The Ricochet Podcast - When the Robots Rule

Episode Date: September 22, 2017

This week, we’ve got Powerline’s John Hinderaker in the Long Chair®, John Yoo protecting us from sentient robots (read his new book Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War ), and the Hoover Institution’s Kori Schake with some thoughts on how to take down Rocket Man. Also, Minnesota statues and other assorted ephemera. Music from this week’s podcast: Rocket Man... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and John Hinderaker of Powerline sitting in for Rob Long.

I'm James Lilacs. Today we have John Yu talking about future war and Corey Shockey talking about the Norcs. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye welcome everybody it's the ricochet podcast number 370 we're brought to you by the fine people at lending tree you know rates always go up and they go down but regardless of what is happening with the rates you can always get the right offer for you with lendingtree.com find out just how much you can save right now by going to LendingTree.com slash Ricochet. And we're brought to you by The Great Courses. Hey, look, what are you waiting for? Get started now with The Great Courses Plus so you can dive deeper into areas you love to learn about. Sign up now at TheGreatCoursesPlus.com slash Ricochet. And we're brought to you by BombFell. It's an online personal styling service for men that helps you find the right clothes.

You only pay for what you keep and there's no charge to send anything back. Could it be any better? Sure. $25 off your first purchase if you go to BombFell.com slash Ricochet. Remember Rob Long, everybody? Because this is the... Jim Lee. Yeah, Rob who's now off, of course, making popular culture in 30-minute slabs, can't

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Minneapolis and John Hinderock from the Center of the American Experiment and Powerline blog, living out in some distant, shrouded, gated burb, I believe. Is that right, John? Yeah, well, I live in a burb, and I work in a burb, too, actually. At the moment, I'm in Golden Valley. Ah, Golden Valley, lovely place.

And you used to live, your house used to be around the corner from mine, so I drive past your old shack on a daily basis, I think. So here we are. You're in Golden Valley. I'm in Minneapolis. Peter Robinson in golden, sunny Sylvan we are. You're in Golden Valley. I'm in Minneapolis. Peter Robinson in Golden, sunny Sylvan, California. How are you, Peter? I'm well.

And I wonder if the two of you could semi-officially right now to get it done make me for the following hour an honorary Minnesotan. I just love hearing you guys talk about local politics, the community. And so all I want, I want no California, the least national politics we can. Of course, we have guests. But Minnesota, that's what I want. All right. How about this? John, you know this story, no doubt.

White woman candidate hands black man her used gum. I missed that one, James. Well, I'll find the story. Do go on. You were going to say something, John, to Peter. Well, I was going to say, Peter, that this is kind of an elite jurisdiction, and you can't just become an honorary Minnesotan. To do that, you must visit the Minnesota State Fair, and unfortunately, it's over for this year. So talk to us again in 2018.

All right. All right. I'll mark it on my calendar. It is and it isn't. I missed the fair this year because I was on the National Review cruise steaming across the Atlantic. So when I got back, I went to the fairgrounds. Everything was closed. There was no food.

There was nothing. But there were still the baskets of flowers. There were still the chairs. There was still the whole physical site of the fair shuttered, yes, as if expecting hurricanes or zombies. But it was still quite something to walk around it at the end of the summer and feel as if I hadn't missed it completely. I went to the Star Tribune's booth, which had a door open, and I stuck my head in and asked if there was anybody there. And if so, could I have some lip balm? Because the Star Trib gives free flavored, fair flavored lip balm every year and there were

two guys there and they gave me lip balm so i technically you don't have work for a newspaper that hands out lip balm we do this really minnesota is just a different world i can't even begin to compute that so um what's the deal they're taking down statues in min, too? You know, it's really funny, Peter, because across the south, much of America, leftists are demanding that statues of Confederate soldiers, Confederate generals be taken down, monuments to Robert E. Lee, and so on. You might think Minnesota would be immune, right? I mean, we're as northern as you can get. You know, the state of Minnesota joined the Union just in time for the Civil War. And fought, as I recall, it was a Minnesota regiment played a critical role at Gettysburg.

Am I remembering that right? Yeah, the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Regiment, one of the most heroic units in the history of the U.S. Army, made a famous suicide charge on the second day at Gettysburg that may have saved the battle. So you wonder, what the hey, if there's any place that should be immune to this statue mania, you would think it would be Minnesota. But it turns out that at the Minnesota Capitol, there are a number of statues. And one of the statues is of Christopher Columbus. The statue was donated many years ago by a group of Italian-Americans who lived in the Twin Cities. And it's been standing there innocently for, I don't know, 80 years or something like that. Twin Cities, and thousands of them have now signed a petition to remove the statue of Christopher

Columbus, who, according to the petition, wanted to extinguish Black and Native peoples, which is very bizarre. What? Yeah, it's very bizarre. Well, as I said in my post on Powerline, I don't think Columbus wanted to extinguish anybody, but there weren't any black peoples in the Americas when he was in the 15th century. So the drafters of the petition are a little confused about their history. So there are several kind of crazy elements to this whole campaign, one of which is that they've got a candidate for a statue to replace the statue of Christopher Columbus, and that is Prince Rogers Nelson, the recently deceased Minnesota rock star. Okay, and now Minnesota being Minnesota. At least he's from here. Give him that.

Yeah, that's true. There, there, that's from here. Give him that. Yeah, that's true. There, there. That's the Minnesotans. Here I sit in California trying to think how does this play out in Minnesota. And to me, the Minnesota, the hallmark of Minnesota politics is still good neighborliness. I imagine Minnesotans from this real assertion, crazy, badly written manifesto by the lefties who claim that Christopher Columbus was trying to extinguish black people who weren't. All right. It's crazy, but I imagine the good people in Minnesota are thinking, well, now, is there something we can do to accommodate them?

How's this going to play out? Well, genteel old consensus liberalism is coming up fast against the sort of area of the left infected with the Antifa spirit. So it's amusing to watch the old guard confronted by people who do not share any commitment to this, quote, civility in Minnesota nice, but who prefer to rant and scream and yell because that generally gets your attention nowadays. Right, John? Well, that's right. And the dynamic is also changing because we have much more of a conservative movement now in Minnesota than we used to. There's sort of consensus, nice liberalism really is a thing of the past. And of course, that's driven in considerable part by

the organization that I lead, Center of the American Experiment. But there's another twist to the statue story that I find highly entertaining. If you go back to the leftist's petition, they denounce Christopher Columbus and they want his statue removed because he was, quote, a man who murdered, raped, and enslaved black and native peoples in the Americas. Now, that's historically confused, as we've noted. At best, but I pointed out in a post on Powerline that they got to be careful, or anybody that thinks about going along with this petition drive, the path of least resistance always to give in, but they got to be careful because there's also a statue on the Minnesota Capitol grounds, along with a number of others, of Leif Erikson, donated, no doubt, by some

Norwegian Americans living in Minnesota. And there's a really nice statue of Leif Erikson with his Viking helmet and a big sword out in front of the Capitol. Well, I assume most people are aware that the Vikings practiced slavery, and Lee Ferrickson himself did come from a slave-owning family. And if the objection to Columbus is that in addition to having something to do with slavery, he was guilty of rape and murder, well, you know, there have never in human history been rapists and murderers who have equaled the Vikings.

Rape and murder are us. So you're right. If these statues go down, then it will be notable to the people who walk by them and say, oh, there was something there and others not. There's some items that are a little bit larger than this. For example, a lake, a lake that looms large in the consciousness of Minnesotans and Minneapolis is Lake Calhoun. It's one of the beautiful lakes in our uptown district. Right, exactly. That's Calhoun.

You know, James, I've lived here for 40-odd years. I had no idea that Lake Calhoun was named after John C. Calhoun when he was Secretary of War until like two years ago when all of a sudden this controversy sprang up. I mean, nobody knew that. Nobody, I mean, Lake Harriet named after somebody's wife. You don't really think much about that. You think, it's a series of

phonemes that attach to a body of water at a time and a place. And nobody ever went down to Calhoun to lay out in the sun or to take a little, you know, paddleboard ride and thought, boy, what really makes this special is the underlying notion of white privilege that the name suggests. It's a qualification. Right. So it's Calhoun now, and they want to change it back to what they say is the original Dakota name.

Now, how they know that that's the original name and nobody ever called it something like that before, I don't know. But the Dakota name is Bidet McKay something like that before i don't know but the dakota name is bidet mckay scott that's the bravest attempt at pronouncing that name i've heard anybody make it it's scott yeah it means white earth lake okay so no one no one will ever call it that ever period except the people who painfully attempt to make sure that everything is correct and will themselves be vilified in the end for one mistake and driven out of polite society. But nobody will. I mean, so you have a choice between pretending that it's no longer going to be known as Calhoun in people's heads and it's this other thing or risking public calumny by actually saying, I'm driving down to Calhoun. Because at a certain point, it will be seen as an act of intentional offense to call the lake by its name because of the connotations that you

yourself don't mean to give. This is peculiar. It's kind of like the Dartmouth Indians, right, Peter? Don't start. We'll do a separate show on that sometime. So listen, we've got guests coming on, but one more as an almost honorary, as a one year to wait, and then I'll be an honorary Minnesotan for the two of you. So I've known all – I was going to say all three of you. The third person I'm talking about, of course, is Scott Johnson, who's a friend of both of you and a colleague of John Hinderacker on Powerline. So give us a two-minute update on the state of the conservative movement in Minnesota, because it's real now. I've known you guys for so long that it's gone. I've known

you. I've watched it go from a glimmer in your eye to something real, and then just say a word or two about the Center for the American Experiment, a totally commendable operation that people in the upper Midwest who are listening to this podcast should hear about it. Turn Minnesota into a red state. By red, I mean conservative. And I've said five years purple, ten years red. And my organization, Center for the American Experiment, is taking the lead in that effort. And I could go on and on about all of our projects and programs. I'll spare you that.

Some people say Minnesota is already purple. So currently, as of the last election, Republicans control both the Minnesota House and the Minnesota Senate. And I think for the first time since Senate elections became partisan, which was only in about, I think, the early 1970s, if I remember correctly. However, that said, what did our Republican legislature do in the last session? They increased spending by just a hair under 10%. And so we are not anywhere near what the three of us would consider to be any kind of conservative goal line.

But we are campaigning very actively for reduced spending, lower taxes, more business-friendly climate, and everything else that goes with the conservative agenda. And give us 10 seconds on what people in Minnesota who just heard you mention the Center for the American Experiment, where can they go to sign up to learn more about it? Well, go to AmericanExperiment.org, and you can learn a lot about the organization. You also can sign up for our fall briefing coming up on Monday, October 2nd. And Mark Stein is going to be the speaker at this year's fall briefing, so they shouldn't miss it. Excellent. Yeah, he's right i mean there are a lot

of people outstate uh who voted for trump who otherwise had probably never voted for a democrat before a republican before which is interesting to see here in the city where i live there's the usual arguments that well look around we're booming we're doing wonderful and life is good and it's all in a progressive high tax high regulation environment so argue with that huh yeah well one of my one of my main efforts is to point out to people that we're not booming actually minnesota's performance and the performance of the twin cities metro area are both below average ah john john john have you have you not looked downtown bristling with cranes as new skyscrapers full of housing go up there's a lot of people who

are moving downtown. And I'll give them this. Downtown is filling up with awful lots of people. And a lot of those people are paying too much for their mortgage. I know it because they probably aren't going to LendingTree. Did you know, however, that whether you're going to a condo in downtown Minneapolis or a small town somewhere in Texas, you could get, well, you could save $20,000 or more. But 80% of the people only get one mortgage offer.

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No terms, no conditions apply to John Yoo. Because when we have him on, anything goes. We're going to talk, I don't know, baccarat, tuxedos, international intrigue, cruise ships, or maybe what's going on in the law areas of the world today. You know him. John, welcome back to the podcast. Hey, James. Hey, everybody. Thanks for having me back on.

You have a new book by some odd, strange coincidence, and here you are again to talk about it. Striking Power, How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War. Now, anytime somebody says the rules have changed, I'm a little bit suspicious because the old rules have a way of asserting themselves. Tell us what's different. James, I know you're going to like this book because of your love for Star Trek. Yes, absolutely. James I know you're going to like this book because of your love for Star Trek Yes absolutely But I got to say John even so in Star Trek When every system was down Riker grabbed the joystick and said

Ramming speed like it was two ships on the high sea Some things don't change This actually appeals to the older Star Trek generation Which you and I are members of Which was the original older Star Trek generation, which you and I are members of, which was the original Kirk Star Trek, where all the machines always take over and try to destroy planets, and then the Enterprise has to intervene and stop them. So this book is a response. Actually, it is a response to these concerns that people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking

and Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple, have all signed these letters in the last few weeks calling for a ban on all artificial intelligence research and advanced robotics in warfare. And so although we started this book three or four years ago, we wrote it with the idea that we were going to respond to these people who want to ban the progress of technology and war and hey john it's peter robinson here and the answer first of all before you give the answer to that before you reply to that impulse and give us the thesis of the book what does that impulse arise from do they really they don't they're not saying we should stop all war. We should just stop with the weapons we have. What – I mean if you were to make the best of their argument that you could, what would you say? I think the best – it's interesting. Part of it is psychological. feel uh guilty the way uh you know robert oppenheimer the nuclear bomb uh felt guilty

that somehow they'd added to the arms race as if uh if they hadn't been around the u.s and the soviet union would have gone to come to peace right away in a mutual understanding of universal love and harmony but i think there's also this uh putting aside the fear and i think there's a cultural fear which uh i think has only been stoked because James Cameron is such a good director. And so everyone's watched all these Terminator movies where Arnold Schwarzenegger, we shoot him and he keeps coming back because he's a robot warrior. Yes, yes. I mean we should have shot him because of all the stuff he did as governor. Exactly.

Robot warrior. But I think the third argument, I think the more serious argument that gets obscured by the cultural fears is that people are worried that we are losing grasp of technology, that computer – and there's some truth to this – that computers are becoming so advanced. Programming is called the AIML, artificial intelligence slash machine learning. We're at the point where computer programs are programming themselves. And so people are becoming worried now that we can know in a few years, we're no longer going to be able to even understand what our computer programs are doing and how to control them. So John, this is John Hinderacher. I want to just follow up on that a little bit. Is this a serious concern, the idea that there could be a sort of revolt of the robots?

They could run off on their own and try to take things over from us? I know. When I started working on this, I knew that this was a concern, but it's actually very broadly held amongst not just scientists, but also political theory and philosophers and political scientists. In fact, I would say it's probably, it might even be a majority of the people who write in this field are genuinely worried. So they say, take an example, there's a difference between the computers beating us in chess, and then the computers just beating us in go which is this weird uh asian game and uh i tried to put that all behind me when i came to america so i didn't learn go so it's actually easier to learn than

chess i go ahead i have a word on go but go ahead yourself oh yeah oh god peter robinson playing Oh, got Peter Robinson playing Go in his I sawed polo shirt and I sawed – All right, all right. Man, tuck it, red pants. Subtle challenge on you. So I think with chess, what we did was we basically programmed all possible moves in chess. And a computer, when they beat the chess champion, just quickly processes through all of them. When we beat them and when the computers beat us in Go, instead what they did is they fed all the games that had ever been played in Go. And then they said to the computer, program yourself to play this game.

And so when the computer beat us in Go, it actually used strategies that no human being had ever devised before. So it actually was creative and it learned rather than just mechanically processing through every possible move. I have nothing to add to that. That's exactly the point I was going to make. I was speaking to a physicist here at Stanford, and it turns out that Go is a very, it's the game where you flip, the bead is black on one side and white on the other side, and the object of the game is to end up with more of your color on the board. Conceptually, it's pretty easy. But, of course, with a big board, and the Go board is quite big, it becomes fantastically complicated.

It turns out it's been played for centuries, and there have been Go masters who have been documenting moves for centuries. So we have a lot of data about the kinds of moves that have been made in Go. And precisely the point that you made just now, John, is the point that this physicist made to me, that the remarkable thing is not that the computer was able to search the database and come up with moves that would beat the opponent, the human opponent was then facing. Instead, the remarkable thing that took everybody's breath away was that the computer was able to develop strategies, stratagems, tactics that had never been used in the history of the game. Yeah, but John, let's leave the game of Go behind and go back to the original question. It sounds to me like your answer to that question was, yes, there is a very real risk that computers and robots could stage some kind of revolt, invent their own strategies and their own goals, and take over from us. So, for example... What a great idea for a movie. Yeah, right. For example, take all the sex robots away from us.

You know, so is that right? I mean, this is really something we should be worried about. So this is why this is the main thesis of the book is actually this is exaggerated fear, because what robots do and what cyber and space weapons do is actually make war far less destructive, much more precise, and ultimately we think will lead to less war overall. Because look at drones that we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the leading edge of the kind of technologies we're going to see deployed in war. But even with those weapons, you can see the bombings are much more precise. First of all, our own soldiers are taken off the battlefield. And so they're not at risk. And then the targets were hitting them with such precision that you can

destroy the factory, which we used to carpet bomb in order to destroy world war two, or even would use dumb bombs and destroy miles in the, the wars of the 20th century after world war two. Now those kinds of targets can be hit by single missile fired a single time with almost no damage to the targets around it and the other thing about the advances and technology is that when you marry them to high speed computing robotics plus high speed computing plus precision missions munitions and sensors in space and real-time communications means that war itself is so fast.

If you go peer back behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Persian Gulf War in 1991, these were wars where we suffered virtually no casualties. We basically beat one of the largest armies in the world in 100 hours or three weeks it's incredible that fast paced web uh warfare which they merit which the united states has a great advantages and actually leads to far less casualties and death and harmful wars so i actually think that's the trade-off so you could say okay maybe there's this risk in the future uh we may lose control these uh robots and computers so that's not happened yet and there's no evidence yet that that would happen. But we'd have to trade away all the gains we can get now from all these precision technologies and the lowering of harm and death in wartime. Fastest with the mostest, and we do that because we can project power.

We can get there quickly. We can move carrier groups. But projecting power means something completely different when it's being done from above by a satellite that is penetrating your grid and turning off your power i mean that in a stroke can nullify sort of the uh the material advantage that we have which is yes yes makes it one thing is so the most maybe the most controversial part of the book uh would be that we actually call for the use of these weapons against economic targets to civilian infrastructure. So take an example. An old-fashioned example is in the Kosovo War, we actually dropped special bombs on electrical transmission networks in Belgrade to paralyze uh the you know paralyze uh serbia and we made up all kinds of convoluted reasons why this was okay even though really it was

designed just to pressure the serbians to get rid of milosevic now we can imagine what we can do with cyber weapons or weapons from space or even small tiny drones you know the next fleet of drones are not going to be predators and reapers they're going to be uh swarms of drones about the size of a bird and we're just going to release them and then they're going to swarm and strike the target now we could do things like if we if we're having a contest or dispute another country we could just shut down their stock market for a day or close down their electrical grid and put pressure on them in a way that economic sanctions do, but not as bluntly and causing as much harm. So, but John, you're describing these things with us being on the giving end and not the

receiving end. I mean, other countries are going to develop the same stuff. What happens when somebody sets a flock of birds against us? That's why you're going to see peter writing from flocks of birds and palo alto just like uh at the in that movie that hitchcock movie the birds exactly no so no but you're right the first of all one one point is just that uh the the more uh the more real politic point is the Russians and Chinese are rapidly advancing in these areas. We have a huge – we started out with a huge advantage.

I have to say the Obama administration really restrained our progress in these areas because they were hoping that Russia and China would also reciprocate and that we'd read some kind of modus vivendi with them. So we wouldn't use weapons against each other. We wouldn't advance robotic weapons that's why uh for the last two three years the united states has not responded to russia whether they tried to hack the election or not or china stealing the entire government database of personnel we didn't do anything because the united states was hoping they would restrain themselves if we restrained ourselves that instead what they did they took advantage of us for two years, three years. And I think that's how it can happen.

They actually see these technologies as a way to leapfrog our enormous conventional advantage. But then the second point I'd say is, yes, all these things make us also vulnerable. I mean, we're also subject to attack too. And strategists say when offensive weapons are really cheap like you know nuclear weapons and defense is really expensive like missile defense then you have to defend yourself through deterrence and so i think we're going to return in the book we argue we're probably going to return to a world of of mad you know mutually assured destruction but it's going to also have to apply in cyber it's also going to apply with robotic weapons until we can build

cheaper defenses. John, I'm still hung up on one point. I'm going to give you one more chance to address it, and you'd better get it right this time. So you sound, I'm trying to figure out whether it's because you find the whole idea so amusing or whether you really just it doesn't bother you but you sound almost glib about this notion to put it in crude science fiction terms that one day all of these robots in the sky and flocks of birds flying over palo alto may turn against us and and and you grant that very serious people, we can decide whether they're serious people – but people who are right in the middle of the technical work involved in artificial intelligence, to name two, Elon Musk and Wozniak of Apple fame, are worried about this themselves. It's not as if we have the scientists who are involved, the technical guys who are most involved in all of this stuff saying oh come on that's a ridiculous worry they're saying yes as a matter of fact we should be worried and we're not

worried enough and john you says well yes yes but before they turn against us think of all the good they could do that's unsatisfying so why i originally uh i wanted to call the book um embrace the machines because because i thought i thought actually the robots could bring so much good to the human condition that this end of days fear of the robots actually taking over such a low probability that it makes no sense. Now, my co-author and my publisher vetoed this because they said this sounds like a book about having sex with robots. And I said, are you idiots? Can you imagine how many books we would sell if they actually thought it was about sex with robots? It would be number one on the Amazon bestseller list. My serious point is, I guess it's as you say, Peter, I do think that the gains and benefits from – you're seeing them in the regular economy every day, but I think the gains and benefits in wartime are so vast that we can do so much good in reducing the harm from war, even given that there will be vulnerabilities and even, that we might use these on each other, putting against this,

you know, in a way it's a funny thing. We're almost anthropomorphizing the robots. We're saying, Oh, if we give more power and discretion to robots, they're going to use them for the same reasons humans would be use them. Is it just to take over?

I don't see why we should assume robots would want to take over and run our world. We can always, we're the ones who still build them, design them and decide whether to deploy them. so i think we still ultimately have control over them sounds like somebody who himself is already a machine an android and has just been sent forth to make a very personable human case for their eventual rule uh if we had a void conf machine from blade runner here john i'd hook you up to it and ask you i can't wait did you say

did you see the clips for the sequel? I know. They look great, don't they? Actually, it looks really good. It's enough to get me back in the theater. And if you want to get back into the bookstore, or for that matter, go to Amazon, you can buy John's new book, Striking Power, How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War.

You know, we could have peppered you with some questions about current events, but as Paul Harvey said, this is the news of lasting significance today and the stuff that we'll be talking about decades hence. You were there first. We're the mostest. Thanks, John. Thanks, guys. John, when you see Hal, tell him I said hi.

Don't sing that Daisy song. He's already watching all of us. What do you mean, Stephen? All right. See you later, John. And he's absolutely right. I have a green light on my computer right now that it's interrogating me. I have cameras that I set up around the house to detect various things.

In 1984, it turns out to have been a volunteer project. We all signed up for it. But 1984 isn't the only old dystopian that came out of the old days. When John mentioned Star Trek at the beginning of it, there are two Star Trek episodes about the very thing that he's talking about. One is a society that simulates war, simulates atomic bombs, and then has its populace walk into disintegration booths in order to be actual casualties. That way they don't destroy property and they continue the war without wrecking their civilization. And if you think it's ridiculous that people would willingly walk into a disintegration

booth for the good of society, you haven't been to Northern Europe. The other story, interesting, came about on the cruise when we had a panel about Donald Trump's first X number of months. And Mark Halperin, the novelist, the great novelist, you know Mark Halperin, right? Winter's Tale, Soldier in the Great War. I mean, starts making a Star Trek reference, which just cracked me up, of all people.

It's like, Jonah Goldberg is not on this ship. I'm the Star Trek guy here, Mark. Don't walk on my territory. But he was talking about the episode in the Corbinite Maneuver, in which essentially he was comparing Trump's rhetoric to the giant ship that showed up, which was huge, but eventually hollow and had no force behind it. And the line from that episode that Kirk had was how he was going to defeat this standoff, not by chess, but by poker. And that's the thing. Poker, the human element, the ability to – the machinations of the human mind and personality. When a machine can emulate those, if it's possible, it probably is to a recognizable degree, then we're in trouble.

That will be John's second book. And I would love to have him give a lecture on this. I would love to have him lecture, co-lecture with me on the foreign policy cybernetic implications of Star Trek. It'd be a great, great courses series, don't you think? We should talk to them. Now, when I say videos, I mean the Great Courses Plus, and we're big fans of them, and that's why we keep telling you about them, and that's what I'm doing right now. Great Courses Plus is an on-demand video service with a wide variety of engaging lectures taught by award-winning professors.

Topics like politics, business, photography, cooking. Perfect way for people who love to learn to get unlimited access to over 8,000 fascinating videos. So what are you starting for? What are you starting for? Get waiting now. That's right. There's even courses on how to read advertising copy, I'm sure. Great Courses Plus, you can dive deeper into areas you love to learn about, such as the Philosopher's Toolkit.

This is a lecture that seems particularly keen today. It's got a lecture called Bogus Arguments and How to Diffuse Them, taught by Professor Patrick Grimm. In this lecture, you'll take a grand tour of the world of bad arguments. You hear none of those here, right? But you hear them out in the world. From ad hominid attacks to false alternatives to hasty generalizations, the lecture presents the most common logical

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Sign up at thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. And thanks, of course to great courses for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast well gentlemen i was listening to mpr this morning a round table of long faces and pulled chins and much distress over the president's speech at the un one of them said uh that if you read it it sounds like a basic basic border boilerplate not that bad but then he starts getting into scary stuff about national sovereignty and what that means. How'd you guys take the speech?

Oh, I thought the thing, I have to say I read it. I did not listen to his, I just came to it later in the day. So I read it over and I only saw clips of his delivery. So if I can't, I can't grade him on his delivery, although everybody in my life seemed to think it was pretty good. What did I think of the speech? I thought the speech was a darned good speech at pretty nearly every level. It was well-constructed.

It made one powerful point after another. The passage that I liked, that I thought was the most powerful and in some ways the most pertinent, was on Venezuela, where he said it's not a failure of leadership. It's a textbook case of what socialism does when it is put into effect. Very powerful, very good to have a president of the United States saying these things in the General Assembly of the United Nations. My own feeling reading it, as I said, I read it rather than listen to it, but saying that we're prepared for the total destruction of north korea was just yes you want to stand up and you want to you want to say we're willing to fight

it would have been better in my judgment if he had said we're prepared to destroy the regime which has enslaved north korea it was just a little bit off because it suggested that we were willing to wipe out lots of civilians with the leadership. One error there. And what, of course, the press isn't quoting. They take that quotation that we of thing unnecessary, and we'll see how you do. It was a direct challenge to the United Nations to do its job. Terrific, I thought. What about you, John? I thought it was an excellent speech, and I agree with your last point there, Peter. Remember when George W. Bush did this before the invasion of Iraq? He went before the General Assembly, and he challenged the United Nations. And it was UN resolutions, after all, that were

being disregarded and violated by Saddam's regime. And I think it's good to challenge the United Nations. I thought that was one of several really excellent aspects of the speech. Well, perhaps we could bring in somebody who studies these things for a living. That would be our next guest, Cori Schake, research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She blogs regularly for shadow government on foreign policy and is on the editorial board of Orbis and the board for Center for European Reform. Hello, welcome to the podcast. Hey there. We're talking about the total destruction of North Korea because it's Friday and we're just in that kind of a giddy mood.

What does that mean exactly? Well, it's not entirely clear, to be honest, because the administration has been varying in their response to it. The president has been incendiary in his rhetoric about it. Secretary of Defense Mattis has typically been much more restrained in talking, for example, about the U.S. destroying the regime in retaliation for any attack on the U.S. or its allies. But a week or so ago, coming out of the cabinet meeting at the White House after the North Korean nuclear test, Secretary Mattis suggested that any threat to the U.S. or its allies could result in destruction of the regime.

The president in his U.N. speech talked about the destruction of the entire country. Mistake, right? Hi, Corey, it's Peter here. That was a mistake? Yeah, I think it was a mistake. I think it's actually very much in our interest to make a distinction between the leadership of North Korea and the entire country of North Korea,

because not to do so punishes the prisoners in North Korea twice over. So, Corey, go ahead, John. John Hinderacker here. I don't disagree with that. But on the other hand, is it so bad to kind of keep them guessing? Is it so bad to have a president rattle the sabers a little bit? It reminds me a bit of when Ronald Reagan said the bombing will begin in five minutes, you know, testing a microphone. You know, I mean, I think that everybody understands that what we want to do is get rid of the regime, not kill everybody in North Korea.

But I don't think it's so bad for the president to say that kind of thing. So I have a couple of reactions to that. I think the Reagan example is slightly different because we were dealing with a Soviet Union that we had 40 years of experience of understanding each other. I think the margin for error is slimmer in the case of North Korea. A lot of Americans talk confidently that, for example, the Kim regime is only after nuclear weapons to deter an attack on itself. I don't think any of us really know that. And I think we ought to be a lot humbler in talking about what we actually know about North Korea because, you know, it's the most isolated country in the world.

It's a regime that for the past year, for reasons that at least I don't understand, has slammed the gas pedal to the floor on its nuclear tests and on its long-range ballistic missile programs. So I think we ought to leave ourselves a lot more space that we don't understand what's going on. And that's what makes me, in this particular instance, more hesitant. he believes the Trump administration's threats to the North Korean regime actually have returned us for the first time since 1999 to a place where the North Korean regime might actually negotiate over its nuclear program. Wow, that's actually a kind of act of magnanimity on Bill Perry's part because he's a lifelong Democrat and was, of course, Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton. Notably, he advocated the preventative American attack on the North Korean programs, and he believes that the Trump administration's moves have made it more likely that the North Koreans will actually negotiate reductions or

limitations on the program. Corey, here's the mystery. Peter Robinson speaking here. Here's the mystery to me. There's only one? Yeah, actually, there is only one because I'm so ignorant. I only see a few points at a time. To those of you who actually study this and know a lot about it, I'm sure there are many mysteries, but there's only one to me. Why haven't the Chinese taken action against this lunatic? That's such a good question, Peter. That's the key to the whole puzzle, isn't it?

So my own sense is that the answer is the chinese are not unhappy with this outcome right right it distracts the united states from bad chinese behavior trying to intimidate countries in the south china sea and the east china sea away from china's regional ambitions and And, you know, it has the potential to separate the United States from its close allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, which is also advantageous to China's aims. What I think the Chinese have inadequately taken on board is that this threat, this problem that the North Koreans created, the United States didn't create, this problem has the potential to dramatically tighten America's alliance relations. I think in large part because of the smart way the Trump administration is playing this, and particularly the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense are playing this

with Japan and with South Korea. It also has the potential to permanently increase American military presence in China's neighborhood in order to be able to target any missiles that the North Koreans fire or any nuclear weapons, or to keep alive the option of regime change if we feel really threatened by what the North Koreans are doing. So I think the Chinese are underestimating, and I'm sorry, I left out another important point, which is a war between North Korea and the United States would bring commerce to and from Asia to a grinding halt. And the Chinese have a lot less slack in the rope to, deescalate the situation, leave the regime in place nominally, but just take care of that meddlesome little guy? That would be a terrific outcome for American interests and I think also for Chinese interests.

I hope they do it. I'm sorry. I know I hope they do it. I don't. I'm sorry. I know I just repeated the question. I'm sorry. It's the flaw of a host who had to. I'm sorry.

Stop. I asked the same question. Let's just not do that then. I thought that question had not been asked. I'm sorry. I had to take my dog outside to go to the bathroom. So that's what it was. Okay, that is the absolute best excuse of all time. I don't even have a dog, but I'm going to use it over and over when I miss the uptake.

We're just a happy family here at Ricochet, Corey. And we record these podcasts. We fit them in with our home lives as best we can. Fantastic. I'm in favor of it. Okay. We'll cut this part out, and I'm sorry about that. I thought that's a good time to ask.

John, you probably had something. John, you asked a question. I'm going to think about something that has to do with China and North Korea. Go ahead, John. All right. It sounds like you're not particularly unhappy with what the Trump administration has done. What do you think we should do going forward to try to deal with North Korea? So I'm unhappy with the president's rhetoric because I think it's incendiary and unnecessarily so.

And it makes it harder for us to do what we need to do in North Korea, which in my judgment is to stop focusing so much on North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons. They already have 20. They already crossed that threshold some time ago. The last four American presidents made that possible because nobody was willing to pull the trigger and attack the North Koreans given the vulnerability of South Korea to a retaliatory attack. And that strikes me as a judgment that continues to govern and constrain America's options. What I think we should be doing that we're not doing is diminish the political value to the North Koreans for crossing the threshold. That is, rather than focus on the possession of nuclear weapons, we should be consistently at all levels of the American government

reinforcing that North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons does nothing to change the circumstances that have existed since 1953, which is that if North Korea attacks South Korea, Japan, the United States, or any of our other allies, we will eliminate the government of North Korea, and we will install one more to the liking of South Korea. That threat has prevented a North Korean attack on South Korea since 1953. I think it continues to restrain North Korea, and I think that's where our emphasis should be. Corey, last question. One of the things the president said was that there were gas lines in Pyongyang, which you see three cars perhaps idling and waiting to gas up at the pump, not gas lines like we saw in the 70s. But in the 70s, of course, we had an oil shortage. We were

running out of this stuff and now we're awash in it. There's a new strike in the North Sea. There's all kinds of oil that diminishes the ability of russia to use their money to cause mischief now you're on the board of the center for european reform how does american energy policy uh give us new power perhaps when it comes to getting what we want done in europe for the benefit of Western civilization? Such a fantastic question. It diminishes the influence of all the bad guy states and increases the possibility that America can reward its allies if President Trump first learns to understand that playing team sports is America's great advantage in the international order. Helping our allies with trade and with energy accessibility is a great way to diminish

Russia's ability, Iran's ability, Venezuela's ability to keep their own limping economies afloat and to put America's allies at risk. So it's a fantastic way. And moreover, it's a magnificent example of how American ingenuity, American technology, American law creates innovation that solves problems for the world. Corey, thanks so much. And if our usual history of can-kicking continues with North Korea, we'll have you back in the podcast in 10 years to talk about what to do about it. That, too, would be a good outcome to this problem.

Hope to have you back much, much sooner than that. Thanks for joining us today. Corey, thank you. Thanks. I'm just not crazy about the whole Rocket Man insult. I know Scott Adams will say that all the defenders say that this is really great, that this is how he freezes and personalizes and makes a catchy phrase that everybody remembers. But it just makes me think of Elton John. And it also makes me think, unfortunately, of some of Elton John's more

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just does his job. The things that he's trying to do are popular. He's trying to get the economy moving. He's defending the U.S. in foreign policy. He's doing what he can from a regulatory, administrative standpoint on immigration. And these are popular things. And I think if he doesn't allow himself to be distracted by some of the craziness going on on the left, we will see his approval continue to rise. The other thing he's doing that I think is smart is a throwback to the Bill Clinton strategy of triangulation. He is not tying himself to the anchor that is congressional popularity.

He's shown that he's willing to go directly to Schumer and Pelosi and try to negotiate a deal. And people like that. And so I think that if you put aside a few self-inflicted wounds here and there, Trump has been doing a very good job. And I think that people see that he's doing a good job. And most important, if like Ronald Reagan, he succeeds in really getting the economy moving and jobs being created, whether they like the policies in the first instance is not so important because they will like the effects of the policies. You go on.

No, so that's it. I'm optimistic. Well, that success of getting the economy going happens when you get out of the way and when you remove the boat anchors we've draped around the economy's neck. Part of that is tax reform. Peter, do you think that he's got a handle on this or is he going to leave it to Congress or is he going to go to Pelosi and Schumer and the nightmare of having them do our tax reform rears its head? He can't possibly go to Pelosi and Schumer on tax reform. The Democratic Party is now the party of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. That's the energized base. That's the source of the funding for the

Democratic Party. And they understand only one kind of tax reform, and that is to raise everybody's taxes. He cannot go to them. So the question is whether he can get the Republicans in Congress pulled together. And my answer to that is sure he can. Tax reform is not nearly as complicated, politically complicated. Well, complicated in the legislation involved and the substance of the issue, but it's not also more to the point. It's not nearly as politically complicated as health care reform. They'll get it done. It probably won't be the kind of dramatic tax reductions. Well, it can't be the kind of reductions we saw in 1982 and then again in 1986 under Ronald Reagan because high rates – the high rate in those days was very high.

It took it from 70 – Reagan took it from 70 percent on top payers down to 28 percent. There's not room to do that kind of a dramatic swing. But getting corporate tax rates down, the economy is already ticking up. I'm with John Hinderacker completely. If Trump just stops the unforced errors and does his job and above all moves on tax reform and gets the economy growing at 3% or higher, Republicans are going to have a good year in 2018 and Donald Trump gets to be president for more years if he wants the job, I think. You have just described a scenario that has 40% of the country looking for hemlock online. And that's a good thing, James.

Yes, because they believe that we will have descended into a dystopian authoritarian abyss from which the country will never continue. Well, it'll be fun to see them go mad if that's the case, because mad is what they seem to be going constantly with no, with the foots on the gas, and they seem to think that the rest of the country is willing to follow them in their derangement, and that just doesn't happen. People look at a lot of these guys and say, there's something wrong with you

that you are this spun up constantly about something that I just personally don't see. And you know me, I've never been a Trump guy, personally don't like him, but want the administrations to succeed in a variety of conservative and right side ideas. So, you know,

vacillate between hope and eye rolling, but it's one of those weeks of hope. So there you have it. And there you had it in the sense that it was the podcast. It's not over yet because I have to tell you about Bombfell, the great courses and LendingTree, all of those places, wonderful sponsors, and they will help you save money, look better, and be smarter. That's quite the trifecta. The Ricochet store also will be happy to relieve you of some of your money in exchange for Ricochet-branded swag, bags, pins, USB cards, the whole thing.

It's there. And if you enjoyed this by any means, if you can go to iTunes and leave a nice little review, that helps to surface the show. More people hear it. More people subscribe. Ricochet prospers. That's a win-win for everybody.

And it also kind of involves you people who are, don't go. Now, I know what you're saying. You're heading off because you haven't joined yet and you feel guilty. Well, you should. Look, there's a cheap little podcast for you for $2.50 a month. Would it kill you? It's half the price of a cup of coffee. So sign up, please, and we'll stop guilting you.

We'll guilt everybody else, but you will have a warm feeling of self-regard for knowing that you've chipped in. John, a pleasure. Enjoy this Minnesota day. It's going to be 95 degrees and sunny. Wow. Oh, too hot. Thanks a lot, James. It was fun.

Peter, we'll see you later. And everybody, thanks for listening. And we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, James. Ta-da! She packed my bags last night pre-flight Zero hours

9 a.m. And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then I miss the earth so much I miss my wife It's lonely out in space Such a timeless life

I think it's gonna be a long, long time The touchdown brings me round again to find I'm not rocket man. I'm a rocket man. Burning out his kids up there. Think it's gonna be a long, long time The touchdown brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home

Oh no, no, no I'm a rocket man Rocket man Burning out his view of heaven Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids In fact it's cold as ice And there's no one there to raise them If you did And all this science I don't understand

It's just my job five days a week Rocket Man The touchdown brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home No, no, no, no I'm a rocket man Rocket man Burning at the speeds of heavy fire I think it's gonna be a long, long time The touchdown brings me round again to find

I'm not the man they think I am at home Oh no, no, no I'm a rocket man Rocket man Burning out his fears of daring Ricochet. Join the conversation. Thank you.