is a good morning.

>> my name is nancy and i am delighted to welcome you to the annual savanna the festival presented by georgia power, david and nancy, the sheehan family andnd mark and pat. many thanks to jack and mary romanos the sponsors for this glorious venue of the trinity united methodist church. we would like to extend special fonts. thanks to the individual donors who've made and continue to make these free festival events possible. 90% of the revenues come from people just like you. we are excited to have the savanna book festival at this year for your phone please look in your program for information on downloading it. it takes just a few seconds and will be hopeful today.

before we get started i have a couple of housekeeping notes. immediately following the presentation, robert will be signing this full purchased copies of his book just across the way. if you are planning to stay in the venue for the next presentation, please move forward as it empties so the ushers can accurately count available seat. please take a moment to turn off yourco cell phones and we also k that you do not use flash photography. during the question-and-answer portion please raise your hand and i will call on you and one of the ushers will bring a microphonene to you. in the interest of time and to be fair to all the others please limit yourself to one question and don't tell a story. robert is with us today courtesy of hugh and friend thomas.

doctoror robert is an adjunct faculty member at the university of notre dame and he's the director of intelligence community programs at george mason's university school of engineering. he's a member of the air force studies board and the intelligence community studies board of the national academies of sciences, engineering and medicine. please give a warm welcome to robert. [applause] let me think nancy and the savanna book festival for having me here this is an awesome eve event. first of all i appreciate your interest in my work. i also don't know if any of you saw in the savanna morning a

really nice review of an interview with me. as a retired military person i've probably done a thousand speeches. standing up in front of a group talking abouty a book is like talking about one of your kids. but this is a really important topic now probably more so than it's ever been. i know if you read the news you hear all this talk i actually saw an article yesterday orr the day before in one of the publications talking about drifting toward war very much like they did before world war i and so i think it's a frightening time and probablyy very timely to talk about my book. i will talk about over the why

of it and how i came to write it which is a cool story i always like to tell and then some of the themes that are in it. if it isn't immediately obvious i grew up in rural southeastern turkey, never did get rid of the accent. i was a product of theet sputnik era, so i was all about science and technology, was interested in space and strangely enough nuclearsp weapons to end somehow or another i got into the university of notre dame. never figured that one out, but they left me i let me in and ite immediately obvious i had no means to pay for it thus entered the army. i was going to serve my four years and get out and become a nobel prize-winning physicist

but that didn't work so i stayed 32 years in the military sex of it in the army, 24 in the air force, six in the air force, trained for infantry to go to vietnam, turned out i didn't go to vietnam. after my phd i went sure many where i stood astride facing 100 divisions of soviet infantry who we were going to nuke when they came across the border. to that i commanded an army tactical weapons unit that was going to hand out nukes to the firing battalions. ..

>> with the fall of the berlin wall in the fall of communism when we went into kuwait to get saddam hussein and you would have thought with that in the fall of communism that we won world war iii the way we rafting. so after that we came bullies

the strongest nation under kelly remaining superpower and let everybody know it. and that be builder to me. fast forward again 2003, really the crux of what bothered me was the invasion of iraq. and it is public knowledge i was very concerned about that and i kept to that. so i retired from the air force went to work for industry t immediately and got me thinking about all of this and all of my friends at notre dame and said i have some issues can we talk about it? say develop a course and now you can teach it. still today eight or ten years later traveling back and forth to teach students about war and ethics and technology.

duringng halftime they highlight a student and a faculty member it was so popular they put me on national television and that got the attention of new york times so sam friedman interviewed me a great article and then that caught the attention of random house if you know anything about the publishing business his father has ten pulitzers to their credit and loving calendar for this one that john was a wonderful editor was very nice

to me and very patient so the themes of the book therere are several themes that number one that war as we knew it was changing that was obvious. more and technology have always gone together that is critical to soldiers and there is a big chasm with the american military and the american people. with the unfettered technology invasion coming from a lifelong geek often we were

militaristic and hubristic and american about our technologies and control is hugely important. so we are mesmerized by technology steel, gunpowder stealth technology, nuclear weapons the computer and the internet it was not al gore who invented it it was the military research agency we are seducedol by it the patrol from new york city there are lines you ask people why they are there? because there is a new iphone just because.

robert oppenheimer the father of the atomic bomb basically said we were seduced we were worried about it after we didit it. and marine general james status who used to be one of my heroes once said to his soldiers forget about technology you have to operate on your own. he's not saying that anymore but the largest defense budget in the world larger than the next eight countries combined in the largest proliferator. twice as much as russia. war is different terrorism, guerrillais warfare, cyberwarfare truth into our election system and advanced

technologies like cyberand other are more available to more people all over the world. people worry about cyberattacks on the electric grid we saw what happened to sony betty betty has read about the virus war will be closer to home as we have seen and others will have the same technologies that we have so now it is fairly obvious countries like china some machines in some form will watch over us i worked in a place for there watching all the time pretty much

everything in the world is connected to the internet. so machines will think for us so extreme learning and artificial intelligence will give us the answers it is up to us they will fight for us but we can see robots on the battlefield. they are often told by humans that is not always going to bee the case. soldiers were will be fast and subtle we may not even know it's happening or it may happen in the blink of an eye.

so some of the technologies. i heard the military described as a giant armed nervous system. and with information technology we are not at home -- now the point to put billions of transistors on a tiny tip. advanced data mining, artificial intelligence as a dod just asked for another $18 billion for artificial intelligence. weapons will have decision-making capabilities we already have that they are defensive in nature the patriott system antimissile systems but more and more

offenses weapons will sneak up on the capability right now they see a hand always be on the loop we are watching the loop but war will be so fast that humans are irrelevant maybe we slide into a case of decision and not even know it weapons will go to a target area to decide who to kill and takewa action they may seek permission first or not these things are good. don't get me wrong. drones and all of these technologies to make our soldiers better are good but they need to come with a little bit of thinking with the enhancements there is a factor involved in this the

exoskeleton to help soldiers pharmaceuticals right now airplane pilots have drugs to keep them awake now to talk about give them drugs more courageous orgi less fearful or feel less pain so think about that. then the whole area of neuroscience and this is really interesting talk about some of the work they are doing mostly for treatment was soldiers with traumatic brain injuries but they can enhance

but they can identify the structure of the brain and thoughts if you can read the thought you can write the thought. then there is concern about biology. virus editing. the director of national intelligence actually said there is a threat that people will create viruses that are not available to treatment. cyberwar, dams, power grids, there was actually a case a

man sitting in the back of an airplane could hack into the cockpit hacking into airplanes and weapons is another area the dod will spend $12 billion next year the electromagnetic anybody read the book one second to after electromagnetic holes you can do that without a b nuclear bomb hypersonic weapon echo 15 or 20 times the speed of sound technology is moving really, really fast if you look at the adoptionif curves becoming more frequent even i cannot keep up

and i am an engineering id expect the american public? they look at the technology and say okay. got it. but the u.s. is technologically illiterate when it comes to the rest of the world. but if we don't understand how the netflix recommendations work then it doesn't matter but it does in the military if we are going to kill people it really matters a lot to understand and also understand the consequences. working with a friend of mine former navy was exposed multiple times to agent orange's we really have to

think before those consequences we knew what they were. his against technology or tat? technology is good obviously, healthcare, everything we have done is wonderful and antibiotics now we have a hard time trying to find ones that work . the food industry. we had more food than me know what to do with. artificialt intelligence the technology eating the government. we don't actually know how it works even with the specialists. so i moved on talking about

technology that was fun and from george mason university masters students one was a who had just come backe from iraq where 16 of the soldiers in the unit were killed and hundreds wounded. and he talked about how difficult it was to treat the wounded souls. but believe it or not they are people and they go out maybe even civilians he talked about how important it was for soldiers what is correct and what is not correct in warfare for the loss of armed conflict and he was very interested in that.

but with those cool technologies to balance them up against the wars --dash of our conflict to say do they satisfy the proportionality and discrimination of combatants? and you could say this so much talk but it is important and i talk about things that we did bombing civilian targets with massacres of vietnam. for instance, robots. there was this idea that humans and robots will fight together on the battlefield but what we see if somebody

throws a grenade will my robot jump onto the grenade? but do i jump on the grenade to save the robot? come lottery and loyalty comes into question with machines. enhancements, drugs, neuroscience as a soldier operating can it make a moral decision? i don't know. trying to make machines act more like people and people act more like machines somewhere in the middle is a messss. so my editor asked me, besides you who cares about this stuff? so that sent me on a rant in chapter four.

so i fall into g this discussion about how arrogant we are about our technologies after the fall of the wall they were everywhere. remember shock and all the 2003 invasion? the media. by the way i love the media. i think they get it wrong and publish on the wrong things and don't focus on the important things. but i don't talk about fake media. theoc internet is an awful place. it's good and awful place for people to do bad things. i think we are deliberately ignorant. we don't try to educate ourselves and the public is just not involved in that

chasm with no knowledge of the military not everybody in the military is a killer. out of sight, out of mind, leaders actually use the military as a ploy back to this education thing it was interesting i read ann article remember when russia went into crimea? there was a survey of 2000 people what you think united states should do? 60% said we should go in militarily. but the same 60% if they knew where ukraine was? they said no.e and nothing about the military i like to use the phrase that

most people don't realize the u.s. now spends three quarters of a trillion dollars per year $250 billion of that is on new weapons they don't realize the impact of all of the deployment that are soldiers and sailors face what psychological scars of war and have no idea how the military gets its missions and what the threats are. but they do know, don't get me wrong. thank you for your service halftime shows it believe me that is wonderful but not enough. we allowed the politicians to deploy the military congressional research service

said we have deployed the military over 60 times. and a recent article rented out we have special operations forces in 143 countries. maybe all of those are legitimate or we like to use the military. so i say we kind of disrespect our military i wrote an article we have halftime shows in all these other things but i say it's a sign of disrespect to ignore somebody and we are ignoring it. that has to change. there has to be a national conversation i had a novelist

friend writing what i thought was a pretty good description she reviewed my book and said we asked them to go into battle trusting with the tools that we give him or the right ones their motives are honorable and actionsw are sanctioned and talking about that human element of war that america is lacking in the intellectual capacity not just in education but a way to study and consider to actively choose the conflicts should be when we put machines between us and the enemy.

and we wrote the article was part of the book but i like to end my description what i think of as patriotism if you remember adelaide stevenson who said patriotism is not a sure and frenzied outburst. but the steady dedication of a lifetime. so i say that will not anymore. we have to sit down and have a debate because this technology is coming and coming at us fast and will present issues for the soldier. and for our decision-makers.

they really don't have the capacity to understand thesi stuff and for them to have a national debate about that we ask a lot of the military and i hope this book sells a gazillion copies but if they will read this and enter into that it is so important especially now. and with that there is a chapter of things i think we could do is not the greatest chapter but thank you for your interest in the book i am anxious to get your questions. [applause]

>> please wager hand. >> do you have information about our embassy in cuba? >> the short answer is i have no information at all. people were getting sick i think technically it is low-frequency sonic ways so it is conceivable that i have no information on it.

>> so now the military leaders they are chronologically challenged how do you make them understand because many of those who are very familiar with technology are not in the military how do they use technology to the best advantage? so how do we trade them to fight the battle of the future? >> i do think it is the military decision-makers who are the issue. generally speaking it doesn't want to go to war by and large

it is the civilian leadership that is troublesome and the only way that i know of is for the public to demandom it. if the public demands it will listen. it's a tough problem to try to explain to the political scientist how it works is a fools errand but try to explain to them the implications is something that we could do. >> thank you for writing a wonderful book but aren't you

really describing that the republican accuse the democrats of losing china when it fell to the communist nixon spent four years in vietnam out of war he could not win and today we are in afghanistan nobody in this country can explain the exit strategy and they are terrified to tell us the truth because they know it is unsatisfactory. one way of asking is this a lost cause? they are terrified of their own people and for good reason.rr if i said it is a lost cause maybe i should have said difficult but the biggest part of the problem that war has

come frequently with thoughts of the vietnam war on ast credit card with every conflict i'm not silly enough to think we will go back to the draft but it hasn't affected theo t american people after 911 that was an awful awful situation the president declared an actualde emergency he actually did say shopping. why people affected from 911 and the families obviously was the military. i signed orders keeping people in the military. many t of them at some may have

been killed or wounded. and not know if that answers your question but we have to figure out a way to make it. will do it when it really needs to be done. >> you talk about the ethics of four with the exponential technology could there really be the ethic of war? that is a wonderful question.

literally for millennia. when those advanced countries do follow otherwise war is nothing but -- butchery which it was back in the days. but the basis of your question if i could be so bold like al qaeda they don't care about ethics. that isn't or should be what is important to us. we talked a big game about sub human rights so then we have to demonstrate some aspect and

then to sign up like the geneva convention and other natural humanitarian laws. lee is a place for ethics. you should do what other people think is correct. >> do you believe the all volunteer military is the moste effective way? that is a question i get a lot a grip at the time of the draft i don't think we have

any other option of an all volunteer army but i don't have any other answers. moving on perhaps moving on with national service but with the volunteer military is if you look at the data increasingly comes from a narrower slice of the american public. it doesn't represent the entire demographic and that is worrisome. and they have a decision and i don't want to use the term mercenary and to impose their will on others.

i don't think it other than a draft it'll think that will happen again.t t >> do you envision combat but what about the unmanned aircraft so certainly it'll have that rotation i guess my question at some point is what's the point? but the short answer is yes

that technology is getting soec much better. a student asked me why we just have war between machines? my answer was it's a good point at some point humans will die. >> so why would you say no to a draft? it seems to get the public interested in what the politicians are doing if their son and daughter might be affected mistake my answer as a no but i grew up in that

time. it is not without its problems. you could be drafted with bone spurs. and then they rely on the smaller subset. so i just don't think it is possible in the current environment. if 911 wasn't enough. >> i do believe everyone should serve and if you will not serve in the military and with the social contract i would like to see the draft but it would never happen admiral mullen we should lower

the active duty soldiers to a very low number and fill it up with reserves. then the next time we go to war the reserves have to go. that would impact families and they may actually say no. i didn't say no to the draft but i'm a realist. >> and a? the military budget and with

three quarters of a trillion per year but if we can't win with that? or half of that? can the military spend its budget wisely and efficiently or is it a behemoth that keeps growing? >> i was with you up to a certain point. [laughter] i was in that business for years. i don't think we need three quarters of a chilean dollars but to be fair much of that t was operations spare parts overnc 200 billion i honestly think we don't get one system out onto the field until we move to the next one.

and then to something we have to respond to. but maybe if we looked at that very closely we could find where we need to be that so ask any typical person on the street.. and i think that's sad. and the politicians say okay we need to go to war. nobody ever tells us how saving troops in the ukraine and how that makes us safer? you could say with nato and

they are with us. >> that is a long and rambling answer to your question. did i answer it? [laughter] >> i have one question you say the military is developing neurological advancements do you see there could be a way to help our students today? >> there are two answers the first is those types of technologies almost always get

into the civilian world they are developed by civilian companies sowo yes whether or not they should help students because of a very sticky ethical question with the idea to put brain enhancements in is like having students take ritalin. so whether or not we should bee enhancing people what about people that cannot afford neurological testing? those technologies will make their way into civilian life. but we want to and on a positive note.

soldiers sailors airmen and marines s are the best in the world they are great young people. and they deserve the best of what we can give them. [applause] we will accept your donations to the savannah book festival because of your generosity we can keep the festival free please help us to continue keeping it free. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> right now affordable housing that is quickly important for the future because we cannot afford to have people live here people are suffering so affordable housing is critical and to the homeless population and then try to fix this problem. and then to be a partner with affordable housing. >> the taxes that was passed this fall.

i am concerned that high-speed rail is getting into taxpayers not paying for the problems. >> i am a college student it is important for me on the immigration policy to have access to higher education. >> so veterans affairs and benefits. >> but then throughout all of california with all of the

problems we are having with the gun issue so the bill needs to be passed and they did not pass it at this time it was too expensive. so i would like to see that happen we will solve all of the problems of the teachers and the schools. >> good evening ladies and gentlemen stephen