Mixed Signals and Emerging Technology with Amy Zegart

Does America have a plan for winning the competition of the future—mastering artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and space, plus other material and developmental sciences? Amy Zegart, the Hoover Institution’s Morris Arnold and Nona Cox Senior Fellow and cochair of the Stanford Emerging Technology Review (SETR), explains how this one-of-a-kind partnership between the Hoover Institution and Stanford University’s School of Engineering gives policymakers the tools they need to better address the challenges facing cutting-edge industries. Also discussed: the Trump national security team’s inelegant use of a chat app while prepping for a military strike in Yemen, plus the significance (or lack thereof) of Trump’s nemeses caving in to his demands—and whether other entities (Canada, Panama, Greenland, Venezuela’s trade partners) will follow suit.   

Recorded on March 26, 2025.

Download the SETR report here: Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2025

Episode Transcript

>> Mike Waltz (00:00):
And we're gonna figure out how this happens.

>> Laura Ingraham (00:01):
So you don't know what staffer is responsible for this right now?

>> Mike Waltz (00:05):
Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible.
And look, I take full responsibility,I built the group to make.
My job is to make sureeverything's coordinated.
[MUSIC]

>> Bill Whalen (00:16):
It's Wednesday, March 26, 2025, and welcome back to Goodfellows,
a Hoover Institution broadcast examiningsocial, economic, political and
geopolitical concerns.
I'm Bill Whalen, I'ma Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow and
I'll be your moderator of today's show.
I wanna welcome back to the show.
He missed the last show, butwe have it back in our good graces.
That would be the internationalman of history himself,
the historian Neil Ferguson.

(00:36):
Sir Neil Ferguson, I should say.
And also joining us,one of our regular Goodfellows,
former presidential national securityadvisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.
We are not with John Cochran today,John is in Japan.
Kinishiwa, John,wherever you happen to be right now.
But standing in for John, taking hisplace, welcoming her back to the show.
She hasn't been with us fora while is Amy Segart.

(00:58):
Dr. Zegaert isthe Hoover Institution's Morris Arnold and
Nota Jean Cox Senior Fellow as well as aProfessor of Political science by courtesy
at Stanford University.
Amy is also a co chair ofthe Stanford Emerging Technology Review,
which we're gonna talk about today.
This is a partnership betweenthe Hoover Institution and
Stanford School of Engineering,its purpose being to better
educate policymakers on how artificialintelligence, robotics, material sciences.

(01:21):
And all other kinds of cool, cuttingedge stuff is gonna change the world.
Amy is recently on Capitol Hill withHoover's director Condoleezza Rice,
discussing emerging tech with lawmakers,I'm curious as to how that went.
Amy, you'll have to shareyour insights on that.
But today she is indeed a jolly goodfellow, Amy, welcome back to the show.

>> Amy Zegart (01:38):
Thanks for having me, I guess I have to channel my inner grumpy
economist today to try to stand in forCochrane.

>> Bill Whalen (01:44):
Just don't take notes.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:46):
No, Amy, he's the huggy economist.
He's actually huggy, as you know,I mean, he's not really.

>> Amy Zegart (01:51):
[LAUGH] Yes.

>> Bill Whalen (01:52):
So, Amy, before we get into emerging technology,
let's talk about what we might call erranttechnology, and that is the current
mess in Washington involvingthe Trump national security team.
Apparently taking to the chat app signalto have conversations about upcoming
military strikes in Yemen.
This is the classic Washington whodunit.
What did they know?
When did they do it?
What did they discuss?
And the key question here, Amy,how did a journalist by the name of

(02:15):
Jeffrey Goldberg,he is the editor in chief of the Atlantic,
which is hardly a pro Trump publication,I would add.
Somehow he got occluded into the chain.
So, Amy,your thoughts on what is going on here?
And perhaps you'd like to posea question to General McMaster,
who I think has been througha few chats like this.

>> Amy Zegart (02:31):
I for sure wanna pose a question to General McMaster,
since he's lived through this.
Look, the reality is, Bill, as you know,it's bad, we can debate the niceties or
the specifics of what's classified, what'snot, who did what, when did they do it?
Is it bad to have specifics oftargeting on a signal chat?
How did Jeffrey Goldberg get involved?
But the reality is this isincredibly valuable information.

(02:54):
And I think lost in the shufflein the hearings this week in
the Senate Intelligence Committeewas a question posed by the head of
Cyber Command and NSA General Hawk.
And the question was,if this were a foreign government and
we had access to that information,would that be considered valuable?
And his answer was undoubtedly, yes.
So if it's incredibly valuable to collect,it's incredibly valuable to protect.

(03:16):
And sothat's what we're dealing with here.
But I'd love to know from HR,your view of how serious this is and
how you dealt with thesecommunications challenges.

>> H.R. McMaster (03:26):
Well, we had our own kind of problems in Trump 1 early,
and our biggest problem wasdeliberate leaks by people, and so
what the dilemma that puts you into isdo you bring your circle even tighter?
Right, and exclude a lot of people forsecurity reasons, but then you deny your
ability to access their points of view,what they can contribute to the analysis.

(03:48):
I think in this particular case,
where there's a very significant securitybreach, it's really three issues, I see.
The first is the decisionto use signal at all.
And the reason they're doing that is forconvenience, right?
And maybe there's some traffic youcould put on an app like that.
But what we really need is youneed a government designed,
government developed app that gives yousome degree of encryption for routine,

(04:12):
not sensitive communications, right?
And we don't really havethat now that conforms with
the Presidential Records Act.
So the decision to go on to signal,first of all was a bad decision.
But I kind of understand theywere doing it for convenience.
But the second key thing is,what were you putting on there?
When you look at the sensitivity of thatinformation, at least what appears clear
from Goldberg's reporting that he leftout being a responsible journalist,

(04:36):
he didn't put it in his report.
Certainly that was way too sensitive for
anything less than our highest levelof government based encryption and
hardware and everything that you cansecure from any kind of potential breach.
But the third thing, andI'd love to hear what you and
Neil think about this is,is the nature of that discussion and

(04:56):
the degree to which it wasn't reallya very effective deliberative process.
It was after the President's decision.
But still those discussions are best hadin kind of like a semi formal setting.
And a lot of times that's not DonaldTrump's, that's not Donald Trump's style.
But you need to be in the situationroom and you need to say, hey,
the purpose of this meetingis to determine whether or

(05:18):
not to employ militaryforce against the Houthis.
To ensure freedom ofnavigation in the Red Sea.
And then go through the intelligence,what is at stake,
draft goals and objectives, andthen present the President with
courses of action that integrateall elements of national power.

(05:39):
And then assess the risk andso forth, the cost and
the potential foraccomplishing the objectives.
But anyway, I think that'sthe way I'm thinking about it.
Why you signal it all, the decision thento put sensitive information on it and
the fact that, hey, it's not a goodvenue or mechanism for deliberation.

>> Amy Zegart (05:58):
I think that also raises the question of what don't we know?
We don't know what devices were used.
We don't know whether theyhave malware on them.
We don't know what other conversationsmay be taking place on signal and
whether there are sensitive thingsthat are being discussed there,
which gets to your point, HR.
And I think your book reallylays out very well at war
with ourselves structured process todeliver options to the President.

(06:20):
That's what the President deserves,that's what the President needs.
Is that happening or
are we seeing sort of an erosion ofthat fulsome discussion in a room?
We tell our students, right, this isa conversation, this is not a chat.
Don't email me this, talk about that,it's the same thing in the NSC.
You wanna be in the room togetherhashing through the pros and
cons of different options.

(06:40):
And when you're doing that viachat in the middle of the day,
it's really hard to geta coherent conversation.

>> H.R. McMaster (06:45):
Stories.

>> Niall Ferguson (06:46):
I have a question for you Amy, because this is really right up
your street technology has changed inour lifetimes extraordinary rapidly.
But in a way,the the problems are familiar,
it's easy to mock Mike Waltz andPete Hegseth and JD Vance,
because this conversation endedup all over the Atlantic.

(07:10):
And it does seem absurd thatJeffrey Goldberg, of all people,
should have accidentally beenbrought into the conversation.
As Bill said, the Atlantic has beentearing chunks at the Trump administration
in round one and in round two, soit's bizarre that he was in the chat.
But it seems to me we shouldn'tbe too quick to rush to judgment.

(07:34):
Because blunders with communicationstechnology have been happening to
Republican and Democraticadministrations for a long time.
I happened to be in the midstof poring over the Nixon tapes.
Now, the Nixon tapes make this looklike a completely trivial thing, because
hours and hours and hours of incrediblysensitive presidential conversations,

(07:59):
Stations were taped by Richard Nixonin the belief that at some point they
would be valuable when he came towrite his self aggrandizing memoirs.
But it turned out to be a catastrophethat brought his presidency down.
Hillary Clinton's emails springto mind as another example.
It feels to me as if we've beenfailing to manage new technologies for

(08:24):
at least half a century inside the WhiteHouse and inside the federal government.
And so I'm a little disinclinedto just heap scorn and
opprobrium on these guyscuz this is not new.
It feels like every administration hasat least one major fail with technology,

(08:44):
right?
I mean, we've seen this before.

>> Amy Zegart (08:47):
Neil, I always love talking to a historian about these kinds of
issues, you're absolutely right.
Although I would argue thatNixon's a different case, right?
Nixon deliberately choseto use technology.
He banked on the idea that would help him,it turned out that it hurt him.
With respect to Hillary Clinton'sserver and her house and
what we're seeing now,I think it's a different challenge.

(09:08):
It's the need for speed anddecision making which is ever present,
the availability of technologythat facilitates that, and
then the countervailing demands forsecurity.
So we see this across the government,right?
Things are happening faster than ever,events are moving faster than ever,
we all deal with this.
Do I have to do two factor authentication?

(09:29):
Do I have to log into the secure network?
And it's a productivity killer, right?
So it slows down the process at a timewhen decision making needs to accelerate.
That's the broader challenge, you'reabsolutely right that this administration
is grappling with,how do we get to a decision quickly?
And we have technological toolsthat enable us to do that, but
there are downsides to that.

(09:50):
And so you're seeing to HR's point,we don't have good technological
options to optimize the security andthe speed and we need to develop those.

>> H.R. McMaster (10:00):
Well, the other thing, Amy, I would say too is,
they've been on the road,all of them, right?
And of course this is one of the aspectsof the security risk here is that,
Steve Wykoff was maybe in Moscow,at the time.
But you've got the Vice President who'soff on it, given an economics talk,
they're all every scattered everywhere.

(10:21):
Now there are ways you can do this though,with secure communications,
you have staffs who can do it.
But one of the things that surprisedme when I was National Security Advisor
is a degree to which there's reallyno training or orientation for
people when they come into a new administration.
Because they hit the ground running,right?
They just got confirmed and there'snot really time, a lot of times for

(10:43):
the staff to say, hey,here are your communications capabilities.
Here's how you can use your staff torapidly connect you with anybody.
And of course they will default towhat is easiest, as you mentioned, and
security does make it a little bit harder.
I'm thinking of, you know that scene inMaxwell Smart when he's talking to Chief
in the cone of silence, right?

(11:04):
Which was very secure, butthey couldn't hear each other.

>> Chief (11:07):
I am deeply concerned about
the conference room,>> Maxwell Smart: but
I'm concerned
about the conference room.

>> H.R. McMaster (11:15):
[LAUGH] What you need are technological capabilities that
provide you security buthave a high degree of convenience.

>> Niall Ferguson (11:22):
I wonder, Amy and Hr, is there a kind of element of ideology
here that this administration isa coalition between the MAGA movement and
red pill Silicon Valley, in many ways.
Personified by not only Elon Musk, but
others in the tech community whostrongly back Trump last year.

(11:43):
And J.D. Vance, before he decidedon politics as a vacation,
did his time in the valley asa venture capitalist with Peter Teal.
I sense that the whole atmosphere in thisadministration is the bureaucracy sucks,
whatever they recommend is tired, butwe're wired, so we are on signal.

(12:08):
Is that part of the problem here that kindof protect the fundamental assumption is.
If the guy in state ordefense comes up to you and says sir,
this is the way in which we are gonnaencrypt your every communication
with 10 factor authentication andyour response is, duh.

(12:29):
This is exactly what Doge is here to stop,
we go with signal because that's howwe communicate in tech bro world.
Is that part of it?

>> H.R. McMaster (12:39):
I think so, I'd like to ask Amy about this too because you're very
much attuned to the tech culturehere in Silicon Valley and broadly.
But I just kind of see a parallel again,hashtag predictable for
historians to look for the historicalanalogy with John F Kennedy and
the Kennedy administrationcoming in in 1961.
The whiz kids disregarded kind ofthe formalistic decision making and

(13:02):
policy making process ofthe Eisenhower administration.
They were gonna move fast andbreak things.
They were gonna put into placea fundamentally new approach to national
security and
they had a very small group decisionmaking with very informal discussions.
And I mean, sadly, what came out ofthat is the Bay of Pigs [LAUGH].

(13:22):
So I think there is a tendency earlyin administration to say, hey,
we're not gonna do things the old way,we're just gonna forge ahead on our own.
And then I think we got off light orthey got off light on this.
What I'm hoping for is that I don't wantto see anybody's heads roll out of this.
I wanna see them just say, hey,we learned from this, right?
And we're gonna adjust our procedures and

(13:43):
we're gonna have decision making witha much higher degree of security,
pay more attention to operationalsecurity and so forth.
But yeah,I think this is like the whiz kids.
The first chapter in a book I wrote abouthow why Vietnam became an American war is
entitled the New Frontiersman andthe Old Guard.
And the New frontiersmen [LAUGH]of the Kennedy administration

(14:06):
were really anxious todisregard the procedures and
the decision makingprocesses of the old guard.
But Amy, do you think there'sa cultural aspect here?

>> Amy Zegart (14:16):
I think there's partly a cultural aspect here which is just as Neil
described this is we're gonna do thingsdifferently, we're gonna move fast,
that's the Silicon Valley way.
And by the way, there's real merit tothat approach that the bureaucrats get in
the way, they slow things down.
But the historical periodthat springs to mind for
me is Barack Obama when hecame into the White House.

(14:38):
Remember the President's daily brief, thesingle most important, highly classified
document that goes to the President everyday used to be delivered only on paper.
And Obama's like, you gotta be kidding me,can't you bring me an iPad?
Why can't I interact withthis in a more modern way?
And that's what proddedthe bureaucracy to say, you know what,
maybe we need to getinto the 21st century.
So I think bureaucracies liketo do things the same old ways,

(15:00):
that's why we have them.
There's some merits to standardoperating procedures, but
the downside is they don't adaptfast enough, even when they need to.

>> Bill Whalen (15:09):
If I remember correctly, I think one of the first fights Obama
had with his aides was over whether ornot he could keep his own iPhone or not.
Had a big back and forth.

>> H.R. McMaster (15:16):
It was his BlackBerry [LAUGH].

>> Bill Whalen (15:20):
It was a long time ago, wasn't it [LAUGH]?

>> Niall Ferguson (15:22):
Different era [LAUGH].

>> Bill Whalen (15:24):
Okay, let's close out the segment with this question to the panel.
One, do we think this deservesa gate on the end of it,
that classification of scandalsin Washington, if it gets a gate.
But secondly,how do we get all the answers to this?
Should Congress look into it further?
Should Susie Wiles,the chief of staff, investigate?
How do we get all the answers here, HR?

>> H.R. McMaster (15:43):
Well, this is tough, right,
because it involves executiveprivilege in the White House, right?
And one of the things no president wants,and
we've seen how bad this can be in theearly Trump administration when the FBI
misused its power withtrapping Mike Flynn.
And everything else isyou don't want the FBI.
Coming into the White House, right,
there's no White House counselwho wants that to happen.

(16:04):
And so investigations involvingthe White House are really tough.
I really think that the White Houseneeds an investigative team.
I mean, this is something that I wished Ihad when I was National Security Advisor,
again, mainly because of the leaksituation that I inherited.
You might remember I came intothe job about a month after
the administration came in andtwo presidential phone calls had leaked,

(16:28):
one with the one to Australia andone to Mexico.
I was very much interested in making surewe knew how the hell that happened and
shut down the possibility for the leaks.
But, man, I was never able to beat itbecause of some of the dynamics there.
We used to joke like, hey, how long isit gonna take this meeting to leak?
So I think that there's a real gapin capability and there needs to be

(16:49):
an investigative body in the White Housethat the President has confidence and
trust in and can use forthese kinda things.
But you know what I'd like to see?
I'd like to see them just come cleanon it like, yeah, we screwed this up,
this was bad, okay.
We just came into this job.
We're gonna learn from this.
Instead of the kind of just the denialsthat you've heard from some of the people

(17:10):
who are on the chat.

>> Niall Ferguson (17:11):
Yeah, this is no big deal.
And I think the media, desperate fora scandal, we're not even 100 days in.
These are inexperienced players with,if you think of the accumulative
years of experience in the executivebranch, it's a pretty young.
It's a pretty green team, and

(17:33):
I think they should just admitthey screwed up and learn from it.
I don't think it's a scandal.
In fact, I think it's noise.
The real signal that isn't reallybeing addressed is what it tells us A,
about their attempt to restore deterrence.
I thought that was a very interestingpart of the conversation and

(17:54):
I think a legitimate concern.
There's been a chronic failureto deal with the Houthis.
Secondly, very interesting to seethe divisions of opinion about what it
implies for the US Policy towards Europe.
I'm more interested in that content whichwe got a glimpse of than I am in the fact
that they inadvertently gotJeffrey Goldberg on their chat,

(18:15):
by the way, and we're all on chat groups.
I'm in multiple chat groups, and
half the time I have no idea whothe other people in chat group are.
Amy, HR, I'm I audible [CROSSTALK].

>> Amy Zegart (18:28):
You're not making decisions that put soldiers in harm's way.
So I think I disagreewith you a little bit.
Look, yes, it's a new team.
The key word here is learn.
Is the team gonna learn andfix the problems that are evident now?
So it's not that it's nothing,it is something.
But the key is what'sthe administration gonna do?

(18:50):
What's the most productive path forwardto make sure this was a near miss, right?
Fortunately, it was Jeffrey Goldberg,it wasn't Xi Jinping or
it wasn't someone from a hostile powerin the Middle East that could have taken
action that could have killedAmericans involved in this operation.
So Lindsey Graham said it yesterday,we dodged a bullet.
And so the key thing is,if Congress investigates,

(19:13):
it's gonna be a political circus.
So how can there be a thoughtfulinvestigation to figure out how to
learn and improve, right?
The best teams in any sport, look atwhat they did wrong and they fix it and
they learn from it and they get better.
And that's what we want.
And I think that's best doneinside the administration.

>> Bill Whalen (19:32):
Okay, well put.
All right, let's shift and
let's move on tothe Stanford Emerging Technology Review,
which Amy is a co-chair of.
They came up with a report in February.
As I mentioned,
Amy went to Washington with Condi Riceto talk to Congress about this.
In the report itself, Amy, you identified,I quote, 10 key technologies and
their policy implications.
I'm not gonna put you on the spot and askyou to name all 10, that would be cruel.

(19:55):
I will quickly rip through the 10 forthe panel.
They are alphabetically.
Artificial intelligence, biotechnology andsynthetic biology, cryptography.
Nobody's taking notes here.
Lasers, material sciences,neuroscience, robotics,
semiconductors, space, andsustainable energy technologies.
Okay, Amy, 10 key technologies.

(20:17):
Is any of those ten paramount doesone rule over the other nine?
And among those 10 technologies, Amy,is there one that we might call a sleeper?
In other words,we'll be thinking 20 years from now,
why were we more focusedon that back in the day?

>> Amy Zegart (20:30):
Yeah, thanks for the really easy question there, Bill.
I love all my technologies likeI love all my children, so
there's not one that's morespecial than the other.
The one that's getting all the attentionright now is obviously artificial
intelligence.
And so I often like to say it's allabout AI and it's not all about AI.
So AI is an enabling technology.
It's a general technology that issuper powering scientific discovery.

(20:52):
So AI enhances bioengineering,AI enhances material science,
but the arrows go the other direction too.
These technologies affect each other.
So AI relies on semiconductors.
So semiconductor technology is crucial.
Semiconductors in turn rely onadvances in materials science.
And so one of the challenging things and

(21:14):
the exciting things about this moment isthat these technologies affect each other.
It's not just all about one drivingprogress in all the rest of them.
So if I had to pick,I would say in the near term,
AI is the critical enabling technology,but we can't lose sight of the others.
And in terms of what's the sleeperhit of the summer that we

(21:36):
should be paying attention to,but we're not, biotechnology,
both in terms of the opportunity tobiomanufacture goods that are currently
made by regular manufacturingprocesses today.
And by the way,biomanufacturing can happen anywhere.
So think answers to yoursupply chain problems, right?
And the biorisks of you canmanufacture good things and

(21:56):
you can manufacture really scary things.
So I would say biomanufacturing,bioengineering.

>> Bill Whalen (22:02):
Neil.

>> Niall Ferguson (22:03):
I wanna ask you, Amy, about space, because I have been doing
some reading recently,including a manuscript by Hoover fellow
Eyck Freyman on the Indo-Pacific militarychallenge the United States faces.
And the thing I came away thinking was,gee,

(22:24):
our whole military capability ishighly dependent on satellites.
In fact, without those satellites,our armed forces are blind.
And I had underestimated the extentto which the US military
has come to rely on those satellites foreverything, for targeting,

(22:47):
for communications, forsurveillance of the enemy, I could go on.
So talk a bit about that,
because I feel as if we talkrelatively little about this issue.
But when it comes down to, I don't know,the war games that I hear discussed,
the classified ones that I just herealluded to, the point of failure

(23:11):
often seems to be Chinese orRussian knockouts of our satellites.
Talk a bit about that.

>> Amy Zegart (23:18):
So I'm so glad you mentioned space, Neil.
So in the Tech Policy Accelerator,which is the umbrella outfit that I lead,
space is a major line of effortunderstanding developments in space.
So historically, andHR knows this even better than I do,
we've relied on a handful of veryexpensive space satellites, right?

(23:41):
So a billion dollars apiece,the size of a bus, and
they were not designed to beprotected in space, right?
Because the thinking was space is hard.
We don't need to think abouthaving them be mobile.
We don't need to think about defensesbecause once they're up there,
they're ours.
That is no longer true.
And so what we've seen is an increasingreliance on On space based capabilities,

(24:01):
as you say, but also a decentralizationof capability across countries.
So lots of countries are in space now,we've seen a massive proliferation of
space based assets in the commercialsector Think Elon Musk, Starlink,
for example.
And so space has become congested, spacehas become contested with all sorts of
military maneuvers in space is thatreally a satellite that's moving around?

(24:26):
Or is that a offensive weapon that theRussians just launched, for example, or
that the Chinese have launched?
And so we're dealing with a lotof challenges at the same time,
it's not just the military that relieson space based assets for everything.
It's all of us, your banking, your GPS,your communications, the financial system.

(24:47):
We are incredibly reliant on space, and wetake it for granted that it's always gonna
be available when in fact it is very mucha battleground between countries today.

>> Niall Ferguson (24:57):
Hr, you must have thought about this too.

>> H.R. McMaster (24:59):
Well, one of the first briefings I asked for
when I was National Security Advisorwas on space.
And what we did is, we very deliberatelyshifted our approach to space,
because even under the Obamaadministration they had clung to the hope,
right, that space couldremain an uncontested domain.
And it was already contested, right.
We knew that with the Chinese antisatellite demonstrations, but also we knew

(25:23):
that what the time was classified a lotof this has been declassified since then.
A whole range of offensivecapabilities that the Russians and
the Chinese were developing.
So we convened the Space Councilthe Vice President,
Vice President Pence did a fantasticjob with this by the way.
And one of our senior directorsin our Defense Division,

(25:45):
later Lt Gen Bill LaCourre,
who became the first deputycommander of the Space Force, right?
And a lot of time in space command,fantastic guy.
And that strategy,there's a public one that you can look at,
I think was extremely welldone on the defense side.
And there was a classified partof it that we put resources on.

(26:08):
Of course, we had all the OMB people,the office of management budget people
involved in all these discussions toensure we could get the resourcing we
needed, to make our spacecapabilities more resilient.
And ensure our continuous and unobstructedaccess to these critical assets.
And Amy mentioned what those are for,communications and

(26:28):
surveillance capabilities and so forth.
So we're in a much better place for
a number of reasons because I thinkthat strategy has been resourced and
I would imagine the Trumpadministration will continue.
But also what Amy mentioned isthe commercialization of space, and
the degree to which private sectorcapabilities like Starlink for
example, give you a degree of redundancy.

(26:51):
To understand the situation,I think you should go to, there's
a company called LEO Labs, which is rightdown the street from us [LAUGH] here,
which has terrestrial basedspace surveillance capabilities.
And it's unbelievable what they built,in terms of visibility in space.
And when you look at their products,you just think, how can so

(27:11):
much stuff be up there?
And so you have the threat, you havethe congested nature, which Amy mentioned.
But now you've got increasinglya space debris issue as well.
So, hey, it's a fascinating area to track,I'm glad you brought it up Neil.
And we take it for granted, we take it forgranted, and we can't afford to.

>> Niall Ferguson (27:30):
Can I ask the target audience for
the Stanford Emerging Technology Review?
Because, my sense is that the policycommunity knows about this.
There are people who live and breathethis at the Pentagon, but the public,
and indeed the academic world hasessentially not taken it seriously.

(27:52):
Indeed, I think when you say spaceforce to the average undergraduate or
the median voter, they're more inclinedto joke about it than take it seriously.
So, is part of the point ofthe Stanford Emerging Technology Review to
just widen public understanding, and
reach an audience that is currentlya little bit asleep at the wheel?

>> Amy Zegart (28:16):
Anil that's part of our objective, but it's not the main one.
So you mentionedpolicymakers in Washington.
So one of the main thrusts ofour effort is the idea that
policymakers aren't just ingovernment offices anymore.
Policymakers include leaders,you mentioned universities.
So the people inventing these capabilitiesneed to understand the geopolitical

(28:37):
context in which they're operating.
And private sector leaders, we just talkedabout the commercialization of space,
are you a combatant ora non combatant if things go bad in space?
Who's protecting your assets?
What responsibilities do you have?
How do you collaborate with foreigncountries or the US government?
So private sector leadersare policymakers today.

(28:59):
You've written about this I know Neil.
They have the power of states,countries in times gone by.
So, Elon Musk is deciding whether and
where Starlink can be used on thebattlefield between Ukraine and Russia.
He alone is making that decision.
So it's an expansive set of decisionmakers that need to understand both

(29:19):
the technology and its implications, and
the geopolitical contextin which they're operating.
So our audience is both government andprivate and academic leaders.
And we're trying to translate betweenthe scientific developments, and
the geopolitical realities.

>> Bill Whalen (29:35):
Amy, can you talk a bit about the synergy between research and
government funding in this regard?
We're in a state California,which has been trying to build a train for
15 years now and has barely laid track,it's just pathetic.
The technology world does notdeal in years as does government,
it deals in months.
So you're going to Washington,
you're talking about gettingthe government involved in emerging tech.

(29:56):
The lawmakers understand the necessity,the speed at which this works in other
words, when you talk to these lawmakers,in fact, I'm curious about this as well.
You're talking to lawmakers, how many ofthem get emerging tech, understand this?
Or are you and Dr. Rice unfortunately inthere with hand puppets trying to explain
a lot of this stuff?

>> Amy Zegart (30:12):
Well, some get it very well, many are learning, right.
We only have a handful of engineersin the entire U.S congress.
And so it's hard to understand, andso one of the reasons we have this
flagship report, Stanford EmergingTechnology review, is it's 101.
Here's what this technology is, here's howit works, here's what's happened recently,

(30:34):
here's what's over the horizon.
So we need to do a better job ofcommunicating these developments in near
real time,to decision makers who need to know.
So there are some people thatare very focused on these
technological issues you see.
And we have Senator Young in the Senate,Senator Rounds, Senator Booker.
There's a bipartisan group of people incongress that actually are very interested

(30:56):
in this, but it's small to be sure.
So one of the things that we foundwhen we were in Washington, and
this is true by the way in the Valley,
there tends to be a thought thatall investment is the same,
all research and development isthe same and that's not true.
So what does our innovation ecosystemactually look like that has made the US

(31:19):
the innovation superpower of the world?
It has two parts to it.
The first part,which is the part we often forget,
is the federal government funds risky,
long term foundational researchmostly in universities.
And that is no commercializable productthat you can foresee in the future.

(31:39):
It's basic things like,what are the laws of physics and
how do they operate in the universe?
How does the human immune system work?
Only the federal government can investat scale and over long periods of time.
That's part one of our innovation model.
Part two is, universities thenpublish that research openly and
the baton goes to the, Private sector,and the private sector does its thing.

(32:03):
So almost nobody, to your earlier pointabout the public, almost nobody would
know that the federal government investedfor years in fundamental research and
universities about this thingcalled a digital library.
Sounds very boring, right?
But everybody knows google, and
that's what resulted from those years offundamental research at universities.

(32:24):
So, I think we need to do a better job inthe university community of explaining
what the innovation model is andhow universities and
fundamental research are a core partof our economic innovation engine.
When Condi and the team andI were in Washington,
and by the way,the team included engineering colleagues,
the chairman of the electrical engineeringdepartment at Stanford, Mark Horowitz,

(32:47):
Fei-Fei Li, computer scientist,Al godmother, and Allison Okamura,
who's a mechanical engineeringprofessor and a robotics expert.
And when we went around town,we kept getting asked, what's your ask?
What do you want?
And our answer was, we're here to help.
Tell us what you need, and
we will provide the expertise to helpyou understand these technologies and

(33:09):
assess what policies might be best suitedto advance American interests and values.
And that was in some ways surprisingto us that that was new to them but
has proven incredibly valuable.
And so a lot of our follow-on workwith the emerging technology review is
responding to those requests invery specific policy domains and

(33:30):
technological areas.

>> Bill Whalen (33:31):
What we have here is a unique,
one of its kind program in academia.
The question would be why isit a one of a kind program?
Why is only Stanford doing this, andwhy Stanford and the Hoover Institution?

>> Amy Zegart (33:42):
I think Stanford is uniquely positioned in three key ways to
lead an initiative like this, andthere's a reason no one else has done it.
The first is we have the bestengineering school in the world.
This is a partnership between the HooverInstitution and our School of Engineering.
Each of us is more than 100 years old, and
this is the first time we'vecollaborated in such an integrated way.

(34:03):
And that's very exciting.
So, we have the technological expertise inall of these emerging technology areas,
and so we can lead the policy discussionswith experts in those fields.
And that's critically important.
So that's advantage number one.
Advantage number two is our neighborhood.
We're not just anywhere in the US.
We're in the heart of Silicon Valley.
And as I often say to policymakers,we don't just happen to be here.

(34:26):
We made Silicon Valley.
Our ties to industry, to investors andinventors, and executives,
are deep and they are broad.
And so we can harness that ecosystemin understanding across sectors how
technology is moving andwhat the implications could be.
And then the third is thatwe're the Hoover Institution.
And so we have deep policy expertise.

(34:48):
We have a combination of socialscientists, even some historians, right?
And others across technological fieldswhere we care about the policy impact
that we have.
Those three things are an invaluable and,in my mind,
unique combination that give usa leadership role in these areas.

>> Bill Whalen (35:07):
H.R, could you tie this into something that you've done recently,
written about you andyour colleague AJ Grotto?
I had the pleasure of doing a podcastwith him recently on this.4 And
that is the concept ofeconomic statecraft.

>> H.R. McMaster (35:16):
Right, well, Andrew Grotto did a fantastic job on that.
It was fun to work with him.
And essentially what we did istry to lay out principles for
employing the tools ofeconomic statecraft.
And really the main problem that wetook on, and so many Hoover fellows and
people who are expert in thishelped us with this, and
Hoover economists who are skepticalabout any application of the tools of

(35:40):
economic statecrafthelped us tremendously.
Is really to address the problem of how tocompete with China's status mercantilist
economic model effectively withoutstifling any of the advantages associated
with our free market economic system andour sort of unbridled entrepreneurship.
And I think this is reallyan important question to ask.

(36:04):
And what we provided is reallyguidelines for employing the tools of
economic statecraft and doing it in a waythat accomplishes those objectives.
But, Amy Neal, I know you're aware thisis a debate we have on Goodfellas,
and John Cochran was very helpfulto us in sort of providing

(36:26):
his perspective andstrengthening that report.
But, Amy,
how do you see the landscape in Washingtonin terms of applying those tools?
You mentioned the importance ofinvestment in basic research.
That's under kind ofsome duress right now.
But where do you see the pendulumswinging in the areas of export controls,
inbound and outbound,investment screening, and

(36:49):
maybe efforts to secure the researchenterprise, which you mentioned,
the tendency forscientists is, hey, publish it.
They want everybody to know, andthey wanna collaborate internationally.
But now we have adversarieswho could weaponize a lot
of the technology that we'redeveloping against us.
What are your feelings about that?

>> Amy Zegart (37:08):
So it's a broad landscape, H.R I'll take a stab at it.
So, I think there are many things that arehappening at the same time with economic
statecraft.
And I think, at the risk of offendingmy historian colleagues on this show,
I think we are stuck in antiquatedthinking about our policy tools.
So, history is beneficial for somethings and counterproductive for others.

(37:32):
So, for example, export controls.
What's the purpose of export controls?
Well, in the Cold War, as you know,
the purpose was to denycapabilities to our adversaries.
Deny them fissile material,deny them weapon systems.
Well, today,
export controls are designed to delay ouradversaries from accessing technologies.
We've seen this play out with DeepSeq,and it's a real question,

(37:55):
did export controls work?
Did they backfire?
How do we know?
And the answer is we don't know yet,right?
But you can certainly see that DeepSeq,right,
the Chinese startup that really revealedsome pretty sophisticated engineering
outputs where they could have a frontierlarge language model with less compute
than the hyperscalers in the US we candebate how much less compute they use.

(38:18):
But they did use orders ofmagnitude less computer.
Well, that was withan export control regime.
So, now I've heard everything from wedidn't export control enough to we export
controlled too much.
So there's a real debate there.
And what we need to do is actuallyfigure out what is the evidence that
we need to collect to makea decision one way or the other.

(38:39):
You mentioned H.R,this question of research security.
I think one of the tendencies we have isto think it's only our decision whether
the best and brightest foreigntalent comes to the United States.
And we need to now make sure thatour research enterprise is secure.
It's no longer our decision, right?
So, foreign talent from China inparticular is going to other places.

(39:02):
They don't have to come tothe United States anymore.
I did, with a research assistant,
did a wonderful analysis ofthe talent behind the DeepSeq papers.
There were five papers,there were 211 authors.
And she found all publicly availableinformation about where they went to
school, where they worked,when they did it, what countries.

(39:24):
And guess what?
It is a homegrown talent story.
Half of the authors of those fiveDeepSeq papers, half of them,
were educated andtrained nowhere outside of China.
Nowhere.So, I think we need to face facts that
everyone will always want tocome to the United States.
We'll get the best andbrightest foreign talent has a vote.

(39:46):
And we need to think not only aboutsecuring the research enterprise, but
attracting the best foreign talent fromcountries that are allies and partners and
developing our own expertise.
K12 is a national security issue in a way.
It's It's never been before and so
there's a lot of talk on the immigrationside and not enough talk, in my view,

(40:06):
on the crisis in K12 STEM education,that is a national security risk to us.

>> Niall Ferguson (40:10):
If I can just defend the historical profession against your
scathing commentary, Amy actually,a really nice bit of historical research
by my former student Chris Miller in hisbook Chip War, showed that it wasn't
export controls that stopped the SovietUnion being able to build computers.

(40:31):
They stole all the semiconductors thatthey needed, but they just couldn't do it,
and so with the idea of Jake Sullivan'ssmall yard with a high fence.
If the fence has got a hole in itcalled Singapore, and the GPUs
are getting through, which they clearlyare, then ultimately the whole strategy

(40:52):
of technological containment doesn't havea strong historical foundation at all.
In fact, I struggle to think, andI'm often asked this question, so
I'm forced to think about it,of successful enterprise,
strategic enterprise,based on technological containment.
I mean, it was tried repeatedly,
people throughout history have thought,we have the wonder weapon.

(41:12):
Now we must just make sure, or the wondertechnology must just make sure that
the dastardly Spaniards or the Dutchdon't get it, and it never, ever works.
Because if something is as valuable as,say, artificial intelligence, large
language models, you're not gonna stopthe Chinese being able to develop them.
Especially, as you said, because theChinese have massive homegrown AI talent.

(41:36):
By the way, this was anticipatedby some excellent work done in
the Macro Polar reports,which you may know,
showing that the flow of AI talent,which was initially massively
from China to the US is much lessdecisively from China to the US now.
So I've just been in Asia andhere's a question for both of you,

(41:59):
I came back struck by,not just the confidence over AI,
I mean, Kai Fu Lee's line is pretty clear.
We may not be able to compete on training,but we can win on inference and
adoption andI think that's turning out to be true.
The other thing that is really striking isthat China thinks it's won the automobile

(42:20):
competition, it's won the EV race, and BYDis gonna eat the world, including Tesla.
There's immense self-confidence in
China about their capacity towin these technological races,
and I must say I'm strugglingto think of why they won't.
There's mounting evidence that they'reahead in multiple domains, the Australians

(42:43):
have a great study on this,which you probably very familiar with.
How worried should we be?
How worried are you, Amy?
You think about this more than I do,I mean, I just came away from my Asia trip
thinking we're losing in many, manydomains that we thought we would win in.

>> Amy Zegart (42:57):
Well, Neil,
as you know, I naturally go tothe dark corner of every room.
So, yes, I'm very worried, I think weshould be even more worried than you say.
Not just because ofthe BYD's of the world, but
where is China investing, right?
So China is investing infundamental research.
This is, we harvest the seeds thatwe plant in fundamental research 25,

(43:19):
30 years earlier, and so, yep,they've conquered batteries.
They look like they're ahead inparts of AI, but they are investing,
investing, investing in biotech andfundamental research across the board.
So the US Is spending, the US Federalgovernment is spending a third of what it
spent in fundamental research,as we did in the 1960s,

(43:42):
one-third of what we used to spend.
China is spending six times faster thanthe United States and will overtake
us in funding and fundamentalresearch within a handful of years.
So, you don't have to guess what the CCPthinks, they tell you what they think and
where they think the battleground is.
So not only I think are we falling behindin today's battleground technologies,

(44:04):
we're falling further behind intomorrow's battleground technologies and
that really concerns me.

>> Bill Whalen (44:09):
Amy, let me close out the subject with the question to you.
Time flies by here in California,Silicon Valley, and
before you know it,you're gonna be looking at another review
put out by the Stanford EmergingTechnology Review, another report.
The question to you, Amy, is, a year fromnow, if you're looking at the next review,
the next report, what would youlike to see in the way of progress?

>> Amy Zegart (44:27):
So, Bill, I think the report is our flagship product, but
it's not our only product.
So let me talk a little bitabout what we wanna do and
then what progress I'd like tosee just on the policy domain.
One thing that we wanna do is, the reviewin many ways I think of as a first date,
right?
We're sending it out to Washington,we're briefing officials in Washington and
in the Valley, and then we wanna know,give us homework, right?

(44:50):
What more can we help you with?
What second dates can we get?
Right now we're inundated with seconddate requests, that's a good thing,
it's a good problem to have.
Second date requests from industry, seconddate requests from the administration and
from Congress.
And I think that's a reallypositive development,
because we want our expertsto weigh in on policy,

(45:10):
to help decision makers makebetter policy, so it's inbounds.
The second thing we wanna do is scale,right?
We wanna scale our outreach,we have a podcast that we launched with
the Council on Foreign Relationscalled the Interconnect,
which looks at specific technologies andtheir implications.
We have a great Hoover team that hasa terrific go-to-market strategy,

(45:30):
so we're gonna be coming soonto a theater near you with
the Stanford Emerging Technology Review,and
hopefully you'll see it in lots of places.
And we wanna build the stableof engineering leaders
here at Stanford that wanna work withus at Hoover to help policymakers.
So this is all about human talent, and
we need to harness the humantalent across this campus.

(45:51):
And there's tremendous enthusiasm fromthe engineering side of campus to
do this work with us, soI think that's exciting.
What do I wanna see onthe policy side a year from now?
I think the Trump Administration isalready heading in that direction,
the Vice President gave a fantastic speechon AI opportunity soon after he came into
office.
I think that is the right frame, we needto run faster, not regulate more, and so

(46:14):
I think the administration is headingvery much in the right direction.
The second thing I'd like to see a yearfrom now is a rejuvenation of the contract
between the federal government anduniversities on scientific research.
We're at a crucial moment here,universities have done themselves
no favors with the politicalissues on our campuses and

(46:35):
the protests after October 7th.
But science has to continue and
we have to ensure that we're investingin the technologies of tomorrow.
So if I got those two things,AI opportunity,
investment in fundamental research,I would be a happy woman.

>> Bill Whalen (46:49):
Sounds good, for
those who wanna know more aboutthe Emerging Technology Review,
there's a website, it isSETR.stanford.edu, SETR.stanford.edu.
Amy, thanks forthe conversation, I enjoyed it.

>> Amy Zegart (47:00):
Thanks so much.

>> Bill Whalen (47:01):
But don't go anywhere, we wanna have some more fun with you, okay?

>> Amy Zegart (47:04):
[LAUGH], Anytime.

>> Bill Whalen (47:06):
Let's now shift to our B block and what I call the art of the,
not art of the deal, butthe art of the cave.
And i like to play a game withthe three of you, if you're willing,
a game that we call.
Big Deal, Little Deal, or No Deal at all.
[MUSIC]
And Amy, the way this works is I give you a policy matter and

(47:27):
you tell me, is it a big deal,a little deal, or no deal at all?
I think Neil likes to play this game.
So, here we're gonna go, two issueshere I want you to discuss, number one,
Columbia University, facing a $400million cut in federal funding.
It caves into Donald Trump andit agrees that in the future,
when there are pro-Palestinian protestson campus, protesters cannot wear a mask.

(47:48):
Columbia will beef up its securityforce and if Colombia doesn't go along,
it loses its federal funding, Neil,big deal, little deal or no deal at all?

>> Niall Ferguson (47:56):
It is a big deal, partly for what we've been discussing.
I mean, if universities havebeen central to research and
development in the United States.
If they were key to American success inthe first Cold War, it's kind of a problem
if the federal government and universitiesare in a kind of war with one another.
I hear great protests from the scientificcommunity about what is happening.

(48:22):
And I must admit, my response isthe universities had this coming.
They brought this upon themselves.
And it's not good enough to say, but
I was in my laboratory whencrazy stuff was happening.
If crazy stuff was happeningon your campus and
you were a tenured professor,where were you?

(48:44):
This has been a long time in the making,over 10 years.
The elite universities,it's not just since October 7th,
it's been a decade long.
The elite universities have turnedthemselves into clown shows
over of woke activism.
And Donald Trump signaled throughoutthe campaign that they were gonna pay
a price for this.
This is no big surprise.

(49:05):
There were clear statements in the Trumpcampaign that the universities were
going to be hit hard.
And this is just the beginning.
There's way more to come andnobody should be under any illusions.
The endowments are gonnabe on the hit lists too.
It's not just gonna be the kind of fundingthat Colombia has been threatened with
losing.
So I think this is a huge deal andI'm not gonna sit back and

(49:28):
have it all blamed on Donald Trump.
This is something the universities havebrought upon themselves because of
a decade of abysmal governance and totalirresponsibility on the part of academics.
As well as administrators who seem tohave forgotten that universities are not
a political project.
So that's my view.
It's a big deal and the universitieshave brought it on themselves.

>> Bill Whalen (49:50):
HR yeah.

>> H.R. McMaster (49:52):
I think it's a big deal.
I think the pressure's being applied toresearch and sciences, but of course,
the problem is in the humanitieswhere the curriculum of
self loathing has become prevalent.
So, I think it's important to administera corrective and again to incentivize.
I think university leadershipto be responsible,
to recognize that the mission ofthe university has been compromised by

(50:15):
their failure to lead andtheir failure to call out this behavior.
Which was to advocate for violenceagainst members of the student body and
then to obstruct the verymission of the university by
occupying buildings andintimidating students.

>> Bill Whalen (50:35):
Amy?

>> Amy Zegart (50:35):
Big deal but for some different reasons that what my colleagues
have said, I completely agreeuniversities have brought this on.
We have a freedom of inquiryproblems on university campuses,
not just free speech, free inquiry.
Some views are tolerated andcelebrated, and other views are not.
We have a monoculture on our campusesby the way our students want to
hear disagreement,they want to hear contending views.

(50:58):
They ask in class for more of that, anduniversities haven't given it to them.
And that's the essence of education,is to examine issues thoughtfully,
rigorously, from a variety of perspectivesand be able to debate them civilly.
And we have lost our way on thatcompletely agree with that.
But there's a question about what'sthe right approach to correct for

(51:21):
this endemic problem.
And I am concerned that the Trumpadministration's approach,
which is single out individualuniversities, hold them hostage for
hundreds of millionsof dollars of funding.
I agree with the merits of what the Trumpadministration is asking Columbia to do.
Let's put that aside for a second.
But when you hold universities hostage,
you're not just punishing Columbia,you're punishing America.

(51:45):
Because you're impeding the researchthat is going to enrich our economy,
advance our science, find cures forcancer, and you're setting a precedent.
So let's imagine a Democraticpresident comes into office, and
they too want to holduniversities hostage for
hundreds of millions of dollarsto pursue particular policy aims.
I think we have to imagine that a futurepresident would use the same tools in

(52:08):
the same way.
While I might agree with the presidenttoday, I would not agree with the future
president in using thatmethod to exact change.
There are other ways that could bemore productive to get Columbia
to do the right thing.

>> Niall Ferguson (52:21):
But, Amy, what are these other ways?
Because all one saw over the last 10years was continual failure by trustees,
by presidents, by provosts,by tenured faculty, by administrators.
They didn't reform themselveswhen they had the chance.

>> Amy Zegart (52:38):
We've seen the president use at least two really powerful
mechanisms to great effect already inquite a short period of time executive
orders, right?
And the bully pulpit.
Most of America agrees with a lot ofthe policies that he's talking about with
respect to higher education,he's articulating them and
people are agreeing with him.
So you're seeing a lot of changealready before he decided to

(53:00):
withhold the $400 million of funding forColumbia.
I agree universities have beenmoving far too slowly, but
I think the president's Justice Departmentinvestigations of Title 6 violations
absolutely should move forward.
Executive orders and using the bully pulp.
I think those have been reallyproductive in a short period of time.

>> Bill Whalen (53:19):
HR, do you see a similar outcome in Philadelphia,
where the University of Pennsylvaniais looking at losing, I think,
$175 million if it doesn't changeits policies on transgender sports?

>> H.R. McMaster (53:29):
Yeah, I do.
And, I think this is an area alsowhere the private sector got involved.
A lot of money was pulled from thoseuniversities by individuals who
were dissatisfied with the leadershipof those universities.
Yeah, I mean, I think that this isa really important period of change.

(53:50):
I hope it administers a corrective.
I think it's important with all thesemeasures to make sure that the cure is
effective.
You don't want the cure to be disruptiveas Amy said, there's a downside to it.
But I think there's a wayto mitigate that, a way to,
like with Columbia, incentivizethem to make the decisions that
the leadership of the universityshould have made long ago.

(54:10):
And then once they make those decisions,they're on a path then to be able
to restore funding forresearch in particular.

>> Bill Whalen (54:17):
Okay, I want you to tell me if it's a big deal, little deal, or
no deal at all.
The law firm Paul Weiss,is tied historically to Democrats and
Democratic causes.
The President signs an executive orderbanning lawyers in that firm from
representing clientsdoing federal business.
It takes away security clearances,I think, for partners as well.
And then the law firm turns around andlo and behold,
it agrees to do $40 million in probono work for Trump friendly causes.

(54:40):
Neil, big deal, little deal,no deal at all.

>> Niall Ferguson (54:44):
It's a little deal because it revealed them to have no
courage whatsoever.
I mean, there are moments where you haveto stand up, and they decided to lie down.
So, kind of pathetic, really,
but not a big deal in the waythat the last topic was.

>> Bill Whalen (55:04):
HR, you want to pile on the lawyers, too?

>> H.R. McMaster (55:06):
[LAUGH] no, not I mean, not real.
I'm related to too many lawyers.
Hey, butI think as Amy said it's important to
evaluate the objectives, right?
In which case this ismight be a good objective,
but also to pay attention tothe means that are employed.
Because it's not gonna just be the Trumpadministration who employs these kind of

(55:28):
tactics in the future.
It could be another future administrationwho has much different agenda.
So, I mean, I'd just be cautiousabout these kind of coercive
measures because they couldestablish a new precedent and
we could be unhappy with the waythey're applied in the future.

>> Bill Whalen (55:44):
Yeah, Amy, Goose and Gander, right?

>> Amy Zegart (55:46):
Yep, I mean, I would.
It's a little deal for.
I mean, this is the private sector, andthey can you see different law firms
taking different approachesto the same challenge.
So I think we're always better off whenwe have a robust set of institutions that
have Have the capabilities to askquestions of the state, right?

>> Bill Whalen (56:04):
Okay, now let's turn our attention now to three nations,
three lands that may or may notcave to Donald Trump down the road,
first up, Neil Greenland.

>> Niall Ferguson (56:12):
Well, I can't tell if this is trolling or for real,
I think it's some combination of the two.
My take on this is that we have to lookbehind the facade of imperial bravado,
that the attention is, of course,
caught when the President of the UnitedStates lays claim not just to Greenland.

(56:34):
But also to Canada and the Panama Canal.
But I don't think that's reallythe most important thing about
the national security strategy ofthe second Trump administration.
Which is much more about trying to limitthe commitments of the United States
relative to its big adversaries,whether it's in Eastern Europe or
the Middle east orpotentially in the Far East.

(56:55):
So I, I struggle a bit to see it as a bigdeal, I don't think it's entirely serious.
I think we've just seenVice President Vance take
a step back in his trip to Greenland, and
I'm guessing we won't be annexingGreenland in the next three and

(57:15):
a half years when all is said and done.

>> Bill Whalen (57:19):
HR Venezuela and here, the issue here is the President threatening
trade tariffs against countriesthat buy Venezuelan oil.

>> H.R. McMaster (57:25):
Yeah, I like it, I think we need more pressure on Venezuela.
And of course, this is one of the areaswhere President Trump has heard from
a wide range of people.
People who, I would put the Secretaryof State, Marco Rubio in this camp,
who believe that it's important to isolatethe Maduro regime from sources of strength
and support.
Including the cash flow that's necessarynot only for him to maintain power,

(57:47):
to fund these kind of militiaorganizations which keep him in power.
Even though the vast majority ofVenezuelans voted him out in the last
election.
But also Maduro is funding what I wouldcall progressive authoritarian regimes,
dictatorships in the Western hemisphere.

(58:08):
It's really Venezuelan money that hassupported a lot of the far left parties.
I mean, from Da Silva andPetro in Colombia to, to Ortega,
he keeps Ortega andthe Cuban army on life support.
And so I think anything that can be doneto restrict the resources available to

(58:30):
Venezuela is important.
And it's also important toUS Influence in the hemisphere because
Venezuela has become kindof a platform for Russia,
who provides security for China,who provides financial wherewithal.
And Iran,
who actually provides some refinedpetroleum products that Venezuela needs.

(58:50):
So, yeah, I'm all for it, andI hope that that side of the argument
wins out over Chevron and variousenergy brokers in a particular one in
Florida who want the President toalleviate sanctions on Venezuela.

>> Bill Whalen (59:05):
Okay, Amy, your chance to wave the maple leaf flag Canada.

>> Amy Zegart (59:09):
All the poor Canadians, right?
I mean,I would separate Canada from Greenland,
and we haven't talked about Panama.
So I think with Panama and Greenland,there are real strategic imperatives for
greater US involvement.
For example, the Panama Canal,I think the President was right.
I'm deeply uncomfortable with Hong Kongbased companies controlling the port
operations at both ends of that canal.

(59:31):
The President has a nose forreal estate in Greenland.
Greenland is strategicallyimportant to the United States,
not just because it's on the Arctic,which is thawing and
becoming a new ocean that candramatically reduce shipping time.
But because of the rare earth mineralson Greenland and its location, right?
There is a competition forinfluence in the Arctic.
The Chinese, which aren't even inthe Arctic, claim to be an Arctic power.

(59:53):
The Russians are verymuch there in earnest.
And so Greenland is strategicallyimportant for the United States.
Will it be acquired by the United States?
I doubt it, butI suspect if I were a gambling woman,
I would say by the end ofthe Trump administration,
there will be more close ties betweenthe United States and Greenland.
More capabilities of the United States andperhaps more natural resources that

(01:00:15):
the United States will beaccessing in Greenland.
And that is to the good of the country.
So Canada is a different story, right?
Canada is one of ourlargest trading partners.
And I think the Canadians are alarmed,right,
about the idea that the rhetoric,that they're the 51st state.
And so our allies and partners are some ofthe strongest assets the United States has

(01:00:38):
in our competition with China.
China has customers,we have allies and partners.
And one of the benefits we have is thatwe have very good relations in our own
neighborhood sothat we can focus on economic development.
And so my concern with Canada inparticular is, it's unnecessary to poke
the Canadian bear that we haveplenty of adversaries in the world.

(01:01:01):
And we should be focused on bringing ourfriends closer to combat China abroad.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:01:07):
And Amy, just a quick point on this too.
Hey, we're missing an opportunity,as you alluded to,
for a positive agenda with Canada, right?
Countering Chinese influence,but how about Arctic security,
which is what drew President to Greenland?
How about reinvigoratingNorth American defenses?
The Golden Dome?
That's not possible without Canadabecause the threat from missiles comes

(01:01:28):
across the Arctic Circlein large measures.
So hey, I just think we'reblowing an opportunity for
a positive agenda, and it's regrettable.

>> Niall Ferguson (01:01:39):
The law of unintended consequences,
a very powerful thing in history.
And when you look at the consequenceson Canadian politics of
President Trump's attacks on Canada,they've been absolutely seismic.
Mark Carney, a very accomplishedcentral banker, is now Prime Minister,
which seemed like an absolutelong shot just to few months ago.

(01:02:03):
When the Conservative leaderPierre Polievre was the hot
favorite to win the next election.
I don't think it can be entirely in theinterest of the United States to prolong
the Liberal Party's dominanceof Canadian politics, but
that's actually been the principalconsequence of all of this.

>> Bill Whalen (01:02:22):
Okay, and finally, Neil, in our conversation about Benny to Trump's
will, two individuals who are not usuallymentioned in the same sentence, but
they both tie into Trump's success.
And that would be Jerome Powell,the Chair of the Federal Reserve, and
Vladimir Putin.

>> Niall Ferguson (01:02:34):
Well, at the moment, we seem to be caving to Putin.
I don't know if my colleagueswatched the Steve Witkoff
interview with Tucker Carlson, but
I'm just glad Henry Kissinger didn'tlive to witness that debacle.
He must be turning in his grave.
So if,if caving is what we're talking about,

(01:02:58):
it sounded a lot like the preludeto a cave, that interview.
Jay Powell has experience ofbeing tweeted at by Donald Trump.
Back when he was raising rates in 2018,
he was bombarded with at least 100critical tweets from President Trump.

(01:03:20):
So nothing was more eminently predictablethan that at some point Donald Trump
would start sending tweets Jay Powell'sway, and he started last week.
I think Jay Powell's well used to that,and
as he approaches the endof his time as Fed Chair,
he's got a pretty impressiverecord to look back on.

(01:03:43):
Hasn't been a recession inall the time he's been there,
plenty of people have predictedrecessions, they haven't happened.
So yeah, I think he's in a relativelystrong position at this point.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:03:53):
Okay, and we're going to end up the conversation there, thanks so
much, we enjoyed it very much.
Amy, great to have you on the show,you got to come back more often.

>> Amy Zegart (01:04:01):
I'm happy to come back, talk to you guys anytime,
it was really fun.

>> Bill Whalen (01:04:04):
And once again, the Stanford Emergency Technology Review,
setr.stanford.edu.
By the way, while I'm doing plugs,we are doing a mail show in April.
If you have a question forNeil HR John, any or
all combination of them goto the following website.
Which is hoover.org Ask Goodfellows,
that's hoover.org Goodfellows by the way,we have an anniversary coming up guys.

(01:04:27):
April 1st I think is our five yearanniversary, can you believe that?

>> Niall Ferguson (01:04:31):
An appropriate date perhaps.

>> Bill Whalen (01:04:36):
There's no fool like a good fellow's fool.
All right, all great conversation,
go back to your go back to your spotlightsto see what chats you've been missing.

>> H.R. McMaster (01:04:44):
Take care, thanks Amy.

>> Bill Whalen (01:04:46):
On behalf of the Goodfellows, Neil Ferriss and H.R.
McMaster, the truant John Cochran and ourvery Special guest today, Dr. Amy Zegart.
We hope you enjoyed the show,as always, we appreciate your support.
Please send in our comments,your suggestions, your questions for
us till next time, take care andwe will see you soon, thanks for watching.

>> Presenter (01:05:06):
If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content
featuring HR McMaster, watch Battlegroundsalso available @ hoover.org.