.. thank you. [applause] nussle i think we have got some time left for questions and responses. i look forward to engaging with

you. i think they have a microphone to go around. >> if you have a question please wait for the green blight to appear on the microphone and say your name and ask your question. >> my name is captain rich at the department. i wonder about ten years ago when i was and could cadet talking about cooking and machine gun on to the drone and the instructor said that wasn't ethical. when did change go from and thomas weapons being on ethical and being okay and widespread? >> it's a great question because

it's almost two parts. it's when did the attitude change that we could move into this year and second is can it ever be ethical, is it ethical or not? and the magic moment as he was actually an air force colonel i talked with described 9/11. basically there is a before and after to the relationship with the robotics industry and the pentagon. prior to 9/11 most the companies couldn't even get their calls returned by the pentagon. after 9/11, one of the executives described how they were told, quote, make them as fast as you can. and it's the same thing you receive with different specialty because robotics is a wide field whether you are talking about the drones to unmanned platforms. within the eod community they have small numbers of robots before 9/11 but they wouldn't use them because it was seen as them also courageous thing to do

and in that community and they have what is called the ski-ski effect. that is a certain day in iraq we lost to eod soldiers whose names ended in ski-ski and the community basic attitude changed to you know what, we may -- the courage aspect really doesn't matter. we have to start using the systems. we are losing people too quickly. with pacbots they describe the moment being the deployed experimental ones out to the very first forces in afghanistan who were trying to investigate these bunker complex and realized the technology they were using to investigate the bunkers and see if there is combatants still inside or weapons, it was the very same technology we were using back in world war ii and vietnam. a guy with a flashlight and a pistol. so they were asking afghan allies is to go in first to check that out and as one of them put it, quote, we began to

run out of afghans. that's when the attitude shifted so is sent out this experimental set and the company knew there was a turn and the unit they gave to utilize wouldn't give them the experimental robot back the liked it so much as we have seen this shift and to the arming aspect one of the thinks the book wrestles with when you asked about is almost the lord of all to mirror issue, thou shall not be discussed if we are talking about harry potter parallels. because there are all sorts of logics that a cost on this pathway we don't like to talk about. so one is a personal savings issue. i was meeting with the british royal air force and they said look, we are going to give more autonomy to our robot simply because we can't have the situation where we have one guy controlling one robot. it won't save us any money so we have got to get where we have one guy, five robots or one guy, robots, which means you have to give more autonomy.

the other aspect is the enemy has a vote in this. so if you've got a system and person the connection between the two of them is the new vulnerability said the enemy has a target so your natural response is o.k. i've got to give the system some autonomy because if the enemy kutz the line of communication i don't just wanted to turn off and stand there. it has to be able to carry out the mission. another rationale how we go down this week. another one is that war is happening on a faster and faster pace going quicker and quicker, so they have the counter sniper devices that use acoustics and laborers to sniper shoots at your unit and it immediately plan said the unit, puts a laser beam target on the sleeper said. well, if you don't react quickly enough the guy goes back down and so you lost that opportunity so they say technically it's very easy to put a laser why not put the gun as well. another logical path we that gets you there so the point is you get each of these logical

pathways that take you down this final frontier of arming and that leads to the other part of the question which is what makes it ethical now and that is one of the parts of the debate i want to put out there is that we should debate with its ethical or not and what are the circumstances that make it ethical or not and that's not just things like the laws of the robotics like a asimov. to lead, the department of homeland security has six of them. how about is it something the federal government or local police departments, should they have the systems? too late, the lead police department is purchasing its own. atlanta, one private citizen had his own ground robot arm to. these are weird from to your questions but they are already upon us and that is the kind of debate we need to have because you can't make moral machines.

borelli is something about the people. you can program your machines but you can't make themselves more or ethical. it has to come from us. other questions or comments? >> timothy strom. it is kind of a continuation of the ethical question. you talked about the fact that a lot of the soldiers who are employing the on mant systems that they are referencing them as video games. and we have heard that deer is obviously an ethical debate in just the video games currently used in the sense that they are too violent for children and that for young kids to be doing so so it's dangerous to the overall societal morality and ethical perspectives. but when we were talking about this and soldiers what did you find it was the majority of the ethical voice referencing these things because obviously it's a

spread in other parts of society and i guess for us as the future leaders and officers is the responsibility mainly placed on asa and from where you found is the officers having to make these ethical questions of a -- is there a greater audience addressing this issue altogether? >> it's a great question that people are not talking about enough. so, how is it different being a commander of the unit that uses robotics, age roane squadron for a simple verses a regular unit so i went are now interviewing and was a very interesting to see the different experiences for example an air force colonel who had previously led a predator squadron but before that was deployed in centcom so you see both sides. he described a was more difficult leading this unit

fighting from a far than the one deployed and there was a lot of the challenges as he put, one was you have the fact of people at war 24/7. his unit was and deploying and leading together which had that sense of team and also meant they had decompression period between the intensity of combat and when you get home. instead his unit was on a shift never once in the same place, and they go in and then 20 minutes later again they are at home and they have all of the demands of home. the wife is mad because they were late for soccer practice. the kids are mad because you didn't show up to the pta or selling this so his challenge as a unit leader is he found people were burning the candle at both ends of the stick and that was a challenge. the responsibility put on them, they were in a peacetime base and so they had all of the

administrative -- there's no other way to put it, bureaucratic crap to deal with someone deployed would not have to do even though his unit was 24/7 and needed to be on the combat age. and he just got this very challenging and they didn't have a structure to turn to. how do you do this? they are making it up along the way. he described how he wished they would go to the sort of way sports teams to be for a playoff game. they may be at home but they live at a hotel together, train together, eat together and family stuff is pushed aside. he hoped they would do that the problem was the but involve everyone telling their family it is tougher for me to be around you. i was gone the last year in iraq and now everyone is happy. it's actually better for me to be divided. no one wanted that conversation so we didn't see that happening. to the idea he described how it was a major challenge that he wanted to make sure every one of the men and women working for

him kept focus that this was not a video game and that he would have to fight for information and feedback from forces in the field. how did he utilize our information? lives are at stake. he tried to bring back people returning from the field having them cycle through so they could have the communication. they tried different tracks. they wore uniforms, you know, flight suits even though the are not in the air to give that mental image and this is one of those challenges now that it's going to get more and more typical as you see these systems and use video games as the platform for how we do training with them and actually control them. the controller for the ground robotics and things like the packbot are modeled after the police station controllers. they're relying on the video game industry for two reasons. one is sony, microsoft,

nintendo. they spent tens of millions of dollars designing the perfect system to fit your hands so why not just follow the design? the other aspect is they spent tens of millions of dollars training you on the use of it so right when you join you can figure out how to use it very quickly. now, the challenge is they are finding for example when you were using the same controller and seeing it through a video screen the difference between a training exercise and a real world exercise is only in your head. it's only how you interpret it. it looks the same so that it puts the burden on the unit leader a lot more. and a final note and this is this ethical edge one of the people i met with was a special operations officer. and he was just back from the hunt for zarqawi, the top al qaeda ghanian i reckon he said anything that makes it easier to kill is not a good thing. and i thought that was a real

relevant coming from one of the people giving a warning you don't want to make it too easy. >> cadet jonathan. one thing we discussed the this morning was the industrial complex. how do you think this robotic trend contributes to that factor? >> really need question and it's a big worry of mine as a reference of this is a global industry and there's a chapter in the book called robots that don't like apple pie and it's about how might the u.s. repeat the experience of other nations that have been the leader in technology and fell behind. and it goes along to ways. one is the doctrine we choose for how to use the systems as you probably learned here it's not how many of the system you have or often how good it is.

it's how you utilize it and organize a around it that's the story of the tank for example. we have a challenge right now of what's the doctor and how you use these systems and i remember one captain in the middle east said to me let's not think this better, it's only give me more. and we have gone from saying we don't want these on mant systems, we want them as much as possible and if you look at the defense budget it's one part of the budget that's growing by around 200 per cent per year but we still haven't figured out what's the best way to utilize them and how do you organize around it and is it a mother ship model of warfare in terms of you about a centrally system controlled so that it's concentrated on command and control the distributed firepower or is it a score of model of war where you have decentralized command and control but comfort and firepower. these are different models.

which one is right and which one is wrong? choose royte and you've created the bullets screen and choose wrong and -- one is the industrial complex. but it is we build which can often should the doctrine and a concern for me is that we have a bigger is better mentality when it comes to what we build and by so the cover of a book is a picture of this unmanned jetfighter. it's the size of a school bus. when it prices ultimately it's going to cost around $80 million. are you going to use and $80 million system even if it doesn't have a pilot this possibly that is are you going to send it out just to get blown up? we have a defense industrial complex that specializes bigger is better in terms of the companies. there's only a few top companies that dominate the field. bigger is better in terms of the prices and price overruns. bigger is better in terms of how

long it takes to build the systems as we were talking about this morning the f-22 is first conceived in the late 1970's and doesn't deploy our air force until 2007 so if it was a computer apple conceiving the macintosh back in the 70's but not delivering the first macintosh until 2007. so a question for all of loss is is bigger is better the way the war is going to be in the future? what if it's smaller is better? what if it's better to have a large number of tiny cheap disposal systems. what if it's better in terms of the companies to have a lot of small innovative companies that work? what if it's better in the time line to be spending than the way they do the ipod wear your always getting next-gen versions so i worry we specialize in bigger is better we could be entering a in an era of smaller is better. yes?

>> one negative to that the example of the future, a system is a great illustration and the first program there were no small unmanned systems in the plan and it's because it was actually a run by large defense contractor and the company that made the small systems wasn't part of the traditional d.c. crowd. it was only bottom-up demand. only the soldiers in the field say it's actually the small ones we use every day and want more of. it's not the large unmanned tanks we want. that's the only reason nces was changed to include those smaller companies and robots and what's ironic is that's the one part of c.s. that's now surviving the budget cutbacks because it was the demand from the field level. >> we have seen a lot of these used in iraq and afghanistan and i was wondering when you thought

about these being used in a conventional conflict as well as on conventional conflict. >> it's an interesting question and cox to this what is the future of war and is there almost defined difference ahead of us in terms of the unconventional and conventional? i think we are going to see more hybrid threats. you see a hezbollah may be a monster organization may engage in terrorist actions but it's also able to launch both drones and cruise missiles. it's proven both capacities. you have china of course one of the top conventional threats out there but it also has over 8,000 computer hackers working for it which is a classic ascent letcher caption and this is when we create these stovepipes, we may be setting ourselves up for a fall and even more so in what we buy can we afford to have systems only good for counter

insurgency and other once only good for conventional in the same in the training and organization. and i would argue that the biggest bank for the buck in terms of defense dollars is finding those systems that are cross spectrum. that is useful for whatever the domain of conflict is and what we may be surprised by is that it may not be in as much of the planet of the spirit that makes the difference. so, use the example of how we got zarqawi in the end, the top al qaeda leader in iraq. we could not find him, so while it was a military problem it was an intelligence problem. the jordanians got a human intel chip that zarqawi was seeking the advice of a new religious leader. so they passed on the human

intelligence stick to a loss and our intel analysts said this is an important tip. we are going to use this so they couldn't find zarqawi savitt popped a set of drones over that religious leader who they could find. and you couldn't have him followed 24/7 by troops on the ground. they would have stood out so 24/70 followed this guy everywhere he went and one by the see him go to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and that is where he was meeting with zarqawi. the john puts a laser target, f-16's comes and blows up and that is how we get zarqawi. the question is this: which was the operation? was it six minutes the f-16 pilot flew in and dropped computer guided bombs or was it the whole back and of both robotic and human that gets you to that point which was the operation? second question, who is most

likely to make flag officer out of the asset involved in the operation and that i think is a challenge and would be the same if we were talking about trying to find a chinese mobil site. increasingly the challenge isn't putting still on target. it's finding target with its conventional or on conventional and that's one of the aspects we are going to continue to wrestle with this finding system keyes useful in both entities. >> unfortunately we are out of time. but i want to take this time in the time constrained environment i often ask myself what does this mean to me and how is this going to impact me and i think over the last hour work you've captured that both issues and in pacts whether you are a mid-level officer with these cadets' first out here about to graduate 25 days and you've done that with the unmanned systems because it is going to impact us and there will be implications in this room so i want to thank

you on the part on behalf of the premise of social sciences as well as u.s. military academy. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you again for the service you're going to be giving our nation. >> if you like what you heard and haven't gotten the chance to pick up the book dr. singer will be on the fourth floor from 1400 to 1600 today to sign books and also chat about questions you might have regarding this subject or anything else he might have on your mind defense policy related. thank you.

up next on book tv, "after words," an hourlong discussion

between a guest host and the author of a new book. this week, uruguay and author eduardo galeano talks about his new book, "mirrors" stories of almost everyone. he also discusses the 1971 book, "open veins of latin america," which venezuelan president hugo chavez came to president obama during the fifth summit in april. mr. galeano is interviewed by john dinges, a journalism professor at columbia university and the author of the condor years, how pinot shea and his allies brought terrorism to three continents. >> host: hello. we are here with one of the authors that i have admired my whole life, eduardo galeano. eduardo galeano was born in uruguay. i mentioned to him just a minute ago that i have had his books in my head for decades. one of the reasons i became

involved in latin america and latin american studies and writing as a journalist about latin america was because of your work. so it is a great pleasure for me to be here with you. >> guest: thank you. >> host: you've been in the states a while now. >> guest: ten minutes. [laughter] >> host: you just arrived. and i know you're going to new york. >> guest: and afterwards other cities. to help my new baby, called "mirrors", help litwak. it's a baby. >> host: this is the book, "mirrors" stories of almost everyone. but of course i checked out the spanish title, it is [speaking

spanish] which means it universally almost. >> guest: if you say universal history it sounds so swollen and arrogant. my intention was to write a homage to human diversity without boundaries, without tears, no frontiers at all. three lead. it was a mad adventure and the titles are more or less and try and to say it's a serious but don't be afraid. >> host: i think it's less serious when it's called stories of almost everyone because almost everyone is in this book. and particularly people who are not usually mentioned in world history. give us a couple of examples of

the kind stories that you're telling that you think characterized what kind of book this is. >> host: yes, my intention was i never know if the result is that the level of the good intentions. but the good intention was to rescue the beauty of the terrestrial rainbow. we are much more than what we are told we are. official history has mutilated our past or the media is mutilating present history. so, we -- we are much more than what we are told for instance in

visible. people doing history, making history don't know they are doing it. women suppressed an official history just released to the corrective place, black people, indians, the south of the world, china, india, i don't know, so many -- so many colors to be added to our rainbow which is much more beautiful than the other one and the sky. >> host: well, i don't know if people realize what kind of book this is because this is not a history book, it's not in all, it's not a work of nonfiction serious analysis. it's a book