. .

the sad thing was the war of 1812 when everything was burned. then they had to start piecemeal since then and every president who came didn't like what was there in the state have auctions in the square. then every president could change the decor if they wanted once president grant had the blue room pilot and chester arthur had at robins egg blue and finally that was all stopped at the time of theodore roosevelt in 1902.

>> this week on "the communicators" we focus on the future of television. former fcc chairman julius genachowski and former fcc commissioner robert mcdowell followed by our discussion with congress and greg walden chairman of the house subcommittee on communications and technology. >> we are anna lindh's gate that is absolutely shifted and there are areas of the statutory scheme where it makes sense to look at it and say are those keeping up with the changes in the marketplace? fundamentally having this kind of competition programming innovation access by new players to consumers and access by the traditional players to viewers

in new ways. obviously what is happening on tablets is amazing. what is starting to happen in the living room is very exciting we are in just an incredible time when it comes to the delivery of the programming to consumers. there are issues. we heard the commission both of us did from distributors who are concerned about the cost of programming and consumers are concerned about the cost of programming so that's an issue the commission and congress will need to continue to look at. but i do think this is an area where the glass is half-full at least because we are seeing exciting new competition and creativity in this part of the landscape. >> i would say the glasses overflowing. i think it's terrific time to the consumer in the market and probably like the ex-chairman i look at this market through the eyes of my kids. i have three young kids and what are their consumption habits and they have more choices than any

human beings in history in terms of what is there and conduits too so it's a very positive marketplace right now. i i think a lot needs to be revised to reflect that. the fcc has released zero authority to forbear from regulation in the video realm and i think congress needs to help us out with that but to help the fcc out. subsequently, but also in all areas that we have these stovepipes if you are offering services over copper repair there's coax to cable and another over the air and get another in the marketplace has converged well beyond that. these are 80-year-old concepts we need to move on but congress needs to initiate a rewrite as soon as possible. >> the video world is going through enormous change.

i think a huge paradigm change right before our eyes. with the 2-1 decision on the case where it can basically download the single off aaron put it up on the internet and say that's okay. that has huge consequences potentially. so that area doing that just a limited basis in one market talking about expanding to get satellite providers thinking well, now we can get around to re-transmission and we will do that. you have a cable company that says we will look at that too and all of a sudden the whole business model and marketplace is getting tossed around pretty rapidly. >> host: you also mentioned the aereo decision. what's your decision? >> i was surprised by the decision. i'm an old radio broadcaster so i'm not a tv guide but i look at that. that's it descriptor in the marketplace sort of like disruptions aren't bad.

necessarily this one really has to think much bigger consequences as people are beginning to read into it. >> to piggyback off of that as aereo has progressed through the courts and others like fox talking about cooling the response how does that play on capital? >> i think that's all part of the discussion because at some point producers rogue ramming has to have a way to get paid or you aren't going to have programming. a lot of that has been through the various financial arrangements among the providers and tv stations in all of those very complicated mishmash of laws and rules and legacies and all. if that goes away and someone is taking your product and putting it up on cable for free basically then all of a sudden you probably have to look at paging and that is what they were carefully saying at the n.a.b. and of course it's sort of let up every switch board in

the telco world. but i think he didn't say they were going to but i think this is the point i'm making is you have everybody sitting back going wait a minute what just happened here was aereo and what does that mean? does that mean i get transfer fees and what do we do with contracts and if you're the local broadcast provider what does that mean? i don't think we know all the implications. the 2-1 decision in one court doesn't make this formal everywhere. >> host: in that same n.a.b. speech you said you are not convinced re-transmission consent means reform bullet this time. >> that is true but most of these agreements have been reached now. we want to marketplace that works. that is my fundamental philosophy whether it's broadcast cable wireless world i want a competitive marketplace and i want the marketplace to work at it i don't want government coming in unless the

market place fails and so here you have most of these regions especially consent agreements that have now been signed. i think virtually all of them aren't some of them are now extended out four years or eight years. so the market place has worked in that respect and i think that is a more efficient way to deal with this than to get into a ratesetting body and who is going to get paid what for what? i mean that to me is not agile nor a good way to go. >> host: what do you think of john mccain's re-election of the à la carte bill? >> you know there is a lot of talk about the pros and cons of all a card. it's certainly some of the cable providers like the notion. i'm not sure it's the panacea that many think it is that suddenly can just pick the shows you want. you still have the whole tier 1 requirement locally where the broadcast signals through there and then you go above that. so there -- i don't know if he

is talking about getting rid of that and again you wonder what that does to the pricing model and to the wide range programming that's out there. there is the trade-off that says with the current system you get a lot more programming that frankly maybe consumers wouldn't want it but frankly wouldn't exist otherwise. there wouldn't be the consumer demand probably for it and it gets bundled them and this bad and the other thing. so i think you have to be very careful. that would be an interesting disruptor in the market and something that would be great another say what you disaster. evil would know what they're getting into and suddenly you have a home much -- bunch more splits -- sports programming. >> host: you're watching "the communicators" on c-span in this week our focus is the future of television as we continue we will hear from chet kanojia of aereo and gordon smith present

of the association of broadcasters. we then speak with michael powell president of the national cable and telecommunications association. >> guest: when we think of aereo aereo as a really new way of thinking about how people are going to consume television in the future. it's an on line platform which is direct to consumers and people can get access today to live broadcast television along with their dvr device without a cable connection just using the internet for the price of $8 a month. >> host: this is over the air broadcast channels that people can get through aereo? >> guest: that's correct. >> host: what am i holding in my hand here? >> guest: that is the foundational piece of the aereo microantenna. think about it as how you used to have over the air antennas in the past. they were large. we miniaturized them so it

allows technologies through and part of miniaturizing them is so we can build hundreds of thousands of these things into a small room and by doing that we can allow a cloud-based implementation of how consumers can capture a signal which is really the big innovation here. the cloud technologies allow us to lower the cost down very dramatically, lower barriers to the consumers vary significantly because suddenly you don't need boxes or cables or courts. you just go on line and sign up and you have access to that's actually antenna. >> host: what is it made out of? >> guest: it's actually copper. >> host: is that all there is? is there a chip in here or anything? >> guest: that's the front end of it and there's a whole host of signal processing technology that is on a circuit or and the equipment looks like a telecommunications equipment. >> host: are their cable channels that are part of aereo

service? >> guest: we are working with limburg television as a partner and that seems to have done very well. it's sort of coincides with their view that televisions evolution is going to be what i call deep libraries. by that i mean things that are not time-sensitive that can be libraries and in fact they are. if you go to netflix or amazon or any number of these on line libraries you have a tremendous amount of content. we think people won't live for things that are relevant and unscripted so it tends to be sports news and large reality shows and special events and things of that nature. we focus on news is the first category that we think we can open this platform up to and allow these consumers have access to different things so that is it.

>> host: what is your response when broadcasters say you are stealing their signal? >> guest: you know at some point you have to call it what it is. it's name-calling because when three federal courts express an opinion that is illegal technology and it's consistent with what congress intended it's difficult for me to sort of look at it any other way except as name-calling or mischaracterization. the fact of the matter is this content is paid for by the consumers in advertising spectrum. i think it's worth clarifying that area technologies applied to free broadcast. it is not applied to cable content or cable channels. when we work with the cable channel for example them bloomberg's case it's a productive partnership where we enter into a commercial relationship with them. so it's difficult for me to even

answer the question why when you are required to program to consumers interests. a consumer has a right to an antenna and whether they buy the antenna from radioshack or they buy it from aereo is not relevant. we have consistently established the length of the wire that connects the antenna to your dvr and your television set isn't a matter of debate. whether you live in an apartment building where you have a 50-foot wire versus a 10-foot wire how is that any different? >> guest: i would respond this way. it is true the second circuit is not a luminary in junction against broadcasters so the case proceeds and yesterday on the merits in the ninth circuit a case called the aereo killer the ninth circuit district court

held that it was in fact identical facts. they held it was a violation of the documents of that happened yesterday. ultimately this will have to be decided i suppose by the supreme court but the principle is simply this. if you want to put out our stuff you want to grab it in charge someone for it then there's the copyright issue. if aereo doesn't want -- they just want to provide the service and not charge for them may have a better case but ultimately when you take someone else's property and use sallet you owe them for it. you should negotiate for it and that's the requirement of the law and eventually the courts will decide on this. certainly the market will. as television broadcasting becomes more and more mobile -- it used to be ubiquitous. broadcasting was a big tv in your living room and now it's pretty much on every device that you can have. that is going to create a real investment problem on return on

investment problem for aereo as a business model. >> guest: another technology creating headaches for broadcasters is the dish hopper and broadcasters recently lost their temp to get it to luminary in junction there. it allows basically consumers to skip commercials. some folks have haps broadcasters will have to figure into their retransmission fee request if they lose that case. can you give us your sense of where you think that's going? >> guest: i think if it does not violate copyright than it probably and most certainly does violate contract and so it then becomes an issue of the hopper is just broadcast content, not a cable content. so it's something of real concern to us. it's not for a consumer. it's for them. it's for dish because they don't

allow people to block out their ads, just hours. so you know at the end of the day i think all of my members when it comes to doing content deals with dish, they are going to have to either invest past action and they probably have damaged that they can seek but as for the future of means you better have a different number in mind when you want to go she ate retransmission consent with dish. >> guest: well i think if i were answering that question i would say follow the technological trends that are transforming all of the digital businesses. the first that i would probably observe is the dramatic shift from hardware to software centered systems. the minute you were able to do more in software rather than proprietary hardware i think the full creativity of software engineering comes into play. i think that's common to television. you have to ask the consumer what is the tv experience of my home and they will talk about it

walks that sits on their credenza above their tv and they will talk about a remote control. they will talk about the things that they don't like about it to be perfectly candid but increasingly the functions that those devices serve are going to be able to him be migrated into software rather than proprietary hardware equipment and i think you will get faster innovation cycles so a company like time warner or comcast can innovate overnight, not over the course of a hardware replacement and i think that when you do that you start inking about the other great trend we have seen ushered in by a mobile and app environment. you will be able to see minuets of software that are able to deliver kind of new and intriguing experiences taking advantage of the premium content we love but also with the powerful informatiinformati on pipe that we are able to marry with that and i hope to creative minds that will combine to create really revolutionary new kind of television's.

>> host: jeff bewkes of time warner predicted that most channels like hbo subscription-based. you will be able to watch almost all a cart. >> guest: people say that. >> host: he didn't say à la cart. >> guest: i didn't think that he would. that means many different things to many different people. what it means which i think is correct is that people will have a very time anywhere at anytime devised approach to their television experience. my life as a child of appointment television and my show is on at 7:30 and i'm angry with my mother because we are out shopping and if we don't get back in the next 20 minutes am going to miss it on not going to by the way have any ability to catch up to it or see it again. i can remember that anxiety. i need to get home to see my show. no child today has that experience first of all already

but the new dimension that's going to come and that is the devices. more than just the traditional set up in the home the ability to get to all of these other things which is why you see people talking about software and ip meaning if i can begin to speak the language of all computing devices and i can begin to port my experience to all computing devices, that will give the consumer dramatically more power to choose time, place and manner. i love "homeland." i haven't seen sunday's episode aired i've heard people talk about it but i'm picking and choosing when i want to see it that i was busy last night so i didn't watch it last night gave terry the redskins were on monday night and i would much prefer to see that than to do this but tonight on the slower night i might watch it tonight and that is what a dvr does for me. when you start to have the ability to command contact more fully as we were just talking about things will look a lot more like that. what i don't necessarily agree

with, i think people still love discovery. i don't mean just the channel. i mean the ability to find surprises. every month or every year i giggle a little bit about some show that people are suddenly talking about that i don't think you could have ever imagined choosing. if you came to me and said i want you to choose "honey booboo" or the show with the -- or a student food channel network i don't think if i had to predetermined that was my preference i would have ever picked it. but the ability to stumble on them or to hear people talking about them and letting me go into an environment and go kind of dabbling around in that and suddenly finding i sort of like "honey booboo" and now i ching it, still think that's a huge part of the american television experience and i think it gets sold short when we techno-ecstatic talking about anytime anywhere now and i think

a lot of americans love the enjoyment of escapism and passivity and being able to kind of rome around finding things they didn't know were there. television advertising is a great thing to a degree but it's always been an odd thing. through proctor & gamble you run in ad. it's hard for me to know how much the ad worked. you ran it and some creative group says we did a great job and you love the looks of it. you run out consumer surveys to see people were impacted by it. the internet provides much more real-time answers to those kinds of return on investment question so i think you see advertisers chasing a lot of digital because they learn more about the effectiveness of their messages but don't count the tv ad is dead. i think the tv ad has to become more entertaining and when it does its mini-tv. i think it's hilarious the super

bowl is as much a parade of television advertising experiences as it is a football game. why? because that is the day the advertisers go for it all. they put their best and most interesting ideas -- what i think is starting to happen is the super bowl is extent -- expanding. if you want to buy doritos okay in july you are going to have two start showing me stuff against the fragmented as attention span that captures me like you did in the super bowl. nabe you don't have to pay super bowl prices to get it on but i think for entertainment value you have got to get eyes on whose world is so infected with media. how do you get out of that noise flow and get his attention? humor are the things that make things go viral. you have to get him out of the big cacophonous space. >> guest: in some ways we are

talking about mass media types is advertising. do you think maybe not 10 years but 20 years operators can serve up individually targeted ads to viewers based on what shows they have been watching over the course of days and weeks the way that the internet can sort of track where you then? >> guest: i think the short answer is there will be no technical limitation to be able to do that. then it will just be a behavioral decision whether to do that and that relationship with your consumer. right now that's exactly what happens on the web. if i go to amazon right now or if i go to cnn news.com or c-span.com and you do it at exactly the same time we very well may not see the exact same advertising environment. if you go to aol.com i guarantee you will not see the same. so when you think about where his tv going, back to her first software ip, metadata, the line

between tv distribution and internet distribution comes a lot fuzzier. what you are able to do in the internet model you certainly will be a will to do even if the cable model is her pride terry or private in some degree, the basic mechanisms will still be there. we could know if it doesn't creep you out what you are watching at the moment and who is doing the watching. x-box has an application out that they are experimenting with which when you walk in the room its kinect system looks at your skill of frame and knows that it's you and not your son. >> host: you are watching "the communicators" on c-span and this week our focus is on the future of television. we travel to the ces international show in las vegas and caught up with troy wolverton of personal tech knowledge acondas for the "san jose mercury news" and we also speak with phil mckinney president and ceo of cable --

for the cable industry. >> guest: right now hd television is generally defined as one that has 1080p so what 1080p means is you have 1080 line resolution by columns of resolution. on a fort ktvu have doubled that so you have double the lines of resolution and double the columns of resolution so you get about 4000 resolution on a fort ktv. it's actually both sides are doubled but the length and the columns you actually have four times the resolution of a regular television. so it's useful on a big-screen tv. most would say it's useful on a 60-inch and above tv. if you are setting up close to a large screen tv you could definitely tell the difference.

the numbers displayed on the other side of this wall here where they are demonstrating newspaper text on a screen and showing what it looks like on it 1080p and what it looks like on a four ktv and you can definitely tell the difference. it's much sharper and clearer on a 4k tv bandmate 1080p tv. the problem right now is 4k tv tvs are extraordinarily expensive. like darrell was saying they started off at $25,000 so they are hoping to get those prices down and they probably will come down but we are so far talking about several times the cost of their regular 1080p television of the same size for a 4k tv version. the other problem is we are talking about an conversation there's no content out there. sony is distributing the 4k tv

as a hard drive that has 10 movies on it. i don't know about you but i watch more than 10 movies in my regular viewing habits. you won't get the regular television shows in 4k tv and the vast majority of the latest movies in 4k and your streaming video services aren't coming in 4k. there's nothing out there in 4k right now sohtz sony is trying as darrell talked about, sony has a lot of the movies that are shot these days are shot in 4k. they're just just shifted it to consumers in and 1080p resolution. they are hoping to start moving the ball to get more of those out in 4k but it's going to be a big process. frankly i have my doubts that they are going to put much more than 4k will watch this content. why would they take that process because there's going to be in

large expense. that is what they learned with 3-d. 3-d was a big push for the last several years and it turned out consumers weren't terribly interested in 3-d. is this chicken and egg thing. consumers aren't interested so they are putting out 3-d content and 4k is going to be even worse. in the sense that it's only on big size television and markets for big size television while significant like 20% now is still a fraction of the total market. host goes the cable industry a growing industry? do you see a long future? >> guest: oh yeah definitely. keep in mind our membership is worldwide and not just in the u.s. so if you look in areas like china there are estimations there will be $30 billion of capex and the cable industry in the next five years. even here in the u.s. we are still seeing growth. if you look at the growth rate in data usage from subscribers

from data services we are seeing anywhere from 30 to 40 to 50% cable rates on an annual basis and there is no slowing down. there's this insatiable hunger for more capacity, faster speeds so the cable industry has a long future to be that provider of choice for the services. >> host: when you look 10 years down the road, how are people going to be viewing video in viewing tv? the same way they are today? >> guest: you are saying that shipped already. the role of the second screen in the living room and five years from now what's the concept of the channel? today we think of channels is being this linear on your remote control. how many of us really watch linear television in real time other than if it's a sports activity. we have got into this time-shifting model. now you are seeing this device shifting. i'm a recorded on my dvr my living room but i want to watch it on my tablet when i'm out and about.

i think you're going to see an explosion of devices and the way consumers want to enjoy the content. they want to enjoy where they are at when they wanted and see the content they want. they don't want to be tied like i have to be home at 8:00 for tied to a device. you will see a shift in the concept of subscribing to a channel and the shift as far as what device i want to enjoy it on. if >> that thing i care about most is to make it more of a museum with more pieces of beautiful furniture that belonged to old

presidents. most of what is here dates from 1902. >> wise and they're more antique furniture? i would have thought they would have been collecting this since the beginning of this republic. >> the thing is thomas jefferson did the most wonderful thing and putting in beautiful furniture. the sad thing was the war of 1812 and everything was burned. then they have to start piecemeal since then. every president who came could sell what he didn't like what was there and these do have options in the square. every president could change the decor if you wanted. once president grant had the little room file it and chester arthur had at robins egg blue. finally that was all stopped at the time of theodore roosevelt in 1902.

>> max boot printed presents a history of warfare. unconventional warfare often thought of as the modern means of war has a long tradition that dates back to antiquity. this is just under an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the heritage foundation and our louis lehrman auditorium. we of course will come those joining us on all of these

occasions on our heritage.org web site in-house as we prepare to begin. please make sure cell phones have been turned off. it is a courtesy or speakers to appreciate. we will post the program within 24 hours on a homepage for your your further reference as well. hosting are then today is steven bucci director of r. douglas and sarah allison center for foreign-policy studies. he previously served heritage is senior research fellow for defense and "homeland" security. he was well-versed in the special area operations in cybersecurity areas as well as defense support to civil authorities. he served for three decades as an army special forces officer and top pentagon official in july 2001. he assumed the duties of military assistant to secretary rumsfeld and work daily with the secretary for the next five and a half years and upon retirement from the army he continued that the pentagon as deputy assistant

secretary of "homeland" defense and american security affairs. please join me in what coming steve bucci. [applause] >> let me add my welcome to all of you. i think you are going to have a real treat this morning. as john mentioned i'm a special forces officer by profession so this area is near and dear to my heart. this is what we did. they don't let me do it anymore. i mentioned max. when i was a cadet at west point i bought a book that had just been published. it was a 2-volume set. it's called war in the shadows, the guerrilla in history by robert aspirate. the book from 1975 until now really has been the sort of benchmark for this kind of historical review of this

subject area. that is a long time for it book to keep that sort of position. well, with apologies to mr. asprey i think his book is being replaced now and max has done that with this book which is on sale outside, "invisible armies". he i think is that the new benchmark for the subject area. his look is very comprehensive, and it's somewhat chronological but not entirely. it's somewhat regional but not entirely and it's somewhat not functional isn't the right word, topical but not entirely. that sounds like it's not organized well and don't let me give you that impression. it works very well and flows well. max is a really fine writer and i say that from the standpoint of a reader.

it's very easy to read in a way that sometimes historical works are not. so i would recommend it highly. what we are going to do this morning is when i get done introducing hymns is going to give opening remarks for a little bit and then we will open it up to questions and answers when he is done with his prepared remarks. i will come back up and play moderator. i will tell you now when you ask a question stand up and identify yourself very briefly and if by the end of the second sentence i don't hear it question mark i'm going to ask you to sit down very politely because the object of this exercise is for you to ask questions and draw from max 's knowledge and from information he presents about the book, not to give a speech. if you want to give a speech come and see me afterwards and we will see what we can arrange for you to get your own program. that is where we are going this

morning. for those of you that don't know max boot is one of america's leading historians and one of our best historical writers. he is presently the gene j. l. patrick senior fellow for national security studies at the council on foreign relations. he continues to write in "the weekly standard," "the los angeles times" and a regular contributor to the new york times, "the wall street journal." he has been an editor and a journalist for "the wall street journal" for "christian science monitor". he has written two other major hooks in the past that are of interest to me, the savage wars of peace, small wars and the rise of american power and war made new, technology warfare and the course of history 1500 to today. max tends to write really big

hooks. big books. this morning he's going to talk to us about his latest, "invisible armies." i will turn it over to you. [applause] >> thank you very much steve for that warm and generous introduction and thank you also for your many decades of service and indeed i see a lot of folks here who are either current active duty or retired military and i thank all of you for your years of service to the nation. what i'm here to talk about today is the contents of my new look which as steve mentioned as a history of guerrilla warfare and although it may seem sick and daunting i did try to tell a good story, i sort of encapsulated by a thousand years of guerrilla warfare history into one book. that may seem like a formidable undertaking but here today in front of your very eyes i'm going to do something that i

think it's even harder. i'm going to try to encapsulate the entire look into a 25 minute talk so that's going to work out to be about 200 years per minute fasten your seatbelts. we are going to go for a little historical journey here. what i'm going to do his first talk about guerrilla warfare and then i'm going to talk about how to counter guerrilla warfare and finally i'm going to conclude about why it's important we figure out how to counter guerrilla warfare. the question that i most often asked when i tell people i've been writing up look on the history of guerrilla warfare is what is the first guerrilla war? the answer is guerrilla warfare is as old as mankind itself. it's impossible to say when the first guerrilla war to place because that is essentially tribal war. tribal warrior going back to the time of mankind have been fighting with hit-and-run tactics. they have been attacking enemy villages and fleeing before the main forces of the enemy could

arrive. they don't stand toe to tell them slug it out with the enemy the way we imagine the conventional army should. in essence, tribal warriors have been taking part in guerrilla warfare for countless years. by contrast, turns urgency warfare and conventional warfare are both relatively recent inventions. they were only made possible by the rise of the first city states in mesopotamia 5000 years ago. by definition you could not have a conventional army without a state so until you had states you had no conventional armies which have officers and enlisted ranks in a bureaucracy in logistics and all these things we associate with conventional armed forces. but guess what? as soon as you have the very first city states of mesopotamia they were immediately attacked by nomads from the urgent highlands, sensually guerrillas. so from the very start organized

militaries have always found a lot of their time fighting unconventional air regular warfare and do you know what? those terms don't make a heck of a lot of sense. that is one of the big takeaways that i had from doing six years of reading and research for this book. the way we think about this entire subject is all messed up. they think that somehow conventional warfare is the norm that the way you want to fight is to how these conventional armies slugging at out in the open but the reality is though civilized than the exception. just think about the more modern world. what is the last conventional war that we saw? this is a hard question to answer because in fact it was the russian invasion of georgia in 2008 which didn't last very long and yet all over the world today they're people who are dying in war whether in afghanistan or mali or syria or the, or myanmar or colombia or many other countries. all these people are victims being ravaged by unconventional warfare but the terms are off

because this is in fact the norm. we have to flip our thinking 360 degrees and understand unconventional warfare is the dominant face of warfare, always has been at odds will be. every great power throughout history, every great general including the great generals of antiquity had to deal with the threat of unconventional warfare including of course the greatest army of all, the roman legions in putting a formidable force even when they were not led by russell crow. [laughter] they bested every power in their neighborhood but roma's we also know was ultimately brought down in the fifth century and what was responsible for the downfall of rome? well roma's much like the united states and that it did not have great power rivals. it was not surrounded by great states other than the persian empire.

ultimately he was basically surrounded by those that were labeled as barbarians and how did the barbarians fight? well they did not have organized militaries. they did not have centurions. they did not have the infrastructure of the roman legions. they fought in a very different style and yet ultimately they were successful. the follow from was precipitated by the invasion of europe and the four century by a fierce group of warriors known as the hunt. a four century historian left a very interesting and perceptive description of how the haunts fought. he said they are very quick in their operations of exceeding speed and surprising their enemies. they suddenly dispersed and reunited and after having inflicted vast losses on the enemy scattered themselves over the whole plane and irregular formations always avoiding and entrenchment.

think about that description. that sounds a lot like guerrilla warfare to me and that's essentially what they were practicing under their formidable leader of attila the han. they were masters of guerrilla warfare such that they pushed the dramatic tribes further west to the roman empire led to the collapse of the greatest empire in antiquity. in many ways there is truly nothing new under the sun about the threat posed by guerrillas. they have been around as long as civilization itself and the u.s. army and marine corps and other modern militaries including the french have to deal with the threat today is absolutely unsurprising. i don't mean to suggest that absolutely nothing has changed over the course of the last 5000 years. there have in fact been significant changes. the biggest one has to do with the power of public opinion and propaganda. this was something that was demonstrated in our very own war of independence.

now when we think of the american war of independence we tend to think of battles like lexington and concord or the yankees slithering on their bellies and shot at the -- between trees and rocks. these were no doubt affected tax fix but in the end what is striking to me about the american revolution is the extent and which was decided not so much by what happen on the battlefield but what actually happened in the parliament in the commons in england. when you read conventional accounts if i may use that word of the american revolution they usually conclude with a battle of york town in 1781 in which lord cornwallis surrendered 7000 troops to general washington. there is no doubt his was a massive setback for the british war effort but the fact remains that even surrendering 7000 troops to washington the british

had tens of thousands more troops in north america. they could've summoned tens of thousands of more troops if they had decided to do so. but they were not able to do so because of the power of a new force in insurgent warfare, a term that was only coined faithfully in 1776. the power of public opinion. now, if the founding fathers had been battling the roman empire i can assure you that the romans to matter how many battlefield deaths they would have -- the fact that this did not happen is because of what happened in the institution that the romans did not have to worry about at least not after the rise of the empire. the was the house of commons parliament. in 1782, a year after, the year

after the battle of yorktown there was a close vote in the house of commons to discontinue offensive operations in north america. the vote was 234-215. it was a nail biter but because lord north who was the hard-line prime minister who wanted to prosecute the war against the american rebels he lost that vote and therefore he had to resign office. lord rocking him and his whigs who work committed to a policy of conciliation with their american brothers took office. that i would submit to you was truly where the american revolution was won in something the founding fathers were very well aware of. they tried hard to influence public opinion not only in the american colonies but also in great britain. when you think about documents such as thomas paine's common sense or declaration of independence, as much as anything these were propaganda used against the british and they had their impact over

several long years of war. they were down the fight that resulted in the vote to discontinue the war in america. that is some new and warfare. that's something that was completely different. that was some bring that the haunts and the romans did not have to worry about. but the rise of democracy or the spread of media that becomes a major force and in fact many others in the future would seek to emulate what the american rebels did including some such as the viet cong or the iraqi or afghan insurgents who have tried to use the power propaganda and public opinion against us. all these factors are especially important if in the theories of mao tse-tung who was one of the great of course and most influential theorists of guerrilla warfare that ever was. he had a very different deal of guerrilla warfare than that

practiced by the nomadic warriors. he wrote an incredibly influential look in 1938 called on protracted warfare which he wrote sitting in a cave in northern china working so intently that he didn't notice a fire from a candle was burning a hole in his socks. what mao emphasized is as he famously said people are like water and an army is like fish. he said that it was essential to keep the closest possible relationship to the common people that guerrilla force in winning the support of the public among whom it was operating. he gave instructions to his soldiers to be courteous and polite to pay for all articles and establish -- for people's houses. believe me this is not something that the huns worried about thousands of years before. their iq was killing as many

people as they possibly possibly could and as gruesome a fashion as they possibly could. mao understood in this new age you had to pay attention to public opinion and that is something that has been incredibly influence liver sense and especially influential but, even more so with terrorist organizations because terrorism as the anarchist said in the 19th century propaganda by the deep. even more than guerrilla warfare terrorism is about selling a public relations point. in fact osama bin laden obviously the most famous terrorist of our age went so far as to say that the media war is 90% of waging jihad. he placed the emphasis not on battlefield attacks but on the perception he could foster among his enemies. now the very fact that the media has become so important that the public opinion has become so incredibly important puts a

great power like the united states especially a great democratic power like the united states at a disadvantage. something very interesting comes out when you look at what has changed in guerrilla warfare and as part of this book we did a database of insurgencies in 1775 which is included as an amendment. what we found was that the wind rate or insurgents has gone up since 1945. prior to 1945 insurgents went about 20% of their wars. since 1945 they are running about 40% of their wars. the wind rate for insurgents has roughly doubled in what accounts for that? i would argue it's the power of public opinion and propaganda, the ability of even relatively weak groups to bring downs drunk or adversaries by marshaling public opinion against them. that's something that all insurgents try to do these days and sometimes very successfully.

but there is a danger here and we should not swing too far from one extreme to the other. we should not underestimate the power of guerrillas nor should we overestimate the power of guerrillas and terrorists. they are not invincible and i think there has been a fallacy and the tendency in the post-world war ii era to focus on a handful of successes that the mao's in the ho chi minh's think wow these gorillas are superhuman. that is in fact not the case because if you go back to the figure i cited even if insurgents are winning 40% of the wars that means they're losing 60% and the reality is just as most business startups don't become apple or microsoft most insurgent groups don't become the viet cong or the chinese red army. to make that point i would refer you to one of the most famous insurgents of all time, che

guevara who once used to adorn every dorm room wall in the world. he became a legend because of the success that he and fidel castro had in overthrowing the tieser regime, very impressive campaign that made possible by the fact that batista had no legitimacy. he lost the support of the entire society and that is why castro with a few hundred followers is able to overthrow the state defended by tens of thousands of soldiers who supplied aircraft with heavy armor. they were incredibly successful in cuba but when. shay: got a little cocky and decided to export the cuban revolution it didn't work out so well for him to read what he tried to do in 1966 is he went to bolivia. what he discovered in bolivia was not a country with an unpopular dictator. what he discovered was a country that popularly elected president.

che guevara had no legitimacy because he came in as this outsider originally this argentinian who became a cuban citizen from the outside with a handful of followers. they didn't even speak the language is the local indians and in fact shaye's best friend was -- so it's no surprise that by 1967 he was hunted down by these guys the bolivian army rangers trained by u.s. army special or says. this is how che wound up, if even shaye guevera this icon of the revolution could be defeated and killed then i don't want to hear anybody suggest that it's impossible to defeat any group or insurgency. you can do it. you just have to have the right strategy. the question