Transcripts For CSPAN2 Striking Power 20170917

At 6 30. I apologize in advance for cutting off any moments of brilliance on their part or any of yours because of timing. My name is john yoo, i am a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise institute and coauthor with Jeremy Rabkin who is already at the other end of this book after 20, by yours now before supplies run out. That is a joke, supplies will never run out. Striking power. We are proud to have our commentators. Bios in front of you, mister lewis is a fellow at the center for strategic and International Studies which is almost next door to us. A long background on these issues and governmental agencies, just complaining, the United Nations. And professor andres at the national college, deep background in Cyber Security issues, really grateful to have them with us. What we are going to do today, i am going to drive the themes of the book. We will hear from rich and jim and Jeremy Rabkin will respond and we will have 25 minutes for your questions and our answers and discussion. With that said, let me welcome all of you to our new building. I couldnt think of a better place to talk about future technology than our prototype bridge of the starship enterprise. This is an amazing facility, looks like we are already in the space age. Welcome to all of you who are not from aei. I would like to thank Lindsay Weiss for organizing the panel and everything ran so well and the aei leadership and staff for providing a nice home for Jeremy Rabkin and i to do our research. The book has three points to it. A lot of the Rapid Advances we are seeing in technology and the economy are coming to military weaponry. If you think about some of the major advances youre seeing in the civilian world, autonomous cars, great advances in robotics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles we have seen for more than ten years are just the leadingedge of the advances robotics are going to provide to military affairs, much more complex drones, naval vessels that dont need large groups, drones that can operate in the air autonomously, ground vehicles, antimissile defenses which are in the news and our thoughts with regard to north korea. Cyber also present the aggregation and rapid manipulation of data in the civilian world, the use of algorithms to carry out everything from trading to electrical systems, social media and the military world. The virus that was allegedly created by the United States and israel which delayed the uranian Nuclear Program by several years. The United States has been on the receiving end of cyber with alleged tax into the Government Office of Personnel Management database and other alleged russian interference with the us electoral system. Also on the defensive in cyber. Space, we have seen in the course of a few years a rapid drop in the costs of launching satellites into space thanks to private enterprise, spacex. There is a lot of reluctance and concern about the deployment of these technologies in warfare. Elon musk who himself is the head of space x and head of tesla recently issued a letter two weeks ago signed by 100 other ceos of Tech Companies calling for an outright ban on the use of Artificial Intelligence in weaponry. Two or three years ago he was joining a letter by stephen hawking, the famous english physicist and steve wozniak, one of the founders of apple and thousands of other scientists to call for regulation and even prohibition of the use of Artificial Intelligence in weapons. They fear a future where robots will make decisions how to wage war, robots will make decisions whether to try to assassinate enemy leaders or attack specific ethnic groups or invade and occupy territory. The book Jeremy Rabkin and i rose is a response to these efforts to create a ban or heavily regulate these new weapons. One is historically we think such efforts are doomed to failure. Every time there has been a big advance in economics or technology, productivity married to similar changes in military affairs, there has always been an effort to stop orban those efforts and almost invariably fail. We have a discussion about why they failed. Think about world war i which deployed for the first time in a broadway economic progress made during the Industrial Resolution where you saw mass production of weapons, the introduction of aircraft, submarines, longrange artillery. People called for the banning of a lot of these new weapons, but in the end the only one that succeeded was the ban on biological or chemical weapons. All those other mass production type weapons survived and were widely used. We should actually not fear these weapons. Because the effect of these weapons is different than past revolutions. Past revolutions the effect of these new technologies has been to make war cheaper, more massproduced, more destructive and less discriminate in the sense that weaponry discriminated less between civilians and combatants. We think these new technologies have the opposite effect. With drones, cyber, space weapons, the use of force can be more precise, less harmful, less destructive, much more protective of civilians, more discriminating between targets and civilians. The third thing we argue is the main critics of these new technologies that come from technologists themselves, the tech ceos from United Nations leaders, not all the many academics in the field, officials of other governments. Their main argument has been that war has become too easy when you can launch it by pressing a button or when you can send a robot to do the fighting. Why not ban these weapons to make war harder and more difficult to reduce overall . Our argument is that is not an argument about the technology. That is an argument about the purpose of war in the modern age, whether there has been too much war or too little more. One thing is north korea or rwanda or syria, examples where countries feel stuck between passivity, appeasement or doing that and momentous step of deploying large amount of troops, resources and we argue these technologies can provide nations with options, in between doing nothing and going to fool world war that hopefully will be to use as a force that promote International Order and stop human rights abuses or allow great powers to negotiate their disputes before they reach a shooting war. Let me just close before turning it over to our two commentators. Last thing, seems like a lot of the fear of the new weapons is because James Cameron is too good a director and convinced us the terminator movies are what we should fear. You can see it in the rhetoric opposed to new technological developers, the headlines, articles, if we go down this route soon, it will lead to terminator robot and skynet will take over and humanity will be lost. That sounds great. I love science fiction, sounds like a great episode of many star trek series which i highly recommend, but is it really a serious concern . Do we have evidence of that happening . Has it ever happened before . Why cant we take safeguards as we do with the development to make sure it doesnt happen in the future . With that i would like to turn it over to richard first, you will go first. We look forward to your comments. Coming at this a little differently having worked for the permit of defense for quite a few years and taught at the National War College. What we try to do is figure out how to best use the technology. When i read in the book about efforts to ban or discriminate against using these technologies, i thought that doesnt sound like a good idea. That would make it harder to win. There is a different perspective from the department of defense side. Let me take this to a different level. One of the things we need to do from the perspective of america being a representative of the American Government is we need to be concerned about how best we can win. If we use technologies that help us stay at we can reserve this system we have built and sustained since world war ii for a longer time, our system wont last forever, no system does. States with different system of government we dont agree with will begin to prevail. We maintain for a longer period of time. This other thing that is going on along these lines is our system, this International System, peaceful, stable, democratic system depends on having allies. It works as long as we have the moral authority and have allies behind us and if we start doing things which make our allies uncomfortable or unwilling to work with us we will have problems. There are two sides to this even from the perspective of some like me coming from his affirmative defense wanting our country to win on the battlefield and on the bigger political and diplomatic table. We have to take into account what our allies and friends are saying but im worried with this technological debate, this is serious and we have to be careful about going along with what our allies and friends, american constituencies are trying to do in banning this technology or stopping technologies like robotics on the battlefield or the use of cyberspace. I dont think what they are trying to do is necessarily logical. There is a constituency out there that makes its living, mostly International Lawyers, who make their living by being antius. That is what they do. Doesnt matter what the issue is. We cant take the argument at face value. I dont for the most part these guys are totally serious at the end of the day. When we hear what they are saying we shouldnt do we are doing almost all of them. We have banned weapons in the past but usually as weapons that have a horrific effects of chemical weapons biological weapons, nuclear weapons, weapons that dont have a horrific effects are not banned. I think that is one of the things we want to think about. Its not clear to me that johns points are wrong, that if anything the new developments will change warfare significantly so youve seen the blend of antisatellite in space and cyber precision and hypersonic strikes. Will be a different kind of battlefield just as in 1990 we saw different kind of battlefield from that new set of military technologies. Not clear to me existing international law, one doesnt apply. I think everyone agrees it does. They dont agree how it applies but theres agreement at least among u. S. Members that it applies and second wont reinforce some of the key principles of the laws of Armed Conflict proportionality distinction and discrimination. Sip it premature to be worried about this. When you think about there i would say to audiences. The audience we just heard about the International Lawyers but another one to bear in mind is an old arms control trick. As an old arms control i can say that. Amended treaty that bans for europe on it is doing and not what you are doing. That is respected. Id be upset if they chinese didnt try to do that. A classic example of course is the Chinese Foreign Members Ministry was staunchly denouncing the weaponization of space and antisatellite weapons up until the morning they woke up and read in the paper that they had tested an antisatellite weapon. We have to expect that our opponents will take advantage of efforts to constrain the u. S. Without themselves being constrained and of course biological weapons are classic example of that. When you think about russian behavior. The other thing ive been thinking about and i was thinking about this largely in the context of cyber attack, why are we so risks diverse . Why do you have people writing about technology that do not exist or if they do exist theyve been around for a long time. The patriot has an autonomous mode. Some of the antiship defense satellites have not autonomous mode. Not the end of the world. Its preferable i think you have machine shot it as opposed to having a human shot at but you have people who object seriously to the spread of the select capability. Why are they so risk adverse and i think in some ways its because society itself has changed. Western society, American Society so we are much more riskaverse than the nuclear president which is a new demonic technology. That was the source of the godzilla movies and this is kind of her replay of this. We worry about catastrophes that probably wont happen and this might be one of them. When i look at these things for me it is just a further continuation of the technologies that have made military is more effective. We are not alone. Everyone i assume knows the leading expert of drones in the world is china. We are not in first place. But there is this larger debate about how these weapons bring unknown perils to the future of conflict. I will stop at that but we could have a larger discussion about improved military capabilities. He could make the case it seems to make great powers more cautious about about going toward it reduces the risk. My own belief is we will never see another world war Something Like world war ii where you have mass mobilization, industrial warfare on a global scale. Think most countries want to avoid that and one of the reasons they want to avoid that is precisely because the increased capabilities provided by the military systems makes it so costly. That isnt an argument for banning them. I want to just briefly address one issue that has come up and go onto two aspects other than that is a be a lot of this talk about banning control talk, no one is taking it too seriously. Im open to that but just so you have a frame of reference in the cyber area nato sponsored a project coming up with a manual on how the Armed Conflict applies to cyber and they did it not officially nato document but the nato center for excellence in talmet estonia broad and scholars from around the world, most of them people affiliated with government and they came up with this quite bulky, stuffy how Armed Conflict applies to Cyber Operations and they serve confidently. Of course it does in all the rules have to be applied in the cyber context than you might think well, thats a sight worth seeing. Therefore competing treatises that have been written by scholars probably not working for governments. Mostly people at universities and this original manual is now in its second edition in the second edition is longer and more detailed than the first. I went to the book party, the launch for the second edition of the manual here in washington which was interestingly sponsored by the dutch government for the finnish government. Some european country was associated with it. Dutch, yeah and people who werent all that is said well we came up with the second edition three years later because governments express so much interest. Everybody now sees maybe these arent exactly the rules but there must be rules for a second edition. Im not sure anyone could tell you confidently what would really happen if we started going back and forthwith disruptive cyber attack spot i think its not real good to have everything channeled to a fairer rules lets make them far more detailed. I think the point of that is to be inhibiting and i think the way governments work there are lots and lots of lawyers basically giving a lot of material for lawyers to save no, we cant do this because you are the rules. It makes it look like this is all been worked out. By the way no one is proposing a new treaty. They are all saying lawyers can extrapolate how this works. The first thing i want to say the least in some areas to cyber teen example whole lot of people generate a whole lot of things that look semiauthoritative and serious so its not a few people saying things on tv and they are just kidding. The second thing i want to say to a followon, it discourages people who need to think about this from thinking in a serious way. The point of our book is not lets just cut loose in the wild that is not the point at all. Its that new technologies put up in many ways in many contexts into a different situation and we should think about how this works. Let me just give two examples. The main treaty going back to the 1970s make a distinction between military targets which are permissible and civilian. Not only civilian human beings but civilian infrastructure should not the adults are your target. Proportionality is literally its not like theyll be excessive. Its, if there is going to be incremental harm to civilians objects, civilian infrastructure and has to be incidental because they cant be the thing you are aiming at. If its incidental and still cant need, cant be excessive in relation to the military advantage. When you are going after military targeting up to hit some things nearby. That whole way of thinking is basically a few bomb cologne with 1000 bombers you break a lot of stuff. You kill a lot of people. It had better be worth it. This whole way of thinking about it which makes certain sense if you are sending in a lot of numbers to hit a city with 1943 technology so basically couldnt get within a fivemile radius of the intended target. More than half fell outside of the fivemile radius of a were not close to the actual target which is why they needed so many bombers. If you think about cyber you can just say the iranian, the Iranian Program will find uranium. We are going to hit that installation and we are going to blow anything up. We are just going to target the industrial control on some important pieces. No one was killed. It just incapacitated this particular piece of equipment. If you step back and ask the lawyers questions were the military lawyers questions are still fall was that i permissible target . Was it a military target and the iranians swear up and down, was a Peaceful Nuclear there. Actually thats a complicated dispute. Is it military or is it civilian . That itself is somewhat disputed and even if you said their capacity to produce a bomb down the road is a fact that, okay by you did incidental damage in the meantime. That whole set of questions that people had learned how to ask about the kind of technology that we had in the 1970s just doesnt make sense. We are dealing with cyber strikes that can be very very focused and you might want to do before you are involved in some of these military complex. We did this surreptitiously so my main point is its not only a matter of who they will inhibit from doing things we should do but thinking in an imaginative way and a creative way and an appropriate way what do technologies enable us to do . What kind of limits do we want to have and what kind of him limits do we not want to have and do we need to have a more focused consideration of these things rather than a somewhat if i can say robotic way and saying we have this body of law from 1970s. Lets just go forward mechanically applying it to a new strategic setting with new kinds of weapons and to knowledge he. I was actually in town at the nato conference and at one of the side events i asked the following question which was not a popular question but my question was can chipmunks captured tigers and the reason for that is the great powers behave in a certain way and you really need to look at the p5 and perhaps a subset of the p5. The p5 is not like the dash the p5 will do what it needs to do and as a member of the p5 chooses not to pursue these technologies they may be disqualified themselves from being a great power in the future. More importantly treaties have some value because they set these rules for how warfare should be engaged in a way that minimizes civilian damage. The eight convention, the Geneva Convention and its protocols, those are posts that no. One of the things i worry about is they came after wares were resized aerial bombardment and chemical weapons and horrific destruction. Thats what inspired them and in some ways theorizing ahead the event of that may not be a good way to do it. Usually these constraints are posts that no when we have a little bit of experience. There is another issue here which is really important and that pertains to cyber space and health laws and traditions work in this field. Cyber space is something ive spent a lot of time thinking about over the last 10 years or so and it strikes me, its very subversive the way that cyber conflict works. You dont think about the cyber pearl harbor but people are realizing thats not really the issue. What happens is your opponents find some way to get inside of your system. They think of as subtly. They find some that allows them to penetrate you without alerting you to the point where you are going to get up. Its like a frog in a pot. You want to be able to keep warming up that water and taking something, taking something but never to the point where force is the frog to take maneuvers to jump out of the pot and do something big. Our adversaries have gotten good at this sort of thing. The chinese in particular by the russians as well and the they are fighting are also legal or of tradition which allow us, allow them to get into our system and ways that we cant resist. We cant stop so one of the things thats in the news a lot lately has been Chinese Companies purchasing u. S. Companies and you have seen them buying strategic technologies. The free market. You can come up with a great analogy why not let chinese investors who may or may not be working for the Liberation Army or someone else in the chinese brockers he why not let them buy having the freedom of private property you want to sell that for once that technology is in the hands of the Chinese Government he can be used to do similarly devastating things to our military our Critical Infrastructure and so forth. Thats a in our armor. Thats a hole in our law. How do you revise their laws and traditions in such a way that we can start to address these critical vulnerabilities which exists because we have outpaced the laws made in the earlier era where traditions and customs whatever it might need. So this is something i think really needs to be addressed whenever we think about new technologies and militarize technologies being inserted into the milieu and the mix of military capabilities. Im going to continue as coauthor im going to still be the moderator. The strange position to the end that i think its like being an asian mother with a kid which as an asian kid my mother would say and i know she was really proud of me. She would say thats a good score but why didnt you do better . Jeremy having heard these two comments why did we do better in our pro . Is there something we should have added . What would you say in response to these two points . I do take the general point but there is a lot of talk about the law of Armed Conflict and its tough to know what the real significance of it as particularly when we are not fighting. When you are not fighting the easiest thing is to say of course we would never do a thing because we just wouldnt ever have to take your point that we do things that we are teaching in our war colleges that you are not supposed to do or at least where teaching in our schools that you are not supposed to do. What does that tell you . Actually i dont know and since you pose this as a question, i wish i knew the answer to these things and then i will have a chapter. Let me explain it to you. I think, i mean i think this is kind of a pervasive feature of modern life but people say things they dont quite mean. If you keep saying them you start to worry that it kind of makes a difference. If i could give you an analogy, which i probably shouldnt but i will anyway betsy devos was recently at my school. People have gone really crazy with the harassment features and i think part of the reason people went a little bit extreme is they kept saying things which didnt quite fully think that they kept saying it and then theres a certain momentum. I take the point that if you are really caring so much about lawyers and care so much about how you look the main interest of these weapons, the main importance of these weapons, i could be wrong but i do think the main significance is that allows us to deliver coercive, call them strikes, coercive strikes, prompts in a compact allout war. I think the stuxnet attack was excellent that nobody in the world, like no government said that was running should have done that. They thought that was interesting. Its precisely in that sort of shadowland where you were not in allout war and you just think to hell with the rules, this is allout war and it isnt quite normal peacetime interactions where i think there is hesitation. There should be hesitation. I want to be provocative. You would want to go too far. You dont want people to denounce it and you havent fully committed solicitation like that i think there is some hesitation i would give you one example which i think is kind of construct this. The Bush Administration had this program to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and one of the things that we did was some intervention on the high seas. There was one moment in which we seized the ship from north korea which was bound to some place in africa and it sure wasnt shipping civilian goods from north korea which everyone likes to have. The whole thing was incredibly suspicious and we released it very quickly. Take it what that was about, ever talk to anyone about what that was about. Normal peacetime conditions we are worried about degrading the laws of the sea. We want this to be there we want there to be a general understanding in peacetime. If we were in a real board we know it from the last fullscale war, world war ii, we allow ourselves to interview interfere and we just said no you need our permission to be on the atlantic literally. Short of that we are not sure what the rules are there some indications that bear little bit more inhibited in some circumstances than we might be and i think we need to think harder about new technologies allow us to have an intervention that is not the same as launching a war and what should we allow ourselves to do . Am not saying if we thought hard figure it out and we have a perfectly calibrated scheme which we could then disseminate to people in the military. We are going to learn from experience. We are going to see what the reactions are. We are busy with effective than whats not effective but its fair to say even accepting the point where theres a great deal of verbiage and meaningless rhetoric and the great deal of gaming we are sometimes in danger of gaming ourselves or inhibiting ourselves excessively are being too worried about as someone said to me, one of my students that was coloring outside the lines, we should get it. You can color outside of the lines when you have a pen that is a really different kind of pen. Before returned to the audience i want to ask one question of our panel because jeremy really sharpens the point i think its jeremys view that the laws of war post 1977 are ideologically or politically motivated and they have the effect of somewhat inhibiting the United States and the western powers in what they can or are willing to do and these new technologies seems to be what jeremy is arguing give us the opportunity to try to change those. Do you agree with that initial argument that the laws of war and this incarnation are really motivated by political or ideological gains in putting that aside you think the United States should use the opportunities and to knowledge is to try to change them back to the way they were before . I will take that. I absolutely agree. International law is one of the ways other countries cut try to constrain the United States. We see a country as powerful as United States you try to find some way to gain some control. Go back to the 1970s in your book you talk a lot about the perspective of fairness. You give all of the advantages to the guerrillas and the terrorists and all of the advantages go to the weak powers definitely designed to constrain power. Try to find some way to keep that superpower at day and in check. Right now there might be some opportunities with your weapons to change that a little bit. So yeah i think thats the case but theres another thing going on which our adversaries right now are making good use of some these technologies. The chinese in particular and the russians we seen in the news finding ways to take advantage of these. If we come up with some nifty new laws they are going to apply to us but i really dont think the new laws that govern this technology and constrain this technology i dont think the chinese respect those laws and i dont think the russians will respect those laws or the lithuanians are the north floridians. If we come up with a new set of laws and try to construct new technology i cant see any good news coming out of it for an International System that we have built in world war ii. Maybe im too dismissive of the International Lawyer class thats trying to do this but if they were successful it would definitely be a bad thing for the stable world system that we have today. Thats why would address the system. I wonder for this in a more political issue so im treading a little bit outside of the bonds out of the bounds here. The preference in western society particularly in europe for the last few decades has been to move away from a force as an instrument of state power particularly in the western European Countries none of whom perhaps with one or two exceptions when it comes to defense. Some people have called it a period of strategic to timidity. Not that the laws themselves are a problem. The laws are relatively flexible and give you the ability to do what you need to do if you can justify it. Think its our interpretation that is the dilemma. I know and a Cottage Industry now in parts of the act to the mac world to create a new norm covering warfare you can only use autonomous weapons because we dont need the norms. Im not sure we even need new laws but we may need to rethink the politics of how we use force. Part of this i think countries are cautious about force. Even the russians and the chinese are careful to not cross some elbow fine threshold that would provoke a military reaction. We have entered a new way to think about conflict. The new way is technology to influence each other and i think thats right. We need to think through that not so much to change the laws but how we apply those laws. We are going to turn now to questions from the audience. I then asked to say, keep in mind that the event is being livestreamed and also on cspan. Please wait for the microphone to come to you before you ask your question. Clearly into the microphone. Ask your brief question and make sure it really is a question. I teach a vertically so a lot of times questions turn into speeches so we want to avoid that here. So if someone could bring a microphone over. Thanks. And also please if you are directing a question to this specific person on the panel as well would be helpful. Let me address the question to all of you. If we take away the presumption this technology and it fits the United States in any kind of asymmetrical way because they are disseminated and they are dualuse and so on with the attitude that you all seem to be advocating change in any way . Now for me because for me the one issue that hasnt come up enough in the counter argument is the aspect of reducing casualties. This part i am baffled by it. If you have to choose the twine one of our soldiers being shot and the machine being shot i know which one i would pick. Im happy to send machines to combat if it reduces casualties. That has nothing to do with advantage from one side to the other. Im not sure we have an advantage. Our opponents have been thinking for a decade on how to build technologies that give them an advantage. If you look at chinese and russian activities in space we are vulnerable but maybe one of these people signing letters we dont have these autonomous weapons and we wont have wars. What was that thing called the treaty of 1926 . Oh that, come on. Technology saves peoples lives on the battlefield. You have to get down to cases some of them might he really provocative and make war more likely. There are certain types of cyber complex which i would love to ban if we could get our opponents to it here too it. I just have no hope whatsoever that they will appear as anything that we would want them to adhere to. If i thought it would somehow help us in the process i be the first one to try to get a new rule. I just dont see that in the cards for many of the technologies we are discussing here today. I want to say two things in the first is we shouldnt think of this as the only conflict that matters is the United States and china. We actually havent fought china since 1953 that we had a lot of people fighting and a lot of places. Its worth thinking about how it could apply to a lot of places in the middle east for example. Thats the first thing in the second thing is to be a really crude about this, i dont think my view for what its worth is there cannot be an international mormon binding on us without our consent and therefore if we really disagree its not the rule at least for us. If you accept that which certainly everyone who works for the United States government should not only accept but assert and repeat every day, the danger is not that the legal danger where we get trapped, this psychological danger that we get turned around and confused like what were we talking about . And to push back on that and if someone says oh you were just saying cyber is lawful because you are better at it, okay fine we are better at it. The point of the rules cannot be to make sure that everyone has an equal chance. The point of the rules is to avoid unnecessary suffering when it can be avoided and when its unnecessary but not to equalize the situation and if you say we wont otherwise get agreement thats okay. There are a lot of things there is no agreement on what the rule should be so we can live with that. Whats the point of being a superpower if you cant live with some uncertainty in the world . Since we have been beating up on International Lawyers all day Evan Williams of former Legal Adviser at the state department will defend his profession. Thats not really what i had in mind. [laughter] but this whole area baffles me and it seems to me there are couple of elements here. I want to direct this to the chairman and john. Arms control, should we allow this kind of weapon and whatever that debate was, is that a debate over how the laws of war, what they should be in this context . I thought it was interesting, back at the beginning of the year when the russian hacking and interference was at its peak , two academics who are not lawyers so we cant even blame the left proposing the great outrage of what the russians have done and they are recommending responsive action that would deter them from doing it again. I asked the question, what is it that we would be taking, this action against . Was at the hacking or was it the use of what they got through the hacking and disseminating it in the middle of this u. S. And the response came back the use of this material in the u. S. Campaign and the whole thing seemed to fall apart. I think it was used by the russians. Whats an appropriate response to the use of one of these cyber things as opposed to whether or not the cyber hacking should be permitted. I dont see any answers. I do not think there are clear rules about this and i think what the russians did which people are carrying on about like thats the most monstrous thing ever i would speculate that we would done similar things in other countries elections. We tried to help, although its unclear to me what the motive was on the russian side. We usually have a more constructive strategy. I think they were just trying to shake things up but yeah i think its fair to say there arent agreed rules about this and i think we dont want there to be agreed rules because i think we probably dont know what we might like to do as far as gathering information and applying it which is the core of this. Its distracting to say cyber homages think it is espionage espionage. Are we against espionage . Would be likely to be an elaborate code of espionage rules . I think not. Prison trumps executive order on cybersecurity includes the commissioning of a study by the Interagency Community on how exactly to deter, norms and deterrence. One of the things you will see in the next few months is certainly a study and perhaps even suggestions for retaliatory actions that will be painful, damaging but not permanent and reversible. To go back to the arms control lingo this would be called populating all the rungs of the escalation ladder. We have done a good job of populating the ladder above the threshold of use of force and below that where these activities fall there hasnt been a lot of thought. I think the call by the administration to think up these reversible retaliatory actions is a good idea. The book itself is fairly pessimistic about arms control but not about deterrence. We didnt have arms control that succeeded until stahl and s. T. A. R. T. After a lot of time and a lot of experience with the weapons and a lot of experience with their adversaries. Exactly what jim is talking about is exactly what we want to do. Want to start to develop a method message of retaliating ,. Thats where we think the norms get created after long period of practice of deterrence rather than signing an agreement and a treaty or getting together and putting together an expert manual. Jeremy didnt mention this to richard that theres a harvard project that gets killer robots. We banned killer robots because harvard said we had to. I dont think any of these things are going to succeed but the things that jim and richard are talking about that are important is where we can have deterrence. We think these weapons just create more opportunity. We want to have an aei study and deregulation, coercive uses of new technology. Everyone hates arms comptrollers. I even hated arms comptrollers when i was a kid. The utility of arms control in the future is a good question however. Im calling on the ringers first so how about harvey over here. Dont call on harvey. Hi. My question or comment is in my private capacity. I do not represent the entity that im associated with. Jim raised the issue, he called at the loft countermeasures which are starting to evolve and evolve that way from the practice. I think there are a number of levels of conversation you are having and one is we always talk about at the National War College a revolution in military affairs and technology is becoming the third revolution. We talked about what the advantage is for the west visavis its adversaries but a question for you guys is, there is this notion that what you are focusing on is called how you apply the law to the idea of fighting. We also have a reason to go to war. Technology is cutting across both of those phenomena. As you said a lot of countries are trying to figure out what is below the threshold under Geneva Conventions further projection of force inside of space. A lot of us are trying to think about that. Id be curious for you as a group to Start Talking about what you see as abell him and what would be a reason that would cross over and i dont think you are saying that you want to throw out the concept of our way of making that distinction. The origins of all the ease norms comes from us which is the lieber code which started the civil war which lincoln lays out the left and right margin of whats appropriate or more and he does it in the context of the civil war. The golan and you want to join the north in a manner that is does not result in an ongoing civil war forever which we may have. Id be curious to see the annals we are going to do this in the lightning round fashion because they are only four minutes left so go. We started this with the lieber code. Lieber was hired to do this because he was from germany and was thought to know what the europeans think the rules are and he did some research. He gave some explanation for why these are the rules. We didnt just make them up. To the larger point of course we want to have rules in the way we fight war. Of course you do and the question is are they frozen in place to what people thought they should be in the 1970s even that was a partisan telling in the 1970s. If you raise the question of getting into a war its an interesting fact which has now been totally forgotten. They used to have before the Second World War specific reprisals which men and after 1945 we thought no, hit them hard there will be a war we will be back to and that will be terrible. No, no, no because it has to be something thats in itself lawful. Anyway it blurs a lot of lines as to what you think of as an act of force when you can do it at a distance without personnel and we need to think more about that. I would address it by saying what counts is war now is really unclear. The russians right now regularly say they are at war with us. There is also a strategic chinese contingent who say they are at war with the United States. If you were doing a some people in the Intelligence Community have published a number of times trillions of dollars damage to your adversary economy is that considered war . Last week a report came out of the dragonfly malware thats been found on u. S. Critical infrastructure. Its not like they are putting bombs underneath their transformers. They are not physical bombs. Is that war . We need to rethink what constitutes this. This whole notion that we will declare war does not cover any war and we need to really rethink this common sense term to come up with solutions in these technological puzzles. Really quickly the rules that apply to combat and the use of force remain perfectly applicable and appropriate. I dont see any difficulty in using proportionality distinction and discrimination as a military necessity. As we have heard the part thats difficult is what qualifies as war now . What is the decision you make and in some ways the rules are as germane to the new technologies deployed on a complex where you marched into battle. I think its more what is conflict and not what do you do when you are in conflict. I know what to do but making that decision its not at all clear anymore. Let me thank my coauthor and our two panelists for great discussion and i thank all of you for finishing exact way on time. Id like to also invite all of you for a wine and cheese reception across the hall and an opportunity to buy a signed copy of the book if you are so inclined. Again join me in thanking everyone on the panel. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] host adam winkler a few years ago we had the debate about whether corporations were people. Are they . Guest at the very complicated question actually. Under the law traditionally corporations are people. Legal persons and what that means in law is they are indepeen