Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Elliot Ackerman & James Stavridis - Imagining the Worst to Prevent It From Happening

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Interview Only w/ Elliot Ackerman & James Stavridis - Imagining the Worst to Prevent It From Happening · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace,
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  Speaker 1: so use that code. Sometimes when you're trying to figure
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: out the best way to talk about political reform, writing
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: fiction can be the way to get people to sort
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of broaden how they think and realize that actually, this
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: interesting fictional piece of work is actually trying when it
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: comes to using fiction to teach. My friend, Jim Staviriti's
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  Speaker 1: retired admiral former NATO Supreme Ally Commander, has been at
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  Speaker 1: the forefront of this and with his writing partner in
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  Speaker 1: this one, Elliott Ackerman, they have a sequel now. They
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  Speaker 1: wrote sort of a futuristic, realistic, futuristic, semi dystopian view
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  Speaker 1: of where the world could be in twenty thirty four.
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  Speaker 1: This is their sequel, twenty eighty four. Almostaviti's good to
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  Speaker 1: see you, sir.
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  Speaker 2: Good to see you, sir.
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  Speaker 3: And I think, as you said in the run up there,
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  Speaker 3: this is not predictive fiction, let's hope not.
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  Speaker 2: This is cautionary fiction. The idea is.
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  Speaker 3: To engage the reader to understand how difficult the future
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  Speaker 3: could be while we still have time to reverse engineer
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  Speaker 3: it and avoid it.
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  Speaker 1: Ellie, your motivation for getting involved with this, and tell
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  Speaker 1: me how you got got in with the Admiral.
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  Speaker 4: Well, I think you know, Jim touchdown, I think you know.
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  Speaker 5: We believe that if you look at the great challenges
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  Speaker 5: facing humanity in the twenty first century, which this series
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  Speaker 5: of books addresses, whether it's you know, twenty thirty four,
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  Speaker 5: which is pure level war, you know, twenty fifty four
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  Speaker 5: was about artificial intelligence and domestic politics in the United States,
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  Speaker 5: and that twenty eighty four deals with a climate crisis.
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  Speaker 4: And really the future of war.
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  Speaker 5: It's this idea that if we can imagine these worst
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  Speaker 5: case outcomes, that's actually the first step in avoiding them.
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  Speaker 5: And if you look at the great national security failures
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  Speaker 5: that our country has faced over the last I don't know,
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  Speaker 5: you know, fifty to one hundred years, you know, So
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  Speaker 5: everything from Pearl Harbor to nine to eleven to the pandemic,
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  Speaker 5: they've all been failures of imagination. So if you want
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  Speaker 5: to prevent those, you know, start imagining those outcomes so
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  Speaker 5: that you can avoid them. And the second part of
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  Speaker 5: your question, the way we hooked up is long story short.
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  Speaker 5: We're both graduates the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where.
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  Speaker 4: The Admiral was the dean.
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  Speaker 5: He and I knew each other as alumni, and just
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  Speaker 5: sort of by way of coincidence, we had a shared
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: book editor at Penguin Press who played who played matchmaker
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  Speaker 5: between the two of us. So and I would say
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  Speaker 5: also our writing duo is really, in some ways of
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  Speaker 5: writing trio because we've had the same editor for all
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  Speaker 5: of these books, Scott Moyers, who's.
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  Speaker 4: Been a great steward of this series.
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  Speaker 1: That I think is the hardest part and co authoring
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  Speaker 1: I've done it is agreeing on a style. Nobody writes
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  Speaker 1: the same, you can certainly you know. And how difficult
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: was that at first? And or was it pretty easy
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  Speaker 1: the whole time? Or is that the work of the editor.
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  Speaker 2: We divided and conquered if you will.
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  Speaker 3: I kind of developed this strategic remit this idea putting
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  Speaker 3: these three novels together.
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  Speaker 2: And then is was this one?
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  Speaker 1: By the way, let me pot was this like, were
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  Speaker 1: you like George Lucas here you outlined the entire arc, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: and you just knew, okay, we're going to do this
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  Speaker 1: one is book one, this one is book two, and.
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  Speaker 3: This is the three Okay, absolutely, And so fortunately my
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  Speaker 3: editor said, eh, Stevrid is here a great guy. You've
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  Speaker 3: never written a novel. Why do you think you know
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  Speaker 3: how to write fiction? And oh, by the way, I
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  Speaker 3: had this brilliant young novelist, Elliott Ackerban.
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  Speaker 2: He had no idea.
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  Speaker 3: I knew Elliott, and I said, oh, Elliott ackerban Man,
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  Speaker 3: I'd love to learn how to write fiction from him.
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  Speaker 3: So that's kind of how it got going to answer
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  Speaker 3: the question style wise, if I'm the strategic creator of
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  Speaker 3: the art and detailed outline, guy Elliott is the one
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  Speaker 3: who has his fingers on the keyboard kind of writing
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  Speaker 3: that beautiful prose.
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  Speaker 2: But then it's very shared.
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  Speaker 3: Then it just goes back and forth and back and
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  Speaker 3: forth until we're both happy with the final product.
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  Speaker 1: So I followed quite a few what I would call
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  Speaker 1: economic optimist who call themselves futurists, And one of their
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  Speaker 1: big complaints about fiction and about writing about the future
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  Speaker 1: and these sort of is that we all are more
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  Speaker 1: dystopian than what the reality is. Do you accept that premise?
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  Speaker 2: I do.
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  Speaker 3: And if you think of Malthusian predictions about the population
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  Speaker 3: is going to hit a point where the planet can't
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  Speaker 3: support it, none of that is coming true. It's kind
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  Speaker 3: of the opposite. Actually, assume nations are going to be
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  Speaker 3: competing for immigrants.
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  Speaker 2: I think.
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  Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, yeah, you can't
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  Speaker 3: be too dystopian, nor should you be so pollyannish.
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  Speaker 2: And so the idea is to.
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  Speaker 3: Frame these challenges in a way that strikes a reader,
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  Speaker 3: is realistic and sort of puts pressure on solving the problem.
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  Speaker 2: Why you can still do it.
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  Speaker 1: So I want to talk about future of war because
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  Speaker 1: I feel like wars, the war has changed and we
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  Speaker 1: haven't realized it yet. When I say we, I'm talking
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  Speaker 1: about the United States. I think we know it. I
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  Speaker 1: think are certainly folks that the Pentagon are aware of it.
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  Speaker 1: But I think it's dramatic. I mean, we're already seeing it.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, what great power is it vulnerable to asymmetric
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  Speaker 1: warfare at the moment.
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  Speaker 5: Well, I think if you look at that, I mean,
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  Speaker 5: the history of war, right is a history of you know,
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  Speaker 5: technology is changing, one side having the upper hand, you know,
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  Speaker 5: whether that's you all the way back to you know,
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  Speaker 5: Alexander the Great and the Sarissa, which is basically just
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  Speaker 5: a very long spear that he used to conquer all
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  Speaker 5: of the known world to you know, the United States
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  Speaker 5: and naval warfare and the fact that we were the
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  Speaker 5: first to sort of understand the premiacy of the aircraft carrier.
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  Speaker 5: So there's constantly these you know, cycles of technology and
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  Speaker 5: war changing, and the victor is really who can adapt
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  Speaker 5: the most quickly. And I think what we're doing in
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  Speaker 5: these books is we're trying to pose those questions.
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  Speaker 4: You know, how is war changing? You know, how can you.
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  Speaker 5: Be like Gretzki and you're not going to where the
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  Speaker 5: puck is or go to where the puck is going?
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  Speaker 5: And you know, that's one of the inspirations behind this
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  Speaker 5: series of books is to try to get people to
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  Speaker 5: imagine what the future is going.
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  Speaker 3: Well, let me add one thought to that, Chuck, your point,
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  Speaker 3: we're watching war change in front of US, and we're having.
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  Speaker 1: All these particularly Russian.
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  Speaker 3: I think it really we're going to look back at.
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  Speaker 3: Ukraine is very pivotal in the art that Elliott just described.
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  Speaker 3: But I want to make a point using that war
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  Speaker 3: in Ukraine. Sure, it's drones, it's artificial intelligence, it's high
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  Speaker 3: tech materials, it's all that very advanced starship troopers kind
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  Speaker 3: of thing. The war in Ukraine is also World War One.
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  Speaker 3: It's all quiet on the Western Front. It's blood, guts, trenches,
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  Speaker 3: artillery tanks. Yeah, it's changing, but there's a certain terrible
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  Speaker 3: brutality to war that I don't think is changing. We
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  Speaker 3: need to be careful, we don't kind of gameplay our
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  Speaker 3: world that thinking these are all videos. Somehow war is
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  Speaker 3: still terrible, and that's what we try to imagine in
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  Speaker 3: these books.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate that you're doing that, and I guess
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  Speaker 1: and Elliott address you, Gohda and addressed this question. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: because in some ways the books are dealing with this
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  Speaker 1: is what happens when it feels as if you don't
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  Speaker 1: have to sacrifice a human being to conduct a war.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think like fundamentally war is a
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  Speaker 4: human activity, right, because it is you know, it is
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  Speaker 4: a it is a political act, right, I mean Klauswitz said, right, politics,
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  Speaker 4: war is politics by other means.
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  Speaker 1: So well, war. I heard somebody say something the other
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  Speaker 1: day that, I, you know, war means you're terrible at diplomacy.
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  Speaker 1: That's another way to put it, and I would agree
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  Speaker 1: with that too.
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  Speaker 5: So you know, you get you a nation gets to
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  Speaker 5: the point where it is trying to inflict its will
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  Speaker 5: on another nation. So it is always ultimately human beings
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  Speaker 5: trying to inflict their will upon one another. Now there's
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  Speaker 5: you know, layers of technology, you know, so we go
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  Speaker 5: back to the days of Alexander that was literally at
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  Speaker 5: the point of one human being, you know, doing it
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  Speaker 5: with a spear face to face. I mean, now we
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  Speaker 5: obviously have over the horizon weapons but do this, but
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  Speaker 5: it's always the human influence in that chain, no matter
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  Speaker 5: how exquisite or remote the technologies get. But we're also
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  Speaker 5: you know, there's very interesting world questions going on right
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  Speaker 5: now and some of these new defense technologies, I mean
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  Speaker 5: questions about where human should exist in the kill chain.
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  Speaker 5: You know, should we have autonomous weapons that don't require
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  Speaker 5: being human beings to give the final authority to you know,
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  Speaker 5: to take life. And these are all really live questions
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  Speaker 5: right now, what.
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  Speaker 1: Do you presume in your arc, Jim, I.
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  Speaker 2: Want to jump on that kill chain question.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. This, to me is
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  Speaker 1: something I fear. This should be like the Geneva conventions.
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  Speaker 1: We should all agree on this around the globe, and
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  Speaker 1: yet I don't think we will.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think we will.
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  Speaker 3: But I'm going to give you a counterintuitive, more controversial
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: view here, but I'll pose it to you in a
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  Speaker 3: very personal way. Suppose your interac and you go to
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: collect water for your family because the pump pump isn't working.
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  Speaker 3: So you get five or six huge containers, You go
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: to a pump, you fill it up with water.
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  Speaker 2: Now you come back to your house.
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  Speaker 3: A predator is overhead, and a human in the kill
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  Speaker 3: chain makes a decision that you're a terrorist based on
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  Speaker 3: a variety of intel tips they've gotten. That human is tired,
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  Speaker 3: that human is young and inexperienced twenty three year old
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  Speaker 3: Air Force drone pilot, and that human in the kill
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  Speaker 3: chain says.
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  Speaker 2: He's a terrorist.
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  Speaker 3: I'm going to kill him, And everything I just described
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  Speaker 3: to you actually happened.
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  Speaker 1: This has happened. I was just going to say, you're
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  Speaker 1: describing something that I've read about recently.
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  Speaker 2: You have in Afghanistan.
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  Speaker 3: And so at the end of the day, if that
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  Speaker 3: predator is up there with a missile trying to decide
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  Speaker 3: that Jim Stavritez is a terrorist or a good human being,
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  Speaker 3: I'm not sure I want an exhausted twenty three year
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  Speaker 3: old making that call. I might want that, AI, and
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  Speaker 3: I think that's coming sooner than you might imagine. So,
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  Speaker 3: as Elliott says, at this point, these really are interesting questions,
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  Speaker 3: and I'm quite skeptical of people say, oh, I always
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  Speaker 3: want that human in the loop.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not so sure.
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  Speaker 1: Interesting, Kelly, you agree with that, I know you having.
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  Speaker 5: These systems, I think absolutely. I mean, I think a
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  Speaker 5: lot of these systems are going to wind up evolving
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: into sort of dual use systems, so they will enhance
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: human judgment. I mean, one of the one of the
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: truisms that I'm jumping talk about, I can talk about
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: it in my own military experience is the experience of
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: being in combat is being completely overwhelmed by information and
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: decisions and you're exhausted and everything coming at you. So
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: any tools you can provide a decision maker on the
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  Speaker 5: battlefield to be able to make clearer, safer decisions those
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: you know, those tools are net positive. But the implementation
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: of these tools, you know, pose definitely certain moral moral questions,
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  Speaker 5: and different societies will come to different answers as to
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: how they want to employ these tools in the future.
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  Speaker 5: But I definitely think these technologies can also be a
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  Speaker 5: great force of good.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something we explore in twenty eighty four.
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  Speaker 3: Not only at the tactical level, Chuck, but this also
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  Speaker 3: has to occur at this strategic level. When you're making
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  Speaker 3: that decision about whether to go to war or not,
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  Speaker 3: AI can look at every conflict that's ever unfolded in
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  Speaker 3: the history of mankind in a nano second and make
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  Speaker 3: a probably better informed decision than Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 2: Is making right now about going to war in Iran.
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  Speaker 1: Who should Here's so, I'm going to confess to a
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: dystopian show that I found myself more consumed with than
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I ever imagined I would be. And it was called Fallout.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: And I have no idea whether either one of you
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: have seen it. Elliott, you might be familiar with it familarly. Yeah, Yeah,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And the premise of fallout is in some ways, basically
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  Speaker 1: the corporations are more powerful than the nation states, right
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and the people behind. And so you sit there and
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: you're like, well, that's not like you know, it's science fiction,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: but it's not totally crazy. Right. We already now have
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: companies that are more valuable than a bigger in some
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: ways GDP wise than many a country. You know, how
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: concerned should we be and how do you deal with
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: this in your dystopian future of corporate You know, the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: because this technology is not being developed by the government,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: it's being developed by the private sector. Who's in charge
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: of it, who owns it? And therefore, you know, do
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you have nation states that are essentially have to bow
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: at the altar of a corporation?
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  Speaker 3: In twenty eighty four in the book, we kind of
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: explore that with a very large international finance firm that
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: has a great.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Deal of influence and power.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: And I think that's quite realistic, and that real static
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: power is dialing somewhat away from nation states and somewhat
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: toward private entities call them corporations, call them finance firms,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: call them big conglomerates. But I think nations are going
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: to continue to hold firmly to two things, one of
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: which is the ability to apply extreme violence at large scale.
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  Speaker 3: And I think nation states are going to ensure that
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  Speaker 3: these corporations don't get that level of power. And that's
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: a longer conversation how that could occur. But then secondly,
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: I think nation states are going to maintain control of
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: currencies of actual dollars and yu one in every Euro's.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: Nation states are not going to surrender those and that's
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: why cryptocurrency I think has a kind of a shelf.
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  Speaker 2: Life that's going to diminish.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: I think nation states are going to remain prevalent in
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: those two areas.
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  Speaker 5: I think, just to Gem's point, I mean sometimes we
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: lose sight of that. It's sort of because it's the
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: water that we swim in, but that, you know, one
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: of the defining qualities of a nation states that it
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  Speaker 5: holds a monopoly on.
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  Speaker 1: Violence, Okay, until it doesn't.
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  Speaker 5: Right well, that I mean that you as as a
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  Speaker 5: nation state, that's what defines you. You know, if I
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: go out and you know, kill another citizen, I get
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: in a lot of trouble for it.
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: If we as nations we are going to war and
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  Speaker 4: we're going to kill. We are allowed to do that.
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  Speaker 4: We have a monopoly on violence.
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  Speaker 5: That's sort of one of the when the nation, when
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: the modern nation state was created, one of the powers
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: that was given to it was this monopoly on violence.
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: That we're allowed to use violence as a nation state,
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: and that's seen as legitimate. And so I think just this,
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: that's the Gem's point, you know, do will you see
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  Speaker 5: the influences we've seen of corporations over nations. Yes, absolutely,
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: And as technology becomes more powerful, you know, the technology
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: that is private will have so over a nation state,
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: but the nation state remains the entity that holds a
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: monopoly on violence.
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  Speaker 3: Let me cross those two streams, which is say, as
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: an example in history, British East India Company, Dutch East
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: India Company, these were mercantile entities that did raise an
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: effect private military forces both at sea and ashore. Ultimately,
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: in both cases the nation state suppressed that and found
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: can't be two purveyors of violence in this same ecosystem.
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  Speaker 2: I think that's going to hold true for a while.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about you know, when you first came out
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: with twenty thirty four, it felt far away. We are
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: now eight years away in theory the next president will
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: be president when your fictional twenty thirty four becomes not fictional.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Now that we're closer, what do you think you're getting right?
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: And what do you what are you like thinks that
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: the outcome is still to be determined.
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, I think for you know, each
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: of the books is always a little bit different, and
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: again there works a speculations.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: So I don't think ours no has ever been to you.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: Know, necessarily call it right, but to say, listen, if
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: you know, let's not get these things. Let's not get
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: these questions wrong, because we don't want the the futures
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: that we predict, and particularly in twenty thirty four in
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: the other books. But I think one of the things
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: has been a lot of fun in writing these books is,
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: you know, seeing the ideas that we're tinkering with and
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: experiment and experimenting when it start to sort of manifest themselves.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: So I think in.
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: Twenty eighty four, I'll say, you know, we've been working
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: on this one for a while. So I like to
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: say to Jim, you know, we were talking about Greenland
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: before it was cool, so sort of you know, fun
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: as we were in the later stages of this book
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: and to see you know, Greenland and the future of
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: sort of these these northern provinces, you know, is very
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: much up for grabs. And in twenty eighty four, I mean,
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: I don't think this is a real spoiler, but you know,
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: we talked about the lush, verdant wine land that exists
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: up in Greenland and that they're making some of the
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: best chardonnays around in twenty eighty four because of climate change.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let me let me pick up on twenty thirty four.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: I think we have correct the ongoing tension between the
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: US and China. The fundamentals are bad between these two countries.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: I think we get right a miscalculation that becomes a
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: spark to ignite the war that we hope we can
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: still avoid. One thing I think we got wrong in
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: twenty thirty four, which is not that far away, but
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: we did not bring artificial intelligence into it. It doesn't
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: play a role I think that we miss By twenty
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: thirty four, I think AI is going to be deeply
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: embedded in all aspects of war.
• 20:34
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• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer. Well, let's talk
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: about the real world here in this most recent China
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: trip that he had. You tell me, I can't remember
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: last time a president was so hat in hand on
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: a trip to China.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: I couldn't agree with you more. I think President She
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: had a great summit.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, yes he was. You know it's domble. I mean,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: let's be honest.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the title of the old Tom wolfbook A Man
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: in Full that's President She. He was definitely looked like,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: acted like mature the senior partner.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: That's how it felt to me. I was. I was
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: sorry to see that.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: I think President Trump conversely had a pretty bad ad
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: summit in the regard of how it played globally. Also,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: very few deliverables. I think President Trump wanted to sell
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: five hundred and six hundred seven hundred Boeing jets, huge
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: trade deals on soybeans, beef.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Haven't seen that.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Maybe it'll still emerge, but I don't see it as
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: a very good summit for President Trump.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: And I'll tell you who. It was a terrible summit
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: for terrible for Taiwan.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Really brought the Taiwan question, not in a good way,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: onto the agenda.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: So I.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Came away from the summit thinking, no, not our finest.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Hour, Elliott, how much?
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: What it?
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: So? I participated in something recently and I shared it
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: with my audience. The Atolls Society did a sort of
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: a war game for politics, a wargame for a democracy,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: and there were three teams Nationalists, Capitalists, institutionalists, and and
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I was curious because I was thinking, if I were
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: in your shoes, I'd probably want to participate in quite
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: a few sort of of of war games to use
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: it or simulations like this? Did you do that? Is
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: that helpful? And what simulations were in your head as
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: you were as you were writing this with Jim?
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: I think, you know the process of writing this together
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: is often but you know we both read very deeply,
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: you know, we share a lot of books, we share
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: a lot of articles, and I think in that, you know,
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: in that, we start plotting out, you know, the direction
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: these books are going to take. And then once you
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: start telling the story, of the story itself starts posing
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: immediate questions to you. Like for example, when we set
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: out to write twenty thirty four, I think the initial
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: premise was, you know, what would it look like if
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: the US.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: And China went to war? And sort of almost like
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: guns of all.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: You started from that, here's the thesis if they go
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: to war? What does that look like? Right? And what's
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the new work.
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: Backwards it's going to be you know, like okay, maybe
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: it's feels like a Gulf of Tonkin type incidents, So
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: what would that look like? And so you're asking yourself
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: these questions, there are immediate other questions that come down
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: and so it probably wouldn't surprise you that very quickly,
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: like okay, the US you know, suffers a surprising loss,
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: and then we're like, well what about nuclear weapons? Like
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: of course, and like that question gets posed to us
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: in twenty thirty four and it comes up in that novel.
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: But it wasn't a question that we set out with right.
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: It's a question that just becomes obvious as you start
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: going down this sequential path of what will happen I
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: mean and other questions, because you know, you brought up
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: the politics. You know, a question was, you know, in
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: twenty thirty four, who's president?
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: And in twenty thirty four we have an independent as president.
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: The first endeprint in sense George Washington and twenty fifty
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: four we imagine domestic politics in the US that the
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: parties have basically dissolved, and so you have a sort
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: of extremist party called the Truthers against a more kind
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: of rivncious.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: Independent party that we call the Dreamers.
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: And by the time you get to four some of
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: the political contours of the US have melted away. So
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: you know, Florida has broken off and become an independent republic,
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: and some of the Pacific states are also broken away
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: from the United States. Now, are we predicting that's what's
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: going to happen? Neecessarily, But we're engaging in these types
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: of thought experiment. That's because what's so exciting about it
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: is when you do that, it leads you inevitably to
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: these follow on questions. About what direction you know, not
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: only we're going with our domestic politics, but also where
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: we're going with geopolitics and military questions. I think get
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: put on the table, Jim.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: You're really good at sort of identifying these forks in
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the road. So walk me through the next five years
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: of the forks in the road we're going to have
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that you think are going to make decisions about whether
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: your novels look more accurate or less accurate.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: The biggest fork in the road is actually not in
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: that great geopolitical, turbulent world. Biggest fork in the road
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: over the next five years is right here in the
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: United States of America. And there are two distinct forks
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: in the road. One is will democracy continue to be
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: our central organizing political feature, democracy being defined as the
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: legitimate will of the majority of the people making decisions.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I think that's a question.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: The second internal fork in the road, and even more important,
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: is can we pull together? Can we overcome the big
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: divisions in the nation. I think both of those are
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: questions that Ellie and I interrogated in the middle book
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: in this trilogy twenty fifty four, and I think we're
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: going to learn a lot about them over the next
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: five years, it's going to be a very exciting time
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: for brilliant political analysts like Chuck Dodd to help us
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: understand the answers to those two forks.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes, Elliott, though, I worry that we're we're
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: we can be constrained by history, and it goes back
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: to that failure of imagination. So how do how do
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: you both ground the work in history so that there's
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: there's a logic for readers like me versus the which
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: is how we began our conversation. This failure of imagination
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: issue that I have a friend of mine who says
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: this constantly about the Trump era failure of imagination. He goes,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: that's the number one thing he talks about all the
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: time when it comes to how why opponents keep keep
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: whiffing on Trump.
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: You know, I think it's sort of it it's it's
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: it's sort of that, you know, that classic idea that
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: you have to hold to contradictory I had thoughts in
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: your mind at the same time and not go crazy.
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is.
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: We can't be trapped by history, but we have to
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: look to history to understand how human beings behave in
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: a whole host of situations, and I've written a lot
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: about war over my career, and I think one of
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: the things that's interesting about writing on war is that
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: it's a singular human activity that we have always engaged in,
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: and you can you can see how patterns repeat. But
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: at the same time, you know, the only thing you
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: can truly hang your head on is that everything will change,
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: and this idea that you know every you know that
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: that everything must change so that everything can stay the same.
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: So I think we're we're always looking at, you know,
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: human motivation, understanding the way human beings consistently behave in war,
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: in politics, while overlaying on that all of the things
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: we know are going to be different, fundamentally different away
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: humanity has never experienced before, everything from artificial intelligence to
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: breakthroughs that are going on right now in the enhancement
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: of you know, biology, you know, the the enhancements that
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: we're seeing and the changes in climate in warfare. So
• 29:54
  Speaker 5: trying to take that sort of deeply rooted understanding of
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: history and human behavior and merge it with new, unprecedented
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: technologies and rightly turning that into you know, a story
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: that people want to read that's character driven. At the
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: center of all of these books are the characters, and
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: many of those characters have through lines that go from
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: twenty thirty four all the way to twenty eighty four,
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: both them individually and their children who appear in multiple books.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: What were your to both of you? What were some
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Did you have any books that you read in the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: past that attempted to do that served as pretty good
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: examples of what you were trying to do, or books
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: that you read to sort of help give you a
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: sense of, you know, how other authors have done this. Yes,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: what was your inspiration?
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Very consciously, as we sort of mapped out the whole
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: project was Cold War fiction? And what I mean by
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: that is there were many brilliant books films in the
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Cold War era that did help us imagine what the
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: terror and the horror of a global war would be like.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Think Doctor Strangelove, on the Beach by Neville Shoot, the
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Bedford Incident, Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy, Sir John Hacket,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: the Third World War. Those were very much in our
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: minds as cautionary fiction, and they succeeded. I think it
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: helped frighten the world that contributed to avoiding a nuclear confrontation.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: I always say the Cold War is the most important
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: war we ever didn't fight, and it is also a
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: singular victory for the West for our ideals, very very important,
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: and I think part of that can be traced to
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: this idea of cautionary fiction. So there are a few
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: books on my mind. And final thought Elliott's wonderful point
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: about character. You know, you can write all the policy
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: books in the world about how awful it would be
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: if there were a nuclear holocaust event. Read on the
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Beach by Neville shoot about Australia as the last country
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: left as a nuclear cloud descends to the south, knowing
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: they are all going to die, how do they spend
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: those final days? It's an extraordinary cautionary tale, deeply moving
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: novel that has always been.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Very much in my mind writing these books.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And how would you answer that, ont.
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: I mean, I agree, I mean all the books that
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: Jim mentioned have certainly been on our minds. I would
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: also add, you know, sort of in terms of the
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: scope of the trilogy. You know, books like you know
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: orson Scott, Cards Enders, Game Speaker for the Day, you know,
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: the works of Isaaca as an off foundation, and these
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: are not I mean, they're not really science fiction, although
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: by twenty eighty four sort of roving science fiction. But structurally,
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: you know, how do you tell a story over generations
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: so that you.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: There's a TV show on Netflix based on a book,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: The Three Body Problem, which is also one of these.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Sort of that is a terrific trilogy, by the way.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: And I have so a friend of mine is a
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: huge advocate of it, and I keep he's been pushing
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: me to do that. But when you were talking to
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: both of you, I kept thinking, you know, one of
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the movies that may have actually helped. We don't know
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: how much it helped, but I just think about the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: movie War Games, Yeah, and how it did catch it
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: got it went so mainstream. I have no idea whether
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I had an impact or not, but you kind of
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: hope it couldn't have hurt.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's one worth dusting off.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Given a well, I think it needs to be rebooted.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I cannot believe this is just I mean, in some
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: ways it was so ahead of its time. What happens
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: if a computer takes over our military arsenal Right? Like, like,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: my god, that turned to be way too precious, Elliott,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: you're about to say.
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: I was just going to say, I'm a huge fan
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: of that that movie too, Chuck, and we have a
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: tic tac toe reference in the books that is an homage, total.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Homage, A fantastic look. I got a few minutes left, Jim,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you did Southern Command. I was speaking with somebody who's
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: very aware of sort of how the Cuban military works,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: and I was reminded that the tourist industry is controlled
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: by the Cuban military, which is how they get their financing.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: This isn't going to be Venezuela, is it.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think Team Trump thinks it
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: is going to be.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: They think it is.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but boy, I'd be cautious there. The people of
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Cuba have no living memory of democracy. The people of
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: Cuba have a deeply embedded, hardcore military that's been trained
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: by Russia for decades. China has been a participant in it.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: It's going to be a very different and tougher nut
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: to crack than Venezuela. And I hope we are wise
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: enough not to leap in with military power. Having said
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: all that, we say in the world of investing, the
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: foremost expensive words are this time is different and I
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: wouldn't rule out that this time is different for Cuba.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: And the wild card in it is the Cuban American
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: community in South Florida, which you and I both know
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: pretty well. They could be potentially very engaged here and
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: I think Marco Rubio is the avatar for that.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: So tough one to call. But no, it's not going
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: to be as well.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's my look. We know what the
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: outcome is likely going to end up being, but this
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be Venezuela. And that's sort of what
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: I don't I think people have an expectation that this
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: is going to be They're going to snatch Raoul. You know,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: It'll be like taking one of those ninety year old Nazis,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: you know, and you know we get to frog march
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: them and everything folds. That doesn't feel like it's going
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, And what about the island itself. I
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: think the other thing I keep hearing is that, like
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you buy a house that needs to
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: be rebuilt, but it has a good foundation. I don't
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: know if there's a foundation. I think it's a I
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: think this is almost like an abandoned island. You got
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: to start from scratch when it comes to infrastructure and
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: things like that.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: I couldn't agree with you more. I think what is.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Underestimated is the scope of the problem here. This is
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: not a fixer up or this is a demolition project,
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: and uh, you know it, it is not going to
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: be easy. I think Venezuela, you can make the argument
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: they have so many resources with the oil, the gas,
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: the gold, the rearers. Venezuela could be Dubai on the Caribbean.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Cuba not so much. And and it's going to be expensive,
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: hugely expensive. And if we walk in there and suddenly
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: we get rid of the regime and we have to
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: then construct a new Cuba could be wildly expensive. I'm
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: not sure we thought through to the far end of
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: the economics of it.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: And Elliott, since this is your you get into a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: lot of writing. Is this what do you want to
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: do next? After this?
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: I you know.
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: I mean, both Jim and I have our own projects
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: that we do independently. So I have I have a
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: book that came out last summer called Sheep Dogs, which
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: is a thriller. It's kind of a heist novel, and
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: so I'm working on the sequel of that as well,
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: and so and that's set up as a be a
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: TV series over at Apple.
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: So I'm working hard on.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: That and it's pretty good. Hit the series ready to
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: go before finishing the second novel. Huh. Yeah, that's a
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: great deal in that.
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: And I know Jim's got his projects coming out that
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: I'm sure we'll talk about, but I will I will say.
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: You know, we've been working together on this since I
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: think twenty eighteen, and it's been it's been a lot
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: of fun. So handing in and publishing the last book,
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: at least for me, has been has been bittersweet.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: It's been a great ride.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: And I assume if somebody needs to read the first
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: two before they pick up twenty eighty four.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: Right, No, absolutely not, absolutely not. They all are very
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: independent of each other, but.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: You're rewarded a bit if you've read the other tes sure, sure, okay, okay.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: True for many trilogies.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: I am just finishing up a two volume work of
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: historical fiction, Chuck. First one came out last Fall, The
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Restless Wave.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: It's a novel bring You're Back and You're going backwards?
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Right it?
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: Sort of with that, true, I am exactly and there
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: are many lessons from World War Two that feel very
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: very influential impression right now. And then the sequel to
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: that novel, second volume, think Wins of War War in Remembrance.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: The second one is called The Turning Tide, and it
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: comes out in November, and those two I think have
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: some potential for future cinematics.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: We'll see there it is.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Look at you, you're mister ip. You got a lot
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: of eyep sitting out there, my friend, so do you, well,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: not as much as you, but it is a you
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: know how this world works these days, Elliott, you still
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: want to play in the independent arena in politics.
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: I don't think. I don't think.
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: I don't think right now, though I'm an avid watcher,
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: you know, and appreciate all the work that that you're
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: doing so as much.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: It's other people working, taking the work your dad did
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: and and what you were a part of and all
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: that stuff.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: And.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: Predicting global wars and predicting domestia.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: No, it is, but it's a bunch of patriots, so
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: you got to love that at the end of the day. Anyway. Congratulations,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I always learned something from you, Admiral.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: It's good to see Elliot. It's good to see you.
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: It's been too long, all right, My friends