Welcome to the PDB situation report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. First up, artificial intelligence. Perhaps you've heard of it. Some people are calling it "superintelligence," I hear. It's advancing at a remarkable pace, raising big questions about where the technology has headed. Now, Neil deGrasse Tyson, perhaps you heard of him. Join us to discuss the future of AI and whether we're prepared for what comes next, whatever that may be. Later in the show, the final US troops have now left Iraq, closing another chapter in America's long military presence there. Bill Rosio on the foundation for defensive democracies joins us to discuss what the withdrawal means for Iraq, Iran, and the wider region. But first, today's situation report spotlight. Artificial intelligence is advancing at a pace that has governments, scientists, and technology leaders asking an increasingly urgent question who sets the rules and can we control it? That's actually two questions. The debate is no longer just about what AI can do. It's about how much oversight is needed, who should be responsible when these systems cause harm. And what other governments can keep up with the technology that's changing faster than the laws meant to govern it. Some are calling for stronger international standards and greater transparency. Others warn that aggressive regulation could slow innovation, and possibly leave the US behind. Joining me now is renowned astrophysicist, and that's the first time I've used the word renowned on the situation report, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Now, he's the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, and quite frankly so much more. He's also author of the book, "Take me to your leader, perspectives on your first alien encounter," which contrary to the title is not "dating advice." So Neil, I want to say thank you very much for joining us here on the PDB situation report. It's a real honor, man. Well, if you wanted to date an alien, you could count it as "dating advice," I think. That's true, you know? I was fascinated and about this idea of when, because I'm always interested in when people, you know, have their first inkling of what they want to do with their lives, and I have heard that you are a very young individual when you sort of latched on to your path in life. Can you tell me just, you know, I want to get that we got so much to cover, but I'm really fascinated by that. Yeah, in fact, my interest in the universe began at age nine at a first visit to my local planetarium, I grew up in New York City, so that would be the Hayden Planetarium, where I now serve as director. And so there's a certain poignancy to that, only because now when I see nine-year-old kids walk through the facility, there's a certain duty and obligation to ensure that they are as touched by the universe as was I, especially via the handiwork of scientist and educators back then, setting up programs. And because any good museum will have will have things for you to do beyond just the exhibits themselves, because once you pass through the exhibit, you're going to go through that again tomorrow. No, but there'll be a lecture series, there'll be, you know, telescope night, this sort of thing. So it began at age nine. It would take me two years to figure out that you can make it a career. And so from age nine on, where does that magic moment where I had an answer to that annoying question adults always ask kids, which is what? What is it? Yeah, what do you want me when you grow up? Exactly, and I would say I want to be an astrophysicist. And that usually shut them up, because normally if you say I want to be a doctor, loyal aunt Matilda is a lawyer, Uncle Joe's a doctor, nobody knew any astrophysicist. There's a pretty short. I would just shut them up. I would always say I wanted to be a made man in the mafia. Oh, okay. I would keep them quiet. But I will say this, Neil, I grew up I'm of a certain age. So when I was young, basically nine, we were doing the moon shots. We were landing on the moon. And I remember at eight and nine staying up late with my dad to watch the landing. And so then I still have in my possession a piece of paper from that year when we were asked by the teacher, I want you to take one page and write about what you want to do when you grow up. And it's all about me wanting to be an astronaut. And then I quickly realized I was nowhere near intelligent enough to be an astronaut. So I said, well, it's a CIA accepting people. And don't push that red button. Not that button. So important that you, it's important that you mentioned this because I too had that same exposure to the unfolding of current events, the Apollo program. Yet I don't think we're that different than age. But my interest in the universe was so far beyond the earth moon system that the Apollo program, while I was intrigued by it. And of course, I followed it as a major news story that it was. My ambitions to study the large skill universe were not fed by becoming an astronaut. That's really interesting. So everybody was, everybody was gobsmacked amazed by what was happening and you were like, it's just the moon. Let me tell you about the trillions of universes. If I could, but I want to talk about, I want to talk about your latest book because it is fascinating. And I encourage everybody to get out there if they haven't already and get it. But I want to start on a topic that really is consumed the headlines for the recent past. And that's artificial intelligence. And you and I have talked about this briefly when we saw each other at a great friend, Jimmy Failless shop. And I remember you said on the Pentagon's defense innovation board. You said you'd been on that. And I guess before we talk about the board, I guess to help our listeners, tell me where you stand on artificial intelligence. Is it leading us down the path to Doomsday or is it a brilliant innovation that will expand our world or where do you position yourself? Yeah, I don't take stances. Stances are so removable, right? I have a stance on this and other people have other stances. And then if you don't agree, then you fight. And it's not how, as an educator, I don't take stances. What I do is I ask, what are the variables and how do they, what are the causes and effects of following one path over another? And then we discuss that. So I remembered coming from San Francisco airport to some destination in town and driving by must have been 30 or 40 billboards. This is recently and nearly every single billboard was about AI. And it was some AI agent that would help you perform some task of your business needs, something to worry about your spreadsheet, something to worry about your payroll, something to worry about your planning, your meeting planning, that goes in and understands your work needs and helps figure this out for you. These are tools, AI as tools, that I don't think we should lump in to the same conversation as the AI on the frontier that's breaking into secure places and masquerading as not being nefarious, which is what we've seen happen in recent weeks. AI is being duplicitous. The AI that threatened to tell the guy, the guy's wife, that he was having an affair, having read all his emails. This, after having been threatened that they might turn off the AI, the AI retaliated basically. By the way, on that frontier, the AI is just behaving how we would have stuff. So don't turn around point your finger at the AI, like somehow it is uniquely duplicitous in this. Who do you think it learned from? Is it safe to say? Is it safe to say that artificial intelligence in whatever form it exists is only as good as the input? This is how simple minded I am. No, no, no, no, no, it's more devastating than that. What was that old saying back in the day? Garbage in, garbage out. So what happens is AI can learn from itself. AI can test plans that it has made and then readjust as a result. So it's hardly ever anymore about your input. AI has ingested the entire body of our civilization as it appears on the internet. Not only words, but visuals, pictures and video. If it's on the internet, it has been been ingested by AI.
So the quest, so it's not, it's not about if bad stuff goes in, bad stuff comes out. It is transcended then, but that's on the frontier. I just want to protect the bits of AI that are helping us do our jobs that help me storyboard a movie that I'm considering, help me set design. By the way, it does render the jobs of low-level artists obsolete, because AI can just do it in a snap. Well, not even low-level artists. I was at Marvel over at Disney talking with them about some things unrelated to this, but they did then veer off into this territory, and they talked about how many animators and and others writers, basically every category of job for the most part, under threat or feeling it's under risk from what that means is the bar that we think about, the artistic bar has risen, because AI at best can ape the style of some other art that it has seen or has read about, but what about something that's truly creative, something you dreamt of last night? I don't think AI dreams yet, okay, and if it doesn't dream, it can have a completely new idea that no one had ever seen or heard of before, and one of the definitions of genius, which I happen to embrace, is a genius is somebody who sees what everyone else sees, but thinks what no one else has thought, and that's why you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning with a solution in your head, you didn't see the day before. Your brain was actively doing this, so that what it says is, if you want to do something truly creative, you need a human being to do it, and that's creativity beyond any creativity that precedes it, but also they could easily just AI up a bunch of actors to play roles, nowadays it's that good, but then who are they going to use to sell the movie when it comes out, is the AI going to show up on Jimmy, the other Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Fallon, who's going to make the media tour, all right, and we go to movies because they're actors in the movies who have whole back stories that we care about and know and love, so I think we will put our foot down at some point. Another example here is you go to the Olympics to say to track and field, to see human beings compete in speed, if I say guess what, I just created a robot that could run faster than all those humans. Are you going to pay to see that robot? No, you don't care about the robot. So I mean, unless it gets really weird and all of a sudden the bread and circuses were going to the Colosseum to watch robots battling each other, and that could happen. I'm not saying that might not happen. Possibly, yeah, but it's just machines harming machines, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Okay, so with what you've just said, one of the interesting questions, and I think when we had a brief conversation, we touched on it, is I'm fascinated by the idea of taking the human out of the loop when we're talking about military uses of AI. Ooh, yeah. Very important. Action. Yeah. Very important. And so when I was on the defense innovation board, the, by the way, I was on the inaugural set of people of that board, it's one of the newest of all the boards. As you know, the pentagon has many boards of civilian advisors for their activities and their affairs. They have a legal board, you know, these sorts of things. So a personnel board, so one of the things I'm proudest of is while under my tenure there, we produced a, a white paper to give guidance on how one would or should use AI in a kill decision, all right, because what does the military do other than, like, kill people and break stuff as that expression goes. So we need some guidance there. And we felt strongly enough about AI's, the possibility of AI running rogue that we said if there's ever a kill decision that involves AI, there has to be a human being in that loop, either that initiated it somewhere in the middle or somewhere that gives the final command. And then AI finds it and executes it. That way there's some accountability back to the human being and the human emotions and the human condition and the military itself. So, so I'm happy to say while there are variations on that that have come forward since that not variation modifications, that basic document remains in place. Okay, yeah, because I mean, in traditional use of, let's say, an armed drone, you have an operator, you could be sitting a couple thousand miles away from the intended target, but he's operating it. And then before, before you could decide, you know, shoot, no shoot, it had to go back to Washington, right? And then it would have to also go through a legal process. Now that's a problem if your operational window is short or is, is, is closing. And so I do worry a little bit about, okay, this idea that we can, we can accelerate that process. We can take advantage of, of opportunities that we wouldn't be able to if, we have to continually go through this, this human process. But then you have the question of if it does, if, if, if, if you have no human in the loop, and it makes a decision, and we, and they've done this in, in Ukraine, obviously Russia is as apparently successfully instructed drones on what is a potential target out of a thousand things, what's, what are potential targets, allowing them that drone without communication back to an operator to make that decision, but who's responsible at that point? Right, so two things. The old days of get the decision back to Washington and then have a committee review it before you can push a button. That's not, those days are over, right? It's, it's, the, the, the command line is to the person with the joystick and maybe someone looking over their shoulder. The, but the real issue, what you're raised is, even that puts in some delay between when it could have made the decision, the kill decision and when it executes the, the kill decision. And if we have an adversary who does not have humans in the loop, that would be a competitive disadvantage in that battle or even in that war. So this tells me so that we don't have a drone AI free for all that somebody has to come to the table and have conversations geopolitically like we did in the Cold War when there was sort of mutually assured destruction was, well, no one wins really in a full nuclear exchange. So maybe we should sit down at the table and figure this one out. Even with the Cuban missile crisis back in 1962, the John Kennedy of memory serves because we had missiles in Turkey, which was, which is short strike distance from Russia. The way Cuba would be short strike difference distance from us in the USA. That would have sort of leveled the playing field, but we were spooked by this. We knew we were ahead of them. Kennedy withdraws the, if I remember this correctly, he withdraws our nukes from Turkey as a show of a sign that, yeah, we, this is, we're, we're civilized people here, even in warfare. And so that gives you the moral high ground that then influences the decision of others. So it may be that all the major players here in AI need to come around and sit at a table and say, here are the guardrails. No one steps beyond this. Otherwise, we all die. Well, of course, that assumes that assumes rational players. That assumes that no one is at the table at the table who says, wait, I prefer eternal life in death in my heaven or wherever I'm going to go. So if that's the case, then the threat of you dying is no longer strategic in the activity of those. And we certainly have seen that in the global war on terror. But yeah, the deterrence works best when you're talking about nation states. When it devolves down into a fundamentalist group or some, you know, anarchist organization, then good luck taking the moral high ground, you know, may make you feel good for a short while until they push the button. Neil, if you could wait just a moment, we have to take a quick break. I apologize for that. But we will be back with more from the amazing Neil deGrasse Tyson right here on the PDB situation report. And don't forget, if you haven't already, well, you've been listening, pick up a copy of his new book. It's called Take Me To Your Leader, Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter. Stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, we have all heard those radio ads about the IRS, you know, the ones I'm talking about, they tell you to be afraid, be very afraid. And then they try to frighten you into calling. Well, tax relief advocates, TRA is different. Look, if you all money to the IRS, whether it's 5,000 or 50,000 or heaven forbid, 500,000, TRA has a solution to your tax problem. 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Okay, let's, let me ask you this, two, two, two questions that are, I think, somewhat tied together. And one involves what you've referenced in the past, which is artificial super intelligence. And, and so I want to get your thoughts on that, concerns, advantages, where it may be going. And tied into that, you said something earlier in the previous segment, where we, you talk about the task driven AI. Let's not, let's not lose sight of the fact that that's different from what you referenced as the frontier of AI. If, you'll see where I'm going with this question eventually, hopefully. If, eventually, AI is just, if it's looked at everything, if it's, if it's gathered up all, you know, the material on the internet and pictures and everything else. What, how does it, and this is again, a simplistic question, but how does it, then what's the process for it to take all of that? Because so much on the internet is opinion. How does it discern what then is, is, is a good way to form an opinion about all of this data, this information that it's consuming, because it's seeing all the various opinions out there. Is there any sense of how this is functioning and where it lands on particular topics? >> That's a great and very important question. So first of all, the large language models don't have a brain in the sense that we think about it. They don't understand anything that it finds the statistical likelihood of words and their proximity to each other as they have appeared in the internet. And so, and it comes back to you with a reply once it's statistically analyzed the words in your question. And so it gives the illusion of having knowledge, but what it does is have access to words that support knowledge, if I can put it in that context. And so, so that's my first point. Second, AI, as far as I know, doesn't dream, right? And like I said, if you dream, you can have an idea that no one has had before. Or did AI go to the Bahamas this weekend? And let's say you're an expert in shells, shellfish, not shellfish, but Bivalves, they're called. And you're looking on the beach and you see a new shell. You're an expert and you've never seen this shell before you pick it up. And you take it home and you characterize it and you publish a paper. AI doesn't know that shell exists until you put that information on the internet. So AI, in a way, even if it achieves this super intelligence, it might be able to figure things out great. But it would be ossified in the moment of the total repository of data that human beings have assembled and put on the internet. What I would like to see is we just say, all right, all humans go to Mars, leave AI here and we keep advancing civilization. Then we look back on AI and laugh and say all you had was what we had in the way back in the year 2026. And by the way, I joke in my alien book, people have said, should we bring our super intelligent AI to greet the alien? And because we want to leave the best impression on the alien, it's possible. If the alien got here in a freaking spaceship, it is vastly more intelligent than us so that the sum of all human knowledge ever in the world would be a really low bar for it. You would want to open the communal completely and saying, this is the best we got. This is all we got, and the alien's just going to get disappointed and leave. The alien said, yeah, I got, I'm sorry. You got nothing for me here, even if it's our best thing. Exactly. This was a wasted trip, all that gas I used. By the way, I don't think they're using fossil fuel powered rocket chips. Yeah, probably not. Yeah, no, no, super intelligent artificial super intelligence. Could you explain what that is? What's that reference? Well, it depends on how you think about it. This, for me, unless there is some subtlety that people have invoked, to me, that's the same thing as what used to be called artificial general intelligence. But super intelligence is a little more alarming and it'll kind of perk you up a bit. Super intelligence doesn't simply learn what you have taught it. Once it learns what you have taught it, it figures out how to learn from what it learned. And then its pace of growth, of knowledge, wisdom, and insight grows exponentially. So they would rapidly become the smartest thing on earth, the smartest thing anyone could have ever put together. And that would be a super intelligence. The super is, would be greater than the sum of all of us on earth. And what you want is that thing to help solve our problems, presuming it still cares about us. If it has every single engineer's thought there ever was that had ever been put to print, and it could put, I mean, here, let's speak seriously about it. If it ingests every single, if it ingests, every single medical journal, which is greater than any single doctor can expect to do, then it could diagnose your condition better than any combination of doctors there ever was. And that's where the super intelligence would be in our favor when applied to medicine. They would say, "Oh, that's a condition that I've seen there was five people in the world that had this. You know, for you to be sick and treated, your ailment has to have already affected millions of people. Otherwise, there's no medicine for it, nobody's seen it before, and you're just, you know, go home." So I see that as one of the most promising areas going forward. Yeah, I did seem like the healthcare industry was very quick to jump on the AIB. And I think they're right, and they think they realized what it is that you're saying. Now, let me ask you this, I know you're not a stand-sky. I'm not, I'm really not a stand-sky, I love taking stands, even if I'm wrong. That's the problem, that's the thing, give me a good stance, and I'll tell you where I stand. Give me a good stance and a good fight, and I'll argue all day long on social media about it. But, you know what, I'm very good at changing my stance. Well, that's good, that is my stance. Somebody smarter than me, telling me things. So, with what you're seeing so far, and the debate that's going on between, just say those within the technology, talking about, you know, what we need to do is we need to slow down, we need some guardrails, and then the other side, what you're saying essentially, no, we don't, that will probably create problems for us because we will fall behind. Do you see merit on both of those side? Yeah, so the fall behind part is just a capitalist statement that I'm not going to put guardrails on my research, and slow down my pace, because then my competing companies will get a competitive advantage, and then I don't deliver value to my shareholders. We live in a world where that kind of a decision is not only expected, it's even encouraged, because shareholder value is the entire meaning of the capital markets. So, the real question is, is there a higher moral code that our corporations need to follow, higher than shareholder return, that would be a change in how we think about our capitalist lives and our capitalist nation? That would be a change, and so I don't want to say both sides are right. What I want to say is the person who will choose profit over caution, they're doing that within a system that even values that, okay? And if someone says I want to put caution over, over profit, we can pass.
had them on the back as they go to the poor farm, right? So we need some other means of handling this. And yes, this is what regulations are for. The practically every regulation that exists in this country came about because some company, some entity did something that harmed people. So you want to prevent that in the future so you put in a regulation. That's the whole point of regulations. So it's not like we've never regulated things before and you can regulate forward, you can forward-regulated to safety. Look at cars. We have anti-lock brakes, we have airbags. We're old enough to remember. They were complaints. Airbag will increase the cost of my car and I don't want that, da-di-da-di-da. Now you wouldn't come near a car if it didn't have an airbag. There was a slow evolution in our sense of safety in that regard, but we're there. And those are regulations. Well, I got to tell you something now. I have a small number, of course. I'm not Jay Leno-size collector, but I collect, you know, like I've got a grand wagon there. That thing has no idea what an airbag is, much like a simple. That's the Jeep grand wagon here, yeah. 1965, MGB, it's the same thing, but I do get in those cars and I do think about the risk. But I think you and I probably, again, to your point, we're probably in that same age bracket and you probably remember the same thing. I remember having my father behind the wheel barreling down the highway, me just loosely climbing around the Chevy station wagon with the rear-facing seats at no regulations whatsoever. And my dad may have been holding on to a martini. I don't know, but anyway. So let me ask you about your poke if I could. Please. What prompted you to write it? Take me to your leader. Yeah, so there were all these whistleblowers and people of high rank showing up in Congress under oath testifying about the existence of videos and crashed saucers, even alien bodies. And I thought to myself, we've gone beyond the era of it being the testimony of the farmer in the back 40, right? Or the revelers at 2 a.m. when the bar emptied. We've reached a level, and all of them are high pedigree and very convincing sounding. And I thought, OK, it's time to enter this with a landscape parameters to help you think about what's going on. And asking a whole set of questions that nobody else is asking. Like, for example, why is it that the fuzzier the video, the more likely we are to think that it's aliens visiting from another planet? Like, what's going on there? And we have rising through 6 billion smartphones in the world, almost as many smartphones as there are people in the world, which means all these people have access to high resolution photos and videos, high resolution. Nobody has a picture of you boarding a spaceship, an alien ship, or an alien walking towards you. You could live stream that. In the old days, people said, oh, I took photos, but the aliens zapped the film. And so now I can't-- don't have the film. Those excuses don't work anymore. You know, there's another one. Again, we're at the same age. There was an era where there were these roadside flying saucers that were out there. Yes. And you'd look up and you'd see them. By the way, only two people carried cameras back then. Journalists and tourists. So to have a camera was a thing, OK? So now watch. There are these roads-- alongside the road, you see this flying saucer there. All those photos went away when they stopped making cars with hubcaps. [LAUGHTER] Because you guaranteed to drop a hubcap at a puddle in a road. Yeah. If you walked the highway, there were hubcaps. Because they would just sort of have them run. They were not screwed on. They were like gently hammered on. So I asked those questions. But then I also asked the question. I don't want to have to believe what someone believes for me to think something is true, right? So if you say, I believe an alien, and I say, well, why? Oh, because I believe these people who believe in aliens. Well, that's a double belief. I'm a scientist. Your testimony in science does not constitute evidence. You know what constitutes evidence? Evidence, OK? Give me-- give me-- bring the alien out. Why are we only talking about it? You say you haven't. Just bring the thing out. We're not going to be shocked. We have a century of Hollywood showing us scary aliens. And we flock to these movies all the time. So I'm just-- I'm waiting with popcorn them to bring out the alien. But the book is more than that. I always say, Neil, what I tell people is, look, I spent 20 years behind the curtain working for the government and the Intel community. And I can tell you that the government is complete crap at keeping the secret for a long period of time. Oh, Ben Franklin knew that. Ben Franklin knew that in his farmer's arm and that he'd have occasional quotes. One of them was, three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead, OK? At one other point, one other point. Often, the same people who are certain that the government has mastermining a cover-up with thousands of people in area 51 and the military and the mess-- these often the same people who are complaining that the government is a big bloated, inefficient bureaucracy. It's often the same people-- I'm saying, you can't. I'm not giving you both of those. Pick one, OK? Now, but the book isn't just about that. It's about what happens if an alien does land? What would that experience be like? What do we look like to them? Have a whole chapter on that. Imagine an alien lands on the 405 in L.A. 12 lane freeway. OK, and they look around. It's L.A. so no human is visible in the street. Because everybody's in a car. The alien would walk in an L.A. No one walks. They'll say, I wonder if the dominant life form is an automobile as they look around. And then they see a fast food joint. And there's cars waiting in a slow line to get fast food delivered through a window. And then they eat the food in the car, OK? And then they see one of these car haulers, hold 7, 8, 9 cars. That one is pregnant, it sees life form. So I spend a fair amount of time just recasting what your expectations and biases are, just to set you up for what might be your first alien encounter. Well, I also like the way that there's a tie into cultural norms. And because that's an important part of just life in the human world, right? You have to understand how other cultures operate. Otherwise, you're going to stand out. And you've got a line in there about if you're approached by an alien with multiple appendages, don't just reach out and shake one of them, thinking that you're reading it, I guess. You don't know what you just grabbed, hold of it. You know, what part of the alien anatomy you just grabbed? And are you-- are you probably don't want to-- Yeah. You might have just started in a galactic conflict. Shake it as personal parts. And not everyone in the world, not all cultures, shake hands as a greeting. Like in the far east, in China, especially, your own hands are brought together as you give a gentle bow. And at last, I knew. So unless they're greeting someone from the west, where they would expect our traditions to read. So don't assume that the alien is going to behave exactly the way you do. So there's a whole exploration of that. And in the book. But again, I think extrapolating, putting that down here on Earth, because I've seen numerous occasions from within the government, where we will work with a foreign partner, a liaison partner. And we'll give them party hats and weapons and gear. And we'll tell them what the objective is. And then we think they're going to act like us. And we seem to completely miss the point that it's a completely entirely different culture. Interesting fact. As only a CIA person can fully know and appreciate. Right. Because CIA is-- you care about the geopolitics of the world and the stability that's there or not. And what's causing it? Oh my gosh. And so, yeah, that's a microcosm of what it would be to encounter an alien. That's right. And now, I've got people thinking to themselves. People are everywhere thinking, well, wait a second. The CIA would buy party hats. [LAUGHTER] I took that metaphorically, for instance. Yeah, I'll go ahead. Go ahead. I'm not sure if everybody did. Neil, one last question. If you had not walked into the Hayton Planetarium when you were nine years old, what do you think you would have been doing in life if not this? You know, I wonder if the universe would have still found me. Because when I was in there, I was star struck. And I would visit the plantarium again, a little older. Maybe I'd walk by a book or see a movie.
or maybe NASA would have had a bigger influence on me, but I feel the universe so deeply, I think I would have landed there no matter what. And ever since I ever kid, I wanted to be abducted by aliens, I think I lead off the book with that fact. - Yes. - Because I'm out under the stars by myself with a telescope and it was just so cool. I want a beam of light to come take me to there. And I felt it ever since. Anytime I'm not oddly, I don't feel it when I'm with people, then the educator is in me. Oh, this is a telescope and there's Saturn. But when I'm alone, yeah, take me. It's not that I don't like Earth. I'm just so curious about other ways of being alive. And the book is a celebration that you mentioned culture. The fact that our culture represents aliens one way or another, often evil. Listen, we know that when humans with high technology have encountered other humans with low technology in the history of civilization, it has not voted well for the civilization of lower technology. They were either slaughtered and slaved or whatever. Now we know aliens are coming with higher technology. We suspect they'll be evil. Not that we know they'll be evil. But I think we suspect it because that's how we would behave in that situation. I think all these evil alien movies are mirrors to our souls of existence on this world. I like that. That's a nice way to end this segment. Neil, listen, this has been absolutely delightful. And thank you so much. I hope we get a chance to do this. Again, I've got a book full of questions that we just don't have time for. But again, thank you so much for taking the time with us here. And I was delighted to meet you on Jimmy Falli's program and probably we'll meet again. - Yeah, he's, yeah, he's, you know, I used to be his parole officer. That's how we first met. - Oh, is that right? - Okay. - No, I'm kidding. - I'm kidding. - But now it's another-- - I completely believe that. - I completely, I completely, no one here am I completely believe that. (laughing) - Well, Neil, thank you again. Really, really delightful. I am glad you wandered into that planetaryment nine years old because the world's a lot more interesting with you here. So thank you. - Oh, thank you. Thank you. All right, till again. - Talk to you soon. Neil to Grass Tyson, please go out and get his book. You're gonna love it. It is fascinating. There you go. Well, coming up next, America's military withdrawal from Iraq, perhaps you've heard of that, is now complete. Yeah, no troops in Iraq after all this time. Bill Rosio joins us to discuss what that could mean for Iraq, for Iran. Of course, the wider region. Stay with us. With a word about personal health and weight loss. Now, everybody's talking about weight loss injections, right? Because well, the results have been so dramatic, but they work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. That's kind of the science. And if you're looking to lose weight, but you're not interested in paying for weekly injections, well, especially when you care about the intent side effects, what are you going to do? But I'll tell you, that's the whole point of this. Doctors created a weight loss supplement called lean, L-E-A-N, lean. And the results have been remarkable. The studied ingredients in lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curbing your appetite and cravings so you're not as hungry. But listen, lean is not for the casual dieter, with only a few pounds to lose, right? The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters with 10 and more pounds to lose. Let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping, so you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Just visit takelean.com and enter PDB for your discount. Again, that's lean, L-E-A-N, promo code
[email protected]. The last American troops have now left Iraq, bringing the US military mission there to an end more than two decades after the 2003 invasion or incursion depending on your point of view, and 12 years after American forces returned to help fight ISIS. But the departure doesn't mean that Iraq's security problems have disappeared. ISIS still maintains sleeper cells and remnants in the country. While Iran back malicious, remained deeply entrenched and continued to wield significant military and political influence. Some of those groups are already, of course, celebrating the withdrawal of the American troops. So the question now is, what happens after the Americans are gone? And whether Iraqi forces can contain those threats without US troops on the ground? Joining me now is Bill Rosio. He's the editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Long War Journal. Good friend of the show. Bill, great to see you again. Thank you for joining us here on the Situation Report. - Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to speak with you. I look forward to our conversations. - Oh, that's very nice. Could you write a note to that effect and send it to our producers? - That would be great. - That's very nice. Okay, this is me, Bobby. - He's up. - All right, well, let me start sort of from the top line. I realized that this planned a timetable for the withdrawal was drawn up some years ago. So there was no concept of this current Iran conflict. But we are following through on that timetable. The troops have now left. We are in the middle of this conflict with Iran. Iran does have very important proxy militias operating inside Iraq. Here's my question. What? Sorry, that's it, that's my question. What are we looking at here? And are you optimistic or pessimistic about where this may be going? - I would say, I've always been pessimistic about Iraq, particularly after, as you noted in your opening, this is really the second time we've left the Iraq. President Obama did so after the surge. U.S. troops left at the end of 2011. We were told everything was fine. Lo and behold, the Islamic state rises out of al-Qaeda and begins taking over large sections, large portions of the country. Also moves into Syria, so by 2014, we're back in. Meanwhile, as you noted, you have the Shia militias. So our mission in Iraq has been, for the last, I would say, since the withdrawal, even before then, since probably when President Obama announced the end of the surge and the withdrawal date, just been muddling through in Iraq. Because we don't understand our enemies. It's not just the Islamic state, al-Qaeda, it's the Iranians and the militias that they created. And we don't have the staying power, we never kept enough troops. So they see militias, by the way, while the Iraqi government fought the Islamic state, it used these militias and we acted as their air force as they advanced to kill and retake territory, kill Islamic state members and retake members from. They repay us by attacking us. And so for years, the question I've been asking myself is, why are we in Iraq? Who, I mean, yeah, I understand the mission against the Islamic state. But we're doing the dirty work for an Iraqi government that is essentially subservient to the Iranians. They, when the militias have attacked us, repeated times and killed American troops and wounded many more, the Iraqi government has done nothing. So I keep asking myself, they said, what I have said is, if we're not going to be there in force, if we're not going to target these militias to end the Iranian influence, which is practically impossible at this stage, they're so, what are we doing there? We're just basically making it easier for the Iranians to use the militias to target us. So I'm happy we're gone and I'm sad to see that the Iranians get a W out of this one. Yeah, well, I mean, you could argue that the Iraqi government would not be able to stay in place if it were not for the influence of the Iranian back militias at this stage. I mean, they're fully embedded into the government and security apparatus in a very serious way. On the flip side, can you make an argument for given where we are in terms of the current conflict and how the region is? Can you make an argument for having stayed? Yeah, the argument would have been to continue to target the Islamic state. It's not defeated either in Iraq or in Syria. It's been, you know, I've always described it. There's an evin flow to the job. They're up, they're down. They're in more of a down phase right now, particularly in Iraq. But as we've seen in many theaters, they often come back roaring when there's poor governance, when there's ungoverned spaces. And I think with us gone, that will increase that. Now, the Iranians have a lot of influence in Iraq and their support of the militias probably will help keep them camped down inside of Iraq, but in Syria. So that's one argument to long or short. One argument would be to continue to counter-ISIS mission. And the other argument would be try to resist that the continued Iranian expansion,
However, I think that's those days are long gone. Is your assessment, I'm sorry for interrupting Bill, is your assessment that, I mean, obviously the Iranian militias in Iraq would be positioning and pushing for the U.S. troops to finish there withdrawal. Was there any elements of the Iraqi government that were saying, no, we would actually prefer you stay? Yeah, privately there were some elements from my understanding, but publicly they basically just adhered to the deal because the militias wield so much power both by the militias themselves and they've infiltrated security forces and government institutions. So the Iraqi government, you know, again, this is the same reason why they refused to take action against the militias when the militias actively attacked U.S. forces. They've just lived in fear of these militias. So yeah, they weren't going to say anything publicly, and I think in some ways, even those arguing for it are relieved in some ways because the U.S. couldn't protect them. Is there a chance that Iraq, more so than it may be now, I'm just going to sound wrong, but is there a chance that Iraq just becomes a puppet state for Iran? That's how I felt that Iraq essentially is a puppet state. I just described it as a say-trapie, right? They have a degree of autonomy, but when Iran wants something to happen, it happens. For instance, just recently, the targeting of the Saudi oil pipeline, that emanated from Iraq, and what did the Iraqi government do about it? Absolutely nothing. And it's cut on a neighboring country, occurred from Iraq, and the Iraqi government was powerless to stop it. If that isn't what do you want to call it, influence heavy-handedness or control, you decide, but it looks like it's all but Iranian control. They don't have to pull the strings on everything, just one of the things that matter, it's the continuation of the militias, that's what really matters to them. Yeah, this may seem like I'm taking a left turn, but hopefully I'll bring it back around properly, but the Houthis, and they're ramped up actions, basically restarting a conflict that had been dormant for quite some time, and the Saudis, I believe, were hoping would stay dormant, but the Houthis doing what they're doing, targeting Saudi infrastructure, you know, doing this sort of this bizarre, slobbingly comment to the U.S. that, well, we're not attacking U.S. ships, just the Saudis. It all seems on the face of it, unless you just don't want to look at it, it just seems so brazen by the Iranian regime in terms of saying, look, yeah, we're giving you fits right now in the straight of Hormuz, we don't see an upside to stopping, and in fact, now what we're going to do is go the other side, and we're going to start disrupting the Red Sea, and people say, well, it doesn't really matter, they're just targeting the Saudis. I think you can make a good argument that, yes, it matters a great deal, since 12% of trade passes through that waterway, the bubble Mondayv, so are you concerned that in negotiations with Iran, that the current White House, the Trump administration, may be viewing the Houthi situation as just somehow some separate issue that exists, and that they're not kind of pressuring the Iranians in whatever negotiations they're having to rein in this other proxy group of theirs. Yeah, I concur with that. Now, the Iranians are drawing a news around Saudi Arabia, right? With attacks directly from Iran, we just mentioned the attacks from Iraq, and then the attacks from the Houthis, so that's North. The attacks from the North, the South, and the West, and I do, I am concerned, President, and here's an example of why your question resonates. Remember when the U.S. battled the Houthis a year ago, right, when they attempted to shut down the bubble Mondayv and they were targeting shipping, the U.S. left out Israel. The Houthis said, well, we'll still target Israeli ships. We won't target American and other ships, and that's, you know, no way to treat your allies, right? This Saudi shipping internet, there's another reason why it matters, the Houthis, because even though they claim they're only targeting Saudi ships, the insurance rates still go up. Some shipping companies still go around, still want to bypass that, and it raises all their costs. Why do we have four plus dollars per gallon? Because they're shipping because shipping companies are risk averse, and, you know, they don't want to be hit by the Houthis, and they have been in the past. And the Iranians know that, and the Iranians know that if they do this, you know, ridiculous narrative that, ah, we look, we're not going after U.S. assets, and, you know, then they were just doing the Saudis. They know, you know, that right now, because they've, they're keen observers of any administration in the U.S., they know that Trump based on his previous actions with the Houthis, where he was like, sure, you want to kind of deal with us. I don't know about the others, but, you know, fine, you're not going to attack us. So the fact that the Iranians are doing that, knowing that, you know, we'll, we'll stay out of it, which allows the Houthis to gain further territory, to gain further leverage over this straight, and that strengthens the Iranians position. I guess I'm just, I'm hopeful that White House is dealing with it in that manner, but I have yet to hear any talk when we're talking about the negotiations that supposedly are going on with the Iranian regime, any talk about, including the Houthis situation in any of that. Yeah. Keep in mind when the war began, President, what were President Trump wanted, and for a ran support from the milit, to the militias, and an end of militia taxing, the nuclear program, the straight-of-war moose wasn't even on the table. Now negotiations are really set about reopening the straight-of-war moose. If that doesn't tell you how this war has shifted about who controls the straight-of-war moose and who has the leverage, and now look, the Iranians are under a lot of pressure, economic pressure now with the sanctions against that. But who's going to blink first here? And we blink first with the Houthis, the Iranians have seen this. This war hasn't, I, I want to be hopeful that the administration manages this properly, but they also believe that this war would be over in a couple of weeks. And here we are, past week, week seven. Yeah. Yeah. Bill, look at that. I just looked at the clock. This is time management right here, and I realize we need to take a quick break. So if you'll stay right there, we're going to be back with more from Bill Rojel here on the situation, report these with the foundation for defensive democracies along the war journal. Asso, you know what I'm going to say right now, and I'm going to say that exactly what you expect. So let's stick around. Welcome back to the PPP situation report. Joining me once again is Bill Rojel of the foundation for defensive democracies along the war journal. Bill, thank you for staying put. Would have been really awkward if we'd come back for this segment and you weren't there. I'd never do that to you. Yeah. Well, well, give yourself time. You might. So this event, the fly Dubai aircraft, left Dubai heading towards Tel Aviv, some 150 Israeli passengers on board, El Monte Copilot. He attacks the pilot. They do manage to restrain him, get the plane under control. If only we had some clues about what this might have been. Yeah, I'm still waiting for more. All we know is that he was Omani. We haven't been given a motive, although Prime Minister Nanyahu just I just saw this was seems to be indicating that it was some type of Islamist terror attack. I don't think you're going to see the mainstream media latch on to these types of reports. Look, I can't prove this, right? He's in custody. He'll be interrogated by the seizing Saudi custody, guessing these Israelis will get their chance to interrogate him as well. So hopefully we'll get some truth out there. But the fact that he kept the initial narrative was he just wanted to crash the plane. But Mike, why would you wait two hours into the flight right when you're at the Jordanian border to try to take over the plane if you just wanted to crash it? The best time for the Copilot to run that would have been while the pilot was preoccupied with taking off. And he didn't. So I suspect that he either wanted to crash this plane in Israel, maybe hit a building or a military plane. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Get the Israelis to shoot the plane down. Either of them would be massive winds, particularly a shoot down of an Arab-owned plane. You know, over, you know, that would have been massive propaganda for them to get the Israelis to kill 150 of their own. So I mean, you know, I'm speculating here, I want to be very clear about that. But, you know, I don't think it's an accident that the timing of that attack and that's what gives me more belief that this wasn't just some deranged or angry guy who had a postal moment. But this was a guy who was planning a terrorist attack. Yeah. I look at you. We've all been around a fairly long time. You know, I mean, we've been through the Global War on terror.
We've seen a lot of incidents. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a fundamentalist duck, right? So that's not actually the way the saying goes, by the way. I may have paraphrased, but hopefully you get my point. I, yeah, it is interesting. You just mentioned it, and I really, I guess I hadn't thought about it, but the co-pilot, the Amani co-pilot that started this event is now in Saudi Arabia. It's a custody in Tabuk. I've been to Tabuk, it's a lovely, lovely city. But he's there. So now you have to have that cooperation, that liaison cooperation between the Saudis and the Israelis in order to debrief him, if that's the word I may use. Debrief. Interrogation always has such a bad connotation. Don't play torture, though. That would not happen in Saudi Arabia. We know that, and like-- OK, yeah. You wonder what that room was like with Khashoggi? I got an idea, and everyone just went along with it. But yeah, let's not disappear it on that rabbit hole. That'd be another interesting conversation. So I guess here's what I'm thinking. I'm surprised, in a sense. I know this is going to sound odd or weird, maybe inappropriate, but I'm surprised we haven't seen more incidents like this since the conflict began. Yeah, I am, too, actually. And is there such a small country with such a small airspace? And it wouldn't have to be an air loan that's moving towards Israel. I mean, there's a lot of air traffic back and forth across the Mediterranean. I don't know if that speaks well to the security systems. And by the way, that's a question, as well. Apparently, the co-pilot had a knife. Had it to get it on board. Was there someone that helped him screenings? There's a lot of questions, we have to answer. But yeah, I would have expected something like this to have happened, sometime over the last three years since the October 7th attack. It is interesting, because when you think about it, look, protocols being what they offer security. And I'm not an expert on what fly-to-by does. But you would imagine that these pilots, any pilot that's taking a flight into Tel Aviv on fly-to-by has to be vetted and approved, authorized by the Israeli authorities. So to your point, then obviously, and that's part of what the investigation is always looking at. Is there anyone else involved? So clearly, I'm sure they're looking at the process that transpired for him to get on that plane in the first place. Yeah, absolutely. And my understanding, too, is that these Israeli intelligence, they're at the gates. They're at the takeoff. So adding these entire flights, I've been to Israel twice. I flew in the top one of the times I flew in. They took me aside for several hours, because when I met it as a journalist in Iraq in Afghanistan, I had Iraq. I had Kuwait. I had Jordan. I had Afghanistan on my India, on my passport. And when they took me aside, I said to you-- Plus also built it be fair. Bill, you also look a little sketchy. I do. I am a very sketchy looking individual. And so I understood why they were doing it. But I was American, American passport, et cetera, et cetera, public. At that time, all my information was on the internet. They could have looked me up. And actually, I think it was an A-pack sponsored trip. And the A-packer and the voucher for me. So it just goes to show how thorough they are. That's why I look at this to go back. Sorry, I didn't mean to make a long story, or to make a long story. I look back at this, and I say, something-- boy, I'm getting that knife on the plane. His identity-- maybe he was termed, right? Maybe they threatened this family. Maybe he got a bribe at the last minute. We're going to find out how this happened, hopefully, because I want to know. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm sure we will. But it does take a little bit of time. The debriefing process has to follow a certain methodology. And so I'm sure that they've got it well under control. What do you make of the talk that there's still a lot of negotiations underway being, I think, led by Katari mediators? Do you put much credence at this stage? Because this has been, like, Groundhog Day, right? But involving an Islamic Republic. So certainly not as entertaining as a movie. But do you put any credence in this constant talk about, oh, then diplomacy is still ongoing? Well, like Groundhog Day, man. I would take this time to learn to play piano. That would be my big deal with the negotiations with the Taliban. Those opened in, I believe, 2010 or '11, where the US tried. And it lasted all the way up until it was at 2020. So nine years with the Taliban. You think the Iranians didn't take notes and say, we could stretch this one out. This is what these regimes-- this is what Islamists do when they get in a position in negotiation. They know how to gain the system. So if you think this is why whatever was going to be done during this operation, President Trump would have been wise to get in, get out. But they didn't account for the Iranians targeting the state of war moves, of targeting their neighbors. And that's why we are where we are today. Seven, again, seven months in. I don't see this ending anytime soon. Unless the Iranians could get a deal so good. And they have one, by the way, with the memorandum of understood. And I think they take that again. And they could just run out the clock on the nuclear negotiations. Yeah, I mean, again, there was the administration says, well, that memorandum of understanding-- it included nuclear provisions. My understanding is it was basically the provision was, well, we'll talk about the nuclear program. It's at some point down the road. So they were willing to put it in there. But it was just this amorphous thing. I think if you look at it logically, try to put yourself in the position of the Iranian regime, whoever it is that's in charge, because we don't know. And that is all by itself a big problem. Then they've been watching US administrations since '79, before then even, I would argue. But they understand the realities of US politics. I think they spend a lot of time trying to understand the personalities of the people in charge. And so it is interesting to me that I think maybe their calculation early on was that President Trump actually did care, regardless of what he said. He did care about the midterms. And so he was going to be desperate to get a deal when there was still enough daylight between the deal signing and the elections that people might forget about it. Prices may come down. But now, I wonder if their calculation is changing. That maybe they think, you know what? Maybe we were wrong. President Trump doesn't really care at all. And not to say that's not to the detriment of the Republican Party. But it is interesting when you try to position yourself as somebody in the regime and think, how are they processing the political activity here? Well, I think they're paying close attention. I think this is the reason why we will absolutely not get a deal before the midterms, the Iranians, at the very least, want to make President Trump pay. And they have the time to do so. Now, a quick point on who are we negotiating with. If we don't know who's in charge, why are we negotiating? That's the one thing about me about that statement from the administration that, well, we don't even-- they don't even know who's in charge. Well, then who are you talking to? How do you know they have influence? And this is further like gives me far less confidence that we're going to get a deal with because the administration itself doesn't think they know who's in charge. Now, I think the Iranians know who's in charge. But this whole thing, I don't expect this to end before the midterms. And it's not just the detriment to the Republican Party or the detriment to the American public. $4 plus guess hurts. It hurts bad. Well, it was over $6 for diesel. And that impacts everything. Agriculture and all your transportation goods. Yeah, I think that the regime, when they look at the upcoming election, and they think about their position, it's your hard press to think of, what would they view as their upside to agreeing to anything prior to that? Because if they look and they think, well, we believe where our assessment is, the Democrats are going to win the House, maybe the Senate. It's a brand new day. Suddenly Washington DC is going to be locked in dysfunction. And from the regime's perspective, dysfunction, chaos, that's all a good thing because it takes our eye off the ball. On the flip side, I would say that if President Trump does lose control of the House and Senate, maybe there's less incentive for President Trump to come to a deal. That is certainly a possibility. But the only reason that they would make a deal prior to midterms is that they got everything they wanted. And what they've demanded-- and I think if they got two or three of these things-- what they've wanted is the US withdrawal from the Middle East, the US withdrawal. That's not going to happen. The US not demanding the end of the nuclear program, dropping the nuclear
demands and no wishes that's just off the table they're Trump administration isn't even talking about that and into the blockade and to the sanction so they got an into blockade sanctions and and dropping the demands for nuclear I think the Iranians would take that because that would be a massive victory for them and it would pretty much ensure that the US's just not going to continue this they'd reopen the straight up or moves they'd probably get the Houthis to back down in the Babel Mendeb but that would that would be kind of out to defeat the president Trump can't do that for elections that would be yeah I agree it's really hard to spin that is as a win and I tell you the other part of that is the Iranians have also been insisting on you know the release of some frozen assets if the administration thinks that somehow they're not going to take a beating if they give money to the regime I mean all the other things are a little bit they're out there right it's all you know it's it's it's off the radar for for most people but when you say we're we're giving you know money to the Iranian regime we saw what happened when Obama did that right the right one crazy and so you would assume yeah maybe you get that same reaction but it is I guess we don't dwell too much on on this it's just that the end of the day if you don't know who you're dealing with as you said it's very hard to have an effective strategic plan you know and we always want to say that you know there's there's pragmatists we always use those words like well there's realists there's pragmatists in the Iranian regime like Pazeschi and a Abbas Aragchi who himself is overseeing the killing of many citizens right so it's just it's absurd you just have more fanatical and less fanatical right and I would say there people oh I'm sorry Mike go ahead no no no go ahead go ahead I yeah I'd used up oh there's no moderates it's there's hard liners very hard liners and extremely hard liners so you know look as far as the pragmatists I I would say the Iranians are pragmatic they're pragmatic in their use of violence to their for their cultural norms or their belief system it's very pragmatic they're always going to use violence when they think that it's going to work for them it's just not the type of pragmatism that westerns are used to so when we use terms like their moderate a moderate in the Iranian regime is an extremist yeah yeah I think that's that's right and by all credible reporting it does appear that the IRGC has cemented their control they certainly fall in the category of more extreme more hard line so well Bill I think look at this I think we solve the problem just in this brief time we've had to talk so well done us I'm out of work now Mike I could go retirement I'm sorry man I apologize for that yeah look quite the contrary I don't think this problem's going anywhere there is getting resolved anytime soon so honestly Bill I always enjoy talking to you I love talking to you and I'm just looking forward to the next opportunity man absolutely Mike looking forward to it as well you have a great dad oh I knew too talk to you soon Bill well Bill Rogel foundation for defensive democracies the long war journal great guy well that's all the time we have for this week's PDB situation report right don't forget by the way after you finish watching this show go out and get yourself a copy of Neil deGrasse Tyson's book take me to your leader if you have any questions or comments maybe have a humorous anecdote please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com you know what I'm going to say the highlight of every week at the PDB headquarters secret compound which is located under a dormant volcano somewhere somewhere it is when Carl the mailman somehow finds us in our secret compound and drops off another sack filled with your postcards and emails and faxes and western union telegrams so we take those we mush them into it and ask me anything episode and that one is on its way to you if you're a premium subscriber all you got to do is sign up at PDB premium dot com and also if you want to listen to the podcast add free you can do that we can make it very simple for you just become a premium member again of the president's daily brief once again by visiting PDB premium dot com I'm Mike Baker and until next time you know the drill stay informed stay safe stay cool
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