Will future wars be decided by who controls space—cyber and outer—and which superpower has better paired geostrategic thinking with emerging technologies? Anne Neuberger, the Hoover Institution’s William C. Edwards Distinguished Visiting Fellow and a former White House and Pentagon cyber policy advisor, joins GoodFellows regulars Sir Niall Ferguson, John H. Cochrane, and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to discuss what she sees as a “cyber gap” between China and America, the need for the US to rethink traditional weapons platforms (hello, drones), plus how Dwight Eisenhower’s warning of a “military industry complex” is being redefined by the tech sector’s growing role in present-day and future warfare. After that: the three fellows weigh the significance of a utopian socialist recently elected mayor of a very capitalist New York City, a new “algocracy” (algorithms running the government) in Albania, the UK’s fabled BBC in hot water over alleged editorial bias, plus whether the “war of the tomorrow” may be in . . . Venezuela?
Subscribe to GoodFellows for clarity on today’s biggest social, economic, and geostrategic shifts — only on GoodFellows.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
- We will prove that thereis no problem too large
for government to solve
and no concern too smallfor it to care about.
- It's Wednesday, November 12th, 2025.
And welcome back to Goodfellows,
a Hoover Institutionbroadcast, examining history,
economics, and geopolitics.
I'm Bill Whalen. I'll beyour moderator today joined
(00:21):
by our full fleet of Goodfellows.
That means that we today havein the house the historian Sir
Niall Ferguson, theeconomist, John Cochrane,
and former PresidentialNational Security Advisor,
Lieutenant General, H.R.,McMaster, Niall, John,
and H.R. are all Hoover'sinstitution senior fellows.
Gentlemen, two segments.Today in the second part
of our show, we're going to do a little
(00:42):
game we call Big Deal.
Little deal. No deal at all.
I'm gonna give you abunch of items in the news
and you tell me theirrelative significance.
But first we're gonna kick off the show
with the segment on war, notcurrent wars necessarily,
but Wars of Tomorrow, wars of the Future.
And joining us for this conversation,
making her debut on Goodfellows I might
add is Anne Neuberger.
Ann Neuberger was recentlynamed the William C. Edwards
(01:03):
Distinguished Visiting Fellow here at
the Hoover Institution.
She joins us after serving asa national security advisor
for cyber and emerging technologyin the Biden White House
or field of expertisebeing national policy
around cyber warfare, cybersecurity,
and emerging technologies.
That includes components of AI policy
and Neuberger also workedat the NSA and the Pentagon.
And it's great to meet you.Great to have you on the show.
(01:25):
And I gotta say, when I seethat somebody worked at the NSA,
I'd love to find out what you did,
but you'd probably have tokill me after you told me.
Right?
- Thanks so much. It'swonderful to be here with you
and insured at NSAI was the deputy head
of global operations.
I served as their first chiefrisk officer after Snowden
and stood up their cybersecurity director.
As we saw geopolitics
(01:45):
and cyber threats fundamentally changed
and recognizing that the NSA
and Intelligence community response had
to change along with it.
So I think that summarizes it.
And you seem to be alive and well, bill.
- Thank you very much. SoAnne, let's talk about the wars
of tomorrow, the future of war.
If we look back, I'm gonnaplay amateur historian
for a second, SAR Niall in H.R.
If you look back to the 20th century
and World Wars World War ii,
(02:07):
the less than the winningside did a better job
of mastering technology.
The allies were better at radar.
The allies were better at airwarfare, long range bombers.
If you look at World War I,Niall Ferguson's, the Pity
of War, I recommend to thosewho wanna read about the war,
both sides tragicallyin taking technology,
but using 20th century technology
with 19th century strategy.
And here we are in the 21st century.
(02:28):
We hope you don't have aglobal conflict this century,
but if you look at themajor combatants right now,
if you look at the superpowers,China and the United States,
and you look at how they areboth thinking militarily toward
the future, but embracingtechnology at the same time.
Is the strategy concurrentwith technology and
or is technology outpacing strategy?
- I think undoubtedlytechnology is outpacing strategy
(02:51):
for the simple rule thattechnology has brought asymmetry
to the way war is being fought.
And there's also a silentwar being fought in spectrum,
in cyber and in rf.
And that's really changing on the ground
the way wars are being fought.
What do I mean by technology symmetry?
When you think of fundamentallydrone warfare Ukraine,
without having a navy disablingRussia's Black Sea fleet,
(03:15):
and even more importantlyundermining Russia's overall
strategy of preventingUkrainian exports of grain,
which they know is a keysource of their economy.
That that drone strategy, the fact
that they could use severalthousand dollars drones
to undermine milliondollar platforms, the fact
that they could scale production, the fact
that they could repair dronesin the field changes the
(03:38):
asymmetry and the powerof those platforms.
We certainly saw it as theUnited States where a lot of
what has made the US the mostpowerful military in the world
was our precision targeting GPS
driven precision targeting.
While over time the effectiveness of some
of our most powerful platforms from Jems
(03:58):
to high Mars declined significantly
because of Russian jamming of GPS.
So what we saw was
that even these high-endplatforms could be disabled.
That's in the asymmetrythat now advanced tech,
notably drone warfares introducing.
And we can certainly talkabout it in the context of,
as I mentioned, the silent war
and what's going on in spectrum,
which is increasinglycongested and contested,
(04:21):
and where the US' strategyremains mired in a very different
world than we see onbattlefields happening today.
- Hey, and you know what,you know what I, I, the way I
think about this, you know, in terms
of technological change is,
is the continuous interactionright between, between forces
and war, but also betweenvarious technologies.
You know, you havecountermeasures that are developed
(04:42):
and when you see thesekind of new capabilities,
could you just give uskind of an appreciation for
what you've seen in terms
of the action counteractiondynamic in cyberspace in
the very important electromagneticspectrum that you've,
that you've, that you've highlighted,
but also in, in other domains,including the space domain.
'cause I think what we've seen is so much
of the RF collection rateof LY collection as well
(05:06):
as imagery is happeningin low earth orbit.
It, it seems to me likethe next war is gonna go
right to space right away.
But, but, but I, yeah,I know there are a lot
of countermeasures under development.
Can you maybe describe what we're doing,
what you see the US doing
and what you helped put intoplace in terms of cyber defense
and defense against theseemerging capabilities,
drones being one of them,
but as you, as you pointed out,so clearly drones connected
(05:29):
to a lot of developmentsin across other areas.
- Absolutely. And I think you asked one
of the most profoundquestions, which is there's a,
there's a significant differencebetween offense and defense
and the pace of adoption
and the pace of changeis a key play in battles
of the future as well.
What do I mean on offense versus defense?
(05:51):
One drone is very hard to defend against.
One needs a far more broad-based defense
and the cost of thatdefense often exceeds that.
Similarly, when we thinkabout cyber, right,
we are a democracy up againstauthoritarian governments.
You know, when you think about the evening
before Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
(06:12):
they conducted a cyber attackagainst a commercial company
providing satellite servicesto Ukraine's military, right?
That cyber attack would'vedisabled the Ukraine's military's
ability to communicate securely.
But for a commercialsatellite provider, starlink
becoming a platform upon which Ukraine's
military road, right?
(06:33):
So every element of
that countermeasure was significant there.
I wanna highlight one morepiece before I summarize.
It used to be that USspace-based assets were a
source of unique imagery.
Today you have commercialproviders, companies like Maxar,
companies like Planet Labsproviding deep insight
and intelligence picturesin a very precise way.
(06:54):
In fact, one of the thingswe did, to your point during,
you know, followingRussia's invasion of Ukraine
and Russia's debilitatingstrikes against Ukraine's
electricity and electricinfrastructure was essentially say
that commercial imagery wewere purchasing could be shared
with Ukraine to enableUkraine to rapidly try
to recover from that.
(07:14):
When we think about the Houthis,some of their intelligence
as they tried to disablecommercial shipping in the Red Sea
area, indeed came from Iran.
But a lot of it camefrom subscription-based
commercial services.
So those three factorscoming together, the ability
of cyber to disable, youknow, broad based satellite
and other military capabilities, the role
(07:35):
of commercial imagery, the role
of commercial satelliteservices underpinning military
capabilities and how to thinkabout that are significant.
Now, one of the challengeswe have as a US military,
which you saw I think very much uniquely
and I'd love to hear yourperspective about, is the pace
of adaptation when a new platform comes on
to adapt the defensesquickly enough is one
(07:58):
of our most significant vulnerabilities.
When you think about,for example, you know,
protecting every stadium inthe United States against a
drone attack, we can certainly jam,
but there are countermeasures to jamming.
So how we as a country adaptour defenses rapidly enough
to meet the asymmetry that offense has,
I think is a key area of vulnerability.
(08:19):
And one we really need to rapidly learn,
learn lessons from Israel,from Ukraine to adjust to that.
- Yeah. Yeah.
And just to respond tothat quickly, I think one
of the ways we have todo it is, is imagine
what people could be a really bad day and,
and think about what wewould do the day after
and do that now instead.
I think that's what the, I think that's
what the Israelis did, you know,with Iron Dome for example.
(08:41):
But hey, thanks so muchfor your leadership
and what you've done tokind of, you know, try
to keep us ahead of this.
I think also, you know,you mentioned the, the,
the creative adaptation.
It's astounding how fast orthe speed of it in, in Ukraine
and, and I I'm encouraged a little bit
by the current administration's approach
of maybe contracting dronecapabilities, for example,
as a service so that privatecompanies, as you mentioned,
(09:03):
who are much more agile can continue
to update those platforms with kind
of an open architecture kind of design.
But yeah. Hey thanks.
What, what a, what a greatexplanation of this dynamic.
- Can I ask two, two questionsthat they're related?
One is, are we moving fast enough?
It's very clear that in Europe,
(09:25):
and I'm speaking from London,
there's still a real disconnect
between what's happening in Ukraine
where the Ukrainians areproducing 3 million drones a year
and the Russians 4 million
and what's happening in German re armament
where they're simply notthinking in those terms
or those quantities at all.
(09:46):
I worry that we might stillbe, as it were, enamored
of a revolution in military affairs
that now lies quite some way back
and are having trouble adjusting
to the new revolution in military affairs,
which creates an enormous challenge
because of the cheapness
and quantities in whichdrones can be produced.
(10:09):
So question one, do we really appreciate
how many drones the Chinesecould deploy in the event
of a Taiwan contingency?
That's question one.
Question two has to do
with supply chains inany protracted conflict.
It seems clear that the choke holds
that have been revealed inthe trade war with China,
(10:30):
particularly rare earth elements, would be
of enormous importance
to US defense production, which would have
to be scaled up in a conflict.
Could we even do it underpresent circumstances?
So those are my two questions.
Are we moving fastenough into the drone age
and are we aware of the implications
(10:51):
of the recent rare earthelements moves by China
for our defense industrial capability?
- We're taking real steps.
There's no one step,it's the pace of adoption
and continuously evolving.
So the Department of War recentlymade some very interesting
announcements related tochanges in acquisition
(11:14):
and each of those componentsspeak to the things
that we learn through the now accelerated
pace of drone warfare.
First work to adopt commercialfirst, if it's out there,
don't build a bespoke.
That's one key lesson.
Second is ensure
that the acquisition team is incentivized
for speed sometimes.
(11:34):
Yeah. You know, as welook across cost, schedule
and performance, we didn'tnecessarily put a focus on get
things out there quickly'cause they're only gonna last
for a certain period of time.
If you look at starlink satellites, right?
The constellation isremarkable for two things.
The number of satellites,thousands of systems,
which makes it much harder to jam
'cause there are thousands ofsystems networked together.
(11:57):
And that each satellite isonly expected to be up there,
I believe, for a maximum of four years.
So as a result, you know,
the way we've traditionallybuilt unique satellites
with the expectation they'dbe up there for 30 years,
there's a huge amount of engineering
and resilience when insteadyou're building many
for smaller periods of time,
that's a far differentacquisition pace, approval
(12:18):
and speed that is very much needed.
So that's the second component.
And the third is enablingpeople in theater
to adjust and build byhaving open architectures so
that they can reprogram, they can adjust.
So for example, if you'rein an electronic warfare
environment, like I we weretalking about a moment ago
with H.R. and you see a newsignal of a new platform
(12:40):
that shows up, you canadjust your defensive
and offensive platforms to identify it,
strike it more quicklyor defend against it.
And in fact, you know,to the point H.R. made
regarding Israel's Iron Dome,
what was most powerfulabout the Iron Dome is yes,
there are advanced interceptors,
but it was more the software
and technology that understoodby the arc of a given,
(13:02):
you know, item coming in.
Was it a missile, was ita rocket, was it a drone?
Based upon that, how should werespond if there's, you know,
a hundred coming in at one time
and there's only so many
interceptors, which way do you do that?
That advanced kind of systemlooking across the platform
and defending against it isa key part to your point,
not only of adapting to drone warfare
(13:25):
but also adapting to a swarmof drones and how one defends
and how one also conductsthose operations.
We now see more and more autonomous swarms
where they can adjust based on
what they see a platform there.
So that's the first piece.
And to your question, dowe appreciate the number
of drones to China could bring?
I think we appreciate more
and more how much droneswarms change the battlefield
(13:47):
and bring real risk
to our primary platformin the Indo-Pacific,
which is aircraft carriers, right?
And and the degree towhich we rely on them
to forward deploy and the risks
that they operate in inthis new environment.
And second to yourpoint about choke holds.
You know, it's interesting inmy, the first role I came in
as a Pentagon, I was aWhite House fellow working
for Bob Gates and at thetime he made a commitment
(14:09):
that he would deploy RAs atspeed and scale in order to,
because the,
the V-shaped hullsreally protected service
members far more quickly.
And I recall at the time heused the Defense Production Act
to accelerate
and really get first divson the specialty seal
that were needed to actuallymeet that commitment
(14:30):
of accelerating the deploymentof these special vehicles
that could really save livesand respond to improvise.
Id respond to the IEDs thatwere taking so many lives
that required that we had theproduction in the country.
So what we've learned aboutChinese choke holds in various
metals and in various mineralsrequire us now with that,
those new insights tomap those supply chains.
(14:52):
I think that underpins some of, you know,
the Trump administration'swork with Argentina to say,
where can we build thosealternative supply chains either in
the US or in allies orother reliable countries
because we recognizethey're a key part of war
and of the resilience offielding our platforms
- Well as the economisthere, great, I'd like to hear
(15:13):
that cost effective, flexibleand open are important to you.
But of course those areusually not things we
associated with the military.
And there's a danger,once you say supply chain,
you don't necessarily have tomine rare earth you have the
stockpiling them would get you
through the military needs of a war.
But there is a strongprotectionist Im impulse in our
industry to say, oh no, no, no,
(15:34):
we're important for national security.
You'll have to fight that too.
I wanna ask you to lookhard a little bit every,
as H.R. keeps telling us, everymeasure has a countermeasure,
what will be the anti drone technology.
They're individually very vulnerable.
If you have any speculationhow that'll work,
what is the equivalent ofthe cavalry of World War I?
(15:56):
You mentioned aircraftcarriers and drones.
Of course ballisticmissiles are also a big
danger for aircraft carriers.
Are they the, the cavalry of World War i,
the huge expensive thingthat is not gonna work out.
Surely half of our militaryinvestment will turn out
to be useless in that oncethe first shots are fired.
If you have any ideas what it's,
but the big question, soI'm, I'm the economist
and you're the cyber expert.
(16:16):
I worry about the first day of a war.
Our financial system,if there is even a rumor
that the bank accounts atChase have been hacked and,
and emptied, you're gonnahave the bank run of all time.
I sort of have a vision of, ofthe computers going dark, all
that Chinese malware
that's been sitting there all these years.
And which would just be acatastrophe for, for the country.
(16:38):
I, I hope as, as x an SAperson, you can reassure me
that's not gonna happen.
Or maybe that I shouldbe keeping some gold bars
and beans in the basementjust in case or and cash.
- So a lot there,
and I'll talk about the lastone first, you know, bank,
there's a reason that banking is,
I would say the most securecritical infrastructure sector.
(17:02):
And that's because banks spend the money
and actually exercise the risk.
'cause they recognize they'rea trust-based system, right?
At the end of the day, whenyou're a trust-based system,
then a system that's keeping debits
and credits largely electronically the,
the potential impact onon trust in the system
by a cyber attack is significant.
And indeed, you know,
we've seen cyber attacksagainst banking systems.
(17:23):
There was one in, in Iran during the war
and you saw the immediateimpact it had in terms
of citizens trying
to take their money outand and that impact.
So I will say the USbanking system both has one
of the best partnershipswithin the banking sector.
So that if one sees a particular thread,
if one sees a new type
of offensive technique, they'llshare it with the others.
(17:44):
So they're all secured against it.
It's one of the most sophisticated ones.
In fact, after we saw China's compromise
of the telecom sector in theUnited States, we really tried
to bring in the telecomsto the White House,
to the situation room to teach them
to learn from the banking sector
and how to build a partnership,
build the trust across the sector.
And there's extensive sharingof intelligence information
(18:06):
with that sector as well.
So one never says never in cyber,
but what I will say is they work hard
to build continuously resilientdefenses to partner across
and frankly to start using ai,
which is a huge helpon offense and defense,
but a particularly hugehelp on defense in finding
misconfigurations,
in finding a particularlyvulnerable system
(18:27):
and in modeling potentialcascading impacts
of one entity in a interconnectedsystem on the others.
- And two items I'd like usto get into a cyber warfare
and ai
and they have this in common China,
you wrote a piece inwhich you say that quote,
China is winning the cyber war.
And here we have Jensen Wong, the CEO
of Nvidia the other day saying,
(18:48):
and I quote, China isgoing to win the AI race.
Now Mr. Wong says China has the advantage
because it has lessregulation, cheaper energy.
John can speak to the economics
of the two power competition,but cyber warfare.
And is there a cyber gap
between the United States and China?
And if so, how does theUnited States close the gap?
- Yes, there is.
And I've had the opportunity
(19:08):
to lead teams conducting both offensive
and defensive cyber operations.
And I really reflected deeplyin writing that piece in,
in foreign affairs
because the real source
of the gap is thedifference in our systems.
China's an authoritariancountry, the Chinese government,
not only much of its criticalinfrastructure is in state
owned enterprises, but Chinaalso monitors its networks
(19:30):
through a system calledthe great firewall system
of firewalls thatessentially both monitors all
communications in orderto censor communications,
but also has visibility onnetworks across the country
and is thus positioned toactually potentially detect
and block cyber attacks.
And indeed, in the intelligence community,
China's networks are viewedas one of the toughest set of,
(19:54):
of networks to hack intofor just that reason.
And the United States were democracy
and as such, the US governmentdoes not monitor private
sector communications.
However, where the rubis, is that virtually all
of our critical infrastructure,our pipelines, our power,
our water systems, ourrailroads, are all run
(20:14):
and operated by private sector networks.
So as such, you don't havethe US government actually
positioned to detect and block attacks.
And there's an asymmetry in that
that really plays out strategically.
You know, I have, peopleoften ask me the question
and what do you, why dowe care about, you know,
the gaps in defense?
We have offensive capabilities, we can,
you know, do things to them.
(20:35):
And I said, yes, as a country we have
offensive capabilities.
But as I've seen in, you know,numerous exercises, you know,
and again, H.R. is here so wecertainly can speak to this,
you know, the first strikeis the first strike one.
From there it only starts
and given the realasymmetry in our defenses
because as a democracy we'renot monitoring our critical
(20:56):
networks that our citizens rely on.
We're not actively defending them.
You know, the second retaliatory strike,
we are far more vulnerable
and in practice that meanswe're more constrained on
the offensive side.
So, you know, one
of the big things the lastadministration did was really
reverse decades of both democratic
and republican policy
(21:17):
to really have no regulation in terms
of minimum cybersecurity requirements
for the nation's most critical networks.
And in the Bidenadministration, we recognize
that the Hill really ha,
since the 2015 LiebermanCollins Act hasn't been able
to put in place cybersecurity legislation.
So as such, we essentially went
and reinterpreted safetyrules sector by sector
(21:40):
for airports, for pipelines, for rail
to say those companies have
to have the minimum practices in place so
that at the very leastwe're not leaving the doors
and alarm doors and windows wide open.
But the alarm and monitoringsystem, there's still a gap
between that as a democracy
and what China has in placeas an authoritarian country.
And I will know, and I'm happyto go into it, you know, I,
(22:01):
in the article I talk aboutsome ways to tackle that,
you know, building digital twins
of our most critical systems to identify
and fix the mostimportant vulnerabilities,
identifying cascading thingsin order to see where we spend
our money in the most impactful way
because there is a lot of techdebt accrued over the years.
- J just to clarifywhat you're saying here,
(22:22):
so I was worried aboutthe banks going under,
you're saying don'tworry about that so much,
but do worry that air traffic control
might fall, fall apart.
Stoplights might not work.
Water systems, the pumpsmight stop working.
So sort of you're painting a,a picture of civilian chaos
behind the lines.
That is the thing we ought to worry about.
(22:43):
- One of the things we've seenis China prepositioning in
critical civilian infrastructure in the US
and around the world in Europe,in the Middle East in Asia.
And we believe thatPrepositioning is with the goal
of disrupting it or showingthey could disrupt it
during a crisis or conflict.
Those are relatively vulnerable systems
for the reasons I talked about.
(23:04):
And as such, those are the ones
that while we now have minimum regulations
that's really done a, it'ssignificantly improved them,
it's brought them to the baseline
that we still need to build upon.
So yes.
- Hey, and you know, we,there are probably a lot
of our listeners, you know,have responsibility pro
for critical infrastructure,you know, and,
and could you maybe just talk about kind
(23:25):
of the NIST categories alittle bit, like a quick 1 0 1,
you know, and, and the importanceof kind of a, you know,
kind of a layered act of defensefrom a cyber perspective,
but also, you know, theimportance of being able to have
to recover, as you mentioned, you know,
these dual systems, right?
And what we need is, is,you know, is are systems
that degrade gracefully,like hopefully as the,
(23:47):
as the old guys on this podcasthopefully are doing rather,
rather than, rather thanfail catastrophically.
And, and what and whatquestions should executives ask
of their CISO or board members ask about,
- Yeah, - About the companiesthat that touch this,
this critical infrastructure.
- So there's a small setof cybersecurity practices
(24:08):
that really drive down risk.
In the last administration.
We put in place that small set
of cybersecurity practicesacross all federal government.
It took a solid three yearswith regular meetings.
I would host with deputies of agencies
to ensure those were in place.
'cause there were so many old systems,
it's things like encrypting data.
So if data's stolen by, youknow, ransomware attackers,
(24:31):
it can't be used to blackmail the company.
If it's, or if it's sensitiveip, the data's encrypted.
It can't just be, you know,there's nation state actors
who try to steal that data.
So that's one, it's thingslike multifactor authentication
because spearfishing is stillone of the most prominent ways
that com that companies orentities get compromised.
It's, you know, monitoring the network.
(24:52):
'cause if you're monitoring,then you're more likely
to detect anomaly.
And frankly, to your point,even if an attacker gets in,
'cause we often say it's, it's pretty hard
to be monitoring every door and window.
But at the very least, ifyou're monitoring the network,
if they do get in, youcan contain it quickly.
You know, that's one ofthe, the failures frankly,
that we saw across many ofAmerica's telecom networks was
once China got a foothold, hidthat foothold, they were able
(25:15):
to move across the networkand really get visibility
and turn those into a sigon system.
Ideally you're segmenting the network.
So there's multiple opportunities.
Think of it as like ifyou're deploying a unit,
you have them throughout a givenarea, so you're more likely
to catch an intruder moving across.
It's having a security operation center
and really it all boilsdown at the end of the day,
(25:36):
in addition to the technology to people.
And AI does make it a loteasier for cyber defenders
to both find issues on a network
to do more summaries acrossall the data coming in to work
with that and alert off there.
So that's a, a key area
that I would say isimportant to think about.
I also think as we think aboutus as a country that's kind
(25:56):
of an individuals, we thinkabout it as a country.
One key part is we are oftenhesitant with, you know,
to actually red team
or test live networksfor the obvious reason
that we can't afford ifsomething goes badly wrong
to the point you madeabout a really bad day.
So creating a digital twin
or a virtual replica
(26:17):
of our most important networkslike an air traffic control
system, like a givenpipeline or electricity grid.
And then exercising whatwe know about Chinese
or Russian offensive cybercapabilities against that
to actually know would the system fail?
How long would it take us torecover what needs to be fixed?
So we're confident that if it failed
that we could recover within 24 hours.
Those are the things we can do
(26:38):
to get the national levelresilience that we really need.
- And duet leaves officealmost 65 years ago,
and on his way out of office,
he warns about a militaryindustrial complex.
- We must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought
or unsought by the militaryindustrial complex.
- Now he is speaking invery 20th century terms,
(27:00):
he's talking aboutaerospace and ship building
and their effects onWashington and spending.
But here we're on the21st century, is it time
to redefine the militaryindustrial complex,
including technology,
including tech companieswe see involved in warfare?
And if so, is there adanger about the tech
companies becoming overpowered?
- You know, it's so interesting,
this is a question I'll answer,
but I'd love to hear others'thoughts on it as well.
(27:23):
The reality is that the most promising
and most interestingtechnologies are often
produced by the private sector.
Think about our major AI companies
or think about the companiesthat are helping deploy AI
across, across different sectors.
Frankly, think about SpaceX and starlink
and that global communications
platform and what that's enabled.
So I think the realityis that we want to ensure
(27:47):
that we're broadly adoptingthe most advanced technologies,
but we also wanna think about
what our military should beable to produce on its own.
Because, you know, forthose that I think about,
I mentioned earlier, the evening
before Russia invaded Ukraine,they conducted a cyber attack
and disabled a US satellitecompany called ViaSat
that was providing satelliteservices to Ukraine's military
(28:09):
as well as to, you know, French homes
and German electricity and windmills.
And the company that stepped in
to help Ukraine's militarywas again an American company.
And for those who criticized
and said, well, we don'treally want one particular CEO
making decisions about whichmilitaries have support,
that's a very well reasoned criticism.
(28:31):
The US military didn't,
or any of our allied countriesdid not have an alternative
secure satellite securecommunications mechanism
to make available within 24 hours.
So clearly what we need todo is ensure that we have
that kind of resilient, advanceinnovative technologies,
ideally in the nationalsecurity system itself.
But the reality is that thepace of the private sector
(28:54):
where there's competition,where there's innovation
is going to be faster.
So what we need is a wayto both build that in
and bring it in with all thethings we talked about earlier,
open ecosystem so
that our own people in the USgovernment in the military can
learn to adapt and work with it
and customize it inthe most effective way.
But I'd be curious, I want, I wanna throw
that question back at theother participants here.
(29:14):
How you all think about, youknow, Eisenhower's comment
and today when there'sdifferent technologies,
more software based
and the reality that government often lags
industry in its speed.
- Eisenhower originally intended to refer
to the military industrialcongressional complex
- That- Struck the word congressional out.
(29:34):
Actually he should have kept it in
because a distinctive feature
of the way the US worked inthe Cold War was that a lot
of decisions about where military bases
and military contracts wereallocated were political
and it had to do with the forces of,
of congressional politics.
Now I think we have adifferent problem, which is
(29:57):
that we don't really havethe connections that we used
to have between the military,the industry and politics.
And that is partly why weallowed over 20 years a withering
away of our in def defenseindustrial capability.
It stopped being as politically important
as it had been in Ike's day.
(30:18):
Part of what we have to try
and do is to create politicalincentives for the kind
of smart upgrading of our defenses
that we urgently need to achieve.
And I, I'm not sure thatthe political incentives are
particularly strong anymore.
It's not seems to me a top priority
for many people in Washington,particularly in Congress, to,
(30:41):
to be worried about this stuff.
I'm worried more now thanI was at the beginning
of our conversation, Anne,
because I can't really tellwhich is more vulnerable.
Is it our, our kind ofdomestic infrastructure
and ability to keep society functioning
under de relativelydecentralized cyber attacks?
Or is it that we'revery vulnerable in space
(31:03):
because so much hinges on our,our satellite communications,
which are at least to someextent Elon's to provide.
So I'd love to ask you aquestion right back, you know,
where is the real vulnerability?
Is it kind of on theground in our society,
in our critical infrastructure,or is it actually in space?
(31:23):
- I would say it's bothbecause they're often a backup
and resilience for the other.
So we'd have discussionswith the Taiwanese
or Japanese governments aboutcommunications, resilience.
You know, Taiwan heavily relies
for its communications onundersea cables, you know,
as an island, as underseacables that are very vulnerable.
(31:44):
We've seen the rise in cable cuts,
notably northeastern Europe.
We have a shortage of cablerepair ships as a globe,
as a world, which meansthat when a cable is cut,
it may take some time to also recover.
Well, the biggest resilienceto those undersea cable cuts,
whether intentional or just,you know, poor seamanship
is our satellite communications.
(32:05):
And as a result, you know, as,
as countries like Taiwangrapple with that they have
to think about, you know, building,
can they deploy their ownsatellite constellations
with adequate satellites for resilience
to advance Chinese hacking?
Or do they need to adopta system, you know,
and if so, do they need to beconcerned about the ideologies
of those commercial entities?
(32:27):
So, you know, the realityis that they are a resilient
to each other, but as oursocieties are more connected,
you know, as our weapons aretied to GPS for navigation
as our as ways the waywe go to work is tied
to satellite communications,we need to really think about
what are the worst cases
and frankly invest in ensuringthat they're resilient
(32:50):
as we need them to be.
And, and those investments can be made.
The good part is there'snothing that can be broken
with technology that canbe fixed with technology.
And I say that having workedboth offense and defense,
but often we get, you know,
the offensive investments are far sexier,
the defensive investments is harder
to see the return oninvestments sometimes.
And that's why we often don't make them.
(33:12):
And I think our goal shouldbe defending against our own
offensive capabilities.
We should try to use ouroffensive capabilities against
ourselves and ensure thatanything we know we can do
to others, others can't do to us,
or at the very least we can recover in an
acceptable time period.
- Well, I wanna pick upon the Eisen power issue.
Ne Niall's, right? Since westopped spending on the military,
(33:32):
people are going there, butAmericans are very innovative
and when it comes, whenWashington starts eventually
spending money, they're verygood at knowing how to go
to Washington and get the money.
And for you, you mentionedcost effectiveness,
private sector flexibility quick, oh
that doesn't describe defense
and it certainly doesn'tdescribe Washington.
So the same crowd that has goneto Washington for ridiculous
(33:57):
ridiculously ineffective rat holes
of green energy subsidies, forexample, could be very quick
to wrap themselves in the flag and, and
and become subsidized, becomeprotected on and so forth.
So really how to changethat culture around
how we do any kind
of spending seems like abig question if we're going
(34:17):
to ramp up defense spending.
- And, and I just to go,just to kind of tie this up
with your, your question back to us.
You know, I think certainly itis past time that we, we got
beyond this model of procuring fewer
and fewer, more exquisitesystems that, that are,
could prone to catastrophic failure
and get to, you know, more, you know,
(34:40):
systems in greater numbersthat are less expensive, right?
And to change that cost dynamicthat we see with, you know,
a very low cost drone being shot down
by like a patriot miss orsomething like that. So
- You spend it in delayed,
you can't wait 20 years forthe new drone, right? Yeah.
- But but at the sametime, you know, I'm all
for exquisite capabilities.
You know, I mean, what youdon't want is a fair fight
and you're not, you're, you're,
(35:01):
the way you get a not fairfight is to, to go beyond
what you can get commercial off the shelf.
And in our defense, you know,our defense primes, you know,
in their defense I would say here
have developed tremendous capabilities
that you have seen give the Ukrainians a
tremendous differential advantage.
Give the Israelis a a, atremendous differential advantage.
(35:22):
And I benefited from it, you know,
going back early in my careerwhen I was in this, you know,
70 ton killing machinecalled a Abrams tank.
And, and so, you know, ifyou see obviously what we did
against Iran with B twobombers, that's an exquisite
what the Israeli Air Forcedid with F 30 fives, you know,
and were impervious to, tothe, to the air defense systems
(35:44):
that, that the Iranians had.
So there is a case to be made, I think,
for this combination, acombination of, of cheaper systems
that can be procured largely commercially
in greater numbers in combination
with these exquisite capabilities.
And, and, and so I think,
and I'd love to hear yourthoughts on this, we have
to incentivize theindustry to be more agile
(36:06):
with multi-year contracts.
You know, we have this shutting down
of the government continuous re you know,
relu continuing resolutions.
You know, we're, we're notreally giving a predictable sort
of, you know, demand signalto our defense industry.
And you know, they're, they're not
charitable organizations, right?
They're, they're for-profit companies.
So could you talk a little bit about
(36:27):
what you see on the horizon maybe
'cause it was under the,under the Biden administration
where you had this commission right on,
on the re reforming defense contracting.
Any thoughts on that topic?
- So first, I very much agree with you
that we need a broaderspectrum of capabilities
and the technological asymmetry
that drones have introducedalso bring new risks to some
(36:48):
of our ground-based platforms, right?
And so, so fundamentally Ithink the goal is exactly
as you put it, purpose-built military use.
You know, one of the things wesaw with the Houthis attempts
to shut down commercial shipping, right?
Using essentially drones.
They had some advancedmissiles which the Iranians had
(37:09):
either given them or taught them and
or taught them to build on their own
and some degree to whichthey were using drones
and the both the asymmetry of that tech
that a drone could have that kind
of global economic impact in disabling
or causing them to take thelonger route of shipping.
But also that the defensewas often platforms
that were far moreexpensive than the offense
(37:30):
that was being used.
So I think the key thing weneed to do now is kind of model
what we learned and say,what is the cheapest,
most effective platform
to be used in a givenpoint in time, right?
Ukraine's most effectivestrike platform today is often
grade equipped drones.
Where is that appropriate?
To your point, if you'redoing long range operations,
whether it's in the Indo-Pacific
or whether it's Israel against Iran,
(37:52):
then you need the most advanced fighters.
And frankly you needpeople who are trained
and have careers doing that as well.
Another example of that Ithink about is Israel's pager
operation against Hezbollah, right?
Those kinds of operationstake years to build,
but they are asymmetric,they disabled the,
the key leadership and combat force
of the Middle East major terrorist group.
So I think it's, it'srecognizing that there is now a,
(38:15):
an asymmetry B,
this power in swarms versusindividual unique capabilities.
And C, there are still rare unique cases
where large scale platforms,exclusive platforms matter,
but being sure thatwe're considering where
that's appropriate and wherecheaper commercial scaled
really works through better.
And today the systemadvantages the smaller number
(38:36):
of unique platforms.
And what we wanna do is take
that reason broad based approach
and the incentive somebodymentioned earlier matter a lot,
particularly the incentivesin the acquisition community
related to speed relatedto commercial as well
as the companies andthe broad base of our di
- Well.
And this is a fascinating conversation.
It's an honor to have youat the Hoover institution
(38:56):
and please come back on the show
and let's pick up where we left off.
- Thanks so much for having me
and looking forward to continuing
it offline with all of you. Be well.
- Thanks- Anne.
- Thanks Anne.- So Niall was not here the last time
when we went trick or treating.
So since it's her nail isback, let's play another game
that I like to call big deal, little deal
or a no deal at all.
(39:20):
Gentlemen, I'm gonna readyou something in the news
and you tell me if it'ssignificant or not.
Let's begin with this.
Zoran AMI is now themayor elect New York City,
meaning a socialist isin charge of the city.
That's a center of Americanfinance gentlemen, big deal,
- Huge deal and bad deal,terrible deal for New York.
But you know, this is whathappens in the generational war
(39:43):
that is American politics,
where a very substantialproportion of young voters now
are supportive of socialism.
We've talked about thisat Hoovers for some years.
There was a huge increase inturnout of the under 30 voters.
Massive increase. That was why he won.
And of course you candebate why they voted
(40:04):
for socialist Muslim candidate.
What's not really debatableis that this will be bad
for New York's economy.
And I would predict that we'll rerun
that very protracted cycle of decline
that began in the mid sixties in 1965
and didn't really end until30 years later when Rudy
Giuliani was elected.
(40:25):
And that was because a liberalRepublican became mayor.
This could be worse. So it's a big deal.
- John, the Wall Street Journal columnist,
Matthew ett has a great phrase for this.
He calls it the barista proletariat,
- Yeah, - Young people areovereducated, underemployed
and hungry for free stuff,
- A medium deal.
You know, the other news was the sort
(40:46):
of moderate Democratswinning governorship races,
which I think is more the future
of the Democratic party than Alami,
but very revealing aboutwhat's happened in some ways.
You know, they got what theyalways hoped for in the 1980s,
the skill premium, thecredential premium exploded,
and that was a lot of income inequality.
Then we responded withsubsidies to college
(41:07):
and everyone going to collegeto get useless degrees.
And now here they are, you know,
Mond supporters weretypically $150,000 a year,
30-year-old female in college educated.
And that is who's, youknow, losing from AI
and the, you know, theplumbers in the are are,
are doing great in the new economy.
So they're, you know,that, that, that has come
(41:30):
to roost I think is isthe story that class,
the slightly over educatedwith fairly useless degrees
and and aspirations to do
to not be plumbers isgonna be a very dangerous
political force going forward.
- We're gonna get more intothis with Tyler Coroll when is
on our show next year as hewrites a lot about socialism.
But HR, do you want to addto the real estate portfolio
(41:51):
with a little piano tear inNew York at time to be a buyer?
- I think you need to waittill the property values go way
down after the flight of businesses
and everybody, everythingoutta there. The fact
- That you, you know, tomaking it affordable, he may,
he may make it affordable.
Everybody leaves the prices go down.
Lemme tell you about supply and demand.
- I do think it's connectedas Niall, as Niall alluded
to this kind of the, youknow, kind of the, you know,
the logical outcome of, of thecurriculum of self-loathing
(42:14):
where young people are taughtthat, you know, all the ills
of the world prior to 1945are due to colonialism.
All the ills of the world
after 1945 are due tocapitalist imperialism.
So, you know, don't besurprised, you know,
and the older generationshould say, okay, well,
well I'm glad I paid,you know, $60,000 a year
(42:34):
so my kids could go to school
and be indoctrinated with an ideology
that makes 'em think mond'sa good choice for mayor.
- On the non socialism front,this is our second item.
We have this headline in Politico,
which reads Trump's economy looking more
and more like Saudi Arabia subhead,
top-down capitalism is onthe rise in both countries.
Gentlemen, do you agree?And if so, big deal,
little deal, no deal at all.
(42:55):
- Silly analogy, given theenormous structural differences
between the Saudi economy and,
and the US economy, it'salmost not worth discussing,
which you could say is thatPresident Trump has in common
with gulf monarchies atendency to conflate public
and private interest,which one day may come back
to haunt him.
(43:16):
But, but
of course the really interestingthing about the US economy
is how diversified it is.
Unlike the Saudi economy,
much more diversified than itwas even 50 years ago when the
Saudis could, couldinflict an oil shock on us
and it, it really hurt.
So I'm not sure this is aparticularly useful analogy, John,
(43:37):
- Well, a little bit ofmoving in that direction.
I agree with you. Theeconomy isn't anything like
that Saudi economy,
but there is now foreigngovernments essentially giving
Trump money, hundreds of billionsto invest as he sees fit.
We are sort of cronycapitalist in, in many ways.
So lots of people wantindustrial policies,
(43:58):
including the government and,
and you seem to, you know, buy favor
with the administration inorder to get that kind of deal.
So we're a long way away fromtrying to build a, what is it,
50 mile long mile high apartmentbuilding in the desert.
But we have those tendencies.
- I mean, hey, I'm just likethe wash dub general here man,
but I, I'm watching what seems to be kind
(44:20):
of like a feeding frenzy around,you know, crony capitalism.
I mean make it, get it,get it done what you can.
And I think it's gonna intensify
because there's thisperception, you know, that,
that the Trump administrationis gonna give deals
to friends and so forth.
And, and so there are a lotof industry leaders trying
to get sweet deals fromthe government, you know,
and I don't think that'sgood for us in the long term.
(44:42):
- Alright, moving on. EricSchmidt of Google Fame
and also a past guest ofGoodfellows I would add,
has not been in the NewYork Times, pointing out
that Albania is the first countryto take a real step toward
what he calls Cracy.
This is replacing acorrupt democratic system
with algorithmic one gentlemen big deal.
- We'll find out who knows about Albania's
procurement systems?
(45:03):
- Yeah, this is giving AIa role in the government
seems like a little premature
given the relatively early stage we're at
with large language models.
But I think the, the pointabout cracy, the rule
of the algorithms is well taken.
(45:24):
Eric Schmidt is always aca canny commentator on
technological trends.
But I'm, I'm a littletempted to say that we,
we had cracy long before Albania did.
The, the power of algorithmson our network platforms has
been shaping our politics fora long time now, I'm shocked
to reflect on the factthat it's getting on
(45:45):
for eight year since I publishedthe Square and the tar.
I was debating today with awell-informed person, the,
the impact of YouTubeon the radicalization
of American politics.
You may have noticed, I'm sure you did,
that we now have not onlyantisemitism on the left,
(46:07):
but there's been an outbreakof antisemitism on the right.
And I would say that thisis a direct consequence of,
of Cracy
because the algorithmson platforms like YouTube
have an enormous powerin shaping the content
that young people in particularconsume online. So I think
- Podcast Niall, don't forget podcasting.
(46:29):
- I I I'm glad to say I don'tthink podcasts are quite
as pernicious an influencein disseminating content
because you can recorda podcast mentioning,
no names Tucker Carlson,
but it's YouTube thatmonetizes your content.
And without YouTube thesepodcasts would be little better
than Green Ink letters ofthe sort that people used
to write to newspapers.
(46:50):
No, it's the, it's theplatforms that make,
make the content accessible
and it's the algorithmsthat promote the likes
of Nick Fuentes.
- So, but, but the questionwasn't about social media,
it was about government byalgorithm decisions concerning
what private suppliers will provide.
Goods and services will be by algorithm.
And the answer is, well,who wrote the algorithm?
(47:12):
Computer programs areprogrammed by people.
Ai computer programsare simply summaries of
what other people have have written.
To some extent thealgorithm can say, you know,
we're gonna put it in third hand,
but we have governed by algorithm.
Now who gets food stamp benefits?
Well, there's a set of rules.If your income is below X
and X, Y and z that's an algorithm.
Now maybe you're gonnasay you're gonna defer
to it being written ina machine to help it,
(47:34):
to help it implement a little more
honestly or something of the sort.
But who writes the algorithm?
- Hr? - Yeah, I I just think,you know, this is something
to, to watch carefully
and you know, we've gotthe HAI center at Stanford
and the, the Cyber Policy Initiative.
So I, I think that, you know,
this is certainlysomething they're tracking
and I'll just keep, try
to keep track of it through them. It,
(47:54):
- It could be a way actuallyto implement anti-corruption
things that we, instead ofsaying there's a, the HR office
of who's going to buy tanks,you know, that we're gonna say,
well you have to buy tanks by algorithm.
That lets me control it better,but I'm just making this up
'cause I don't knowanything about a Albania
and its algorithm purchasing algorithms,
- You know, hey, this is something,
this is something we mightpay attention to guys
(48:16):
and maybe have somebody onto talk about, you know,
what was the Doge experienceand what is it, you know,
because there have been likeextreme examples of kind
of counterproductiveactions that they took.
But they actually, I thinkdid achieve some efficiencies
and upgraded some systems,identified some, you know,
some they called them bad payments,
but they were like fraudulentpayments and so forth.
(48:36):
Yeah. So yeah, there is a lot of space
for improving government effectiveness
and reducing corruption.
And, and,
and maybe we should have somebodyto talk on to talk about,
about what that experience was as part
of the, the Doge effort
- Or Estonia's governmentby they, they've,
they've really exactly global, they seem
to be running it fairly efficiently.
(48:57):
I'd like to learn how they didthat and bring it to the DMV.
- Right. Question for Sunil Ferguson,
how far are you right now from the
BBC as you were in London deal,
- But a short stroll?
And if you're asking me a big deal
or small deal, the crisis
that the BBC is a very bigdeal in the United Kingdom
and it may be a big dealglobally given the reach
(49:19):
that the BBC still hasthrough its world service
and its foreign language.
- Can you explain briefly, Niall,
what the controversy is over the BBC
and the editing of Trump?
- Well, the specific issue thathas blown up the leadership
of the BBC was a, a a, an episode
of the long running series panorama,
in which there was some strategic editing
(49:42):
of Donald Trump'sJanuary 6th, 2021 speech.
- We're gonna walk down to the capitol
and I'll be there with you.
And we fight, we fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell,
you're not gonna have a country anymore.
We're gonna walk down to the capitol
(50:03):
and we're gonna cheeron our brave senators
and congressmen
and women, and we fight.
We fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell,
you're not gonna have a country anymore.
- The editing was clearlyintended to make it seem
that the Trump speech incitedthe occupation of the capitol
(50:26):
by the protestors.
But the reason that this has blown up
and led to two seniorfigures resigning is that
for some time we have debated
whether the BBC has apolitical skew to the left.
I've been spending a lotmore time in the last couple
of years back in the UK
(50:47):
after more than twodecades working in the us
and one of the first things
that struck me when I came back was just
how biased the BBC'scoverage of the crisis
in the Middle East was with routinely
Hamas statistics on casualties being
broadcast on BBC news bulletins
as if they were reliable information.
(51:11):
So I think the reason
that this thing has blownup the way it has is
that there's been for some timea growing sense that the BBC
skews a pretty hard lefton a number of issues.
Transgender rights is one two.
And so I I have to sayit's, it's what happens,
go woke, go broke, the BBC's,the latest casualty of the,
(51:35):
we are all on campus nowproblem, where if you gradually
and systematically hirepeople who lean left, then you
as an institution lose your credibility,
lose your reputation for objectivity.
And you know, whetherPresident Trump sues the BBC
or not is I think notreally the key issue.
The key issue is whether the people
(51:55):
who lead the BBC canunderstand why this happened
and do something about it.
If they don't, then I thinkthe BBC is going to go the way
of NPR.
I mean for years, I'm sureyou'd agree, gentlemen,
NPR became increasinglylacking in objectivity,
increasingly alignedwith the progressive end
of the Democratic party to the point
(52:15):
where we no longer could listen to it
and expect to get an unbiasedreporting of the news.
I, the BBC is not quite as bad,
but it's gone down the same path.
And this is a very damaging thing
for a news organization just
as it's damaging for a university.
- John. So I was in Londonrecently on WHO for business.
I turned on the BBC for five minutes
(52:37):
and they referred to anan event going on in Gaza
as a prisoner swap a prisoner swap.
I turned it off immediately.
But this is part of the larger question.
Will there be accountabilityfor the incredible amount of,
how can I say lie politelythat all our media did.
Holman Jenkins is a greatop-ed in today's Wall Street
(52:58):
Journal on it, you know,Russian collusion, Biden laptop,
the, the mostly peaceful protests.
Our, our media went along with all of this
and there hasn't really beenan AC accounting at at least a
truth in reconciliationabout what happened.
So it's, it's, it's, it'sbeginning of a big deal
that hopefully we willsee what went on at least
(53:18):
and do something about it,which may be competition.
BBC is supported by taxes directly.
If you own a television set in, in the uk,
you have to pay this tax.
That's a lot worse than NPR
- Hr.
I believe it's, it is. Charteris coming up too, I believe.
Hr.
- Yeah, I, I'll tell you,I I really, you know,
it is a combination of whatwe've been talking about.
(53:39):
It's the algorithms
and the degree to whichthey show people more
and more stream contentbased on their predilections
to get more clicks, you know,combined with the, the lack
of credibility of our media, right?
This makes it just, I, I worry about as,
as a national security threat
because it makes us vulnerableto cognitive warfare
by our adversaries.
So, I mean, I think we needmore authoritative media.
(54:02):
This is what certain mediaplatforms are trying for.
I mean, I think this is whyCBS has acquired the free press
for example, you know, and,
and anyway, I I think that, you know,
there are some opportunitiesfor media platforms
and organizations, corporationsthat, that are, you know,
kind of studiously, youknow, trying to be unbiased,
(54:22):
provide multiple, you know,sort of sides of every story
and, and, and,
and help Im improve theirability to be authoritative
with a broad swath of Americansinstead of doubling down on,
on a, a, maybe a more extremeor, or biased narrow audience.
- Alright, final item, andlet's make it a quick one.
So it's running outta timesince we began the show.
(54:43):
Talking about the future of war.
Let's talk about what might costly be the
next war for America?
Hr, the United States now has an
aircraft carrier in the Caribbean.
We very quietly forwarddeployed some stealth fighters
to Puerto Rico the other day.
Are we going to war with Venezuela?
- You know, I, I don't know.
I mean, I I mean I I I'd liketo hear more about kind of
what the objectives are associated with.
For example, the strikesagainst the, the, the, you know,
(55:05):
the narco trafficking boats and so forth.
I mean, are we in a deliberatecampaign now to weaken Maduro
and to, and to remove him from power?
I mean, there are reasonswhy we would like to see
that happen, but I don't really,I've not really heard kind
of an explanation of what our overall
goals and objectives are.
And maybe enough about,about, about what is the,
(55:25):
just cause here, you know,to, to use the, the, you know,
the, the, the, you know, the,the phrase from Thomas Aquinas
that was also appliedto the Panama Invasion.
You know, like what, what, whatis, what, you know, what is,
what are the key issues affectingAmericans that the, that,
that the Trump administrationis protecting us from?
I think there are many associatedwith the Maduro regime.
I'd just like to, to hear more about it,
(55:47):
- John.
I wanted to hear more about it.
So I was hoping HR had the answer clearly.
You know, we got aircraft carrier,
all sorts of stuff going on there.
You're shooting up boats, you know,
what's the long run strategy?
Now maybe, you know, maybeyou don't tell everybody,
'cause that would tell yourenemies what the long run
strategy is, but that's clearlythe question of the moment.
- There's a western hemisphere strategy.
(56:09):
It is to make the United Statesa far more influential force
in central and SouthAmerica than it has been
for some decades to counterthe growing influence of China.
And one of the most importantsteps that could be taken
to this end is to get ridof the entirely corrupt
and depraved criminalregime of Nicolas Maduro.
(56:29):
If that's the goal, I'm supportive of it.
It can't happen soon enough.
And hopefully it will bepart of, of a positive trend,
which we can see in othercountries, not only in Argentina,
but elsewhere, land Americaextricating itself from the kind
of catastrophic policies that,that vene that led Venezuela
to the brink of, of ruin anddepopulation. So I'm all in.
(56:53):
- Do you think we can, so these,the idea to spark some sort
of internal coup, or do youthink we're gonna go in and,
and, and get rid of the guy?
What's the, what's the plan there?
- We don't know. We can't know.
But clearly if there's to beregime change there, you have
to create a crediblethreat of intervention
to persuade people todefect from this regime.
(57:13):
The reason it's keptgoing is that like a lot
of criminal rackets, it can enrich
all the people with the guns.
It can reach the security forces.
I think policy is designed todrive a wedge between Maduro
and his, his military lieutenants.
We can only hope that it succeeds
because this agony of a nationhas, has gone on for years.
It has led to massdisplacement of population.
(57:36):
It doesn't get nearly the coverage
that crises elsewhere in the world do.
So in many ways, I thinkthe kind of disquiet
that I see in some ofthe media coverage, I,
I think is misplaced.
We've left this for too longto fester as a regional soar,
and it's long overdue
that there's a change ofregime in that country.
(57:58):
If this is what it takes,then this is what it takes.
- So he's got a great reign ofterror against the military.
Nobody dares oppose him.
But I think your hope then is that if,
if somebody were in mind, we,
we've got jets sayingwe've we've got your back.
We will at least supportyou if you want to do this.
Is is the idea of deployingthe military there?
- Yeah, I mean, I mean, justto Niall's point, I mean the,
the guy's destroyed the country.
(58:19):
He's driven 8 million ofhis own people outside
of the borders of the country.
And he's the nexus for the axis
of aggressors in the hemisphere.
His illicit economy, the,
which has not benefitinghis own people is,
as Niall mentioned, sustaininghis security forces
and these kind of brownshirts to keep him in power.
But he is also financingthe, the far left kind
(58:40):
of progressive dictatorshipin Nicaragua, the,
the Cuban regime.
And he's financing kind of, you know,
far left political movementsthat produced Petro in Columbia
that has supported the Sylvanin, in Brazil, for example,
that has unsettledpolitics in Peru and Chile.
So it, it, Venezuela reallyis the nexus for a lot
of what's wrong in, in the hemisphere.
(59:02):
I'd just like to hear moreabout like, what is the strategy
because, you know, you know,a raids from, from aircraft
from ships, they, they, theyshould be only part of a,
a broader, you know, abroader, you know, application
of other tools and otherinstruments of power.
- I also like what you're saying, Niall,
that there's a generalstatement here, sort
(59:23):
of an old mc Monroe doctrine.
Latin America will not signup with China, Russia, Iran,
and so forth becausewe're just sitting asleep
and not gonna do anything about it.
- And as HR omitted tomention, in an excellent survey
of the problem, China
and Russia have been sources
of support from Maura's regime for years.
(59:44):
So I call it the Don Row doctrine
as opposed to the Monroe Doctrine.
I think it's kind ofan overdue reassessment
of our policy in the, in,in a region that we went
through a period ofneglecting in the belief
that if we did anything there,it would somehow go wrong.
I think this is an important turning point
(01:00:04):
and I'm, I'm hoping anHR one can only hope.
'cause we can't know thatthere is a coherent strategy
to turn all of this show ofmilitary strength into a,
an effective regime change
that restores thelegitimate democratic forces
that ought to be running Venezuela.
- Yeah. 'cause the long historyof us meddling in, in COOs
and so forth in Latin Americawithout sufficient follow
(01:00:26):
through or whatever, is notparticularly encouraging.
So let's hope it getsdone better. Right. And
- This is why the languageis really important.
I know we gotta move on,but just quickly, you, I,
I think the language oughtto be that we're in support
of the sovereignty ofthe Venezuelan people
and that we're in favor of the restoration
of their constitution.
And I think, you know, clarifying
that message is really important
for the Trump administration
(01:00:47):
as they continue thiscampaign of pressure.
- Okay, gentlemen, we'regonna have to cut it off.
There will be, continuethis at some point,
I imagine good conversation today
and it's great to havethe three of you back.
Let's, let's try to do morethree main shows if we can.
So safe travels, lookforward to seeing you
for our next show, which willbe at the end of November.
And it's going to be viewermail solely your questions.
(01:01:08):
So this is my last time toremind you slash nag you.
If you have a question for any
or all of the goodfellows on any topic you
want, send it to us.
You do that by going tothe following website,
which is hoover.org/ask goodfellows.
That's hoover.org/ask. Askgoodfellows, send it a question.
We'll try to get it on the air.
Obviously the sooner you get it in,
(01:01:28):
the better chance you have
of getting your question answered.
On behalf of the Goodfellowser Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane,
HR McMaster, you hope youenjoyed this show today.
We'll be back soon with anotherone. Until then, take care.
Thanks again for beinga part of Goodfellows.
- If you enjoyed this showand are interested in watching
- More content featuring HR McMaster,
(01:01:49):
watch Battlegrounds alsoavailable@hoover.org.
- We will prove that thereis no problem too large
for government to solve
and no concern too smallfor it to care about.
- It's Wednesday, November 12th, 2025.
And welcome back to Goodfellows,
a Hoover Institutionbroadcast, examining history,
economics, and geopolitics.
I'm Bill Whalen. I'll beyour moderator today joined
(00:21):
by our full fleet of Goodfellows.
That means that we today havein the house the historian Sir
Niall Ferguson, theeconomist, John Cochrane,
and former PresidentialNational Security Advisor,
Lieutenant General, H.R.,McMaster, Niall, John,
and H.R. are all Hoover'sinstitution senior fellows.
Gentlemen, two segments.Today in the second part
of our show, we're going to do a little
(00:42):
game we call Big Deal.
Little deal. No deal at all.
I'm gonna give you abunch of items in the news
and you tell me theirrelative significance.
But first we're gonna kick off the show
with the segment on war, notcurrent wars necessarily,
but Wars of Tomorrow, wars of the Future.
And joining us for this conversation,
making her debut on Goodfellows I might
add is Anne Neuberger.
Ann Neuberger was recentlynamed the William C. Edwards
(01:03):
Distinguished Visiting Fellow here at
the Hoover Institution.
She joins us after serving asa national security advisor
for cyber and emerging technologyin the Biden White House
or field of expertisebeing national policy
around cyber warfare, cybersecurity,
and emerging technologies.
That includes components of AI policy
and Neuberger also workedat the NSA and the Pentagon.
And it's great to meet you.Great to have you on the show.
(01:25):
And I gotta say, when I seethat somebody worked at the NSA,
I'd love to find out what you did,
but you'd probably have tokill me after you told me.
Right?
- Thanks so much. It'swonderful to be here with you
and insured at NSAI was the deputy head
of global operations.
I served as their first chiefrisk officer after Snowden
and stood up their cybersecurity director.
As we saw geopolitics
(01:45):
and cyber threats fundamentally changed
and recognizing that the NSA
and Intelligence community response had
to change along with it.
So I think that summarizes it.
And you seem to be alive and well, bill.
- Thank you very much. SoAnne, let's talk about the wars
of tomorrow, the future of war.
If we look back, I'm gonnaplay amateur historian
for a second, SAR Niall in H.R.
If you look back to the 20th century
and World Wars World War ii,
(02:07):
the less than the winningside did a better job
of mastering technology.
The allies were better at radar.
The allies were better at airwarfare, long range bombers.
If you look at World War I,Niall Ferguson's, the Pity
of War, I recommend to thosewho wanna read about the war,
both sides tragicallyin taking technology,
but using 20th century technology
with 19th century strategy.
And here we are in the 21st century.
(02:28):
We hope you don't have aglobal conflict this century,
but if you look at themajor combatants right now,
if you look at the superpowers,China and the United States,
and you look at how they areboth thinking militarily toward
the future, but embracingtechnology at the same time.
Is the strategy concurrentwith technology and
or is technology outpacing strategy?
- I think undoubtedlytechnology is outpacing strategy
(02:51):
for the simple rule thattechnology has brought asymmetry
to the way war is being fought.
And there's also a silentwar being fought in spectrum,
in cyber and in rf.
And that's really changing on the ground
the way wars are being fought.
What do I mean by technology symmetry?
When you think of fundamentallydrone warfare Ukraine,
without having a navy disablingRussia's Black Sea fleet,
(03:15):
and even more importantlyundermining Russia's overall
strategy of preventingUkrainian exports of grain,
which they know is a keysource of their economy.
That that drone strategy, the fact
that they could use severalthousand dollars drones
to undermine milliondollar platforms, the fact
that they could scale production, the fact
that they could repair dronesin the field changes the
(03:38):
asymmetry and the powerof those platforms.
We certainly saw it as theUnited States where a lot of
what has made the US the mostpowerful military in the world
was our precision targeting GPS
driven precision targeting.
While over time the effectiveness of some
of our most powerful platforms from Jems
(03:58):
to high Mars declined significantly
because of Russian jamming of GPS.
So what we saw was
that even these high-endplatforms could be disabled.
That's in the asymmetrythat now advanced tech,
notably drone warfares introducing.
And we can certainly talkabout it in the context of,
as I mentioned, the silent war
and what's going on in spectrum,
which is increasinglycongested and contested,
(04:21):
and where the US' strategyremains mired in a very different
world than we see onbattlefields happening today.
- Hey, and you know what,you know what I, I, the way I
think about this, you know, in terms
of technological change is,
is the continuous interactionright between, between forces
and war, but also betweenvarious technologies.
You know, you havecountermeasures that are developed
(04:42):
and when you see thesekind of new capabilities,
could you just give uskind of an appreciation for
what you've seen in terms
of the action counteractiondynamic in cyberspace in
the very important electromagneticspectrum that you've,
that you've, that you've highlighted,
but also in, in other domains,including the space domain.
'cause I think what we've seen is so much
of the RF collection rateof LY collection as well
(05:06):
as imagery is happeningin low earth orbit.
It, it seems to me likethe next war is gonna go
right to space right away.
But, but, but I, yeah,I know there are a lot
of countermeasures under development.
Can you maybe describe what we're doing,
what you see the US doing
and what you helped put intoplace in terms of cyber defense
and defense against theseemerging capabilities,
drones being one of them,
but as you, as you pointed out,so clearly drones connected
(05:29):
to a lot of developmentsin across other areas.
- Absolutely. And I think you asked one
of the most profoundquestions, which is there's a,
there's a significant differencebetween offense and defense
and the pace of adoption
and the pace of changeis a key play in battles
of the future as well.
What do I mean on offense versus defense?
(05:51):
One drone is very hard to defend against.
One needs a far more broad-based defense
and the cost of thatdefense often exceeds that.
Similarly, when we thinkabout cyber, right,
we are a democracy up againstauthoritarian governments.
You know, when you think about the evening
before Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
(06:12):
they conducted a cyber attackagainst a commercial company
providing satellite servicesto Ukraine's military, right?
That cyber attack would'vedisabled the Ukraine's military's
ability to communicate securely.
But for a commercialsatellite provider, starlink
becoming a platform upon which Ukraine's
military road, right?
(06:33):
So every element of
that countermeasure was significant there.
I wanna highlight one morepiece before I summarize.
It used to be that USspace-based assets were a
source of unique imagery.
Today you have commercialproviders, companies like Maxar,
companies like Planet Labsproviding deep insight
and intelligence picturesin a very precise way.
(06:54):
In fact, one of the thingswe did, to your point during,
you know, followingRussia's invasion of Ukraine
and Russia's debilitatingstrikes against Ukraine's
electricity and electricinfrastructure was essentially say
that commercial imagery wewere purchasing could be shared
with Ukraine to enableUkraine to rapidly try
to recover from that.
(07:14):
When we think about the Houthis,some of their intelligence
as they tried to disablecommercial shipping in the Red Sea
area, indeed came from Iran.
But a lot of it camefrom subscription-based
commercial services.
So those three factorscoming together, the ability
of cyber to disable, youknow, broad based satellite
and other military capabilities, the role
(07:35):
of commercial imagery, the role
of commercial satelliteservices underpinning military
capabilities and how to thinkabout that are significant.
Now, one of the challengeswe have as a US military,
which you saw I think very much uniquely
and I'd love to hear yourperspective about, is the pace
of adaptation when a new platform comes on
to adapt the defensesquickly enough is one
(07:58):
of our most significant vulnerabilities.
When you think about,for example, you know,
protecting every stadium inthe United States against a
drone attack, we can certainly jam,
but there are countermeasures to jamming.
So how we as a country adaptour defenses rapidly enough
to meet the asymmetry that offense has,
I think is a key area of vulnerability.
(08:19):
And one we really need to rapidly learn,
learn lessons from Israel,from Ukraine to adjust to that.
- Yeah. Yeah.
And just to respond tothat quickly, I think one
of the ways we have todo it is, is imagine
what people could be a really bad day and,
and think about what wewould do the day after
and do that now instead.
I think that's what the, I think that's
what the Israelis did, you know,with Iron Dome for example.
(08:41):
But hey, thanks so muchfor your leadership
and what you've done tokind of, you know, try
to keep us ahead of this.
I think also, you know,you mentioned the, the,
the creative adaptation.
It's astounding how fast orthe speed of it in, in Ukraine
and, and I I'm encouraged a little bit
by the current administration's approach
of maybe contracting dronecapabilities, for example,
as a service so that privatecompanies, as you mentioned,
(09:03):
who are much more agile can continue
to update those platforms with kind
of an open architecture kind of design.
But yeah. Hey thanks.
What, what a, what a greatexplanation of this dynamic.
- Can I ask two, two questionsthat they're related?
One is, are we moving fast enough?
It's very clear that in Europe,
(09:25):
and I'm speaking from London,
there's still a real disconnect
between what's happening in Ukraine
where the Ukrainians areproducing 3 million drones a year
and the Russians 4 million
and what's happening in German re armament
where they're simply notthinking in those terms
or those quantities at all.
(09:46):
I worry that we might stillbe, as it were, enamored
of a revolution in military affairs
that now lies quite some way back
and are having trouble adjusting
to the new revolution in military affairs,
which creates an enormous challenge
because of the cheapness
and quantities in whichdrones can be produced.
(10:09):
So question one, do we really appreciate
how many drones the Chinesecould deploy in the event
of a Taiwan contingency?
That's question one.
Question two has to do
with supply chains inany protracted conflict.
It seems clear that the choke holds
that have been revealed inthe trade war with China,
(10:30):
particularly rare earth elements, would be
of enormous importance
to US defense production, which would have
to be scaled up in a conflict.
Could we even do it underpresent circumstances?
So those are my two questions.
Are we moving fastenough into the drone age
and are we aware of the implications
(10:51):
of the recent rare earthelements moves by China
for our defense industrial capability?
- We're taking real steps.
There's no one step,it's the pace of adoption
and continuously evolving.
So the Department of War recentlymade some very interesting
announcements related tochanges in acquisition
(11:14):
and each of those componentsspeak to the things
that we learn through the now accelerated
pace of drone warfare.
First work to adopt commercialfirst, if it's out there,
don't build a bespoke.
That's one key lesson.
Second is ensure
that the acquisition team is incentivized
for speed sometimes.
(11:34):
Yeah. You know, as welook across cost, schedule
and performance, we didn'tnecessarily put a focus on get
things out there quickly'cause they're only gonna last
for a certain period of time.
If you look at starlink satellites, right?
The constellation isremarkable for two things.
The number of satellites,thousands of systems,
which makes it much harder to jam
'cause there are thousands ofsystems networked together.
(11:57):
And that each satellite isonly expected to be up there,
I believe, for a maximum of four years.
So as a result, you know,
the way we've traditionallybuilt unique satellites
with the expectation they'dbe up there for 30 years,
there's a huge amount of engineering
and resilience when insteadyou're building many
for smaller periods of time,
that's a far differentacquisition pace, approval
(12:18):
and speed that is very much needed.
So that's the second component.
And the third is enablingpeople in theater
to adjust and build byhaving open architectures so
that they can reprogram, they can adjust.
So for example, if you'rein an electronic warfare
environment, like I we weretalking about a moment ago
with H.R. and you see a newsignal of a new platform
(12:40):
that shows up, you canadjust your defensive
and offensive platforms to identify it,
strike it more quicklyor defend against it.
And in fact, you know,to the point H.R. made
regarding Israel's Iron Dome,
what was most powerfulabout the Iron Dome is yes,
there are advanced interceptors,
but it was more the software
and technology that understoodby the arc of a given,
(13:02):
you know, item coming in.
Was it a missile, was ita rocket, was it a drone?
Based upon that, how should werespond if there's, you know,
a hundred coming in at one time
and there's only so many
interceptors, which way do you do that?
That advanced kind of systemlooking across the platform
and defending against it isa key part to your point,
not only of adapting to drone warfare
(13:25):
but also adapting to a swarmof drones and how one defends
and how one also conductsthose operations.
We now see more and more autonomous swarms
where they can adjust based on
what they see a platform there.
So that's the first piece.
And to your question, dowe appreciate the number
of drones to China could bring?
I think we appreciate more
and more how much droneswarms change the battlefield
(13:47):
and bring real risk
to our primary platformin the Indo-Pacific,
which is aircraft carriers, right?
And and the degree towhich we rely on them
to forward deploy and the risks
that they operate in inthis new environment.
And second to yourpoint about choke holds.
You know, it's interesting inmy, the first role I came in
as a Pentagon, I was aWhite House fellow working
for Bob Gates and at thetime he made a commitment
(14:09):
that he would deploy RAs atspeed and scale in order to,
because the,
the V-shaped hullsreally protected service
members far more quickly.
And I recall at the time heused the Defense Production Act
to accelerate
and really get first divson the specialty seal
that were needed to actuallymeet that commitment
(14:30):
of accelerating the deploymentof these special vehicles
that could really save livesand respond to improvise.
Id respond to the IEDs thatwere taking so many lives
that required that we had theproduction in the country.
So what we've learned aboutChinese choke holds in various
metals and in various mineralsrequire us now with that,
those new insights tomap those supply chains.
(14:52):
I think that underpins some of, you know,
the Trump administration'swork with Argentina to say,
where can we build thosealternative supply chains either in
the US or in allies orother reliable countries
because we recognizethey're a key part of war
and of the resilience offielding our platforms
- Well as the economisthere, great, I'd like to hear
(15:13):
that cost effective, flexibleand open are important to you.
But of course those areusually not things we
associated with the military.
And there's a danger,once you say supply chain,
you don't necessarily have tomine rare earth you have the
stockpiling them would get you
through the military needs of a war.
But there is a strongprotectionist Im impulse in our
industry to say, oh no, no, no,
(15:34):
we're important for national security.
You'll have to fight that too.
I wanna ask you to lookhard a little bit every,
as H.R. keeps telling us, everymeasure has a countermeasure,
what will be the anti drone technology.
They're individually very vulnerable.
If you have any speculationhow that'll work,
what is the equivalent ofthe cavalry of World War I?
(15:56):
You mentioned aircraftcarriers and drones.
Of course ballisticmissiles are also a big
danger for aircraft carriers.
Are they the, the cavalry of World War i,
the huge expensive thingthat is not gonna work out.
Surely half of our militaryinvestment will turn out
to be useless in that oncethe first shots are fired.
If you have any ideas what it's,
but the big question, soI'm, I'm the economist
and you're the cyber expert.
(16:16):
I worry about the first day of a war.
Our financial system,if there is even a rumor
that the bank accounts atChase have been hacked and,
and emptied, you're gonnahave the bank run of all time.
I sort of have a vision of, ofthe computers going dark, all
that Chinese malware
that's been sitting there all these years.
And which would just be acatastrophe for, for the country.
(16:38):
I, I hope as, as x an SAperson, you can reassure me
that's not gonna happen.
Or maybe that I shouldbe keeping some gold bars
and beans in the basementjust in case or and cash.
- So a lot there,
and I'll talk about the lastone first, you know, bank,
there's a reason that banking is,
I would say the most securecritical infrastructure sector.
(17:02):
And that's because banks spend the money
and actually exercise the risk.
'cause they recognize they'rea trust-based system, right?
At the end of the day, whenyou're a trust-based system,
then a system that's keeping debits
and credits largely electronically the,
the potential impact onon trust in the system
by a cyber attack is significant.
And indeed, you know,
we've seen cyber attacksagainst banking systems.
(17:23):
There was one in, in Iran during the war
and you saw the immediateimpact it had in terms
of citizens trying
to take their money outand and that impact.
So I will say the USbanking system both has one
of the best partnershipswithin the banking sector.
So that if one sees a particular thread,
if one sees a new type
of offensive technique, they'llshare it with the others.
(17:44):
So they're all secured against it.
It's one of the most sophisticated ones.
In fact, after we saw China's compromise
of the telecom sector in theUnited States, we really tried
to bring in the telecomsto the White House,
to the situation room to teach them
to learn from the banking sector
and how to build a partnership,
build the trust across the sector.
And there's extensive sharingof intelligence information
(18:06):
with that sector as well.
So one never says never in cyber,
but what I will say is they work hard
to build continuously resilientdefenses to partner across
and frankly to start using ai,
which is a huge helpon offense and defense,
but a particularly hugehelp on defense in finding
misconfigurations,
in finding a particularlyvulnerable system
(18:27):
and in modeling potentialcascading impacts
of one entity in a interconnectedsystem on the others.
- And two items I'd like usto get into a cyber warfare
and ai
and they have this in common China,
you wrote a piece inwhich you say that quote,
China is winning the cyber war.
And here we have Jensen Wong, the CEO
of Nvidia the other day saying,
(18:48):
and I quote, China isgoing to win the AI race.
Now Mr. Wong says China has the advantage
because it has lessregulation, cheaper energy.
John can speak to the economics
of the two power competition,but cyber warfare.
And is there a cyber gap
between the United States and China?
And if so, how does theUnited States close the gap?
- Yes, there is.
And I've had the opportunity
(19:08):
to lead teams conducting both offensive
and defensive cyber operations.
And I really reflected deeplyin writing that piece in,
in foreign affairs
because the real source
of the gap is thedifference in our systems.
China's an authoritariancountry, the Chinese government,
not only much of its criticalinfrastructure is in state
owned enterprises, but Chinaalso monitors its networks
(19:30):
through a system calledthe great firewall system
of firewalls thatessentially both monitors all
communications in orderto censor communications,
but also has visibility onnetworks across the country
and is thus positioned toactually potentially detect
and block cyber attacks.
And indeed, in the intelligence community,
China's networks are viewedas one of the toughest set of,
(19:54):
of networks to hack intofor just that reason.
And the United States were democracy
and as such, the US governmentdoes not monitor private
sector communications.
However, where the rubis, is that virtually all
of our critical infrastructure,our pipelines, our power,
our water systems, ourrailroads, are all run
(20:14):
and operated by private sector networks.
So as such, you don't havethe US government actually
positioned to detect and block attacks.
And there's an asymmetry in that
that really plays out strategically.
You know, I have, peopleoften ask me the question
and what do you, why dowe care about, you know,
the gaps in defense?
We have offensive capabilities, we can,
you know, do things to them.
(20:35):
And I said, yes, as a country we have
offensive capabilities.
But as I've seen in, you know,numerous exercises, you know,
and again, H.R. is here so wecertainly can speak to this,
you know, the first strikeis the first strike one.
From there it only starts
and given the realasymmetry in our defenses
because as a democracy we'renot monitoring our critical
(20:56):
networks that our citizens rely on.
We're not actively defending them.
You know, the second retaliatory strike,
we are far more vulnerable
and in practice that meanswe're more constrained on
the offensive side.
So, you know, one
of the big things the lastadministration did was really
reverse decades of both democratic
and republican policy
(21:17):
to really have no regulation in terms
of minimum cybersecurity requirements
for the nation's most critical networks.
And in the Bidenadministration, we recognize
that the Hill really ha,
since the 2015 LiebermanCollins Act hasn't been able
to put in place cybersecurity legislation.
So as such, we essentially went
and reinterpreted safetyrules sector by sector
(21:40):
for airports, for pipelines, for rail
to say those companies have
to have the minimum practices in place so
that at the very leastwe're not leaving the doors
and alarm doors and windows wide open.
But the alarm and monitoringsystem, there's still a gap
between that as a democracy
and what China has in placeas an authoritarian country.
And I will know, and I'm happyto go into it, you know, I,
(22:01):
in the article I talk aboutsome ways to tackle that,
you know, building digital twins
of our most critical systems to identify
and fix the mostimportant vulnerabilities,
identifying cascading thingsin order to see where we spend
our money in the most impactful way
because there is a lot of techdebt accrued over the years.
- J just to clarifywhat you're saying here,
(22:22):
so I was worried aboutthe banks going under,
you're saying don'tworry about that so much,
but do worry that air traffic control
might fall, fall apart.
Stoplights might not work.
Water systems, the pumpsmight stop working.
So sort of you're painting a,a picture of civilian chaos
behind the lines.
That is the thing we ought to worry about.
(22:43):
- One of the things we've seenis China prepositioning in
critical civilian infrastructure in the US
and around the world in Europe,in the Middle East in Asia.
And we believe thatPrepositioning is with the goal
of disrupting it or showingthey could disrupt it
during a crisis or conflict.
Those are relatively vulnerable systems
for the reasons I talked about.
(23:04):
And as such, those are the ones
that while we now have minimum regulations
that's really done a, it'ssignificantly improved them,
it's brought them to the baseline
that we still need to build upon.
So yes.
- Hey, and you know, we,there are probably a lot
of our listeners, you know,have responsibility pro
for critical infrastructure,you know, and,
and could you maybe just talk about kind
(23:25):
of the NIST categories alittle bit, like a quick 1 0 1,
you know, and, and the importanceof kind of a, you know,
kind of a layered act of defensefrom a cyber perspective,
but also, you know, theimportance of being able to have
to recover, as you mentioned, you know,
these dual systems, right?
And what we need is, is,you know, is are systems
that degrade gracefully,like hopefully as the,
(23:47):
as the old guys on this podcasthopefully are doing rather,
rather than, rather thanfail catastrophically.
And, and what and whatquestions should executives ask
of their CISO or board members ask about,
- Yeah, - About the companiesthat that touch this,
this critical infrastructure.
- So there's a small setof cybersecurity practices
(24:08):
that really drive down risk.
In the last administration.
We put in place that small set
of cybersecurity practicesacross all federal government.
It took a solid three yearswith regular meetings.
I would host with deputies of agencies
to ensure those were in place.
'cause there were so many old systems,
it's things like encrypting data.
So if data's stolen by, youknow, ransomware attackers,
(24:31):
it can't be used to blackmail the company.
If it's, or if it's sensitiveip, the data's encrypted.
It can't just be, you know,there's nation state actors
who try to steal that data.
So that's one, it's thingslike multifactor authentication
because spearfishing is stillone of the most prominent ways
that com that companies orentities get compromised.
It's, you know, monitoring the network.
(24:52):
'cause if you're monitoring,then you're more likely
to detect anomaly.
And frankly, to your point,even if an attacker gets in,
'cause we often say it's, it's pretty hard
to be monitoring every door and window.
But at the very least, ifyou're monitoring the network,
if they do get in, youcan contain it quickly.
You know, that's one ofthe, the failures frankly,
that we saw across many ofAmerica's telecom networks was
once China got a foothold, hidthat foothold, they were able
(25:15):
to move across the networkand really get visibility
and turn those into a sigon system.
Ideally you're segmenting the network.
So there's multiple opportunities.
Think of it as like ifyou're deploying a unit,
you have them throughout a givenarea, so you're more likely
to catch an intruder moving across.
It's having a security operation center
and really it all boilsdown at the end of the day,
(25:36):
in addition to the technology to people.
And AI does make it a loteasier for cyber defenders
to both find issues on a network
to do more summaries acrossall the data coming in to work
with that and alert off there.
So that's a, a key area
that I would say isimportant to think about.
I also think as we think aboutus as a country that's kind
(25:56):
of an individuals, we thinkabout it as a country.
One key part is we are oftenhesitant with, you know,
to actually red team
or test live networksfor the obvious reason
that we can't afford ifsomething goes badly wrong
to the point you madeabout a really bad day.
So creating a digital twin
or a virtual replica
(26:17):
of our most important networkslike an air traffic control
system, like a givenpipeline or electricity grid.
And then exercising whatwe know about Chinese
or Russian offensive cybercapabilities against that
to actually know would the system fail?
How long would it take us torecover what needs to be fixed?
So we're confident that if it failed
that we could recover within 24 hours.
Those are the things we can do
(26:38):
to get the national levelresilience that we really need.
- And duet leaves officealmost 65 years ago,
and on his way out of office,
he warns about a militaryindustrial complex.
- We must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought
or unsought by the militaryindustrial complex.
- Now he is speaking invery 20th century terms,
(27:00):
he's talking aboutaerospace and ship building
and their effects onWashington and spending.
But here we're on the21st century, is it time
to redefine the militaryindustrial complex,
including technology,
including tech companieswe see involved in warfare?
And if so, is there adanger about the tech
companies becoming overpowered?
- You know, it's so interesting,
this is a question I'll answer,
but I'd love to hear others'thoughts on it as well.
(27:23):
The reality is that the most promising
and most interestingtechnologies are often
produced by the private sector.
Think about our major AI companies
or think about the companiesthat are helping deploy AI
across, across different sectors.
Frankly, think about SpaceX and starlink
and that global communications
platform and what that's enabled.
So I think the realityis that we want to ensure
(27:47):
that we're broadly adoptingthe most advanced technologies,
but we also wanna think about
what our military should beable to produce on its own.
Because, you know, forthose that I think about,
I mentioned earlier, the evening
before Russia invaded Ukraine,they conducted a cyber attack
and disabled a US satellitecompany called ViaSat
that was providing satelliteservices to Ukraine's military
(28:09):
as well as to, you know, French homes
and German electricity and windmills.
And the company that stepped in
to help Ukraine's militarywas again an American company.
And for those who criticized
and said, well, we don'treally want one particular CEO
making decisions about whichmilitaries have support,
that's a very well reasoned criticism.
(28:31):
The US military didn't,
or any of our allied countriesdid not have an alternative
secure satellite securecommunications mechanism
to make available within 24 hours.
So clearly what we need todo is ensure that we have
that kind of resilient, advanceinnovative technologies,
ideally in the nationalsecurity system itself.
But the reality is that thepace of the private sector
(28:54):
where there's competition,where there's innovation
is going to be faster.
So what we need is a wayto both build that in
and bring it in with all thethings we talked about earlier,
open ecosystem so
that our own people in the USgovernment in the military can
learn to adapt and work with it
and customize it inthe most effective way.
But I'd be curious, I want, I wanna throw
that question back at theother participants here.
(29:14):
How you all think about, youknow, Eisenhower's comment
and today when there'sdifferent technologies,
more software based
and the reality that government often lags
industry in its speed.
- Eisenhower originally intended to refer
to the military industrialcongressional complex
- That- Struck the word congressional out.
(29:34):
Actually he should have kept it in
because a distinctive feature
of the way the US worked inthe Cold War was that a lot
of decisions about where military bases
and military contracts wereallocated were political
and it had to do with the forces of,
of congressional politics.
Now I think we have adifferent problem, which is
(29:57):
that we don't really havethe connections that we used
to have between the military,the industry and politics.
And that is partly why weallowed over 20 years a withering
away of our in def defenseindustrial capability.
It stopped being as politically important
as it had been in Ike's day.
(30:18):
Part of what we have to try
and do is to create politicalincentives for the kind
of smart upgrading of our defenses
that we urgently need to achieve.
And I, I'm not sure thatthe political incentives are
particularly strong anymore.
It's not seems to me a top priority
for many people in Washington,particularly in Congress, to,
(30:41):
to be worried about this stuff.
I'm worried more now thanI was at the beginning
of our conversation, Anne,
because I can't really tellwhich is more vulnerable.
Is it our, our kind ofdomestic infrastructure
and ability to keep society functioning
under de relativelydecentralized cyber attacks?
Or is it that we'revery vulnerable in space
(31:03):
because so much hinges on our,our satellite communications,
which are at least to someextent Elon's to provide.
So I'd love to ask you aquestion right back, you know,
where is the real vulnerability?
Is it kind of on theground in our society,
in our critical infrastructure,or is it actually in space?
(31:23):
- I would say it's bothbecause they're often a backup
and resilience for the other.
So we'd have discussionswith the Taiwanese
or Japanese governments aboutcommunications, resilience.
You know, Taiwan heavily relies
for its communications onundersea cables, you know,
as an island, as underseacables that are very vulnerable.
(31:44):
We've seen the rise in cable cuts,
notably northeastern Europe.
We have a shortage of cablerepair ships as a globe,
as a world, which meansthat when a cable is cut,
it may take some time to also recover.
Well, the biggest resilienceto those undersea cable cuts,
whether intentional or just,you know, poor seamanship
is our satellite communications.
(32:05):
And as a result, you know, as,
as countries like Taiwangrapple with that they have
to think about, you know, building,
can they deploy their ownsatellite constellations
with adequate satellites for resilience
to advance Chinese hacking?
Or do they need to adopta system, you know,
and if so, do they need to beconcerned about the ideologies
of those commercial entities?
(32:27):
So, you know, the realityis that they are a resilient
to each other, but as oursocieties are more connected,
you know, as our weapons aretied to GPS for navigation
as our as ways the waywe go to work is tied
to satellite communications,we need to really think about
what are the worst cases
and frankly invest in ensuringthat they're resilient
(32:50):
as we need them to be.
And, and those investments can be made.
The good part is there'snothing that can be broken
with technology that canbe fixed with technology.
And I say that having workedboth offense and defense,
but often we get, you know,
the offensive investments are far sexier,
the defensive investments is harder
to see the return oninvestments sometimes.
And that's why we often don't make them.
(33:12):
And I think our goal shouldbe defending against our own
offensive capabilities.
We should try to use ouroffensive capabilities against
ourselves and ensure thatanything we know we can do
to others, others can't do to us,
or at the very least we can recover in an
acceptable time period.
- Well, I wanna pick upon the Eisen power issue.
Ne Niall's, right? Since westopped spending on the military,
(33:32):
people are going there, butAmericans are very innovative
and when it comes, whenWashington starts eventually
spending money, they're verygood at knowing how to go
to Washington and get the money.
And for you, you mentionedcost effectiveness,
private sector flexibility quick, oh
that doesn't describe defense
and it certainly doesn'tdescribe Washington.
So the same crowd that has goneto Washington for ridiculous
(33:57):
ridiculously ineffective rat holes
of green energy subsidies, forexample, could be very quick
to wrap themselves in the flag and, and
and become subsidized, becomeprotected on and so forth.
So really how to changethat culture around
how we do any kind
of spending seems like abig question if we're going
(34:17):
to ramp up defense spending.
- And, and I just to go,just to kind of tie this up
with your, your question back to us.
You know, I think certainly itis past time that we, we got
beyond this model of procuring fewer
and fewer, more exquisitesystems that, that are,
could prone to catastrophic failure
and get to, you know, more, you know,
(34:40):
systems in greater numbersthat are less expensive, right?
And to change that cost dynamicthat we see with, you know,
a very low cost drone being shot down
by like a patriot miss orsomething like that. So
- You spend it in delayed,
you can't wait 20 years forthe new drone, right? Yeah.
- But but at the sametime, you know, I'm all
for exquisite capabilities.
You know, I mean, what youdon't want is a fair fight
and you're not, you're, you're,
(35:01):
the way you get a not fairfight is to, to go beyond
what you can get commercial off the shelf.
And in our defense, you know,our defense primes, you know,
in their defense I would say here
have developed tremendous capabilities
that you have seen give the Ukrainians a
tremendous differential advantage.
Give the Israelis a a, atremendous differential advantage.
(35:22):
And I benefited from it, you know,
going back early in my careerwhen I was in this, you know,
70 ton killing machinecalled a Abrams tank.
And, and so, you know, ifyou see obviously what we did
against Iran with B twobombers, that's an exquisite
what the Israeli Air Forcedid with F 30 fives, you know,
and were impervious to, tothe, to the air defense systems
(35:44):
that, that the Iranians had.
So there is a case to be made, I think,
for this combination, acombination of, of cheaper systems
that can be procured largely commercially
in greater numbers in combination
with these exquisite capabilities.
And, and, and so I think,
and I'd love to hear yourthoughts on this, we have
to incentivize theindustry to be more agile
(36:06):
with multi-year contracts.
You know, we have this shutting down
of the government continuous re you know,
relu continuing resolutions.
You know, we're, we're notreally giving a predictable sort
of, you know, demand signalto our defense industry.
And you know, they're, they're not
charitable organizations, right?
They're, they're for-profit companies.
So could you talk a little bit about
(36:27):
what you see on the horizon maybe
'cause it was under the,under the Biden administration
where you had this commission right on,
on the re reforming defense contracting.
Any thoughts on that topic?
- So first, I very much agree with you
that we need a broaderspectrum of capabilities
and the technological asymmetry
that drones have introducedalso bring new risks to some
(36:48):
of our ground-based platforms, right?
And so, so fundamentally Ithink the goal is exactly
as you put it, purpose-built military use.
You know, one of the things wesaw with the Houthis attempts
to shut down commercial shipping, right?
Using essentially drones.
They had some advancedmissiles which the Iranians had
(37:09):
either given them or taught them and
or taught them to build on their own
and some degree to whichthey were using drones
and the both the asymmetry of that tech
that a drone could have that kind
of global economic impact in disabling
or causing them to take thelonger route of shipping.
But also that the defensewas often platforms
that were far moreexpensive than the offense
(37:30):
that was being used.
So I think the key thing weneed to do now is kind of model
what we learned and say,what is the cheapest,
most effective platform
to be used in a givenpoint in time, right?
Ukraine's most effectivestrike platform today is often
grade equipped drones.
Where is that appropriate?
To your point, if you'redoing long range operations,
whether it's in the Indo-Pacific
or whether it's Israel against Iran,
(37:52):
then you need the most advanced fighters.
And frankly you needpeople who are trained
and have careers doing that as well.
Another example of that Ithink about is Israel's pager
operation against Hezbollah, right?
Those kinds of operationstake years to build,
but they are asymmetric,they disabled the,
the key leadership and combat force
of the Middle East major terrorist group.
So I think it's, it'srecognizing that there is now a,
(38:15):
an asymmetry B,
this power in swarms versusindividual unique capabilities.
And C, there are still rare unique cases
where large scale platforms,exclusive platforms matter,
but being sure thatwe're considering where
that's appropriate and wherecheaper commercial scaled
really works through better.
And today the systemadvantages the smaller number
(38:36):
of unique platforms.
And what we wanna do is take
that reason broad based approach
and the incentive somebodymentioned earlier matter a lot,
particularly the incentivesin the acquisition community
related to speed relatedto commercial as well
as the companies andthe broad base of our di
- Well.
And this is a fascinating conversation.
It's an honor to have youat the Hoover institution
(38:56):
and please come back on the show
and let's pick up where we left off.
- Thanks so much for having me
and looking forward to continuing
it offline with all of you. Be well.
- Thanks- Anne.
- Thanks Anne.- So Niall was not here the last time
when we went trick or treating.
So since it's her nail isback, let's play another game
that I like to call big deal, little deal
or a no deal at all.
(39:20):
Gentlemen, I'm gonna readyou something in the news
and you tell me if it'ssignificant or not.
Let's begin with this.
Zoran AMI is now themayor elect New York City,
meaning a socialist isin charge of the city.
That's a center of Americanfinance gentlemen, big deal,
- Huge deal and bad deal,terrible deal for New York.
But you know, this is whathappens in the generational war
(39:43):
that is American politics,
where a very substantialproportion of young voters now
are supportive of socialism.
We've talked about thisat Hoovers for some years.
There was a huge increase inturnout of the under 30 voters.
Massive increase. That was why he won.
And of course you candebate why they voted
(40:04):
for socialist Muslim candidate.
What's not really debatableis that this will be bad
for New York's economy.
And I would predict that we'll rerun
that very protracted cycle of decline
that began in the mid sixties in 1965
and didn't really end until30 years later when Rudy
Giuliani was elected.
(40:25):
And that was because a liberalRepublican became mayor.
This could be worse. So it's a big deal.
- John, the Wall Street Journal columnist,
Matthew ett has a great phrase for this.
He calls it the barista proletariat,
- Yeah, - Young people areovereducated, underemployed
and hungry for free stuff,
- A medium deal.
You know, the other news was the sort
(40:46):
of moderate Democratswinning governorship races,
which I think is more the future
of the Democratic party than Alami,
but very revealing aboutwhat's happened in some ways.
You know, they got what theyalways hoped for in the 1980s,
the skill premium, thecredential premium exploded,
and that was a lot of income inequality.
Then we responded withsubsidies to college
(41:07):
and everyone going to collegeto get useless degrees.
And now here they are, you know,
Mond supporters weretypically $150,000 a year,
30-year-old female in college educated.
And that is who's, youknow, losing from AI
and the, you know, theplumbers in the are are,
are doing great in the new economy.
So they're, you know,that, that, that has come
(41:30):
to roost I think is isthe story that class,
the slightly over educatedwith fairly useless degrees
and and aspirations to do
to not be plumbers isgonna be a very dangerous
political force going forward.
- We're gonna get more intothis with Tyler Coroll when is
on our show next year as hewrites a lot about socialism.
But HR, do you want to addto the real estate portfolio
(41:51):
with a little piano tear inNew York at time to be a buyer?
- I think you need to waittill the property values go way
down after the flight of businesses
and everybody, everythingoutta there. The fact
- That you, you know, tomaking it affordable, he may,
he may make it affordable.
Everybody leaves the prices go down.
Lemme tell you about supply and demand.
- I do think it's connectedas Niall, as Niall alluded
to this kind of the, youknow, kind of the, you know,
the logical outcome of, of thecurriculum of self-loathing
(42:14):
where young people are taughtthat, you know, all the ills
of the world prior to 1945are due to colonialism.
All the ills of the world
after 1945 are due tocapitalist imperialism.
So, you know, don't besurprised, you know,
and the older generationshould say, okay, well,
well I'm glad I paid,you know, $60,000 a year
(42:34):
so my kids could go to school
and be indoctrinated with an ideology
that makes 'em think mond'sa good choice for mayor.
- On the non socialism front,this is our second item.
We have this headline in Politico,
which reads Trump's economy looking more
and more like Saudi Arabia subhead,
top-down capitalism is onthe rise in both countries.
Gentlemen, do you agree?And if so, big deal,
little deal, no deal at all.
(42:55):
- Silly analogy, given theenormous structural differences
between the Saudi economy and,
and the US economy, it'salmost not worth discussing,
which you could say is thatPresident Trump has in common
with gulf monarchies atendency to conflate public
and private interest,which one day may come back
to haunt him.
(43:16):
But, but
of course the really interestingthing about the US economy
is how diversified it is.
Unlike the Saudi economy,
much more diversified than itwas even 50 years ago when the
Saudis could, couldinflict an oil shock on us
and it, it really hurt.
So I'm not sure this is aparticularly useful analogy, John,
(43:37):
- Well, a little bit ofmoving in that direction.
I agree with you. Theeconomy isn't anything like
that Saudi economy,
but there is now foreigngovernments essentially giving
Trump money, hundreds of billionsto invest as he sees fit.
We are sort of cronycapitalist in, in many ways.
So lots of people wantindustrial policies,
(43:58):
including the government and,
and you seem to, you know, buy favor
with the administration inorder to get that kind of deal.
So we're a long way away fromtrying to build a, what is it,
50 mile long mile high apartmentbuilding in the desert.
But we have those tendencies.
- I mean, hey, I'm just likethe wash dub general here man,
but I, I'm watching what seems to be kind
(44:20):
of like a feeding frenzy around,you know, crony capitalism.
I mean make it, get it,get it done what you can.
And I think it's gonna intensify
because there's thisperception, you know, that,
that the Trump administrationis gonna give deals
to friends and so forth.
And, and so there are a lotof industry leaders trying
to get sweet deals fromthe government, you know,
and I don't think that'sgood for us in the long term.
(44:42):
- Alright, moving on. EricSchmidt of Google Fame
and also a past guest ofGoodfellows I would add,
has not been in the NewYork Times, pointing out
that Albania is the first countryto take a real step toward
what he calls Cracy.
This is replacing acorrupt democratic system
with algorithmic one gentlemen big deal.
- We'll find out who knows about Albania's
procurement systems?
(45:03):
- Yeah, this is giving AIa role in the government
seems like a little premature
given the relatively early stage we're at
with large language models.
But I think the, the pointabout cracy, the rule
of the algorithms is well taken.
(45:24):
Eric Schmidt is always aca canny commentator on
technological trends.
But I'm, I'm a littletempted to say that we,
we had cracy long before Albania did.
The, the power of algorithmson our network platforms has
been shaping our politics fora long time now, I'm shocked
to reflect on the factthat it's getting on
(45:45):
for eight year since I publishedthe Square and the tar.
I was debating today with awell-informed person, the,
the impact of YouTubeon the radicalization
of American politics.
You may have noticed, I'm sure you did,
that we now have not onlyantisemitism on the left,
(46:07):
but there's been an outbreakof antisemitism on the right.
And I would say that thisis a direct consequence of,
of Cracy
because the algorithmson platforms like YouTube
have an enormous powerin shaping the content
that young people in particularconsume online. So I think
- Podcast Niall, don't forget podcasting.
(46:29):
- I I I'm glad to say I don'tthink podcasts are quite
as pernicious an influencein disseminating content
because you can recorda podcast mentioning,
no names Tucker Carlson,
but it's YouTube thatmonetizes your content.
And without YouTube thesepodcasts would be little better
than Green Ink letters ofthe sort that people used
to write to newspapers.
(46:50):
No, it's the, it's theplatforms that make,
make the content accessible
and it's the algorithmsthat promote the likes
of Nick Fuentes.
- So, but, but the questionwasn't about social media,
it was about government byalgorithm decisions concerning
what private suppliers will provide.
Goods and services will be by algorithm.
And the answer is, well,who wrote the algorithm?
(47:12):
Computer programs areprogrammed by people.
Ai computer programsare simply summaries of
what other people have have written.
To some extent thealgorithm can say, you know,
we're gonna put it in third hand,
but we have governed by algorithm.
Now who gets food stamp benefits?
Well, there's a set of rules.If your income is below X
and X, Y and z that's an algorithm.
Now maybe you're gonnasay you're gonna defer
to it being written ina machine to help it,
(47:34):
to help it implement a little more
honestly or something of the sort.
But who writes the algorithm?
- Hr? - Yeah, I I just think,you know, this is something
to, to watch carefully
and you know, we've gotthe HAI center at Stanford
and the, the Cyber Policy Initiative.
So I, I think that, you know,
this is certainlysomething they're tracking
and I'll just keep, try
to keep track of it through them. It,
(47:54):
- It could be a way actuallyto implement anti-corruption
things that we, instead ofsaying there's a, the HR office
of who's going to buy tanks,you know, that we're gonna say,
well you have to buy tanks by algorithm.
That lets me control it better,but I'm just making this up
'cause I don't knowanything about a Albania
and its algorithm purchasing algorithms,
- You know, hey, this is something,
this is something we mightpay attention to guys
(48:16):
and maybe have somebody onto talk about, you know,
what was the Doge experienceand what is it, you know,
because there have been likeextreme examples of kind
of counterproductiveactions that they took.
But they actually, I thinkdid achieve some efficiencies
and upgraded some systems,identified some, you know,
some they called them bad payments,
but they were like fraudulentpayments and so forth.
(48:36):
Yeah. So yeah, there is a lot of space
for improving government effectiveness
and reducing corruption.
And, and,
and maybe we should have somebodyto talk on to talk about,
about what that experience was as part
of the, the Doge effort
- Or Estonia's governmentby they, they've,
they've really exactly global, they seem
to be running it fairly efficiently.
(48:57):
I'd like to learn how they didthat and bring it to the DMV.
- Right. Question for Sunil Ferguson,
how far are you right now from the
BBC as you were in London deal,
- But a short stroll?
And if you're asking me a big deal
or small deal, the crisis
that the BBC is a very bigdeal in the United Kingdom
and it may be a big dealglobally given the reach
(49:19):
that the BBC still hasthrough its world service
and its foreign language.
- Can you explain briefly, Niall,
what the controversy is over the BBC
and the editing of Trump?
- Well, the specific issue thathas blown up the leadership
of the BBC was a, a a, an episode
of the long running series panorama,
in which there was some strategic editing
(49:42):
of Donald Trump'sJanuary 6th, 2021 speech.
- We're gonna walk down to the capitol
and I'll be there with you.
And we fight, we fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell,
you're not gonna have a country anymore.
We're gonna walk down to the capitol
(50:03):
and we're gonna cheeron our brave senators
and congressmen
and women, and we fight.
We fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell,
you're not gonna have a country anymore.
- The editing was clearlyintended to make it seem
that the Trump speech incitedthe occupation of the capitol
(50:26):
by the protestors.
But the reason that this has blown up
and led to two seniorfigures resigning is that
for some time we have debated
whether the BBC has apolitical skew to the left.
I've been spending a lotmore time in the last couple
of years back in the UK
(50:47):
after more than twodecades working in the us
and one of the first things
that struck me when I came back was just
how biased the BBC'scoverage of the crisis
in the Middle East was with routinely
Hamas statistics on casualties being
broadcast on BBC news bulletins
as if they were reliable information.
(51:11):
So I think the reason
that this thing has blownup the way it has is
that there's been for some timea growing sense that the BBC
skews a pretty hard lefton a number of issues.
Transgender rights is one two.
And so I I have to sayit's, it's what happens,
go woke, go broke, the BBC's,the latest casualty of the,
(51:35):
we are all on campus nowproblem, where if you gradually
and systematically hirepeople who lean left, then you
as an institution lose your credibility,
lose your reputation for objectivity.
And you know, whetherPresident Trump sues the BBC
or not is I think notreally the key issue.
The key issue is whether the people
(51:55):
who lead the BBC canunderstand why this happened
and do something about it.
If they don't, then I thinkthe BBC is going to go the way
of NPR.
I mean for years, I'm sureyou'd agree, gentlemen,
NPR became increasinglylacking in objectivity,
increasingly alignedwith the progressive end
of the Democratic party to the point
(52:15):
where we no longer could listen to it
and expect to get an unbiasedreporting of the news.
I, the BBC is not quite as bad,
but it's gone down the same path.
And this is a very damaging thing
for a news organization just
as it's damaging for a university.
- John. So I was in Londonrecently on WHO for business.
I turned on the BBC for five minutes
(52:37):
and they referred to anan event going on in Gaza
as a prisoner swap a prisoner swap.
I turned it off immediately.
But this is part of the larger question.
Will there be accountabilityfor the incredible amount of,
how can I say lie politelythat all our media did.
Holman Jenkins is a greatop-ed in today's Wall Street
(52:58):
Journal on it, you know,Russian collusion, Biden laptop,
the, the mostly peaceful protests.
Our, our media went along with all of this
and there hasn't really beenan AC accounting at at least a
truth in reconciliationabout what happened.
So it's, it's, it's, it'sbeginning of a big deal
that hopefully we willsee what went on at least
(53:18):
and do something about it,which may be competition.
BBC is supported by taxes directly.
If you own a television set in, in the uk,
you have to pay this tax.
That's a lot worse than NPR
- Hr.
I believe it's, it is. Charteris coming up too, I believe.
Hr.
- Yeah, I, I'll tell you,I I really, you know,
it is a combination of whatwe've been talking about.
(53:39):
It's the algorithms
and the degree to whichthey show people more
and more stream contentbased on their predilections
to get more clicks, you know,combined with the, the lack
of credibility of our media, right?
This makes it just, I, I worry about as,
as a national security threat
because it makes us vulnerableto cognitive warfare
by our adversaries.
So, I mean, I think we needmore authoritative media.
(54:02):
This is what certain mediaplatforms are trying for.
I mean, I think this is whyCBS has acquired the free press
for example, you know, and,
and anyway, I I think that, you know,
there are some opportunitiesfor media platforms
and organizations, corporationsthat, that are, you know,
kind of studiously, youknow, trying to be unbiased,
(54:22):
provide multiple, you know,sort of sides of every story
and, and, and,
and help Im improve theirability to be authoritative
with a broad swath of Americansinstead of doubling down on,
on a, a, maybe a more extremeor, or biased narrow audience.
- Alright, final item, andlet's make it a quick one.
So it's running outta timesince we began the show.
(54:43):
Talking about the future of war.
Let's talk about what might costly be the
next war for America?
Hr, the United States now has an
aircraft carrier in the Caribbean.
We very quietly forwarddeployed some stealth fighters
to Puerto Rico the other day.
Are we going to war with Venezuela?
- You know, I, I don't know.
I mean, I I mean I I I'd liketo hear more about kind of
what the objectives are associated with.
For example, the strikesagainst the, the, the, you know,
(55:05):
the narco trafficking boats and so forth.
I mean, are we in a deliberatecampaign now to weaken Maduro
and to, and to remove him from power?
I mean, there are reasonswhy we would like to see
that happen, but I don't really,I've not really heard kind
of an explanation of what our overall
goals and objectives are.
And maybe enough about,about, about what is the,
(55:25):
just cause here, you know,to, to use the, the, you know,
the, the, the, you know, the,the phrase from Thomas Aquinas
that was also appliedto the Panama Invasion.
You know, like what, what, whatis, what, you know, what is,
what are the key issues affectingAmericans that the, that,
that the Trump administrationis protecting us from?
I think there are many associatedwith the Maduro regime.
I'd just like to, to hear more about it,
(55:47):
- John.
I wanted to hear more about it.
So I was hoping HR had the answer clearly.
You know, we got aircraft carrier,
all sorts of stuff going on there.
You're shooting up boats, you know,
what's the long run strategy?
Now maybe, you know, maybeyou don't tell everybody,
'cause that would tell yourenemies what the long run
strategy is, but that's clearlythe question of the moment.
- There's a western hemisphere strategy.
(56:09):
It is to make the United Statesa far more influential force
in central and SouthAmerica than it has been
for some decades to counterthe growing influence of China.
And one of the most importantsteps that could be taken
to this end is to get ridof the entirely corrupt
and depraved criminalregime of Nicolas Maduro.
(56:29):
If that's the goal, I'm supportive of it.
It can't happen soon enough.
And hopefully it will bepart of, of a positive trend,
which we can see in othercountries, not only in Argentina,
but elsewhere, land Americaextricating itself from the kind
of catastrophic policies that,that vene that led Venezuela
to the brink of, of ruin anddepopulation. So I'm all in.
(56:53):
- Do you think we can, so these,the idea to spark some sort
of internal coup, or do youthink we're gonna go in and,
and, and get rid of the guy?
What's the, what's the plan there?
- We don't know. We can't know.
But clearly if there's to beregime change there, you have
to create a crediblethreat of intervention
to persuade people todefect from this regime.
(57:13):
The reason it's keptgoing is that like a lot
of criminal rackets, it can enrich
all the people with the guns.
It can reach the security forces.
I think policy is designed todrive a wedge between Maduro
and his, his military lieutenants.
We can only hope that it succeeds
because this agony of a nationhas, has gone on for years.
It has led to massdisplacement of population.
(57:36):
It doesn't get nearly the coverage
that crises elsewhere in the world do.
So in many ways, I thinkthe kind of disquiet
that I see in some ofthe media coverage, I,
I think is misplaced.
We've left this for too longto fester as a regional soar,
and it's long overdue
that there's a change ofregime in that country.
(57:58):
If this is what it takes,then this is what it takes.
- So he's got a great reign ofterror against the military.
Nobody dares oppose him.
But I think your hope then is that if,
if somebody were in mind, we,
we've got jets sayingwe've we've got your back.
We will at least supportyou if you want to do this.
Is is the idea of deployingthe military there?
- Yeah, I mean, I mean, justto Niall's point, I mean the,
the guy's destroyed the country.
(58:19):
He's driven 8 million ofhis own people outside
of the borders of the country.
And he's the nexus for the axis
of aggressors in the hemisphere.
His illicit economy, the,
which has not benefitinghis own people is,
as Niall mentioned, sustaininghis security forces
and these kind of brownshirts to keep him in power.
But he is also financingthe, the far left kind
(58:40):
of progressive dictatorshipin Nicaragua, the,
the Cuban regime.
And he's financing kind of, you know,
far left political movementsthat produced Petro in Columbia
that has supported the Sylvanin, in Brazil, for example,
that has unsettledpolitics in Peru and Chile.
So it, it, Venezuela reallyis the nexus for a lot
of what's wrong in, in the hemisphere.
(59:02):
I'd just like to hear moreabout like, what is the strategy
because, you know, you know,a raids from, from aircraft
from ships, they, they, theyshould be only part of a,
a broader, you know, abroader, you know, application
of other tools and otherinstruments of power.
- I also like what you're saying, Niall,
that there's a generalstatement here, sort
(59:23):
of an old mc Monroe doctrine.
Latin America will not signup with China, Russia, Iran,
and so forth becausewe're just sitting asleep
and not gonna do anything about it.
- And as HR omitted tomention, in an excellent survey
of the problem, China
and Russia have been sources
of support from Maura's regime for years.
(59:44):
So I call it the Don Row doctrine
as opposed to the Monroe Doctrine.
I think it's kind ofan overdue reassessment
of our policy in the, in,in a region that we went
through a period ofneglecting in the belief
that if we did anything there,it would somehow go wrong.
I think this is an important turning point
(01:00:04):
and I'm, I'm hoping anHR one can only hope.
'cause we can't know thatthere is a coherent strategy
to turn all of this show ofmilitary strength into a,
an effective regime change
that restores thelegitimate democratic forces
that ought to be running Venezuela.
- Yeah. 'cause the long historyof us meddling in, in COOs
and so forth in Latin Americawithout sufficient follow
(01:00:26):
through or whatever, is notparticularly encouraging.
So let's hope it getsdone better. Right. And
- This is why the languageis really important.
I know we gotta move on,but just quickly, you, I,
I think the language oughtto be that we're in support
of the sovereignty ofthe Venezuelan people
and that we're in favor of the restoration
of their constitution.
And I think, you know, clarifying
that message is really important
for the Trump administration
(01:00:47):
as they continue thiscampaign of pressure.
- Okay, gentlemen, we'regonna have to cut it off.
There will be, continuethis at some point,
I imagine good conversation today
and it's great to havethe three of you back.
Let's, let's try to do morethree main shows if we can.
So safe travels, lookforward to seeing you
for our next show, which willbe at the end of November.
And it's going to be viewermail solely your questions.
(01:01:08):
So this is my last time toremind you slash nag you.
If you have a question for any
or all of the goodfellows on any topic you
want, send it to us.
You do that by going tothe following website,
which is hoover.org/ask goodfellows.
That's hoover.org/ask. Askgoodfellows, send it a question.
We'll try to get it on the air.
Obviously the sooner you get it in,
(01:01:28):
the better chance you have
of getting your question answered.
On behalf of the Goodfellowser Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane,
HR McMaster, you hope youenjoyed this show today.
We'll be back soon with anotherone. Until then, take care.
Thanks again for beinga part of Goodfellows.
- If you enjoyed this showand are interested in watching
- More content featuring HR McMaster,
(01:01:49):
watch Battlegrounds alsoavailable@hoover.org.
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