#36 — What Makes Us Safer？
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Summary
Juliette Kayyem served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, where she handled diverse crises such as the H1N1 scare and the BP oil spill. She was also the Homeland Security Advisor for the State of Massachusetts, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for her columns in the Boston Globe. She's a graduate from Harvard and Harvard Law School, and she's currently on faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School, where I met her because she moderated the event I did with Majid Nawaz to launch her book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, for Harvard University Press. In any case, it was a real pleasure to get a chance to return the favor and have Juliette on the podcast. And I really enjoyed our conversation, and I hope you do too. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you ll need to subscribe to our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don t run ads, and therefore, our podcast is made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you're not a subscriber, you'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation here. Please consider becoming a supporter of what we're doing here, by becoming a member of our podcasting platform, MONEY MADE MADE SINGLE ( ) . You'll get access to the second part of the podcast, "Making Sense: A Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home." Subscribe to Making Sense: An Unclassified Guide To Protect Our Homeland And Your Home ( ) by clicking here. Thank you for listening to the podcast by Sam Harris, I'm making sense of this podcast by the podcast? Sam Harris - The Making Sense Podcast by The MONEY MAKING SENSE Podcast by The Huffington Post, and more! Thank you to Sam Harris for the podcasting service, , by in the making sense Podcasts on this podcast, . in this episode & so on and so on (p. ) , and at the makingsense podcast a Thank you, etc., so you can help us make sense of it? (the making sense podcast ? etc. , etc., and so much so that ... "that's not going to be a good one?
Transcript
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Juliette is, as you'll hear, one of the leading experts on homeland security, and she's written
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a book, which I'm loving, entitled, Security Mom, An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our
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Juliette served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, where
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she handled diverse crises such as the H1N1 scare and the BP oil spill.
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She was also the Homeland Security Advisor for the state of Massachusetts.
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You've seen her, very likely, on CNN as an analyst, and she was actually a finalist for
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the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for her columns in the Boston Globe.
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She's a graduate from Harvard and Harvard Law School.
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She's currently on faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School, where I met her because she moderated
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the event I did with Majid Nawaz to launch her book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, for
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When you look at the background she has, resisting the impulse to take up equal time on the stage,
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giving her views, had to be excruciating, given how qualified she was to have expounded
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So if you look at that event on YouTube, you will see impeccable generosity and tact on the
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part of a moderator, as well as an impressive case of jet lag on the part of yours truly.
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In any case, it was a real pleasure to get a chance to return the favor and have Juliette
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I really enjoyed our conversation, and I hope you do too.
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Well, listen, you and I first met, you moderated the event I did with Majid for the launch of
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And I remember joking at the opening there, both when we were setting it up and actually
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at the event, I think, that he and I should have been asking you questions.
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Now, of course, that really wasn't much of a joke, given your background.
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So just tell our listeners briefly, or at any length you want, just how you got into this
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and why you are in a position to know anything about security and terrorism and homeland defense.
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I'm not sure it's deserved, but I have spent almost close to 20 years now in counterterrorism,
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national security and homeland security efforts.
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I don't want to call it the quaint days, because certainly there were victims of terrorism,
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And I, after 9-11, those of us who were in the field, a very discreet group, I was a lawyer,
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a practicing lawyer, you know, sort of became elevated in various ways as careers do when
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And ultimately, you know, served on the National Commission on Terrorism and then served as the
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state, I'm in Massachusetts, the state's homeland security advisor.
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That was a position that was created after the 9-11 attacks that sort of is the point person to
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oversee the National Guard, emergency management, all the public safety apparatus, and then served
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in President Obama's transition and then as an assistant secretary dealing with, you know,
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the efforts, the things that were going to impact the United States from a threat perspective.
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I've been a writer, an academic, and I'm a CNN analyst, and have had sort of a varied career
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in this space that a lot of people don't know about.
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So, and to be honest, it's not going away, as you know.
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I was under President Clinton, and that was the days of Oklahoma.
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And what got me more involved with international terrorism was the Africa embassy bombings.
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People will remember that in 1998, few Americans died, but our embassies were targeted in Tanzania
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It was really the first time that bin Laden sort of, who was known certainly as an entity
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in national security circles, really did target U.S. interests, in particular an embassy.
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I mean, and so the cases arising out of the Africa embassy attacks were, you know, they
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But most people wouldn't have known what al-Qaeda was or bin Laden was.
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And I remember in one of the trials, a couple of the guys in al-Qaeda were captured.
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There was some testimony from a former al-Qaeda member about bin Laden saying not only how intimately
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involved he was with the Africa embassy bombings.
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In fact, at one stage was, had told the planners to move a truck from, you know, one side of
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But also that this was the beginning, that these sort of coordinated attacks.
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And I was serving on the National Commission on Terrorism.
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And, you know, the media calls I got that day were so basic.
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I mean, they were sort of, who's this bin Laden guy we're hearing about?
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You know, just how people just did not have any sense of what was going on in the world
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or the threat that had caused such terror on September 11th.
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Yeah, I actually want you to describe how you spent your morning of 9-11.
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Because I should say I've read a little more than a third of your book at this point.
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I try not to be the journalist who pretends to have read all of your book or shows that
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So I'm loving the book, and I really recommend that our listeners get it and read it.
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And you have married the insecurities of starting a new family with the insecurities of our
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global war on terror in a really wonderful way.
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And so I want you to describe the morning of 9-11 and just how that proceeded for you.
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And the book, just taking a step back before we get to 9-11, is attempt to talk about these
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really difficult issues, whether it's terrorism or homeland security or the threats we face
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as a nation in a way that maybe people can grasp.
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And so I tell it in the form of a memoir and what it's like to be in this field raising three
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I have a five-week-old child on the morning of September 11th.
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I was having difficulties, as most mothers do, of having any semblance of organization
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And I had decided I was going to get back on my feet and head to New York that morning,
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David, my husband, is driving us to the train station, to South Station here in Boston.
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And I have to tell you, nothing was further from my mind that this was the thing that I
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We had all those of us in the field have been saying, this guy, Bin Laden, and this group,
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Al-Qaeda, wants a mega attack against the United States.
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I board the train and about not very much longer, I get another phone call from David
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And obviously, at that stage, I know that one airplane hitting the World Trade Center
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And I am starting to get a lot of media phone calls, very few people in the field, and trying
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to deal with those at the same time, dealing with a newborn at the same time, heading into
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ground zero on a train with, you know, with my new baby.
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And people, you know, we're so used to the security apparatus now, right?
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Sort of the TSA and airport security and travel security.
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But at that time, there was no protocols for anything like this.
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And so Amtrak, as one would suspect they would do, they just keep going into New York.
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And then all of a sudden, very far into the train ride.
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It just dawns on me like, you know, I have one responsibility to myself and my child, but
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I am an expert that whatever Amtrak was going to decide to do, we had to get off this train,
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that it was irresponsible, if not dangerous, to enter New York City.
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And so essentially, evacuate, you know, stand on a train bench and tell people, you know,
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what I believe to be happening, because, you know, we don't, at that stage, people, information
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was not like it is today, you know, no iPhones, stuff like that.
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And sort of evacuate the train, just say, this is, you know, I know this world, and we don't
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And so, you know, standing on a platform in New Haven, trying to reach friends that I
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know live there, and my husband, who's back in Cambridge, and thinking, you know, even
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for me, I can't separate the expert from the mother, right?
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That, you know, both my self-preservation and preservation for my newborn, but also the
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needs of those on the train was that they just needed to be told what to do.
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And it was the beginning of understanding that the expert and the mother were not so
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different, and that a lot of times the skills in both are somewhat similar.
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I would then enter government, in which that became very, very clear.
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So just to back up, so there was a period when you were on the train, when you knew that
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the second tower had been hit, and you're headed into the city with your newborn on your
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And at this point, you can't call your husband, because you can't get cell phone reception,
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but calls are coming in from journalists, right?
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So you're actually doing interviews at this point with your...
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Interviews, and I admit, I did one interview while nursing.
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And these calls, as you know, are, you know, from top journalists who probably have some Rolodex
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in which it, you know, says terrorism, and I'm serving on the...
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Or we had just given our report, the Commission on Terrorism, essentially saying America was
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unprepared for what bin Laden was trying to do, you know, are finding me through my assistant
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And I'm doing these interviews, and they are questions like, who is bin Laden?
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I mean, already, the questions about what is this?
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And how is the United States going to give meaning to it or understand it?
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And then this sort of realization that not only was I, you know, not only am I trying
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to educate reporters and others that I'm talking to through journalists, but that there's, you
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know, a couple hundred people on the train heading into New York City, and that's sort of
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my responsibility to them, and of course, Cecilia.
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Yeah, because of course, we didn't know at that point that the attacks were over.
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So we didn't know what was going to happen next.
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I mean, you have to, like, not only were the attacks not over, I mean, just remember the
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chain of misinformation that was going on that day.
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I mean, you know, Bush was dead, Cheney's gone missing, the White House has been hit.
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And I, you know, and we had no way on the train to process any of this.
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And I remember hearing someone saying, the towers fell.
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And first of all, you didn't know, I didn't know if that was true.
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And then I just remember thinking, how do skyscrapers fall?
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Because if you haven't seen it, I had assumed, right, that it's like a domino, that they're
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And it wasn't until we arrived in New Haven and there were TVs up that I saw, oh, that's
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I mean, and that's, you know, and those images we still remember today, almost 15 years later.
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So, and I recall that you, your mother woke you up from your delusion, right?
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My parents, the geography can be a little bit confusing.
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I grew up in California, but my parents happened to be in New York that day as well.
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And so I was actually going to see them and my sister and my parents who are in New York,
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So they know what's going on, are realizing that the city's about to shut down.
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They have access to TV that they might not be able to get out.
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And so they resourcefully rent a car in Connecticut.
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And so they sort of just say, okay, if we can get out of the city where I'm going to get,
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where they're going to get a car in Connecticut and try to come to Boston.
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And I'm on a call with her and I'm saying, well, I'll, you know, this is, you know,
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And she is the one who said, you're, you're going, you realize you're back at work.
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You know, I mean, this is, this is your work, right?
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I was teaching at the Kennedy School at Harvard.
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I am on various government programs and advisory councils about this growing threat of terrorism.
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And it was like, oh, that was like the light bulb that, that, you know,
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I thought I was going to have a couple months off and hang out with my newborn and, and work out,
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you know, do whatever we do during real maternity leaves.
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And, and five weeks into it, you know, when my mother said, you know, you know what this is,
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And this is the moment that we never wanted to happen, but that those of us in the field
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had been warning about and, and that realization at that, at that moment, eventually I did get
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to New Haven, I did reach David and he picked me up and we, and we drove back home.
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So you, you've distilled many of the lessons, maybe all of the lessons you've learned thus
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Which, and you know, this phrase shit happens, which you distinguish.
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I was surprised when I reached this point in the book where you distinguish it from keep
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calm and carry on the, the, the, the famous British myth about the, the, what those posters
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So can you just, just define your concept of resiliency and how you distinguish it there
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from just not letting the terrorists win by not doing anything differently?
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So it is, it's remarkable when you, you know, this, when you write a book, what you actually
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And so let me start with resiliency by what it's not, because there was various phrases
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In times of, in times of conflict or, or potential violence.
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So what, what emerged out, out of the Bush administration after 9-11 was this concept of
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You know, and Cheney, the vice president Cheney, you know, said it was the 1% rule, right?
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You know, if there's a 1% chance of terrorism, we're going to do anything we can.
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But it was essentially a notion that was easy to, to understand, hard to implement, which
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was Fortress America, which was essentially that we would put all of our efforts, both abroad
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and domestically to ensure that never again, that this would never happen again.
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And as I say in the book and have said consistently, even in, even when I was in government, it's
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It is a fool's errand and that no country like ours, either before or after September 11th
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was ever at 0% risk and that our vulnerability was actually a sign of our strength.
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And that, and that, and that our invulnerability was a sign of our American exceptionalism.
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So that, but that proves an impossible standard for one, you know, wars abroad show that we
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are vulnerable and that we can't fix the world like in Iraq and Afghanistan with, with just
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But also, as I report in the book, you know, as early as one month after September 11th
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in October of 2001, President Bush calls Tom Ridge into his office.
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Tom Ridge people remember was the governor of Pennsylvania resigned his job after September
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11th becomes the Homeland Security advisor to, to President Bush.
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And he says to Tom Ridge alone in an office, uh, with his chiefest, only his chief of staff
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there, he says, um, listen, I just got a call from the president of Mexico and the prime
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And they say that we, you know, that this fortress America is not working for trade, which is
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Um, and so Bush says to Ridge, we have to let go a little, right?
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You can't even imagine, you know, Bush who's so known as fortress America, never again, but
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just recognizing a month later, a country like ours with millions of people crossing borders
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and trade and commerce and ideas and people moving, uh, was going to get to fortress America.
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So I sort of put the never again standard, uh, uh, to one side, but what, what resiliency
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isn't as well is the, is the exact opposite of that, which is the sort of, you know, keep
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calm and carry on and, and, you know, the sort of, um, what will be, will be attitude.
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Um, people remember the keep calm and carry on mantra sort of started emerging in about
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2005 as the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, um, show, uh, a government very unable to, uh,
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keep us, um, uh, uh, that was very incompetent.
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And I understood it when I started writing the book as a, um, uh, uh, a propaganda campaign
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coming out of the war council and Churchill, uh, during world war II as a way to tell the
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British public, uh, about how to face, uh, and the attitude that they should have in the
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face of what truly was for them an existential threat, which was Nazi Germany.
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I believe that this was how they got through it.
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And then I started doing some research and learned that the keep calm and carry on, which
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as you know, had Mary, many variants to keep calm and call me Mary, the keep common, yeah,
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call me, uh, call me maybe the keep calm and eat chocolate.
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I never was released by Churchill and his war council.
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Uh, they had a million of the posters made, um, and they sat on it.
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Uh, it wasn't discovered until 2005 when a bookstore bookstore owner opens up some old boxes
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in his bookstore, um, and discovers them and he puts them up on the wall.
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And then, uh, they became sort of a world phenomenon and going back and discovering, or why would
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Churchill and why would the war council have done that?
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And, um, essentially it was because, uh, the keep calm and carry on mantra philosophy was
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exactly, uh, not what a society needs in the face of, of mayhem, whatever it may be.
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It was too passive, um, that in fact, uh, what Churchill needed at the time was obviously
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for the men to go to war and the woman to, to enter the manufacturing and commercial market
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and for them to send their kids to the countryside of all things.
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Uh, and so that idea that keep calm and carry on was passive, was really not about resiliency,
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uh, really did, um, animate, uh, a notion of resiliency that really derives from the word
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Resiliency means re means again, of course, but salient means jumping.
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It means essentially investments in our society, in our capability to respond and our, and recover
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Uh, that is what are the policies behind, uh, resiliency.
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And if I could, through the stories of Homeland Security, get people to understand that a nation
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that too focused on stopping all bad things from happening was not going to nurture its
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response, recovery, and resiliency efforts, that, that, that would be in the, in the long
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You know, I want to stay with this, this issue because it's, I feel like there's a paradox at
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the, at the heart here that we, we need to somehow grapple with.
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So as you say, we obviously can't protect ourselves against everything and the mere attempt to do
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that would be stifling of more or less everything we care about.
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We can't live in some kind of panopticon, you know, self-imposed prison where we subject ourselves
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to, you know, truly Orwellian intrusions just to keep us safe from, from our enemies.
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But the paradox for me is that there, I think there's a, a rational fear to have of irrational
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So it seems rational to me to be quote, irrationally concerned about specific risks, given that
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we can be more or less certain that everyone else will respond irrationally when these events
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So, so you take something like, and this is, this is an example, I don't know if you
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do this in the book, but my friend Bill Maher has, has made this point publicly and I thought
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He pointed to, to Hurricane Katrina and he's, he asked us to remember how we responded to
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And, you know, as inept as our response was, this was a, a discrete problem that, that we
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just kind of, once we got our act together, we cleaned it up.
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A thousand people died or, or, you know, a thousand plus people died and there was billions
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of dollars in damage and we, we rebuilt New Orleans and, and it's over.
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If that had been a terrorist attack that created precisely that level of damage, it could have
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been a, a, his, another history defining event where we would launch multi-trillion dollar
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wars and the, the, the global economy could have been plunged into a depression.
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I mean, who knows what would happen with another terrorist event that scale.
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And so his point, of course, is that it's, we should have our response be more in register
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with the, the actual costs of the events and not overreact.
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And so, and, and the, the, the difference between a natural, quote, natural event and
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But I think that given that I, that it will inevitably be that big, that we'll, we won't
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actually be able to, we can't reach the dial in our brains that will make a hurricane equivalent
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with an act of terrorism or an act of terrorism equivalent with a hurricane.
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Given that there, there will be mass panic and economic damage that is in the final analysis
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irrational, it seems rational to build those costs back in to our planning for these events.
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And so I just want you to reflect on that a little bit.
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It's, it's a great point and it does in some ways reflect where, you know, I call it in the
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book, the Homeland Security Apparatus, which is both maligned and misunderstood.
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So, you know, and rightfully so maybe in both instances, but, oh, so just to explain the
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2005, Hurricane Katrina was a pivotal moment for Homeland Security, not because, as you know,
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They don't die from the hurricane, they died from government incompetence.
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And for those of us in our, in, in, in, in that world, looking at it, analyzing it, studying
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it, you know, realize there's a lot of systemic reasons for New Orleans.
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And, you know, it was a city that, that had no, that had no resiliency built into it in the
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first place, just given, you know, centuries of neglect, including the fact it was built in
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a tub basin, essentially, but that, that it really moved the apparatus towards thinking
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Because before that, we were so focused as a nation on terrorism, right?
00:25:05.600
Then the night, stopping 19 guys from getting on four airplanes.
00:25:08.780
That was our, that was our strategy, that we had failed to appropriately plan and prepare
00:25:20.620
And so there was a change by 2005 and certainly 2006.
00:25:24.040
The Bush administration changed after Hurricane Katrina.
00:25:26.700
There's no, I talk about two different Bush administrations.
00:25:30.480
And if you look at the polling that Iraq was bad, but Bush's polling never bounced back after
00:25:39.960
And what happened in Homeland Security is we started to talk about an all hazards approach
00:25:44.360
to response that the firefighter at the moment of the fire does not know whether it's, you
00:25:51.880
know, two brothers at the end of the Boston Marathon, a generator or an errant, you know, generator
00:25:58.580
on fire or an errant cigarette to blow something up, you know, you, and, and it didn't matter
00:26:02.560
at that moment because all, what we need to do is invest in the response to minimize the,
00:26:10.020
So, so in terms of on the response side, after the boom, as we call it in my world, you know,
00:26:16.080
after the boom, there has been a focus on, on sort of this all hazards approach, but, and as you say,
00:26:22.620
and I agree with this, this point, you shouldn't, one should not blame the American
00:26:32.360
I mean, in other words, if, if after San Bernardino, you saw the polling go absolutely nuts, that's
00:26:44.100
And I have, I have believed that Obama has been very flat footed on this, recognizes that
00:26:50.180
terrorism, whatever the consequences are of the attack, that terrorism is different.
00:26:55.060
It hits a psyche that people will act irrationally, but that their irrationality, as you say, is
00:27:02.800
In other words, because it's a purposeful attack.
00:27:06.240
It's very different than a hurricane, very different than the air and cigarette or a generator.
00:27:13.600
And so in my ideal world in which government behaves well, you know, after something like
00:27:18.920
this, it would be able to, you know, to, to guide that irrationality towards, towards
00:27:27.860
rationality would begin, would put it in perspective, would not, would not essentially blame people's
00:27:34.340
irrationality on, as, as Obama did on Trump or cable news.
00:27:42.040
I mean, the idea that, you know, you know, a million people watch CNN, I'm on CNN, I know
00:27:47.500
And so that, you know, so, so big, so I, so that distinction is, is, I think, important
00:27:54.840
And I, I describe it as apparent of this irrationality factor.
00:27:58.860
And you certainly know from your work, you know, the black swan phenomenon, right?
00:28:05.300
And, and they're very rare and their appearance has a disrupt, you know, the black swan theory
00:28:12.140
is their appearance and has a disruptive impact on the course of history.
00:28:16.740
So there's black swan moments, 9-11 being one of them.
00:28:19.620
And you can tell me as a mother that the chances that my child will die from terrorism is 0.0001%.
00:28:29.980
You can tell me that, and I get it, and I can get calculations, risk, and all that stuff.
00:28:39.100
If my child is, is the one that sees the black swan, that is an existential crisis for me,
00:28:45.280
And, and so I kind of get people's irrationality and, and also try to steer it towards understanding
00:28:52.000
that in a world like we live in, you know, we have to accept a level of risk and vulnerability.
00:28:59.980
Regardless of, of, of our hopes and wishes that it weren't so.
00:29:07.580
Yeah, well, I'm glad you, you raised the issue of purpose, because that, that does show how
00:29:12.800
a terrorist attack and a hurricane are not analogous.
00:29:16.220
Because, you know, when you have a hurricane, it doesn't suggest that at any moment you could
00:29:20.860
have another hurricane of that scale, or that somebody is plotting to, to deliver you the
00:29:27.660
Whereas with a terrorist attack, you, it's, it's ongoing, it's emblematic of the next
00:29:34.360
So, but I, so I, so in that sense, it's not strictly irrational to, quote, overreact to
00:29:41.880
terrorism or react differently to terrorism than you would to a natural disaster.
00:29:45.700
But I guess even in a case where it is totally irrational, I see that, that I think probably
00:29:54.080
So flying is very safe and, you know, famously safe and yet famously feared by many people,
00:30:01.600
And when a plane does crash, I think most people have a reaction that that would be one of the
00:30:09.540
And yet, if you're, if you were just going to go by body count, I mean, we have more than
00:30:13.780
30,000 people die on our roads every year, year after year, and we just accept it.
00:30:18.360
And, and I don't know how many people die by plane crash, but it's got to be, you know,
00:30:26.300
And if you, if you, if you compute the, you know, the man hours, person hours exposed to
00:30:31.080
that travel and, and, and your danger, it's, you know, if you're flying on a reputable
00:30:35.200
airline, it's, those are some of the safest hours of your life being up in the
00:30:40.020
And once you get on the ground, you can start worrying.
00:30:42.300
And yet given the horror people experience in response to a plane crash, I think it
00:30:47.920
makes rational sense to over-engineer the safety of planes, to make them safer than
00:30:53.880
would be strictly rational if you just were trying to save lives based on body count.
00:30:58.780
Because if we had, just imagine what would happen if the president said, listen, we're
00:31:03.360
spending a lot of money to make our planes safer than, than they need to be.
00:31:07.800
What we should, we should be making cars safer.
00:31:10.960
We should be making playground equipment safer.
00:31:13.640
This is, this is what's killing all of you and your kids.
00:31:15.980
So I'm going to take some of this money we've spent on, on the FAA and, and, you know, do
00:31:25.200
It would just take a few big plane crashes to get everyone to react against that and,
00:31:32.180
and do the irrational thing, which I think in this case would probably be rational.
00:31:36.360
Because if everyone stopped flying, if someone said, listen, I'm just too afraid to fly now,
00:31:41.000
which many millions of people might do, well then, you know, our economy would grind to a
00:31:45.140
So you have this cascade of effects that, again, even though they are not strictly rational,
00:31:50.660
if they're reliably going to be produced, you, you, you have to build that into the cost
00:31:55.380
in advance in, in, in your thinking about these problems.
00:32:00.900
I mean, what the airplane is a perfect example because, um, and it's something I've struggled
00:32:04.900
with being in the field, um, which I describe in the book is the, the ratchet up, um, phenomenon
00:32:11.280
of safety and security, very easy to ratchet up, right?
00:32:14.680
Because there's, you know, fear and especially after a terrorist attack or, you know, lots of
00:32:19.920
money, lots of goods, lots of gizmos, very hard to step back and say, okay, what's the level
00:32:26.420
of risk that we are going to tolerate as a society?
00:32:30.860
And we're doing this all the time anyway, uh, that would justify taking some of that apparatus
00:32:36.400
or those rules or regulations off of, uh, in this case, airline, um, security it is.
00:32:42.780
And so, and part of this for, I think Americans and, and, uh, is the control factor, uh, is the,
00:32:50.760
what's the, what, what's the aspect of a plane crash that just is so horrible.
00:32:54.900
Every part of it is horrible, but it's that you're sitting there hoping to God, the pilot,
00:33:00.160
you know, you've given control over where, when you're driving, right, it's, it's okay.
00:33:04.480
Well, I, I have some control over, uh, where I go, what time I drive, whether I text.
00:33:12.380
And so part of that, part of what I think, you know, what I'm trying to do through the
00:33:17.120
book and through where I am now in my thinking about Homeland Security, which is very much focused
00:33:24.980
Which is on very much focus on preparedness and, and, and, and response and, and minimizing risk
00:33:31.040
when something does happen is to give people a sense of control over things that they feel like
00:33:39.280
Because I think that's the plane crash is horrible.
00:33:41.200
I think that's also why people freak out about terrorism.
00:33:44.220
It's also, oh my God, I have no control over this stuff happening in Syria.
00:33:52.280
It feels like an amorphous blob, but all I know is it can show up in my kid's school,
00:33:58.240
And, uh, part of, uh, of, uh, of, of accepting a certain level of risk and vulnerability in this
00:34:05.060
country is, is on the other side is, is trying to empower the public, not just with knowledge,
00:34:11.780
but with what tools would you want, or would you desire to have to give you more control,
00:34:17.420
given that you're not going to get the vulnerability to zero.
00:34:20.640
So now what would you say are your greatest security concerns at this point?
00:34:24.920
So, I mean, I could, I mean, given the world I've been in, I could, I must have some good gene
00:34:33.280
that my husband says, I don't have the stew gene that I actually tend not to stew on things,
00:34:37.240
which is probably a good thing to have in my field.
00:34:38.820
Then as a mother of three, but, um, I, you know, obviously there's infinite numbers of
00:34:42.800
things that worry me, um, on the, on the substantive side, it's, it's clearly climate
00:34:48.920
I'm, I'm with Bernie Sanders on this, on terms of the existential threat, um, uh, of, of the
00:34:55.700
movement of, uh, of the earth, uh, whether it's the oceans or mega storms or a refugee crisis.
00:35:02.120
And, um, that is going to change, uh, uh, the way we live globally, the way we live domestically,
00:35:09.340
the way we live in urban societies in ways that we can't even predict right now.
00:35:13.040
And so later on in the book, I get into ways to think about, um, how we might prepare to
00:35:20.560
Um, I'll tell you the more, I said, maybe philosophically what worries me now is that, uh, we, we built
00:35:28.900
no resiliency into our, um, into how we live our lives that we don't accept that shit happens.
00:35:34.880
Uh, and therefore any time there is a disruption to the system, we have the kind of, uh, proposals
00:35:41.660
that are being made, um, by Trump specifically, but even Ted Cruz, uh, that, uh, will make us
00:35:50.860
I, um, know this is also, you know, I've, I'm not a, a religious scholar.
00:35:55.980
So, you know, I just look at this from a safety and security perspective, but I do know, um,
00:36:01.580
that if you asked me from the safety and security perspective, uh, what has made America relatively
00:36:09.420
Oh, you know, we have gun problems, we have violence, whatever, I get that, but relatively
00:36:12.840
safe from the, the generational challenges or problems in the Middle East, the civil wars
00:36:20.340
in Africa, and now what we're seeing, the, the terror in Europe, what, why is the United
00:36:27.580
States immune from that in some, in some ways in, in recent history?
00:36:32.480
We, you, you can't drive from Boston to Damascus.
00:36:36.960
The other is our ability over, you know, over centuries, not perfect.
00:36:45.920
We definitely have been, haven't been great at all times, but to assimilate and acclimate
00:36:50.060
and elevate the other, uh, whether it's the Irish here in Boston or Mexicans in California
00:36:55.340
or Puerto Ricans in New York or Muslims in America.
00:37:02.200
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