divided nation and the world at large lots of of issues in there harlan. thanks for joining us. harlan is a strategic thinker and innovator whose career spans the world's a business and government. he is a csis alum harlan's the chairman of two private companies and an advisor to the heads of major corporations and governments. he holds an ma mald and a phd from the fletcher school of law and diplomacy at tufts university. he was a distinguished visiting professor at the naval war college a professor of military strategy at the naval war college and is up eyes arnold deborah grove distinguish. columnists arno, of course also an alum of csis. so thanks harlan for joining us and welcome to csis. welcome back to see. many happy years there. let me first start off harlan with with the title of the book. you've got two. a concepts to phrases in there that i think would be worth unpacking for folks. the first is the fifth horseman and then we've got an and then the new mad, so can you first tell us what you mean and by the the fifth horseman and then walk us through the new mad because it is not the mutually assured destruction of the cold war. thanks, and i'm going to add a third part of the title a divided nation, which is critical. people understand and know the biblical four horsemen of the apocalypse. well about two and a half years ago a fifth horseman emerged carrying a new man. and this fifth horseman has been extremely destructive. because of what i call massive attacks of disruption, you mentioned mad of the cold war mutual assured destruction what that meant was because both east and west had so many thousands of thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. a war would have been catastrophic but nobody died under a nuclear cloud. under covid almost a million americans have died. that's more than every american who was killed on every battle. we fought since 1775 if that's not massive disruption. i do not know what is and while covid is only one of many disrupters what we have to realize is that taking comprehensively disruptors that include failed and failing government just look at both sides of pennsylvania avenue climate change. cyber, social media drones terror and debt all these are operating together. and unless we understand the coherence of this overarching threat of disruption. we will approach each one singularly and that's not going to be helpful. what really makes life difficult. is that on virtually every issue in this country? we're divided 50/50. the supreme court associate justice. my bed is going to be confirmed 50/50 and that's represented the divided america. so how does it divided america deal with these massive attacks of disruption which are the new threat and i believe in many ways more dangerous than china and russia or at least encompassed china and russia because the strategy of both countries is to disrupt the world order in the united states and the book goes into great detail. not only describing the problem but the last three chapters describe how we can fix it beginning with and i hope we'll get into this a major investment fund i call the 1923 fun because after the 1918 19 20 spanish flu the united states entered into the greatest economic boom in its history. it was short lived, but we can create recreate that and then there are also a large number of recommendations about how we need to reorganize our government both branches and what this means for a national strategy national security and national defense. so let me pick up harlan on the you talk briefly about the seven powerful disruptors. yeah, you you name them as failed and failing government climate change cyber social media terrorism exploding debt and drones and i wonder if you could do two things if if you can briefly talk about what why and how they're disruptors and second how and in what ways they may actually feed together. so they're not sort of independent concepts. that's a very good point seth because these are synergistic in other words one one exacerbates the other founding government. we did not do well dealing with covid that was enormously disruptive. we're not doing well with the resolving the economic and social issues congress can hardly decide on anything that has got to be enormously disruptive to a society at a time when inflation is reaching eight or nine percent gasoline prices of soaring. we have all these domestic problems. so without the ability to fix that everybody's life is becoming far more disruptive climate change some people disagree, but you can't disagree with several facts. the ice caps are melting temperatures are rising and sea levels arising you take a look at the huge storms fires disruptive weather patterns that are increasing in intensity some people believe their existential. i'm not sure that they're existential or not, but i am certain that they're changing life. arizona could become the notion front property. i say ingest, but the point is that we need to take this very very seriously debt over 30 trillion dollars in rising what happens when interest rates reach four five or six percent debt servicing will encompass a huge part of the budget. so, how do you deal with social programs? how do you deal with defense cyber? supposing you lose yourself and supposing you lose internet supposing you lose access to your banks supposing you lose access to everything power. you name it that's very possible in terms of cyber. social media. i plan a deep fake view doing something that's illegal. and how do you deal with it? very very difficult tara tara has now shifted to the domestic front. what's interesting when you go back and take a look at 1918 to 1920 in my book. we're in the midst of world war one. there were 24 letter bombs that are mailed two people were killed. this country was in greater panic than than it was after september 11th and with this edition and espionage acts people were arrested without due process. in fact, you could be charged for criticizing army uniforms. so terror is not new, but it's taking the new domestic form with which we have to deal and ask for drones. supposing on january 6 the insurgents had a handful of drones in each carried to stick a dynamite they could have destroyed the white house and we see the impact of drones right now. what's happening in ukraine? how do you deal with drones there are about two million? you can build them in your in your in your basement. you don't have to register them what happens in the future, you know, if crime increases and you want to make sure you're protected instead of having a bodyguard. you have a robot. or you have an aerial drone flying overhead? can that be armed? or is that going to be a second amendment issue? so we're getting into all these issues over drones for which we're entirely unprepared. and as we really don't have a good cyber strategy. we certainly don't have one for drones and these can be unbelievably disruptive that the general shorthand and what we have to do is understand we have to look at these comprehensively and therefore build a strategy that deals with these and by dealing with these reform a more peric society because we're able to deal with these disruptions, which i arguing to get much more intense in the future. so just briefly what are some examples harlan of how of the the synergy between them because you you talk a little bit about again not as in not just as independent factors, but the synergy about so can you provide an example or two of however at least several of them come together and and haven't even greater impact sure. let's take debt. what happens when interest rates go up? that affects everything. congress is not going to be able to pass laws. you're not going to be able to to deal with so many many issues or take cyber. supposing i decide i'm going to disrupt gas pipelines. how do we deal with that think about of the all-reaching consequences when you can't get gasoline in your car? or cyber turns off the chips and the gas pumps. so this has tremendous consequences across the board and that's going to cause even more disruption because you have a significant part of the public that's already dissatisfied so that you're going to see far more protests. we're not being able to deal with these things and they become cumulative. it's right like somebody who smokes 25 packs of cigarettes a day and after 10 years wonder why he or she has come down with cancer. these are all cumulative and they're interactive. thanks. i wanted to touch base a little bit on the the first of these disruptors. yeah, and and actually go go to the way you start the book. so one of them is failed and failing government and interestingly. you start the book with a series of quotes after the dedication. i'll read the first two the first is declaration of independence when government becomes destructive it is the right of the people to alter or abolish abolish it and establish a new one and then the second is abraham lincoln, june 16th, 1858 a house divided among itself cannot stand you also have quotes from charlie wilson from vladimir putin and then from a potential future american president and jackson bennett, and so the question here is is why the quotes and how do they actually then feed into the argument? i mean i can see the the thread here with failed and fail. over but but if you can unpack that. sure. one of the fundamental problems i go into great detail in the book is that i'm not sure that the constitution is any longer fit for purpose this gets to lincoln and this gets to the into declaration of independence. the reason i say that checks and balance balances only work when one of several conditions are in place one political party can have a super majority and both ends of pennsylvania avenue and five folks in the supreme court, that's not going to work. second you can have a crisis. pearl harbor unified a very divided nation in december 1941. what did covid do like the opposite. or you can have civility compromise and consensus in congress. when's the last time we had that before example? lyndon johnson's closest friend was ever dirksen johnson a democrat dirks and a republican. linden-funded dirksen's campaign and supported with dirksen as a republican that's not going to happen. so we've got a constitution that's not working that gets the first two and you're gonna have people who are going to take to the streets and i'm gonna say quite legitimately when government becomes destructive this is right of people to alter abolish it. it's in the declaration of independence and you're seeing bits and pieces like that because as civil society becomes entirely dissatisfied with government. what are its recourses? they can't elect people who can make a difference. what does it then do and you refer back to 1776 and how this country got started. so what i'm suggesting here, is that the combination of a government that's not working based on a constitution that may not be working with any divided nation that against each other we have here toxic mix that we have to address because if we don't two things will happen standard. living will decline probably dramatically for most americans and the american dream will be far-reaching and what the consequences are. i can't predict but certainly that's a situation we wish to avoid. so we'll we'll get into some recommendations and some of your thoughts including on the constitution a little bit later. i don't want to jump too far into the back part of the book, but i do want to hit a couple of things up front that i think are interesting and one is i found interesting the way you started the book from the perspective of a future us president and jackson bennett in 2029. so the question here is did writing your book in this style. how did it impact how you retroactively analyzed previous events in us history. what? why did you choose this? genre? and and how did you feel it was actually an important to make the point that you did? what i wanted to do is write this as a warning if you go just before that i noted in the introduction going back to vietnam. we're in front of lyndon johnson. i opposed the war i oppose nato expansion. i oppose going into iraq the second time. i was supposed to afghanistan and i was a voice in the wilderness. and so what i wanted to do was to tell people here's what could happen. this is a warning you have to understand. this is the trajectory and while not all these things might happen a number of them will and i take what really could be plausible so that you have a diminution of american power. you've got all sorts of difficulties riots in the united states, which have already happened. so i wanted to get the attention shocking off of the reader. to paint the picture that we've got some real problems i go into the assessment of those problems and they say okay how then do we deal to resolve them. how do we make this a better country? so this is a point here to get the reader's attention. so i do want to pick up actually on you. you talked a bit about the author's note and it is interesting. there's a there's an interesting broader question that comes out of the examples some of which you just outlined you you highlighted some of the warnings that you and others provided around the time of the vietnam war you highlighted the warnings about the expansion of nato you highlighted a that in 2002. iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. you highlight it some of the debates going on even why i was in government around the time of the afghan pakistan study in the review about the center of gravity pakistan. you had a number of comments during and around the trump administration and then you say essentially, you know these like other warnings had little impact. so part of this is what is i mean, what is what is going on? because you're not the only one that's saying these what's the what what why are we having problems historically and learning lessons in in having individuals like you and others? uh, you know warnings that are regularly ignored what why and and what's the broader implication of that? well, the board application is going to keep on making mistakes, but that's a very good question. there are a number of reasons that i go into the book. first since george hw bush, i do not believe we have had elected a president one exception who was qualified experienced and had the proper judgment for the job. and when joe biden got in who could have been more qualified eight years as vice president 36 years in the senate chairman of the judicial and foreign relations committee. but unfortunately president biden has made a huge number or number of mistakes, and i think one of the problems is that first of all the white house is so constrained not only in terms of the number of issues and bandwidth it has but the skill of people too often. we take former staffers who are loyal and don't really take people who are broad-minded enough to have to send because politics at the same time has become so partisan that you want people who with you. so who do you have in any administration? who is the center we go back to jack kennedy. bob mcnamara was a republican. and you did have some people who descended but that was not necessarily good enough to deal with vietnam, but since then you have virtually no dissenters in any administration because of the nature of politics. how do you fix that? one way that i've argued to fix that which gets to the decision-making process is to change the nature of the national security council. and how it operates and put in place one person who's in charge of red team analysis. that is to say when you have program or policy you red team to this in the most adversarial way. we don't do that. second i argue that what we need to do in the pentagon is to separate the joint chiefs of staff from being chiefs of staff to service. i don't think you can do both jobs because it's a conflict of interest. how do you take off your hat the center of the army navy air force marine corps and then become a cheap it's almost impossible to do and the chiefs would function full-time on strategy. that would be your board of red team a lot of people would dislike that because they're military people. they should have no real role in the politics. but unless you can really red team things. it's important. i also would change the structure the cia and state department because sometimes you have too many clashes of different bureaus without having any kind of person to reconcile in a serious way. so i go into the book about how we do that now will this be fixed overnight? no, and the reason it won't be is because we're so partisan administrations are more concerned about having people loyal to the president. than necessarily to the larger america simply because there's going to be so many attacks from so many different directions. and so until we can heal that we're still going to be suffering from lack of lessons learned for example you have studied nuclear weapons and deterrence since i don't know when okay, i would argue that we have not put together and i don't know this but i believe it sufficient contingency plans right. now. what happens in russia uses a nuclear weapon in ukraine or chemical weapons, and we should be able to do that. but we don't have any process to guarantee. and so what i'm saying is that we need to have a process that gets knowledge and understanding as the basis for decision making and by putting in red teams and other things we then elevate knowledge and understanding rather than political whims or ideology which too often dominate the choices we make so just to be clear. the administration is has noted that it is a drafted and it's redrafting a national defense strategy in a national military strategy. the focus has been as the secretary of defense is highlighted the indo-pacific and a us shift towards the end of pacific. i think there have been a lot of comments since the russian invasion of ukraine to increase the focus on us posture and us competition with the russians, but your argument in in a sense is very different from the direction that the us is going in which is both the last administration and the current administration. they've used different words competition pacing threat but focuses a lot on the chinese and the russians you don't agree at least. can you explain how your view differs a bit? well, i've done a question. i don't agree look. strategy had been to compete deterrent of war comes defeat russia or china. how you gonna do that? nobody is defined what this competition mean. and if we think deterrence is working look at what the chinese are doing and look the russians are doing and tell me how we defeat both china has a population of one and a half billion people russia's got 6,000 nuclear weapons. so those metrics in my mind are wrong. i talk about something that applies much more broadly to prevent defend and engage. and in that regard i argue for something that i call a porcupine defense the problem with the current strategy. is that not only is not executable. it's unaffordable. if we were to spend $800 billion dollars a year on defense the force would still shrink. we had this irony that the more we spend the smaller the four shrinks why first of all we got uncontrolled cost growth of about five to seven percent in the pentagon real because the cost of everything people escalating weapons f-35 highly capable a hundred million dollars a pop aircraft carrier 15 billion dollars without an airway use a terrific systems. we can't afford them. and so we've got a shift and the whole idea of porcupine defense take a look at ukraine. whether the ukrainians done with relatively inexpensive weapons. and so what i would do would be to have a force that has part conventional defenses tanks fighters so forth and another part that has got tens of thousands of missiles of drones