Science and Technology in the Military, with Ash Carter

Neil Tyson explores the future of science and technology in national defense with former U. S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. With comic co-host Leighann Lord, defense expert Michael Horowitz, strategist P. W. Singer, Mona Chalabi, Chuck Nice, & Bill Nye. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is StarTalk. And we are featuring my interview with the US Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter. And we talked about the future of science and technology in the armed forces and the defense of this land. So, let's do this.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With me tonight is my co-host comedian LeAnn Lourd. LeAnn!

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Neil!

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've got a special guest, Dr. Michael Horowitz. Welcome! You're an expert, you're on the faculty of University of Pennsylvania? That's right. That's right, and thanks for coming up for this. And you're an expert on military innovation and the future of war. Man, so this, he's the right guy. He's the right guy. And plus, LeAnn-

• 1:20Speaker 01

  I need to get his card.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And LeAnn, you actually have been a comedian for the armed forces overseas.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  I have, I have, I've done several tours for armed forces entertainment.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like, all I think was Bob Hope. You did what Bob Hope did.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  But in a dress, yes.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you know? He didn't ever have a dress.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Well, I look better in mine. I think the troops appreciated it, is all I'm saying.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the Secretary of Defense reports to the President, and all of the armed forces report to the Secretary of Defense. Do I have that correct? You got it. I'm pretty sure that. And what's interesting in this system is that the Secretary of Defense is a civilian. And so we have the entire armed forces reporting to a civilian, which ensures that it's civilians that create policy and enforce policy. So that's a, I don't, it's not a unique system, but it's kinda how I'd prefer it.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Civilian control the military.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a kind of a cool fact about it. And so Ash Carter is trying to transform the modern military. You know, if you have a conversation with the Secretary of Defense, you think you might talk, how many missiles, how many troops, how many ships, how many guns, and it's not what my conversation went like.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah, that's he didn't, that's not where he went. Alright? He's, he's, he, he knows where things have been, but more importantly, he knows where he wants to take it. And I asked him all about where the armed forces is headed next. And my first question to him, let's check it out.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Mr. Secretary, it's great, great to have you on StarTalk. I always thought the military should, you know, we had a, you know, once airplanes became important, the air force was invented, but now we have space. Why isn't there a space force?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Oh, there is a space force. There is, there's-

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're, they're under the air force.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  There is space, they're under the air force, but I, you know, the Army and the Navy and the intelligence community also build, operate satellites. Many of them are as big as a school bus.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. One called the Hubble Space Telescope.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Uh, excellent.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And cousins.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Well, we have cousins of that that point downward.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  And, but they're really big. They don't, not-

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wave to them, actually, every now and then when I'm out in the street.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Good for you. Good for you. We'll say, we'll say hi back.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Wow. Was that your satellite?

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oops.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  The one you're waving? Okay?

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oops. So, uh, let me, so I, I'd like to wave to satellites in case they're looking at me. Can I believe for real that they can resolve the fingers in my hand as I wave?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Not quite yet, but you never know where technology is heading.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean, you never, no, no?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  That, that was not an answer. You do work for the government.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A, that was not an answer. B-

• 3:58Speaker 01

  This is a government guy for real.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I may never know, but you know.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  But he may not be able to tell you.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Or then he has to kill you. Do you have people for that?

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you watch any Hollywood movie.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This satellite is, you know, first it's fuzzy, he says, "Enhance." Enhance, which we know is all BS. But, "Enhance."

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's not real.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, if you have, if you shoot over the photo that's low resolution, you can't just say "Enhance" and have some algorithm show detail where there wasn't detail there before, unless you invented it to put it in there. That's all BS.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  The, the technology that, that the United States military and many other militaries have is, is amazing and can do amazing things and you, you can get great resolution from space, looking at things happening on the earth. But, you know, you, you're gonna have to wave for a while before the, you know, contemporary technology is, is gonna be able to pick that up.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, while I'm waving, there has to be a satellite right there who's looking at me.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and unless it's geosynchronous satellite, it's gotta like be passing over for that to happen.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Coverage is one of the biggest issues with satellites, is in the movies, a satellite's always available on demand exactly when you need it to look at the bad guy. In reality, it sometimes can take some time, sort of like in the movie The Martian, when they're trying to get the, the satellites in position to see where Matt Damon's character is.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was intelligently written in that regard?

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So, uh, let me ask, the, the, the space frontier and military innovation have gone together ever since the, the middle of the Cold War, I suppose. There'd be Sputnik, right, orbiting Earth. Freaked us out here in America. And so, uh, it, it, it brought in new politics, new military motives, new budgets, new technological developments. NASA got founded. So, what's interesting to me is, once technology matters and space matters, that's not, it's no longer just a measure of troops and bullets and missiles. It's a measure of technology and science and engineering.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I was intrigued to learn about Secretary of Defense Ash Carter's background. He runs the military and he has a background in science. And this is what makes him a rare breed among politicians in leadership positions today. So I asked him about his path from science to security.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Science to security. Let's check it out.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Well, I had some inspirations, as I think most people did, including yourself. And one of them, I was a, somebody who wanted to know how things worked, always. And so I ended up studying initially. But that meant you took stuff apart? No, it was more mental than that. Although I ended up doing experiments at Fermilab and at Brookhaven. Okay, later on, not in Harvard. No, no, no, no, but I did do experiments later, but mostly theoretical physics. No, it was in the head, and I wanted to know how things happened to be the way they were and how they worked. And so, over time, I was torn, actually, between history. I was a medieval history buff at Yale, as well as a physics major, the kind of right-brain,

• 7:04Speaker 02

  left-brain kind of thing. But they both came together in terms of wanting to know how things work. History tells you why things are the way they are because they developed that way. And physics tells you why things are the way they are from the point of view of how they work inside. So I loved them both. I ultimately ended up with physics. And now, when I was first starting out, I was like most scientists, I was so completely wound up in what I was doing. I was doing quantum chromodynamics was my thing, which is the force that holds quarks together. It's a very difficult nonlinear field theory, it's very hard to solve the equations. So we were trying to find, and I did find, some particular kinematic domains in which

• 7:44Speaker 02

  it was possible to solve the equations of motion and thereby derive a result and test the... That was all very hot, in that, in those days. Oh, it was. It was. Quarks, what held quarks together. And also, I worked at it Fermilab on looking for the W... Chicago. Yeah, the W boson. First time they went up to 3N GeV energy. Really exciting time in particle physics. But the big problem at that time was this is the height of the Cold War. And the problem was the Soviet, then Soviet Union. It wasn't every year a height of the Cold War. Well, it was. There's the Cuban Missile Crisis, there they, you know. And we now know in 1983, which is right around when this was, that the then Soviet Union was afraid we were going to attack them and they thought they might have to attack us.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  So it was a big, big tense time. But one of the issues was, we were building a missile called the MX missile. And where could we put it where it wouldn't, couldn't be destroyed by a Soviet first strike? Because remember the old logic, still, still good logic, of deterrence, which is if you want to make sure somebody doesn't attack, you, you need to make sure they know that you can get them back. Yeah, deterrence works if the other people don't want to die. That's exactly right. Just to be clear. It's essential. That has a big assumption in there. Well, and today we deal with opponents who are not, are not similarly inclined. That's a different kind of problem. But anyway, so it was a big technical problem of where to put this. Then I worked on something that you'd be interested in,

• 9:13Speaker 02

  or you're interested in everything, but you know something about, which is the problem which we never solved of shooting down Soviet missiles in flight from space using X-ray lasers, free electron lasers, X-ray lasers, neutral particle beams, all these things. And it was so-called Star Wars or Strategic Defense Initiative. And, and I, where I first got noticed as a scientist working on national security problems was I wrote a paper based on classified information, but unclassified, therefore widely read, that said none of these things was in the offing. They were not practical. That was very controversial at the time,

• 9:57Speaker 02

  but it was very technically true, as most of the technology community understood. Yeah, the tech community knew this. So I, so to your question about inspiration, the generation of elementary particle physicists who were above me, the generation above me that trained me, all had the World War II experience of being part of the radar project or the Los Alamos atomic bomb project. And they all instilled in me the idea that you had some responsibility to use science for the greater good. They, they always told me that I had some responsibility. To give back or to participate. It was a reflex for them.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  And that is what got me, on a kind of trial basis, into working on security problems.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  So his mentor was Yoda?

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know if that's what it sounds like.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  It does. It's like, wow, that sounds very Jedi positive side of the Force. I like it.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what I'm curious about, Michael, is

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there was an era, the World War II era. Basically, the war was won on science. It wasn't won on troop movements. It was advanced along via troop movements and guns, and, yes. But science ended the war. And the Manhattan Project.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was not only American scientists, in fact, it was mostly non-American scientists, brought over in the service of a military cause. In your studies, do you analyze the role that science has played, does play, should play? Or the psychology of the scientist who says, "No, I don't want to just study in the lab. I want to help my country." Because, of course, Germany had the same call for scientists.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Come forth. Help the motherland. Give me your medical doctors and your physicists." So they were doing the same thing. And so this, for me, asks the question, how does or should the government view the role of scientists in this?

• 12:03Speaker 03

  I don't think it's possible to understand what a military, like the United States military, does without understanding its scientists. You're absolutely right, that America's scientific leadership is the underpinning, not only of America's economy, but America's military.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so given that fact, then that's it. It's your troops and your scientists mixed together. That is your war machine, in a sense.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Fundamentally, and it's how those two things interact. One of the reasons why the United States is the best military in the world is because of the way that it melds those things together and the way that it traditionally has been able to harness the power of science to empower its troops.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Can we still say that, though? Can we still credibly say that we have the best military in the world?

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have the most expensive military.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yes, that doesn't mean the best, much like healthcare. That doesn't mean the best. But if I'm understanding the premise of your first book correctly, if you... Being big doesn't necessarily mean better. And smaller and more nimble is able to make changes quicker than we are. Because we're so invested in one particular direction that we can't shift as quickly as technology.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's part of Ash Carter's commentary is, whatever is your budget, you need to always stay nimble in how you value what it is you're doing.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's where I went wrong with Visa completely.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's trying to make sure it's not just ships and planes, that there's a whole... There are more frontiers. And he'll tell us more about that in the later interviews.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Did I jump ahead? I'm so sorry.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. What I'm curious about is you spent a year... You left academia briefly to go work for the DOD.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what was the... Did you feel dudious? Were you called as a sense of honor?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Were you on the run?

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And responsibility?

• 13:44Speaker 03

  If you're on the run, the last place you want to go is the Pentagon, I think.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd think, yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  You're hiding right under their nose.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  But for me, I think it's really important to get out of the ivory tower. And given that a lot of my research has been about military innovation and the future of war, the idea of rolling up my sleeves and actually sort of getting to work, both from a learning experience was unbelievable and as a sort of a commitment to service seemed important.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is it something we should all do?

• 14:14Speaker 03

  I think that we would be better off if more scientists took a term of service and spent time in the military.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is the... One of the largest bureaucracies in the world is the US military, okay? A bureaucracy usually has a bad name, but it's a top-down system that has layers upon layers upon layers of decision-makers. Is that the right configuration to stimulate the future interest of scientists to join?

• 14:42Speaker 03

  I think the challenge is, the military is not, and the Defense Department are not the places where, it's not the place where that initial spark of science is going to happen, but it's a place that can cultivate that spark and use it to address some of the nation's most, you know, some of the nation's largest challenges.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, a lot of us, and Leanne, you know, when you, in your days growing up, watching movies, we all did, that movies that had any kind of science or technology in it, typically it was an evil scientist, or mad scientist, or a good scientist but co-opted by evil forces. Basically, every representative.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Shady science, absolutely.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and so, I, should we have to worry about this? Is that what the Nazis were doing? Were they, did they cultivate evil scientists?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  They didn't think they were evil, though.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I know, that's the, isn't that an amazing thing? You're there, and everybody thinks they're doing the right thing.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  That's usually when the most evil is done.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, ooh.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Said the English major.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. I have no, I have no comeback to that.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Wow, dear diary, Neil didn't have a comeback, are you kidding me?

• 15:47Speaker 03

  That was just truth.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Michael, I got a question for you.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is next in defense tech? What, so, what, can you tell us, without having to kill us afterwards, what is on the horizon that is tech-based, that you're gonna co-op for the Defense Department?

• 16:08Speaker 03

  So, here's some things that the, that DARPA and the Defense Department are working on right now, that are, that you can read about on the internet with some degree of accuracy, and that I think are really, really interesting. One is a fast, lightweight autonomy. The idea of taking essentially miniature drones and, and having them coordinate with each other to try to conduct surveillance, to try to conduct surveillance in an area, and avoid the need to, you know, put humans in harm's way. The second is research on what are called metamaterials. So, think like Harry Potter invisibility cloak, but, you know, not obviously magical. The, this is Stealth 2.0, an attempt to, to...

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Deal with the fact that other countries after two decades have figured out ways to or figuring out ways to detect airplanes using some of the stealth technology from the 1980s.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I love the concept of new materials. That's a whole frontier. And you know, our man on the street Chuck Nice, yeah, he decided to go out and ask people about what their, so their favorite future weapons are. I don't know if the way to get, is it from movies? I don't know. Chuck Nice, man on the street, let's check it out.

• 17:28Chuck Nice?

  That's right Neil, I'm here in Washington Square Park to find out what people think about the future of defense. Name the coolest futuristic weapon you could think of, whether it's from a movie or a book or anything.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  I think it's the lightsaber.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh!

• 17:43Speaker 05

  Guardians of the Galaxy, when all the fighter jets, they all come together to make that huge shield, that's dope.

• 17:49Chuck Nice?

  Come on, let's have a lightsaber battle right now.

• 17:55Speaker 06

  I got these Star Wars bars, because you know that the flow of Slayer, twisting up your mind like the hair on Princess Leia. So they go against me, but they know the flow of Rip Yor. Trained as a Jedi, but grew up to be a Sith Lord.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  If you could send robots into war, would you think it's okay for countries to go to war?

• 18:13Speaker 05

  If it's just robots going against each other?

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:16Speaker 05

  It'd be better than now, yeah.

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Now what if those robots could feel pain? Oh. You can feel pain as a robot. What would that mean? No, but they can now.

• 18:27Chuck Nice?

  Would you still send them to war? Uh, no, no, not if something's feeling pain. No, no, no. You look like you need somebody to bother you. You have a 50% chance of dying on the ground fighting clones, or an 80% chance of dying in an X-wing fighter dogfight. Which one do you take?

• 18:42Speaker 05

  Swing fighter dogfight.

• 18:44Chuck Nice?

  Because if you're gonna die, you may as well die in style, you know what I mean?

• 18:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, actually, we didn't care. If you know what I'm talking about, you're a total dweeb. When it comes to war, the wards, I'm like Neil deGrasse Tyson, these rappers is B.O.B. You understand, I be holy, because the flow just out the sky. Yeah, my man's like, yo, yeah, that flow was kinda tight, yeah. So would you rather go into battle as a genetically modified super soldier, or be a super smart scientist?

• 19:14Speaker 07

  Wait, going into battle?

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 19:16Speaker 07

  A genetically modified, super badass soldier.

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 19:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who needs the science if you've got all the physical gifts you need for battle? How about like a genetically modified person that understands that war is an awful thing to do and there's many repercussions?

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, that was really beautiful, man. Uh, can I have a hug?

• 19:32Speaker 07

  Seriously.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you have it, Neil. We're a nation of warmongers. Compassionate warmongers.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, coming up, we'll break down the hard data on what is the biggest defense budget in the world when StarTalk continues.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the Rose Center for Earth and Space. We are featuring my interview with the Defense Secretary, Ash Carter. And we talked about the role of science in defense. Check it out.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  The stuff we do is of greater consequence than defense. It in, in eras past, remember that's where the jet engine came from. That's where spaceflight came from. That's where the internet, the integrated circuit and so forth. I want today's Defense Department...

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even supercomputing, what got its frontier and...

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. For example, when I started my career, one of my inspirations was also a Secretary of Defense, also a technologies, happened to be mathematician, Bill Perry. Uh, and he, uh, made GPS happen when people poo-pooed it, they didn't want to do it. And, uh, I want today's Defense Department to be the Petri dish for tomorrow's, uh, breakthroughs in the same way it was for the generation that trained me.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these investments, it costs money. It costs, uh, taxpayer money and somebody has to recognize that there's some kind of return on that investment. And, you know, all the personnel, the standing army as it will, whether or not it's the marching army and the tanks, the jets, the, the, you know, the, the, the, the ships and...

• 21:29Speaker 01

  The outfits?

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the outfits.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  I'm saying, it's not a naked army.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of this, and it costs money.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Just a bit.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I want to know how much money.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  A whole lot.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we need some numbers. And you know what happens on StarTalk when we need numbers?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  We make them up?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a different show. I'm so sorry.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We need some real, we need some real data.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Fine.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got a person just for that.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Do we?

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Called Mona. Mona, can I get some data, please?

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. This is Mona Chalabi. She's a, she's a data collector for The Guardian, and she is an expert in thinking about how to quantify things we otherwise talk about with words. So Mona, how can you shed some light on this?

• 22:19Speaker 08

  So I would like to quantify the size of the US defence budget, and it's a pretty big number. It's actually $580 billion. But when a number's that big, it's kind of hard to get your head around, right?

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not for the astrophysicist.

• 22:33Speaker 08

  This is true.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know, I don't mean to brag, but...

• 22:35Speaker 01

  A stand-up comic is struggling.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm good with the 580, but for everybody else, go.

• 22:40Speaker 08

  Okay, for viewers.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:41Speaker 08

  You can understand that number by thinking of it as a share of the total US economy. So the defence budget represents about 3% of total GDP, but then you have a new problem, right? Which is, is 3% high or low? And to get my head around that, I looked at some of the international statistics about how the US compares. And actually, most countries in the world spend less than 2% of the GDP on their defence budgets. But there are some countries that spend a hell of a lot more than the US as a percentage of GDP. Top of the list is a country called Oman, and Oman spends 12% of its GDP on its defence budget. Yeah.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa. So, so what does that get you?

• 23:21Speaker 08

  Well, the dollars and cents really, really matter here, right? And when you look at dollars and cents instead, the US is top of the leaderboard by a long, long way. In fact, the US defence budget is more than the next 12 countries on the list combined.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 23:35Speaker 08

  And you're asking what that money buys you, so I started to look into the defence budget documents, and they are fascinating. In fact, the second page on that document tells you how much it costs to produce that document, so just...

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 23:48Speaker 08

  I know. So just to produce the budget document costs $28,000. But that's kind of a drop in the ocean, right? When you're dealing with $580 billion.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 08

  So when you look at the entire budget, about a third of it goes towards operations and maintenance. Some of it goes towards investment. So last year, $7 billion was spent on space-based defense systems. And a large, large chunk just goes towards personnel because there are a lot of active military personnel in the US, 1.4 million of them.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, so like salaries, I guess. They get some kind of money for this.

• 24:21Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's the standing and marching army that costs any country a lot of money.

• 24:26Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I wonder if the future of this will have less of a standing army and more of a robotic or technological.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Well, do robots cost less money? Well, they don't need a pension.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  If they retire, they're just gone.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mona, well, thank you for shedding some light on the defense budget that we all pay taxes into.

• 24:45Speaker 08

  Thanks, Neil.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, she can go back and back into it. We're talking about science and national defense. And I asked the US Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, about the future of artificial intelligence and the tech revolution in the role of national defense as we go forward. Let's check it out. Well, we think of the military historically. We think of troops, movements, and weapons, and this sort of thing, and ships and jets. But that's not always the military that we'll need going forward, I'm imagining. There's cyber warfare. There is warfare that doesn't involve advancing lines of armies. That's a very different world. We are bequeathing our next generation.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what did DOD used to look like? And what's it going to have to look like going forward?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Well, it used to look like planes, tanks, and ships. Now, it looks much more like satellites, cyber, signals, special operations forces, meaning very specialized, precise. And so technology changes, the threats change, but you know...

• 25:57Speaker 02

  People also is important. This is vital because the thing that makes the American military, I say, and it's true, the finest fighting force the world has ever known, is actually not our technology, that's wonderful and the best. It is in part the values we stand for, which I'm proud of and are attractive. That's why we have lots of friends and allies, I like working with us. But above all, it's our people. We have had access to really good people over the last generation. Remember, it's an all-volunteer force. We don't make anybody, no draft. In my day, there was a draft, there's no draft. Now, nobody has to do this. They have to want to do this. And if we're going to have the best in the future, we need to make sure that this is an exciting place to come into. That gets back to having scientists who can keep us up to date,

• 26:42Speaker 02

  make sure we don't fall behind. It means people are sensitive to other cultures and other people because one of the ways that conflict unfolds today, unlike the battlefields of old, it's not by remote control. You're up close to other people. And peacemaking involves understanding other people and connecting. So we need people of great sophistication.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in this, when I think of the frontier, where are you guys stepping now that you hadn't stepped before? There's AI, one of them, you know, there are these nano technologies, these sort of things.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  There's absolutely two. AI, another way of putting that is the combination of the IT revolution and the neurophysiological understanding we're increasingly having. And getting the tremendous power of the brain and the machine together, that's going to be huge.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you stepping there?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely, we're stepping there.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, part of stepping there is you don't have your own labs, right? So you...

• 27:43Speaker 02

  We do.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do, okay.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  We do, but that isn't the main thing we do. The main thing we do is give money to people who have labs. Now, why is that?

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I already have a lab, now you don't have to build it. And I propose to you, and I say, I got an idea.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  And individual people and companies run labs in general pretty well. And that's certainly what the government did. Remember, the Soviet Union used to try to make everything in the government. Didn't work out so well for the Soviet Union. So our way is to feed on the very vibrant...

• 28:14Speaker 02

  technological ecosystem represented by this amazingly innovative culture in America, which by the way is becoming global. That's another issue for us. When I started my career in science and technology, most of technology of consequence was American. And most of it

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a point of pride, actually.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, sure.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming out of the 20th century.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  But it's not the case anymore. The technology base is now global. The scientific base is global. It's going to take a different kind of Defense Department to interact with a different kind of tech base, a different generation of people. I've got to look ahead.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That future generation of people, we're talking about Silicon Valley. And he took a trip to Silicon Valley. When was it, 2015?

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they created this Defense, did you know about this, Michael? The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental. That sounds like very

• 29:08Speaker 01

  D I U X.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, D I U X. Yeah, what is that? What's going on there?

• 29:12Speaker 03

  The idea is to try to harness the ingenuity and creativity of Silicon Valley and bring it to the Defense Department to help with next-generation technology challenges.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's the anatomy of the future soldier is a tech expert?

• 29:25Speaker 03

  Yes. And another way to think about it is also that the, that this technology, a lot of the technology of the past, like GPS, started in the military and then there were commercial applications. A lot of the technology we're interested in today is starting in Silicon Valley and the challenge is, how do you harness that for the military?

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, does that mean that there's nothing secret anymore? Because if it's invented in Silicon Valley, anyone has access to it. The government comes in, now they have the widget, and anyone else can get the widget too.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Well, maybe that depends on how early the government gets in, because they're courting startups. So maybe it isn't as broad and as public yet.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Is that, I mean, what, how does that work out?

• 30:05Speaker 03

  It's one of the biggest challenges, as Secretary Carter was saying, in a globalized world where technology is being created for commercial purposes and is spreading around the world for those commercial purposes. It means a lot more countries are going to have access to that technology in the future, which means you've got to run even faster to try to stay ahead.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, tell me about the integration of AI into the future of robotic technology. Should we fear it?

• 30:32Speaker 03

  I mean, in the movies, if you take a robot and you give it a brain and you give it a gun, then humanity is toast.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Because the rational decision would be to kill all humans in the world.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  I mean, it says a lot about how we think of ourselves that when we imagine robots with guns in the movies, we imagine them killing us.

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 30:52Speaker 03

  But you, artificial intelligence can help, as Secretary Carter was saying, it's the fusion of, of the person and the machine and using autonomy in artificial intelligence to help people make better decisions that is the future that DARPA and the Secretary Carter have been pursuing.

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Project.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Advanced Research Project.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Agency. Agency. And what's their budget in a year? About how much?

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Several billion dollars.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Several billion. That's not even very much.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  I was about to say, that's my shoe budget.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  And I say several billion, by the way, because the exact amount of DARPA's budget is not always clear.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when you raise the pitch in your voice with the word "exact"? "Exact." Okay. That, that makes it especially fuzzy.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  It means we're a few billion off.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when was DARPA created?

• 31:46Speaker 03

  DARPA was created after Sputnik, actually.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yes, so it smells like a fear, we were afraid.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  I mean, Sputnik was a shot across the bow to America's technology leadership and, you know, and just like with the creation of NASA, DARPA was an attempt to, to ensure that the United States could stay ahead in developing technologies during the Cold War.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what about bio-warfare?

• 32:07Speaker 03

  I think there's a lot of concern about, especially with advancements in synthetic biology, the ability of scientists in even just smaller labs in other countries to try to cook up diseases. And some of that is overstated. I mean, you can drink the water, don't worry about it. But the, but there is certainly the, there is certainly that fear that definitely exists.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What fascinates me throughout history is the earliest applications of bio-warfare, where you would take a rotting carcass and throw it in your enemy's well, and so that would poison their water supply, or you'd...

• 32:42Speaker 01

  I saw that on Game of Thrones.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Or, or catapult it over castle walls.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, catapult a diseased carcass over, over the walls, yeah. So that's in effect bio, bio, biological warfare.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  Like version point one of...

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zero point one. Well, we've been talking about the future of defense technology as it's influenced by science and tech, biotech. Right now, it's time for the Cosmic Queries segment. This is where we took questions from our fanbase on this topic. And Leanne, you have the questions in your hand?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I have the questions.

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've not seen any of them. If I can't answer it, I'll just say, "I don't know," or I'll definitely defer to Mike. But let's go for it.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And I got a bell. I will hold myself to very fast answers. Okay.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's do this.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  All right. Question one is from Lou underscore Kimaya. If lasers become the new weapons, what would the armor, would, ooh, would the new armor be mirrors?

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Oh, snap. Now, that's very Harry Potter right there. Oh, my gosh.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, not all mirrors reflect all kinds of laser light. So you could have mirrors, and that would reflect visible light lasers, but there are lasers that can laser in other bands of light that could, in principle, pass through the mirror itself and cook you on the inside. So, yeah, so that would be sort of, do we know what laser you're using? Do we know what kind of mirror to then use? And you go back and forth.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  And you can't, "Hey, what laser you using today? Wait, okay, let me get the other mirror. I'm not ready."

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a scene in the remake of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still where Keanu Reeves' character is being sort of laser-targeted by an attack helicopter, and he just puts one hand out, the other hand out, reflects the lasers back, and he blows up the helicopter. Yeah, so that would be a way to send the weapon back to itself.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Well, that has to do with the quality of the manicure.

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Does it shiny? So, what do you got?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Um, from Predator Baron, two words: Death Star.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, okay. So, so, I tweeted about this.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Uh, "It seems unnecessary to completely destroy a planet just to kill the people living on its surface. If you find a weapon that kills the people, and then you get to keep the planet when you're done, why you gotta destroy the whole planet?"

• 35:11Speaker 01

  To teach a lesson to the other planets.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't get it. I don't get it. Then in the last Star Wars movie...

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Come on, Star Wars man, come on!

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in the last Star Wars movie, okay? They would suck the energy out of a star to destroy multiple planets at once, but I did the calculation. The energy in a star, you can destroy hundreds of planets. In that, they only destroyed six. They didn't do the math right. It was way more dangerous a weapon than they even imagined for the storytelling.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  So somebody did movie math wrong?

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, next, wait, go for it, next.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Question from LukeTheMagicKid. Can your mustache protect against Klingon attacks?

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mustache. Unless I got so close to them that I tickled them with my upper lip. And tickled them into laughter where they didn't want to kill me. That is the only way I can imagine that my mustache would protect my life.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Moving on.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, last one.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  From Alaska23. What could an antimatter bomb do in terms of destruction compared to an atom or hydrogen bomb?

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there's no contest.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Who?

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No contest. A normal hydrogen bomb? It converts like some low, single-digit percent of the mass into energy.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? 3%, 2%, 5%, around, low, single digits. If you have a matter/antimatter bomb, 100% of the matter is converted into energy. It is a vastly more potent weapon for anything you want to do. Or it's a vastly more potent source of energy to drive your starship. So the future of matter/antimatter fuel is quite fertile. However, you need the antimatter available to mix with the matter to make the energy. What are you gonna carry the antimatter in?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  A cute bag from Coach?

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any bag you put it in, it will annihilate.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have to make magnetic force fields to contain it. And it's a containment problem that is still not resolved in our laboratories.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's it. Okay, alright. So, what intrigues me is, when you have a science background, you see things differently. And in my interview with the Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, he told me the two most important things he learned from his science background, as applied to his job. Check it out.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  The first is, not to take anything at face value. Don't take received wisdom. Scrutinize everything. That's part of the scientific method. It's extremely important, and if...

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's important for anything. Yeah, whether or not you're in the middle of a scientific...

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Any leadership position, but in government, it's important not to take things at face value. They're never the way you're told first. And the other thing that scientists do is solve problems. And so, it's not, it's a, it's a "we can do it." "Okay, this is a problem, let's solve this problem." Put those two things together. So, where I've seen scientists in government, they have been largely very successful for those two reasons.

• 38:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, why don't we have more of that? Whatever there is, why don't we have more?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  I think a lot of scientists don't have the experience that I had, which is somebody saying, "Hey, look, you can, you can participate in public life in a way that'll be very meaningful to you. You don't have to do it for the rest of your..." The key is, they don't have to do it for the rest of their life. What I'm trying to do...

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a tour of duty, in and out of Washington.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  I'm trying to reach out to the scientific community, make sure that relations...

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think plenty of us would welcome that opportunity. Take a year sabbatical, and just rotate in and out, get to see how the sausage is made.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then, they come out, and they can turn to their family and say, "I did something that really mattered, and it was really exciting." Maybe they'll decide to come back. Maybe they'll never come back. That's fine, but they'll have made a contribution.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's fun to look back at our founding fathers, and the scientific literacy expressed by Thomas Jefferson, and especially by Ben Franklin. He wrote a book called Scientific Researches Into Electricity, and it was known internationally for his experiments, learning about this new thing called electricity. A world known as a scientist, independent of how much we know him as a founding father. And so, that's, that's a different kind of valuation of the role and meaning of science and governance.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Does this, does this mean you're, that you might be announcing your candidacy for president?

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No! Action! More on our future of security when StarTalk continues.

• 40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're talking about science and national defense. And I asked US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter about the future of national defense. Let's check it out.

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you see as the future? If we start having colonies on the moon and Mars and other countries do it, this is a very distant future, perhaps. You know, humans don't always get along. And so is there some plan to think of space defense in terms of defending other locations in space rather than just space assets in orbit? Or is that too far off that you can't worry about that?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  No, but it's a, that would be a quality problem to have in the following sense. It takes a tremendous amount of organization to establish a space colony, which means a lot of people working together, like a nation-state. Well, nation-states sometimes go crazy. But in general, large collectives of people have a certain stability to them. The thing I think we need to worry about in the future is individuals and small groups. Now, I'm not just talking about ISIS and Al Qaeda. And they are today's very important, very dangerous flavor of terrorists. But there are other people out there also, individuals and small groups.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Now, it's sort of a statistical reality that individuals and small groups show a wider range of behavior, including aberrant behavior, than large collectives do. And as more and more destructive power through technology falls into the hands of smaller and smaller groups and individuals, we need to worry about that. So I believe my successors as Secretary of Defense will not only be worried about other nation-states and may not be most worried about other nation-states. They may be united with all other nation-states, worrying about the aberrant behavior of terrorists, small groups, of individuals who are hyper-potentiated, even though they have crazy ideas, by technology.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  And protecting society from that is, I think, going to be a very important part of our security future.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Michael, the future of defense, where's that gonna go?

• 42:11Speaker 03

  The problem is that people are crazy.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the soundbite right there. Right there. Okay, let's go for a beer. We're done here. That explains everything, right.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  People are crazy, and if you take a lot of the technologies coming online now, things like 3D printing, and drones, and advanced synthetic biology, the ability of individuals and small groups of people to blow stuff up has never been larger. That being said, I think the largest threats out there are still from large nation-states.

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, I've got a guy online, Peter Singer, maybe you've known the fellow, who's actually thought deeply about this. He's a defense analyst, and I think we've got him on video call right now. Is that right, Drew? Oh, there he goes, Peter Singer. Hello, sir, thank you. Thanks for joining StarTalk.

• 43:02Speaker 09

  Thanks for having me, it's an honor.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you think about the future of defense and security.

• 43:08Speaker 09

  Yeah, I work on the issues where politics and technology and national security cross. And so I've written a number of nonfiction books on topics ranging from cybersecurity to robotics, drones, to a new project looking at the future of war that's a smash-up between nonfiction, but also science fiction. Basically, it looks at what a future conflict would be like 10 years out, and how it might be fought in everywhere from land, sea, air, but also in places we've never fought before, like outer space or cyberspace.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this would be basically a World War III scenario. But what about drones and AI and robots? Do these factor into your storytelling?

• 43:52Speaker 09

  It factors into both the real world. So if we're looking out there, at least 80 different nations, from the US, again, to China, to Russia, to Israel, to Saudi, you name it, at least 80 different nations have military robotics programs right now.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so what happens? So, in a World War III scenario, I send my robot to beat up your robot, and my robot loses. Okay, so what? Does that mean I'm gonna like surrender to you? Is that what's gonna happen?

• 44:21Speaker 09

  You're assuming that you and I aren't also in the fight. And that's the point, is that you'll see robotics being used for everything from surveillance, being used to hunt submarines, but it also doesn't mean that soldiers on the ground, jet fighter pilots, aren't going away. It's actually gonna be man and machine working together. So, you're not gonna see some kind of, you know, easy, clean warfare. It's one of the things is, certain aspects of war don't change.

• 44:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're not just an analyst and an author, you've been called to testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Armed Services Committee. So, so you're in there, and people are tapping your visions of the future, so that we presumably can have a safer future for us all.

• 45:04Speaker 09

  Absolutely. And, and you know, the hope is that when you're understanding how the wars of the past, but also the wars of the future might start, that, you know, you understand that some of them begin through crisis, miscalculation, accidents. Others reflect a very deliberate set of choices to go to war. So, you know, you mentioned that we haven't had a world war, fortunately, a long time. But if you look at the past two world wars, one was basically, you know, people deciding to go to war. The second was a crisis spun out of control. We're looking at the future, the same thing could happen. A war could start by two warships, you know, scraping paint over some reef that doesn't even show in an article chart, or, um, something happening in space, satellites being taken out in escalation. Or could people be deciding to go to war. And so, it's by understanding

• 45:49Speaker 09

  these things, understanding how the technology works, understanding how it doesn't work, what's possible, what's not possible. By understanding, you're in a much better position to, uh, avoid the consequences.

• 46:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that, okay, so that's encouraging. So, Peter, thanks for calling into StarTalk.

• 46:06Speaker 09

  Appreciate it.

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This late at night, I know it's a little late for you, but, so thanks for doing this. All right.

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're featuring my interview with US Defense Secretary Ash Carter. And for that interview, we had some parting thoughts about the responsibility of science and scientists to society. Check it out. The citizen scientist that we think of coming out of the 20th century, that you were a part of that legacy, clearly was imbued with a sense of accountability because it was physics that ended the Second World War.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 46:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Manhattan Project. And so physicists had a particular accountability and responsibility to participate. Going forward, if it's not about nukes, and it's about biotech, or cyber, or nanotechnologies, then it's not so much the physicist anymore, it's the tech person who has this accountability to the government. So, do you foresee a rise of the citizen tech expert who would be writing the op-eds of the future the way the physicists of the Cold War wrote theirs?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  I don't only foresee it, I see it. Because the people who are at the frontiers of biology, or the frontiers of tech, are people who want to make a difference. And they know they are making a difference. And they know that they're wielding a technology of great power and great consequence. Most of them understand that with that comes a responsibility to make sure that that's used for good and not ill. And I'm trying to tap into that and make them allies, not just of the Defense Department, but of the common good and of peace generally. And I find the reception, as great as it was in my day for a young person like me when I was first told the same thing, "You're a physicist, that doesn't mean that you just

• 48:06Speaker 02

  have responsibility to physics, it means you have responsibility to society."

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Michael, what do you see is the role of like the smart tech scientist in the running of government?

• 48:20Speaker 03

  I think bridging the gap between academia, between the ivory tower and the policy world is one of the most important things that publicly minded scientists can do. I think it's something that I wish more did and that I'm excited that Secretary Carter is encouraging that in this rising generation of scientists.

• 48:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, there's a movie trope that we've all just grown accustomed to, and that's the scientist turned bad, that either wants to take over the world or is controlled by someone who wants to take over the world. Even if a tiny percent of all scientists are that, if they're really brilliant but evil, that could be devastating to the nation, to the world. So, in fact, as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, after the wall came down in 1989, we tried to find programs to attract the Russian scientists to work on things that were in our interest, rather than have them go to rogue nations and then use their intellectual capital against us.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  We did the same thing with German scientists after World War II, to get them to work for us instead of the Soviet Union.

• 49:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. Okay.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  So, do we offer to pay off their student loans?

• 49:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  That would sway me, I'm just saying.

• 49:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's good. Now, before we wrap this up, we can't leave without a visit from Bill Nye the Science Guy.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In his latest installment of Nye Times in the City.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 49:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get his take on all of this. See how he can wrap it up for us. Let's check it out.

• 49:53Bill Nye?

  We're aboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid. It's bristling with amazing innovations of destructive power. See, ever since the first stone was tied to a stick... Technology and weapons have gone hand in hand. Now, keep in mind, without military technology, we wouldn't have microwave ovens, radar, weather forecasting, or mobile phones. It's cool stuff. Now, take this missile, for example. It finds its target with radar, microwave, just like in your oven. And this missile finds its target with heat. Argon gas gets a special sensor cold really fast, and the heat passes through a special lens, and this missile can seek its target with heat.

• 50:37Bill Nye?

  It's the same thing that makes your remote control control remotely. Our desire to be best on the battlefield has given us all this amazing technology. But wouldn't it be something if we could have all this wonderful technology without having to invest so much of our intellect and treasure preparing for war? Back to you, Neil.

• 51:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, parked on the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier, parked on the west side of Manhattan. So, Michael, where do you want to leave us? What is the summation of all the wisdom that you have gleaned from the books you have written, from the courses you have taught, and from the research you have done? Can you distill it into the essence of what we need to hear in this moment?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Into a tweet. Hundred and forty characters.

• 51:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into a haiku, yes. What do you have?

• 51:29Speaker 03

  When Americans roll up their sleeves and work together, we can do just about anything. And that's what Secretary Carter is trying to encourage the United States to do. And I think that's what we need to do in an era of emerging technologies and global challenges.

• 51:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think we'll succeed?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Nah.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  I would never bet against the United States of America.

• 51:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 51:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know what I think about? I think about... You look at how much we invest in the capacity to wage war. And I'm a little disappointed that there isn't at least as much effort invested in never having war at all.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is it always that we will never have war because I am so powerful, you won't even try to attack me? Or maybe there's some other investigations that can occur, where the idea of wanting to attack someone never even comes up. And you look at the history of war. Many of the causes come about because people differ in their worldview, and they will not have a conversation to solve it. In other cases, there's a scarce resources. It is a fight for the high ground, or to control the resources. When I think of space, I think of a place where everywhere is high ground, and there is unlimited resources. So that perhaps the fact that humans wage war

• 52:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is the consequence of the fact that we live on the surface of a finite place we call Earth. That if we explored the universe, and the universe were our backyard, what would you ever fight over?

• 53:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are plenty of planets, plenty of stars, unlimited energy,

• 53:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  boundless natural resources contained in asteroids. Elements we call rare earth on Earth are not rare in space, if you pick the right asteroid. So maybe a future in space, investing $600 billion, will in fact be the end of all wars. And future civilizations will look back and say,

• 53:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "How could humans have been so trite, to not have had the cosmic perspective, enabling them to see the value of peace as even greater than the value of defense?"

• 54:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is a thought from the universe. You've been watching StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you to keep looking up. Thank you, Neil.