StarTalk Podcast_ Tough Love and Geopolitics with Susan Rice and Neil deGrasse Tyson

0:04 This is Star Talk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I got with me my co-host, Chuck Nice. Chuck. Hey, Neil. Tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic. Well, thank you, sir.

0:14 Yes.

0:14 I follow you.

0:15 Oh, I follow you, too. To the ends of the earth. Whereas you only follow me on Twitter. I'm following you to the gates of hell. You're following me like, maybe I'll like this, maybe I won't.

0:26 Earth has no ends. It's a continuous surface, in case you hadn't noticed. See, that's why I follow you. This program, this particular episode, we're gonna talk about the roots of mental toughness as they resided inside former national security advisor to the President of the United States, Susan Rice. And since we're talking about mental toughness, we need our go-to person.

0:51 We need a mind expert, a mental expert. A person who's mental. Right, we need somebody mental.

0:57 I gotta go.

0:59 We got Heather Brilliant. Heather, welcome. You're our go-to mental person.

1:03 I'm happy to be the mental person of this group.

1:06 Thank you. You're one of our featured people on StarTalk All-Stars. It's just great to have you in the StarTalk family.

1:12 I'm happy to be here.

1:13 As long as we're not a pain always reaching for you for this, but it's just always good to have you. Just a little bit of background on Susan Rice. She came out with a book called Tough Love. Tough Love. And she was National Security Advisor to President Obama. Yes.

1:27 2013, 2017.

1:27 That's right. UN Ambassador. So the United States has an ambassador to the UN. To the UN. As distinct from ambassadors to other countries in the world. Correct, right. And she was a Rhodes Scholar. And so she went to New College at Oxford, and she's authored the memoir, Tough Love, my story of the things worth fighting for. So she's got the pedigree, she's got the attitude, she's ready to shake that up. And so she credits some of what she's accomplished, I would say a lot of what she's accomplished, to how she was raised. with Tough Love. Let's check out that first clip. Tough Love, this kind of title, like we say, of our grandparents. So, you're not a grandparent yet.

2:19 God, no.

2:19 Okay, well then, so what are you up there, naming a book, like what the, because Grant, that's a previous generation's.

2:28 Are you dogging my title now?

2:29 A little bit.

2:30 Come on, man.

2:30 Just a little bit. You know what?

2:32 Everybody I know knows what tough love means.

2:33 They do.

2:34 Young people know.

2:35 Even the young people.

2:35 Hell yeah.

2:37 Okay.

2:38 Certainly my young people know.

2:39 That's different.

2:40 I'm kicking their ass. No, no, no.

2:43 No.

2:44 And all the young people who work with me know what it means too.

2:49 Because last time I saw their upbringing, they get a trophy for participating. There's nothing tough about their life. Not in my household.

2:55 That's the point. So- To me, it means loving fiercely, but not uncritically. And, you know, when you mess up, the people who love you are supposed to tell you straight up, you know, that your stuff is not together. I think that's the polite term.

3:11 And there are many families where there are always bolstering each other's efforts, even if it has failed. And you're saying if someone is failing, you get on there, you tell them how and why.

3:24 With the aim of helping them do better, not just to beat them down.

3:28 Right, right, right, right, right. But I'm just contrasting it with, um, The fear of being truthful with someone because you might hurt their feelings.

3:38 Yeah, that was not a familiar concept in my household. So my parents raised me and my brother very much in the vein of tough love. And for better or for worse, my own kids inherited the same.

3:52 Well, they seem to be doing okay.

3:54 They're doing okay.

3:54 How old are they now? Knock on wood.

3:55 So one's a senior in college and one's a junior in high school.

3:58 Okay.

3:59 So.

4:00 and they're doing okay. So far, yes. So guys, what do you think of her definition of tough love?

4:05 I mean, I think it's a unique definition. What we normally think of, at least in the field of psychiatry, is tough love, is when somebody is kind of really out of control or they're, let's say, a drug addict, and it's about.

4:17 You mean literally out of control.

4:18 Like out of control.

4:19 They don't control their own lives.

4:20 Yeah. And it's about then coming in with harsh enforcements of restrictions. So, you know.

4:27 That's not what she said that she had?

4:28 Well, I mean, she has more.

4:30 There are different types of parenting. So there are three different types of parenting. One is authoritative.

4:34 Authoritative.

4:35 One is authoritarian.

4:36 Authoritarian.

4:37 And the other is permissive.

4:38 Right.

4:39 So she's more just what I think she's describing is authoritative parenting. which is that you're demanding, you have high.

4:45 Expectations, rules. Lots of structure.

4:48 Lots of structure, but you're also responsive and connected emotionally, whereas authoritarian is- You do what I say.

4:55 That's it.

4:56 That's it. And there's no- Get your ass over here. Purely punitive.

5:00 Who the hell are you talking to like that?

5:03 All I said was yes, sir. So her way, which is not authoritarian.

5:12 Not authoritarian. Not dictatorial. Right, like totalitarian.

5:15 But authoritative.

5:16 Yes.

5:17 Why should we assume that would work for everyone? Wouldn't that just fall flat for some people trying to grow up?

5:23 Boom.

5:23 And see, that's where, when you said, how do you feel about her? And I said, my response was going to be, it's fraught. And the reason why I think it's fraught is because children are... individuals who respond differently to different stimuli.

5:41 That's why I'm asking Heather. Right, right.

5:42 So there's studies that show, yeah, so basically it's all about the combination of the personality type of the child with the parenting. So there's no one right way to parent. And every type of parenting, there's articles that say that it's really good or it's really bad. And really, the key factor is how it interrelates with the personality. And it's the same thing with learning. Like, for example, some people need really restrictive learning ways to learn, like being tested all the time and having structure, and they work really well in that system. Others don't, and they need a more sort of permissive environment where they can learn on their own. So it's the same thing with parenting.

6:14 But what's described here is there was one way everybody got raised.

6:17 Right.

6:17 And it either works for you or it doesn't.

6:18 Right, and so in some cases, depending, and also there are cultural differences as well. So, you know, depending on the culture.

6:25 One of them is that some people go, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

6:27 Right, mm-hmm, exactly.

6:28 That's a cultural difference.

6:30 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

6:31 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. For example, for example.

6:39 Did your culture go?

6:41 Not fly in my house, no.

6:43 That was not one of your cultures.

6:44 No, but like for example, authoritarian or like sort of very, very restrictive parenting works better in Asian cultures because that's part of the culture. They find that that type of parenting Whereas in the U.S., for example, they get worse results with that kind of parenting because it conflicts with the culture. Yeah, exactly. So you have to be careful when you're imposing other sort of cultural standards that work in one place. Here, it might not work.

7:09 However, you know, sometimes it's when you look at cultural. Now, I will just say this, and people are going to be maybe... We'll just edit it out.

7:18 I was going to say, I'm going to say this, and it probably won't even be heard.

7:23 But.

7:26 the more what is perceived to be permissive in many cultures are the way Caucasian parents, white people, actually let their children do pretty much anything. But I see that there are some benefits to that where the child feels emboldened to try things and be more adventurous.

7:48 So, you know, there's... So the permissive type of parenting has its own advantages. So it does encourage independence. The idea is that you... sort of create an environment where the child can make their own decisions and that they'll be more prepared for life. But on those kinds of parenting, you get more, people tend to be more impulsive, yet at the end of the day, they are better when it comes to sort of making their own decisions. And so, you know, every, as I said, every type of parenting has pluses and minuses, yeah.

8:14 So when kids are born, there should be some little readout on what kind of upbringing they, that genetic.

8:21 What they need. Eventually maybe.

8:24 You go boop, okay this one needs, you know. We are gonna be beating.

8:29 Your ass every day.

8:30 Let me tell you something mister. Your backside's in for a real tanning. I'm letting you know.

8:38 A really good example, though, is there's this film called Three Identical Strangers with these triplets.

8:42 Documentary.

8:43 Documentary. And they were separated at birth. And it was an experiment that was obviously, this should never be done, but they did this.

8:50 An experiment where none of the parents knew.

8:52 None of the parents or the children knew what was happening. So the same exact DNA, but they put them in three different households with different socioeconomic statuses, different types of parenting.

9:02 Wait, this is legal?

9:03 This was not legal.

9:04 No, no, no, no.

9:05 This was not.

9:06 This is the kind of stuff her people do. No, it did. It wasn't me.

9:10 Not anymore.

9:11 I didn't say you. I said your people.

9:13 He's like, look, the most a physicist will do is give you a nuclear bomb. That's the most we will do.

9:21 Whereas her people.

9:22 They're doing human experiments.

9:25 Exactly. Exactly, Chuck.

9:27 But what was interesting and what they.

9:29 Kind of- Right, so it was a low socioeconomic middle class and an upper class.

9:33 Yeah, but they also had different types of parenting. And I think it was like the lower SES was more permissive.

9:39 What's SES?

9:40 Socioeconomic status.

9:42 Status, okay.

9:43 The highest one, I think, was very distant, cold, and restrictive. And I believe that- Unfortunately, that child ended up committing suicide.

9:52 Yeah, yeah.

9:53 And so basically- I'll tell you why, here's why. Red Fox said it first. Well, go ahead. Elizabeth.

10:00 Elizabeth.

10:03 Red Fox said it first. When asked how come black people have such a lower suicide rate than white people, he said, It's hard to kill yourself jumping out of the basement window. That's hilarious.

10:12 Oh my God.

10:14 That is so funny. That is so funny. I am sorry. That is amazing. That was Red Fox 1969 or something. It's so hard to kill yourself jumping out of a basement window. I'm coming to join you, honey, but I'm walking upstairs. All right, we got to keep going.

10:28 So she also credits her ability to tackle difficult situations to playing sports. So there's a whole social thing that goes on in sports. It's not just the contest itself, but the interpersonal dimension of it. So let's find out what she says about this.

10:44 I was very much a tomboy growing up, and I was really into sports. And my idea of fun as a scrappy kid was playing football with the boys or basketball on the neighborhood court. But that evolved into playing varsity basketball as well as varsity tennis and a little bit of softball in high school. And I was a much better tennis player, and I am a much better tennis player than I ever was a basketball player. There are a lot of myths out there about me. The only good one is that I was a really excellent basketball player.

11:20 So people want to believe you were good at basketball.

11:22 People have circulated a myth that I was a great basketball player.

11:25 But in fact. Not true. In fact.

11:29 In fact, I was a mediocre basketball player and a pretty good tennis player.

11:33 Cool.

11:33 Okay. And still play tennis.

11:35 So what did it do for you other than that you had energy?

11:37 It taught me how to really compete and to lose, but also to win and to want to win and to lead a team. And I spent a lot of time describing the role that I had as national security advisor as being akin to playing point guard on a basketball team. Because, one, that was my position. Two, when I was playing in high school and later in graduate school, Is.

12:04 The captain usually a point guard?

12:06 Not necessarily.

12:06 Not when I think about it.

12:07 Not necessarily.

12:07 Okay, I'm just wondering.

12:08 All right. I mean, but on the court, that's in fact often the role that the point guard's playing because they're seeing the whole court. They're calling the plays.

12:15 Right.

12:15 They're dishing the ball for the most part to the shooters.

12:18 Putting the ball into motion.

12:19 Yeah. And, you know, making sure that the stars, who usually those with the great outside shots are the ones, you know, under the basket are putting it in.

12:30 Get the opportunity.

12:31 Now then you get your, you know. your extraordinary point guards who do all of the above. I was not one of those. And so it was really a huge growth experience playing both tennis and basketball.

12:43 Here's what I wonder. Is the personality type that we see among sort of athletes, did that develop by them being athletes or was it always there and now It attaches to the fact that they have great athletic performance.

13:02 Yeah, I mean, it's like what came first, the chicken or the egg? I think certain types of people are.

13:06 The egg came first.

13:07 It did it?

13:07 Yeah.

13:07 Okay. That's been answered.

13:09 Thanks.

13:10 Sorry, I got that.

13:11 Okay.

13:11 I'll just check.

13:12 It was just laid by a bird that was not a chicken.

13:16 Oh, okay, got it, okay.

13:17 You didn't know that. Yeah, and there's a mutation, and then what comes out of the egg is what you would call a chicken, who laid the egg was not a chicken, and that's the first chicken.

13:26 Got it, got it.

13:27 So a cow laid an egg.

13:32 Certain people with personality, you're born with the genetic predisposition of certain types of personality traits and those might be more attracted to certain types of sports also. So it could be that you are more into playing with a group and a team and you like that aspect of it.

13:48 Attracts to golf.

13:50 I don't know, sorry. But the mental discipline though it takes, just to play golf even, or any sport.

14:00 Super mentally tough.

14:02 Absolutely, and so you need that. So I think you come to it, those at least who excel in sports, come to it with certain genetic predisposition, and then they develop it even further. So I think it's the discipline, it's being able to control your emotions under pressure, high stakes. That's another trait.

14:16 So it's not just control over your body.

14:18 No. It's mostly control over your mind, I think.

14:21 Because baseball is 90% of baseball is half mental. Right.

14:27 Sounds like Yogi Berra. It was entirely Yogi Berra.

14:33 But yeah, I mean, it's being able to have the discipline to practice, but also to control your emotions under high stress to rebound from losses, right? You know, so if something happens, you lose a point, you're getting out, you have to be able to get right back on there and not be kind of thrown off.

14:44 Which are good life skills.

14:45 All good life skills. So I think, you know, So you're attracted to a sport for certain reasons, but then you develop these skills along the way.

14:51 Okay, so but without sports, you still want to be mentally tough. What would be, what's a pathway if you didn't do sports like Susan did?

14:59 What's interesting is that you can actually, when we talk about mental toughness, we're talking about when you're sort of emotionally aroused or have a negative emotion, how you can kind of, in a way, suppress it and keep going on and not let it kind of defeat you. And so studies have shown that actually mindfulness and meditation increases parts of the, particularly the left prefrontal cortex, which works to downregulate the amygdala. And so those people who can sort of sort of overcome trauma.

15:26 The amygdala is a part of your brain?

15:27 It's a part of your brain involved in emotion.

15:28 It's a fight or flight?

15:29 Fight or flight response. And so resilience or mental toughness is really about how we can overcome these negative emotions and go on and sort of reframe things in a positive way. And we find that if you have more activation in the left prefrontal cortex, you can do that. One way to do that is through meditation.

15:46 So what if, just as a question, like for developing mental toughness, what if adversity... and failure actually So of course everybody feels bad and they're angered, right?

16:01 But what if that actually fuels better performance? So what you're saying is that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Right. Okay, okay.

16:07 Suppose that makes you, you know.

16:09 So there's a sort of, we all need a little bit of stress that actually helps us increase our performance. And there's this sort of inoculation, a little bit, you know. So it's all about the amount. So a little bit will get you to the sort of we call optimal state of arousal and increase and improve your performance. Too much, however, will become detrimental. I mean, yes, like physiologic.

16:31 Physiologic stimulation.

16:32 Stimulation, exactly.

16:33 So you need a little cortisol.

16:37 Not be good for right now.

16:40 Man, you really like this game, buddy. I got a good example of this, if I may. A track buddy of my father. My father ran track. They were competing against the New York Athletic Club. all white, all wasp of the day. And he was part- No Jews?

16:55 No.

16:55 Not in that club. In his club, Pioneer Club, they picked up everyone who was not admitted to the New York Athletic Club, which were blacks and Jews. So my father ran alongside Jews. Apparently not anyone from your family.

17:05 No.

17:06 The Berlin Stone Place. They were in the stands. So there's still a racial dimension to this, as there was to so much in society back then. It was deep. deeper than even today, as much as anyone complains.

17:17 It was worse.

17:18 It only encompassed everything.

17:20 Everything. And so, coming around the backstretch, my guy, his name is Johnny Johnson, is ahead of the runner from the New York Athletic Club. And on the backstretch for the final straightaway, the guy from the New York Athletic Club, Johnny Johnson overhears him yell to his runner, Catch that nigger.

17:38 Wow.

17:38 Oh my God.

17:39 Which, by the way, is shocking today, but back then you got to realize. Back then it was like, yeah, okay. That's what happened.

17:44 And so he said, this is one nigga he ain't gonna catch. And then increased his win.

17:49 That gave him, that incentivized him.

17:52 It was motivation.

17:52 Yeah, motivation, exactly. So too little is not good, just enough, but if he, let's say, got really angered by that to the point where he was so enraged that he kind of, his performance could have been injured.

18:03 Oh, it could subtract if you get too fired up.

18:05 Yes, if it's too much, too much, so just enough.

18:08 So you grew up in a Jewish household.

18:09 Yes I did. Therefore I did not play sports. It's just not part of our culture.

18:16 So it's really true that scene in the movie Airplane where the flight attendant, then stewardess, had reading material and someone seated there says, I just need something light. And she said, well, here's a pamphlet on famous Jewish athletes. That was the line in the book.

18:35 But the Sandy Koufax was Jewish, just so you know.

18:38 It was very important.

18:38 There's exceptions, but in general, yeah, the stereotype is legit. I was never very good at any sports.

18:45 Chuck?

18:45 No.

18:46 Not at all.

18:47 Damn, y'all.

18:48 You know what? Had I known this before this episode, I would have let both of your asses out in the street. I didn't even watch it. I was like, God, this is exhausting. What the hell are they doing? What is the whole point of this? No, I did.

19:02 I played several sports. But I didn't like it because I was forced into playing sports because my father was a really accomplished athlete.

19:12 Athlete. Another way to say it is you didn't have the mental toughness.

19:14 That's right.

19:15 You know what?

19:16 That's exactly what I was thinking.

19:17 That's another way to say that.

19:18 I've been taught in the last 20 minutes here, a woman, Heather, she's telling us what's going on.

19:24 Did you play a sport, Neil? Yeah, I played everything.

19:26 Oh, you played everything.

19:27 Oh, you were like wrestling.

19:29 Yeah, I used to wrestle. I rode. I also danced. And I played basketball, street ball in the Bronx. And here's the measure of things, just so you know. If it's a five on five choosing sides, how, where in that ranking are you chosen? Okay. First, yeah. Okay, no, I was never first, but I was like fifth. So I was like midway in the Bronx, but then I spent a year up in Lexington, Massachusetts and I went to the playground there and we played ball and I went to jump to block someone's shot and I blocked it with my elbow and I realized I jumped much higher than was necessary to block this person's shot. Because my elbow blocked the ball. So they all thought I was some amazing basketball player when it was actually. And

20:14 it turns out you were just black. Funny how that works. That sounds like we need to go to commercial. Coming back more with my interview with former National Security Advisor to Barack Obama, Susan Rice, who's got her new book, Tough Love, and we're just unpacking the tough love and how all that came about. And we'll talk more about that when StarTalk returns. Welcome back to StarTalk, Chuck Nice. Yes, sir.

20:47 Heather Berlin. Heather, give me your full title, because when you first came on, I didn't give it.

20:51 I'm a cognitive neuroscientist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

20:56 See, that's why I could not do that. No, I know. That's it.

21:00 Drop the mic. Drop the mic. Drop the mic right there. We're done here.

21:05 I'm out, bitches. I'm out. See that? Right there. I don't have to play a sport. So my interview with Susan Rice, former national security advisor to the president. We're talking about mental toughness, a running theme in her book, Tough Love. But in there is also just how do you deal with stress? Mental toughness is one thing to just come back from failure, but how about just stress?

21:34 How about if you're trying to keep peace in the world, there's no greater source of stress. than geopolitics. The Obama administration, like so many, was not short on crises. So I just asked her, what were your challenges in that role? Let's check it out.

21:50 So I think the hardest part of the job of National Security Advisor is the number and the weight of the issues that you're confronting at any given time. I mean, it's almost overwhelming. It feels, I'd describe it as like a slab of concrete lying on your chest, and then they just put more and more bricks on it. And you still got to breathe. So, for example, in my first six months on the job, this is beginning in.

22:17 July 1st of 2013.

22:18 The day I got in the office, the Egypt blew up and a coup occurred, which we didn't actually term a coup. This was the Arab Spring. This was after the Arab Spring. Then Edward Snowden... was in the middle of doing his nasty, releasing alleged U.S. government secrets. We had the war in Syria evolve into the use of chemical weapons and the challenge over the red line that President Obama drew as to whether or not we deal with the chemical weapons through the use of force. We had an extraordinary... secret negotiation going on that led to the Iran deal. We had secret negotiations going on that led to the opening to Cuba. We just had all these things.

23:18 This was day one?

23:20 First six months. But day one was Egypt and Snowden. And that's not even giving you the whole picture of what we were dealing with. But the crush of those issues and the import of each of them and the downside of failure for our security and our interests on any given one of those was quite daunting.

23:44 So Heather, what kind of people handle stress better than others?

23:47 Well, there's actually been some studies which find that there are some genetic differences. So we all have, it's adaptive to have a stress response. So you have what's called the HPA axis, but you know that fight or flight response gives you some.

24:01 HPA stands for what?

24:02 The hypothalamic adrenal, no, no, pituitary adrenal axis. So basically it's releasing norepinephrine and epinephrine, and then also you have cortisol, so that kind of gets you going when you have to run or fight something. We all have that, and that's adaptive, but then what comes in next is how do you handle it? How do you go back?

24:22 I gotta, before you continue, so the idea that when you're scared you pee your pants? Right. Okay, is that from birds? What? No, no, because a bird, if you scare a bird, a bird poops and then flies off, okay? Right, so they don't want to carry extra weight.

24:41 But actually, no, it's the reverse. So when the sympathetic nervous system is aroused, we actually, it restricts so you become less likely to basically crap your pants.

24:49 So why does everyone talk about pooping your pants?

24:51 That's interesting. I don't know where that actually came from, but physiologically speaking, that's not.

24:56 Everything tightens up and it stays in.

24:57 It tightens up, it stays in. It's not the time to be doing your business when you've got to run.

25:01 That's true. Excuse me while I... But usually it's right... I gotta tell you the truth.

25:05 It might help if you were to actually crap your pants because I don't wanna do anything with you.

25:11 Once you do that.

25:12 Oh.

25:13 Oh, that might be a way to get the animal to run away from you.

25:17 I see, I see. They don't like your stink.

25:19 But what happens is, okay, so you have this response. Everything sort of restricts. But then the parasympathetic nervous system kind of kicks in, which kind of relaxes everything and calms it down. And that's how... people respond or deal with stress. So genetically speaking, some people are more what we call resilient. They can respond to stress and kind of calm down their nervous system.

25:39 Can this be trained?

25:41 So with certain techniques, behavioral techniques, we call it, it's a biopsychosocial kind of phenomena where there's some biological aspects, there's some things in your environment that can help you.

25:51 But really- Right, so I guess let me tighten that question.

25:53 Okay.

25:53 Does more exposure to stress make you better at stress the next time, or does it make you worse?

25:58 There's a theory that it's called about inoculation. So in small doses, so the whole thing, there's actually a great book called The Coddling of the American Mind about how we're protecting our kids so much. Yes, exactly, Jonathan Haidt. And it's safe spaces. Greg Lukianoff. And basically we're creating these safe spaces, we're protecting our kids, we're trying to allow them to have any anxiety. But actually it's good to have it in small amounts, to have a little bit of adversity.

26:26 You were warned in advance that someone might say something that would trigger you. And then so you avoid it.

26:31 Exactly. Which is not really good, psychologically speaking. What we want to do actually to decrease anxiety is called exposure. The more you expose people, you can train the brain and the body how to respond. And so then when something, let's say, really traumatic happens, you'll be more prepared to handle that.

26:46 So in small doses, it could help you. But in large doses, it could really It.

26:49 Could hinder you. And we also find that, especially during youth and childhood, if you're exposed to high cortisol levels, it actually affects the way the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in memory, develops. But we find that people who are traumatized early in life have smaller hippocampi.

27:03 But later in life, you can actually try to regrow those neurons. And exercise, aerobic exercise is one thing.

27:10 The hippocampi is plural of hippocampus? Yes.

27:13 The hippocampi is plural of hippocampus? Yes.

27:15 I was a big man on the hippocampus, did I tell you that? Oh my god!

27:19 I feel like I've heard that joke before.

27:22 That hurt.

27:23 Oh my God.

27:26 That hurt my prefrontal cortex. So I had to ask Susan, how did she cope with the stress? I had to ask her. Let's find out.

27:36 The other challenge was, how do you not just deal with all the crises in your inbox, but how do you also, as I say in the book, put points on the board, get affirmative things done that we chose to do that we thought would be beneficial to the United States. So for example, like negotiating the Paris Climate Agreement.

27:56 We didn't have to do that, but we chose to do it. That was an affirmative opportunity.

28:01 Right, you want your job to be more than just solving problems. You want to actually be proactive.

28:09 Right.

28:09 And be remembered for doing something progressive or positive. Exactly. Right.

28:14 So those were the two big challenges. And then in terms of my background, and what prepared me. I mean, first of all, I was fortunate to have had a series of jobs in the run-up to becoming national security advisor that had given me a real insight into the work and the, the, the, you know, the issues and how to, how to navigate. But I also had learned as a child, something that I found was really invaluable as national security advisor, which is to be able to compartmentalize you know, the painful, tough, wrenching issues that you got to deal with from, you know, when you come home and try to be a mom or a daughter or wife or whatever it is, and not let the weight of those issues literally prevent you from sleeping, exercising, functioning,

29:02 you know, as a normal.

29:03 It wasn't just a bad day at the office. It was a bad day on planet earth.

29:06 Exactly.

29:08 And you know, you learned some stuff in that job that you really wish you didn't know.

29:11 Bad day in the Western hemisphere.

29:13 Right. So I actually learned that as I, as I explained through enduring my parents really ugly and violent divorce, uh, and yet still trying to, you know, perform in school and, you know, be a good student, play on my sports teams and try to maintain my friendships that, you know, focus on what you have the ability to control and don't let that which you can't completely control cripple you emotionally or psychologically.

29:44 Compartmentalizing is there a downside to compartmentalizing because i would wonder my most creative thoughts come when things kind of when the spillage right from one thing to another. So is it possible to over-compartmentalize?

29:56 Yeah, I mean, first of all, it is an adaptive defense mechanism, because if things are stressful and overwhelming, but you still have to function in society or at home.

30:03 Still got to eat, find food.

30:04 Right, you can kind of suppress. Well, one technique is to suppress or repress things to the unconscious, but compartmentalizing is you sort of put it in a different brain state. You only can access it when you're in one state and not the other, which temporarily works. But we see psychiatric illnesses where, in a sense, they're over-compartmentalizing, that they actually split into these different, it used to be called multiple personality disorder, but they basically, the idea is that you now start forming a whole nother identity that's associated with those traumatic thoughts.

30:31 That's the limiting case of this. Right.

30:32 And then you can't access them. You can only access them when you're in one state and not the other. So they become sort of almost so separate that the information flow isn't there anymore. And you kind of dissociate is what we call it. Dissociative identity disorder.

30:45 There you go. So what are ways people learn to cope with difficult situations when they have to function in the rest of their lives. Is compartmentalizing the only way, or is there some? Oh, so.

30:59 So there are a number of defense mechanisms, and we all kind of tend toward one or the other. Like, for example, people who are highly intelligent use intellectualization as a defense mechanism, right?

31:09 I wonder who that sounds like.

31:10 I can't imagine who that might be, but you can kind of over-intellectualize things away. I have no idea who that could be. But that's a more mature defense mechanism. So there's more mature ones and there's more primitive ones.

31:25 Now tell me about the primitive ones.

31:29 The primitive ones are less sophisticated. So they'll be just like where you automatically repress something or relegate it to the unconscious, where it can then come up in other ways, right?

31:39 It can percolate.

31:40 It can percolate.

31:40 Psychosomatic. Uninvited. Uninvited.

31:43 Uninvited, exactly. So then, you know, these classic cases with like Freud described of these psychosomatic symptoms. All of a sudden you have some weird twitch in your arm or, you know, it comes out in other ways. So I think there are more adaptive types of defense mechanisms and there are ones that can be more problematic. But they all taken to the extreme can become problematic and create psychiatric illness. Mm-hmm. The idea, I mean, the real goal is to integrate the uncomfortable memories and anxiety-provoking thoughts into your consciousness in a sort of neutral way where it doesn't disturb your daily function.

32:12 We just raised a point. If you have a really uncomfortable memory, why not suppress it?

32:17 Because it will come out as in other ways.

32:20 So basically- But suppose I suppress it so effectively, it'll never come out.

32:23 Maybe for years and years and years, and then 10 years later, all of a sudden you have some major panic attack because you were triggered by something that was deep in your unconscious. So the best idea is to reintegrate that memory in a neutral way.

32:35 That's what therapy does. So it doesn't lurk.

32:36 So it doesn't lurk in the background doing weird things and affecting your behavior outside of your awareness. Okay, so you want- It never fully goes away.

32:42 You want leaders to be able to, To not have something lurk.

32:47 That's right.

32:49 Sounds like a good thing. Not to have lurking leaders.

32:52 Yes.

32:54 God, why does that sound so good? When are we going to not get lurking leaders?

32:59 Lack of insight into your own unconscious processes is really not great. So, you know, just being sort of ignorant and blind to them is not a good policy.

33:07 All right, well, we've got to take a break. But when we come back, we'll get into the anatomy of national security when StarTalk returns. We're back. StarTalk. In this segment, we're going to talk about the future of national security, featuring my interview with Susan Rice, former national security advisor to Barack Obama. And since we're talking about security, we're bringing somebody with us what he does for a living. Steven, Steven Garcia, welcome.

33:36 Thank you.

33:36 Your first time on StarTalk.

33:37 It is.

33:38 And you're kind of local to us.

33:40 Yeah, yeah.

33:40 So we're gonna pull you back. Yeah, yeah. We'll totally pull you back.

33:44 But I'm definitely a fan of the podcast.

33:45 Excellent.

33:46 So you're expert on data and cybersecurity, chief information security officer at ConsenSys, very cool company name. What is it, a blockchain software? Blockchain. Blockchain, excuse me. Yes. Yeah, blockchain software tech company, very nice. Advisory board member for Rutgers University's big data programs.

34:03 Yes.

34:04 So big daddy, big data. That's what he put on his business card. So let's go hit the Susan interview and then we'll come right back to you. Do you have a sense of the direction of the future of security, national security? Is it how many soldiers you have lined up on a battlefield or is it how many programmers you have to protect your cyberspace? Or is it how many scientists and engineers you have to innovate. I mean, so the profile of war is evolving. So what do you see the future, if you had a crystal ball, given your life experience?

34:50 Well, I hate to. Traffic and crystal balls. I didn't take physics. But I would say several things. One, the domains in which conflict can occur are evolving. So we think of fighting as being on the ground or in the air or on the sea. But it's also increasingly, as we discussed a little bit earlier, in space, under sea, in the cyber domains.

35:23 and elsewhere that are very hard for the average American to envision. And those domains are already active battle spaces, at least in theory.

35:37 But then they're the battle spaces yet to be discovered.

35:40 Right, so those are the physical domains. Then there's the means of combat, potentially. And that's where things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, data... biotech and CRISPR come in. Because all of these are ways in which the nature of the tools that we have to engage in combat potentially can change radically. And then the question becomes such moral issues as ones of agency. Like, do we ever want to have fully autonomous weapons? What happens when an artificial intelligence outsmarts the people who built these weapons.

36:23 In the first place. Yeah. So Steven, what kind of security risk do we face today as a country? Cyber security risk. And what should we do about it?

36:33 I mean, to start based on what Susan said, I think we don't want autonomous weapons, right?

36:37 Thank you.

36:38 Every major sci-fi movie we've seen has talked about it, right? 2001 A Space Odyssey, Tron, all the Matrix movies, Terminator 1, Terminator 2, Judgment Day.

36:46 This is known. Right?

36:49 We just kind of can't let that happen.

36:52 We just want ordinary people giving the command to kill rather than machines giving the command to kill.

36:57 Yeah, I think that's appropriate.

36:59 I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah.

37:02 I mean, if Chuck wants to drop bombs, I think I got a chance to reason with him versus a machine.

37:07 Unless the machine has a higher level of reasoning than you do.

37:10 Yeah, and in which case, we're all done.

37:15 Why are we laughing? This is horrifying. I know, this is completely horrifying. That's the point where the machines say, humans are no longer useful to the survival of this world. Exactly.

37:25 I mean, we do tend to make irrational decisions, which can be good and bad, right? But I mean, we have empathy, but sometimes we might choose, in terms of numbers, to kill more people because of an emotional decision versus a rational one.

37:40 So I think working with the togetherness. But why wouldn't AI also have those same emotional profiles in principle if they're like us except better versions of us?

37:48 Because they don't actually feel emotion. We can program in an algorithm, but the actual feeling of, say, sadness or pain or empathy, I don't think that they will ever have that.

37:57 How do we know that wasn't just programmed into you?

38:01 Because I have subjective experience. I think, therefore I am. I feel like it.

38:06 So what should we be doing?

38:07 Well, so to her point too, right, we have new theaters of war, right? See, right, your boy Bill Knight, he's on a show called Blindspot where they did a whole episode on some hackers taking over a satellite that was weaponized, right? And, you know, back in the Reagan time when we talked about Star Wars, it felt like sci-fi and it was out of the realm of possibility where now maybe not so much.

38:26 Most of the world's data travels.

38:28 Through- were not yet born when Reagan was president. You're not referring to the movie series.

38:36 You're referring to the government program.

38:40 The floor of monies to create a fail-safe, foolproof defense system to then render the Soviets' weaponry obsolete. Okay.

38:50 But it doesn't need to just remain defensive. It can be offensive.

38:53 And so with this new age space race, with satellites going up into space, that's another theater. Uh, the undersea water cable was getting tapped for information. That could be another big source of national security.

39:04 So we're going to be moving away from marching armies to defense of cyberspace.

39:10 Yeah. And it makes more sense.

39:12 As the future of war.

39:12 Yeah. It makes more sense because the risk to reward ratio is better.

39:16 Right.

39:17 Um, there's a, a, a value on human life versus data, right? So you can still take over a country with a few keystrokes versus a standing army.

39:27 Makes a little bit more sense on multiple stuff.

39:30 About it. Don't he sound like, okay, what's in your basement, dude? Here's how you would do that. You would just take over.

39:38 It also gives lesser powers the opportunity to enter the theater of war as opposed to our more commonly used known enemies.

39:48 It democratizes who can start a war, is that what you're saying? Right, that's what I'm saying, yeah.

39:52 The playing field does change a little, right? Because you don't need that capital for tanks, planes, whatever.

39:58 Okay, as creepy and as weird as it is that we could be cyber-attacked, that's just another way to be attacked. So I'd otherwise be spending money on tanks, spend the money on cyber protection. And you don't see any problem with that? Not when he owns a cyber company. You kidding me? Stupid question. Sorry.

40:20 So Department of Homeland Security, they do have the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And they are responsible for protecting our federal networks. And there's a few pillars of things that they do protect on a national level. But I think it's important to not just think about this in terms of nation states. We also have to think about this in terms of private companies. The internet doesn't discriminate whether I come into you as a private individual to make my way to government, right? So it has to be a partnership, right? Because all governments use third parties anyway, right?

40:52 So if you're a XYZ random company that has government contracts, you're a potential vector.

40:58 Well, I asked Susan what countries needed to do going forward to change their approach to national security issues. Let's check it out. So should... The future of those meetings that you described with these heads of agency, should they have an ethicist sitting right at the same table? Because you're about to make a decision that affects the health and well-being.

41:18 Right now we have lawyers. Maybe we should have lawyers and ethicists.

41:21 Did I say lawyers?

41:22 We have national security lawyers. But each of us actually have to be ethicists, not just have a specialized somebody to police us because we don't think about the consequences.

41:31 Everybody should be thinking about it.

41:32 Absolutely.

41:34 It's not taught in school.

41:35 No, and the other problem is— Maybe.

41:36 Your mama gives it to you, but people otherwise don't.

41:39 Exactly. And the ethics that we may apply to these questions of war and peace are not going to be the same ethics that other countries apply. And how do you, therefore, have global norms and rules about how to deal with these new technologies?

41:55 They tried that with the Geneva Convention.

41:58 And to a large extent, that worked. But, you know, it's—you can— observe and police and enforce those kinds of crimes. It's a lot harder to see how you police and enforce what you've taught a machine to do. Particularly once it's out of your control. Or a cyber attack.

42:20 Or disinformation that leaks into a.

42:22 Absolutely. So it's getting wild out there.

42:27 Information's getting weaponized.

42:29 Yes, absolutely. And this is exactly what we've seen with respect to how Russia's trying to corrupt our democracy and pit Americans against each other. It's working. They're effective at it. And it will work unless we get hip to it and work together to prevent it. But, you know, information is definitely being weaponized by domestic actors and foreign actors.

42:58 And we need to find new ways to both determine the quality of information and not allow the weapons to be turned against our unity and democracy.

43:09 This is part of the cost of an open, free society. We have susceptibilities that closed societies don't have.

43:15 That's exactly right.

43:16 And that's an eternal battle.

43:20 Let's hope it's an eternal battle because otherwise we lose.

43:24 When I look at our susceptibilities, there's banking, there's interpersonal, just how people are treating each other, there's elections. All of this has a cyber component to it because we now interact through our Facebook pages and, and we see ads or videos. So how do you, how do you balance the free movement of people through society with security risk that we face walking into it flat footed?

43:56 Yeah.

43:56 Well, delicately. Thanks for that answer.

44:01 No, I like every tool, uh, double-edged, right? So, uh, we're an open and free society and we want that. Uh, but there are risks to that.

44:11 Right.

44:11 And so in particular attention with, with our elections, uh, I point to, uh, Michael Isikoff has a book called, um, Russian roulette, but it's, it's a really good breakdown of what happened with us in terms of what Russia did. And, um, What you effectively have here is that, in particular with Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica scandal where you had this company that essentially started plotting all these data points for everyone.

44:34 I don't want to call it the equivalent, but they effectively did a genome mapping of all of our preferences and data points, and that weaponized the data that you're talking about.

44:43 This is what happened.

44:44 So now they know, hey, Neil is very disposed to wanting to talk about this and talking about that. you know, we call them troll farms where there are these kind of fake accounts that are designed to seem like real people and start inflaming people and getting them into conversations. And then all of a sudden you have a polarized nation.

45:03 So you effectively, because, you know, the United States is a titan, right? And so kind of like the Avengers in that point, right? Like you don't beat us from the outside, right? You take, what was that movie? Civil War, where the guy was like, no, no, we're going to.

45:20 Bucky, I love you, please stop trying to hurt us. Okay, sorry, I'm picking up. Wait, so Heather, this sounds like something you guys never thought could or would happen. You knew that we would have hot buttons as human beings, but to have that weaponized, put against us, to pit us against each other.

45:38 I mean, it's psychological warfare. And it's just basically the brain is an information processing machine. So you can manipulate people by manipulating the information that they are accessing.

45:47 Right.

45:47 You knew you could do that one-on-one, but you know you can do that for an entire society.

45:50 Oh, yeah.

45:50 Now we have the tools to do it. Yeah.

45:52 Well, no, we've always had the tools to do it. So let's be clear.

45:55 Well, now they're better, though.

45:56 Yeah, they're much better and they're more effective. But the truth of the matter is what happened with what you said, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook and the weaponization of information is something that the... that the military calls psyops. That's exactly what it is. So why, I don't understand why people don't say what things are. That is called psyops. It is forbidden because it is that effective.

46:21 So, you know. So what kind of policy changes do we need to put into play to protect us going forward without completely constraining our freedoms?

46:29 I mean, a little, a lot would work in helping with data protections. The European Union is a lot stronger than we are on that, so it would help if our data was treated like the commodity that it is.

46:43 What does that entail? I don't know what you mean when you say that. Access to your personal information.

46:48 But not only that, also just restrictions on disinformation. I was talking to an executive at Facebook who actually left Facebook because they're not putting restrictions on disinformation in political ads. and that's really dangerous. So I think there are places where we can in the sort of private sector, you know, or at least let there be policies in place so that, you know, nonsense isn't getting out there, at least in the political realm, which influences how we vote.

47:13 And the media, they have to be the watchdogs they're supposed to be, not lapdogs, not saying.

47:17 Watchdogs, not lapdogs.

47:18 Ooh, I like that. That's the quote of the day. Right on. No!

47:23 Because you can't just say, oh, the administration said this, and that's it.

47:27 Like, your job is to question that, right?

47:29 And so the public.

47:30 trust the media to give that information. We've seen very recently that has not always been the case.

47:37 So we're being manipulated without even knowing it. That's the insidious.

47:40 Part of it. Most of us think we're making decisions of our own free will, but we're really doing things because we're being unconsciously manipulated all the time.

47:46 It's because we're all in a simulation and someone else is programming our behavior.

47:49 Sweet.

47:50 I'm sorry, we gotta end there. We gotta do another show around you, okay? We gotta do that. I appreciate that. So we got to end it there. Heather, thanks for coming.

48:03 As usual.

48:04 Chuck.

48:05 Hey.

48:05 My man. Always good. All right. This has been Star Talk. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, keep looking up.