. We opened with it, which is basically if you want to play in the game and are not on board with what the Chinese President wants to do then you’re an enemy, and he’s going to get rid of you.

 EC: I’m wondering if you could explain that it seems China, more than Russia are devious, violent, they’re on the brink of wanting World War III?

 BA and JW: They’re always kind of challenging the United States and we wanted to get that point across in the book. The Chinese have what they call their 10-year plan which is part of their fifty-year plan so there’s five 10-year plans that make up their fifty-year plan. What we wanted to convey is that that the Chinese don’t think in terms of election cycles like the United States, and I think you’re spot on when you say that they’re more calculating and more disciplined than Russia because the Chinese think in terms of dynasties. Remember that’s their history: Chinese dynasties ruled the world until British naval power came on to the scene. We did a lot of research for this book just about Chinese history and mentality. They’re on the path to reclaim their destiny as the rightful rulers of the world and America is just in the way. They have been very methodical starting with commerce and manufacturing to get their toe in the door. First, making things for U.S. companies and then once U.S. companies started investing there, they develop trust. Now companies can’t own more than 49% of any business in China and if you want to do anything here you have to surrender your intellectual property. Then they send their people over to the US under the guise of researchers, students, and workers but most of them are spies to pillage intellectual property. They then use that to build up their military using all the money that American consumers spend on Chinese products. Now they have more ships in their Navy than we do. They clone our fighter jets, ships, submarines, and missiles because they’ve stolen all our technology. We wanted to show how they are the most formidable adversary that we face, willing to do one thing and say another because they’re very good at propaganda. Plus, they’re very good at managing their money and buy American T-bills so they can influence our currency.

EC:  Everyone seems to be speaking of Russian, but it seems that China is our real enemy-something you point out in this book.

BA and JW: They’re much more sophisticated than Russia, and much less impulsive than Russia. For the Chinese it’s an entire machine really devoted to unseating the US as the world power.

EC: How would you describe the US asset, the Spider?

BA and JW: She is a support asset for the CIA that uses only women to help and has a web of contacts. She gets political dissidents out and can appear cold and cruel.  But she’s a survivor and she’s like a spider. Her name is metaphorical but also accurate because she’s built a web in Beijing that allows her to use Cold War tactics and non-technology-based means and methods to do her job, moving information and people safely. It meant that she’s had to sacrifice certain things like having a family, so I think there probably is an element of stoicism to her. As part of her cover she runs a taxi company, hiring only women. Even though China is dominated by men she’s not going to get pushed around by being industrious and having survived the purge after so many other assets and spies were rounded up and murdered by the ministry of state security. She is stealthy, clever, and hard to catch.

EC:  You also point out the importance of Taiwan-why?

 BA and JW: Taiwan is 100 miles away from their coast. China has multiple bases along the eastern edge right across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan. It would take minutes for their missiles to fly and hit Taiwan and take them over. Everyone knows that Taiwan alone cannot mount an effective defense against a full-scale invasion by the Chinese. I think because 90% of the world’s complex semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan with so much global commerce running in, around, and through Taiwan that the world would balk. So, what we imagined is that Chinese president would say “to diminish the political damage from taking over Taiwan what we need to do is spin this so that our actions are justified, claiming that it wasn’t us being the aggressor.” Basically, using a false flag operation to provide the justification for the invasion of Taiwan.

EC:  Was the role of Katie more of a supporting character?

BA and JW: We did have her anticipate the adversary response and how she helped get the Spider and Defense Minister by out maneuvering President Li. She didn’t wilt under pressure, and she was confident. We wrote her to be the primary protagonist, but this is a Jack Ryan series. Due to the complexity of this book and all the moving chess pieces that we wanted to show on the board, everybody got a little less airtime. There’s lots of other players in the Jack Ryan universe and we wanted to have the whole crew.

EC: You never write her as a superhero, agree?

BA and JW: We want to be authentic, so we don’t want Katie Ryan to be like a marvel superhero where she shows up as the smartest and fastest, able to do flips, beat people up, and knows how to fly planes, basically a one-woman wrecking crew when she’s an analyst who works for the office of naval intelligence. Although she did take a lot of initiative, putting a lot of effort into trying to do as much as she could to figure out what was going on and helping to deescalate the situation by finding a solution.

EC: Why the Battleship game?

BA and JW: The Battleship game is a metaphor for the story itself. Katie and her dad both are analysts, both strategic, playing this game of ships where they can’t see what the other side is doing, can’t see where their ships are. It really was a metaphor for the book, not just the game but also father and daughter playing together, having quality time. One of the things we had happened is that Katie won to foreshadow this idea that she’s the next generation of Ryan, who my gosh maybe she’s just as smart as her dad and or maybe she’s even smarter and she can do the same type of job that he does. Also just giving them some father daughter time to show that they have a very healthy and close relationship.

EC:  Next books?

BA and JW: Out in April is the fourth book in our Shepherds Series, titled Dark Rising. There’s been a bit of a hiatus on Shepherds because we changed publishers and because we started writing the Clancy series, so we had to take a little break. It will now be published by Blackstone. Plus, the showrunner for the Shepherds is developing it for television. It has a faith-based component The plot has these kids called the watchers who have a spiritual gift that allows them basically to sort of predict and maybe see through visions like when bad stuff is going to happen and so they get an idea of something going to happen and tell the shepherds which are a bunch of former military special OPS guys. There is an interesting alliance between adolescents and operators where the operators can’t do their job without the watchers but the watchers can’t protect themselves without the shepherds and so you have this interesting alliance of kids and adults trying to stop evil in the world. The specific plot of the next book has terrorists dealing with the Chinese and Russians surrounding a sex trafficking ring. The hero iJedediah Johnson goes on vacation to the Dominican Republic and when he’s there he stops a kidnapping. What he starts to realize is that all these kids are being kidnapped there and taken to other places.

The book Four Minutes has the task force getting intel from technology and the Shepherd Series is getting intel from the spiritual. It is under development with a producer named Mark Evans. Netflix is developing this for film and so we sort of feel like we should wait and see where it goes. We’d like the movie and book to sort of be compatible and if the film goes off like in a big different direction, we need to be able to kind of know that before we write the sequel. 100% we’re going to write the sequel, but we’d like to get at least the first screenplay finished so we know what’s going to happen and then we can start on the next book.

In July will be the next Sons of Valor book, False Flag. The plot has the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia murdered, and the blame is pointed at Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence. The company goes to the Middle East to help figure out who killed the Crown Prince and obviously the title of the book sort of gives away it away.

In October the next Tier One book comes out. It doesn’t have a title yet, but the plot continues where the last book, Ember left off. A Chinese agent was helping the terrorist organization al Qaeda that was responsible for the bombing that killed President Warner and the Indian Prime Minister. Richard Wang of the task force is kidnapped so it’s about trying to figure who took him and how to thwart the Chinese and the terrorists.

The next Clancy book comes out December, maybe a little less Kate because her brother Kyle is going to make his appearance in the series. She’s got this twin brother Kyle. We’re working on it now.

THANK YOU!!

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