Making Sense - Sam Harris - #36 — What Makes Us Safer？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.720 Today I'm speaking with Juliette Kayyem.

00:00:49.820 Juliette is, as you'll hear, one of the leading experts on homeland security, and she's written

00:00:55.000 a book, which I'm loving, entitled, Security Mom, An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our

00:01:00.660 Homeland and Your Home.

00:01:02.640 Juliette served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, where

00:01:07.680 she handled diverse crises such as the H1N1 scare and the BP oil spill.

00:01:14.640 She was also the Homeland Security Advisor for the state of Massachusetts.

00:01:18.520 You've seen her, very likely, on CNN as an analyst, and she was actually a finalist for

00:01:24.880 the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for her columns in the Boston Globe.

00:01:30.160 She's a graduate from Harvard and Harvard Law School.

00:01:33.420 She's currently on faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School, where I met her because she moderated

00:01:39.500 the event I did with Majid Nawaz to launch her book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, for

00:01:45.420 Harvard University Press.

00:01:47.540 Juliette was great at that event. 1.00

00:01:48.780 She was really a fantastic moderator. 0.89

00:01:51.040 When you look at the background she has, resisting the impulse to take up equal time on the stage,

00:01:59.280 giving her views, had to be excruciating, given how qualified she was to have expounded

00:02:04.980 upon those topics.

00:02:06.360 So if you look at that event on YouTube, you will see impeccable generosity and tact on the

00:02:12.160 part of a moderator, as well as an impressive case of jet lag on the part of yours truly.

00:02:18.160 In any case, it was a real pleasure to get a chance to return the favor and have Juliette

00:02:23.140 on the podcast.

00:02:24.260 I really enjoyed our conversation, and I hope you do too.

00:02:28.280 And now I give you Juliette Kayyem.

00:02:36.860 I'm here with Juliette Kayyem.

00:02:38.900 Juliette, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:02:40.220 Thank you for having me.

00:02:42.520 Well, listen, you and I first met, you moderated the event I did with Majid for the launch of

00:02:48.100 our book at Harvard's Kennedy School.

00:02:50.700 And I remember joking at the opening there, both when we were setting it up and actually

00:02:56.660 at the event, I think, that he and I should have been asking you questions.

00:03:01.360 Now, of course, that really wasn't much of a joke, given your background.

00:03:04.640 So just tell our listeners briefly, or at any length you want, just how you got into this

00:03:09.360 and why you are in a position to know anything about security and terrorism and homeland defense.

00:03:14.320 Well, that was a great forum.

00:03:17.040 And thank you for the compliment.

00:03:19.440 I'm not sure it's deserved, but I have spent almost close to 20 years now in counterterrorism,

00:03:24.520 national security and homeland security efforts.

00:03:27.100 I was in counterterrorism before 9-11.

00:03:29.180 There were a few of us in the field.

00:03:30.720 I was a lawyer at the Department of Justice.

00:03:32.540 I don't want to call it the quaint days, because certainly there were victims of terrorism,

00:03:37.780 but nothing like what happened on 9-11.

00:03:41.200 And I, after 9-11, those of us who were in the field, a very discreet group, I was a lawyer,

00:03:48.920 a practicing lawyer, you know, sort of became elevated in various ways as careers do when

00:03:54.320 things happen.

00:03:55.300 And ultimately, you know, served on the National Commission on Terrorism and then served as the

00:04:02.440 state, I'm in Massachusetts, the state's homeland security advisor.

00:04:06.040 That was a position that was created after the 9-11 attacks that sort of is the point person to

00:04:11.840 oversee the National Guard, emergency management, all the public safety apparatus, and then served

00:04:17.360 in President Obama's transition and then as an assistant secretary dealing with, you know,

00:04:23.700 the efforts, the things that were going to impact the United States from a threat perspective.

00:04:30.660 I've been a writer, an academic, and I'm a CNN analyst, and have had sort of a varied career

00:04:37.860 in this space that a lot of people don't know about.

00:04:41.520 So, and to be honest, it's not going away, as you know.

00:04:45.320 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:46.440 So you served under two presidents, right?

00:04:48.900 I did.

00:04:49.320 I was under President Clinton, and that was the days of Oklahoma.

00:04:53.700 And what got me more involved with international terrorism was the Africa embassy bombings.

00:05:00.920 People will remember that in 1998, few Americans died, but our embassies were targeted in Tanzania

00:05:06.920 and Kenya.

00:05:08.740 Many Africans died.

00:05:10.460 It was really the first time that bin Laden sort of, who was known certainly as an entity

00:05:16.000 in national security circles, really did target U.S. interests, in particular an embassy.

00:05:22.100 But he wasn't a household name.

00:05:24.020 I mean, and so the cases arising out of the Africa embassy attacks were, you know, they

00:05:32.160 were sort of followed by the mainstream media.

00:05:33.960 But most people wouldn't have known what al-Qaeda was or bin Laden was.

00:05:37.580 And I remember in one of the trials, a couple of the guys in al-Qaeda were captured.

00:05:41.860 There was some testimony from a former al-Qaeda member about bin Laden saying not only how intimately

00:05:50.140 involved he was with the Africa embassy bombings.

00:05:53.360 In fact, at one stage was, had told the planners to move a truck from, you know, one side of

00:06:00.600 the embassy to another side, right?

00:06:02.060 So he was very operational.

00:06:03.220 But also that this was the beginning, that these sort of coordinated attacks.

00:06:08.380 And then, of course, September 11th happened.

00:06:10.720 And I was serving on the National Commission on Terrorism.

00:06:14.480 And, you know, the media calls I got that day were so basic.

00:06:18.820 I mean, they were sort of, who's this bin Laden guy we're hearing about?

00:06:22.760 You know, where is Afghanistan?

00:06:23.920 You know, just how people just did not have any sense of what was going on in the world

00:06:30.260 or the threat that had caused such terror on September 11th.

00:06:35.980 Yeah, I actually want you to describe how you spent your morning of 9-11.

00:06:40.160 Because I should say I've read a little more than a third of your book at this point.

00:06:44.880 I try not to be the journalist who pretends to have read all of your book or shows that

00:06:50.480 he's read none of it.

00:06:51.200 So I'm loving the book, and I really recommend that our listeners get it and read it.

00:06:55.500 It's called Security Mom.

00:06:56.960 And you have married the insecurities of starting a new family with the insecurities of our

00:07:04.280 global war on terror in a really wonderful way.

00:07:07.120 And so I want you to describe the morning of 9-11 and just how that proceeded for you.

00:07:13.500 Well, thank you very much for the compliment.

00:07:14.920 And the book, just taking a step back before we get to 9-11, is attempt to talk about these

00:07:19.680 really difficult issues, whether it's terrorism or homeland security or the threats we face

00:07:24.220 as a nation in a way that maybe people can grasp.

00:07:27.960 And so I tell it in the form of a memoir and what it's like to be in this field raising three

00:07:34.200 kids.

00:07:34.760 And it begins on the morning of 9-11.

00:07:38.100 And I was in counterterrorism.

00:07:42.440 I have a five-week-old child on the morning of September 11th.

00:07:47.340 I was having difficulties, as most mothers do, of having any semblance of organization

00:07:53.180 in my own life.

00:07:54.440 And I had decided I was going to get back on my feet and head to New York that morning,

00:07:59.200 go visit my sister.

00:08:00.000 And I had Cecilia with me.

00:08:03.760 David, my husband, is driving us to the train station, to South Station here in Boston.

00:08:08.640 And we hear about the first airplane.

00:08:11.960 And I have to tell you, nothing was further from my mind that this was the thing that I

00:08:17.520 had been warning about, right?

00:08:19.060 We had all those of us in the field have been saying, this guy, Bin Laden, and this group, 1.00

00:08:22.600 Al-Qaeda, wants a mega attack against the United States.

00:08:25.980 I board the train and about not very much longer, I get another phone call from David

00:08:31.600 that a second tower has been hit.

00:08:36.120 And obviously, at that stage, I know that one airplane hitting the World Trade Center

00:08:40.720 may be an accident, two is not.

00:08:42.680 And I am starting to get a lot of media phone calls, very few people in the field, and trying

00:08:47.100 to deal with those at the same time, dealing with a newborn at the same time, heading into

00:08:52.660 ground zero on a train with, you know, with my new baby.

00:08:58.360 And people, you know, we're so used to the security apparatus now, right?

00:09:03.460 Sort of the TSA and airport security and travel security.

00:09:07.940 But at that time, there was no protocols for anything like this.

00:09:11.560 And so Amtrak, as one would suspect they would do, they just keep going into New York.

00:09:16.500 And I keep staying on the train.

00:09:18.220 And then all of a sudden, very far into the train ride.

00:09:21.680 So we're heading into New Haven.

00:09:22.860 It just dawns on me like, you know, I have one responsibility to myself and my child, but

00:09:28.500 also to others.

00:09:29.460 I am an expert that whatever Amtrak was going to decide to do, we had to get off this train,

00:09:36.020 that it was irresponsible, if not dangerous, to enter New York City.

00:09:39.740 And so essentially, evacuate, you know, stand on a train bench and tell people, you know,

00:09:46.740 what I believe to be happening, because, you know, we don't, at that stage, people, information

00:09:51.720 was not like it is today, you know, no iPhones, stuff like that.

00:09:56.080 And sort of evacuate the train, just say, this is, you know, I know this world, and we don't

00:10:02.920 know that this is over yet.

00:10:04.200 And so, you know, standing on a platform in New Haven, trying to reach friends that I

00:10:09.160 know live there, and my husband, who's back in Cambridge, and thinking, you know, even

00:10:14.580 for me, I can't separate the expert from the mother, right?

00:10:18.500 That, you know, both my self-preservation and preservation for my newborn, but also the

00:10:24.400 needs of those on the train was that they just needed to be told what to do.

00:10:28.980 And it was the beginning of understanding that the expert and the mother were not so

00:10:34.360 different, and that a lot of times the skills in both are somewhat similar.

00:10:38.360 I would then enter government, in which that became very, very clear.

00:10:41.840 So just to back up, so there was a period when you were on the train, when you knew that

00:10:46.700 the second tower had been hit, and you're headed into the city with your newborn on your

00:10:53.720 lap.

00:10:54.220 Yeah.

00:10:54.480 And at this point, you can't call your husband, because you can't get cell phone reception,

00:11:00.020 but calls are coming in from journalists, right?

00:11:02.640 So you're actually doing interviews at this point with your...

00:11:05.040 Interviews, and I admit, I did one interview while nursing.

00:11:08.760 I mean, it was such madness, you know?

00:11:11.420 And these calls, as you know, are, you know, from top journalists who probably have some Rolodex

00:11:17.560 in which it, you know, says terrorism, and I'm serving on the...

00:11:20.860 Or we had just given our report, the Commission on Terrorism, essentially saying America was

00:11:25.200 unprepared for what bin Laden was trying to do, you know, are finding me through my assistant 0.51

00:11:31.340 back at work.

00:11:32.840 And I'm doing these interviews, and they are questions like, who is bin Laden?

00:11:37.380 What is al-Qaeda?

00:11:38.980 Why is he in Afghanistan?

00:11:41.000 And also, is this war?

00:11:42.840 I mean, already, the questions about what is this?

00:11:47.700 What is this attack?

00:11:49.340 And how is the United States going to give meaning to it or understand it?

00:11:53.900 And then this sort of realization that not only was I, you know, not only am I trying

00:11:59.020 to educate reporters and others that I'm talking to through journalists, but that there's, you

00:12:04.660 know, a couple hundred people on the train heading into New York City, and that's sort of

00:12:09.000 my responsibility to them, and of course, Cecilia.

00:12:11.680 Yeah, because of course, we didn't know at that point that the attacks were over.

00:12:16.660 So we didn't know what was going to happen next.

00:12:18.600 Yes.

00:12:18.900 I mean, you have to, like, not only were the attacks not over, I mean, just remember the

00:12:24.080 chain of misinformation that was going on that day.

00:12:27.640 I mean, you know, Bush was dead, Cheney's gone missing, the White House has been hit.

00:12:33.160 And I, you know, and we had no way on the train to process any of this.

00:12:37.260 And I remember hearing someone saying, the towers fell.

00:12:42.040 And first of all, you didn't know, I didn't know if that was true.

00:12:44.140 We had no images.

00:12:45.120 And then I just remember thinking, how do skyscrapers fall?

00:12:49.640 Because if you haven't seen it, I had assumed, right, that it's like a domino, that they're

00:12:54.360 going to tilt over.

00:12:55.360 And it wasn't until we arrived in New Haven and there were TVs up that I saw, oh, that's

00:12:59.500 how towers fall, right?

00:13:01.300 I mean, and that's, you know, and those images we still remember today, almost 15 years later.

00:13:06.360 So, and I recall that you, your mother woke you up from your delusion, right?

00:13:11.040 You finally got her on the phone.

00:13:13.840 I did.

00:13:14.720 I, anything, you know, good, a good mother.

00:13:18.540 My parents, the geography can be a little bit confusing.

00:13:21.760 I grew up in California, but my parents happened to be in New York that day as well.

00:13:25.380 And so I was actually going to see them and my sister and my parents who are in New York,

00:13:32.160 but are on the Upper West Side.

00:13:33.360 So they know what's going on, are realizing that the city's about to shut down.

00:13:37.140 They have access to TV that they might not be able to get out.

00:13:40.420 And so they resourcefully rent a car in Connecticut.

00:13:44.340 And so they sort of just say, okay, if we can get out of the city where I'm going to get,

00:13:47.740 where they're going to get a car in Connecticut and try to come to Boston.

00:13:50.660 And I'm on a call with her and I'm saying, well, I'll, you know, this is, you know,

00:13:56.200 I'll come to New York.

00:13:57.180 And she is the one who said, you're, you're going, you realize you're back at work.

00:14:02.020 You know, I mean, this is, this is your work, right?

00:14:05.080 I was teaching at the Kennedy School at Harvard.

00:14:07.380 I am on various government programs and advisory councils about this growing threat of terrorism.

00:14:13.500 And it was like, oh, that was like the light bulb that, that, you know,

00:14:17.360 I thought I was going to have a couple months off and hang out with my newborn and, and work out,

00:14:22.220 you know, do whatever we do during real maternity leaves. 0.99

00:14:24.740 And, and five weeks into it, you know, when my mother said, you know, you know what this is,

00:14:29.660 you're going back to work.

00:14:31.500 And it was just like, yeah, I'm, this is it.

00:14:34.120 And this is the moment that we never wanted to happen, but that those of us in the field

00:14:39.280 had been warning about and, and that realization at that, at that moment, eventually I did get

00:14:45.280 to New Haven, I did reach David and he picked me up and we, and we drove back home.

00:14:51.660 So you, you've distilled many of the lessons, maybe all of the lessons you've learned thus

00:14:57.700 far into this concept of resiliency, right? 0.96

00:15:01.620 Which, and you know, this phrase shit happens, which you distinguish.

00:15:05.000 I was surprised when I reached this point in the book where you distinguish it from keep 0.94

00:15:08.580 calm and carry on the, the, the, the famous British myth about the, the, what those posters

00:15:13.760 did during World War II.

00:15:15.460 So can you just, just define your concept of resiliency and how you distinguish it there

00:15:21.580 from just not letting the terrorists win by not doing anything differently?

00:15:26.460 Yeah.

00:15:26.640 So it is, it's remarkable when you, you know, this, when you write a book, what you actually

00:15:30.440 discover when you research things, right?

00:15:32.200 And so let me start with resiliency by what it's not, because there was various phrases

00:15:36.420 to describe, you know, as zeitgeist, right?

00:15:39.940 In times of, in times of conflict or, or potential violence.

00:15:43.760 So what, what emerged out, out of the Bush administration after 9-11 was this concept of

00:15:49.580 never again.

00:15:50.220 You know, and Cheney, the vice president Cheney, you know, said it was the 1% rule, right?

00:15:55.860 You know, if there's a 1% chance of terrorism, we're going to do anything we can.

00:15:58.960 But it was essentially a notion that was easy to, to understand, hard to implement, which

00:16:03.940 was Fortress America, which was essentially that we would put all of our efforts, both abroad

00:16:10.480 and domestically to ensure that never again, that this would never happen again.

00:16:15.560 And as I say in the book and have said consistently, even in, even when I was in government, it's

00:16:20.940 a, it's a mythic standard.

00:16:23.380 It is a fool's errand and that no country like ours, either before or after September 11th

00:16:29.980 was ever at 0% risk and that our vulnerability was actually a sign of our strength. 0.62

00:16:37.680 But we bought it, right?

00:16:39.280 We bought the never again.

00:16:40.540 And that, and that, and that our invulnerability was a sign of our American exceptionalism.

00:16:46.220 So that, but that proves an impossible standard for one, you know, wars abroad show that we

00:16:53.300 are vulnerable and that we can't fix the world like in Iraq and Afghanistan with, with just 1.00

00:16:58.120 troops.

00:16:58.400 But also, as I report in the book, you know, as early as one month after September 11th

00:17:04.280 in October of 2001, President Bush calls Tom Ridge into his office.

00:17:09.800 Tom Ridge people remember was the governor of Pennsylvania resigned his job after September

00:17:14.000 11th becomes the Homeland Security advisor to, to President Bush.

00:17:17.620 And he says to Tom Ridge alone in an office, uh, with his chiefest, only his chief of staff

00:17:22.400 there, he says, um, listen, I just got a call from the president of Mexico and the prime

00:17:27.860 minister of Canada.

00:17:28.980 And they say that we, you know, that this fortress America is not working for trade, which is

00:17:34.600 true.

00:17:34.900 Um, and so Bush says to Ridge, we have to let go a little, right?

00:17:39.760 You can't even imagine, you know, Bush who's so known as fortress America, never again, but

00:17:45.280 just recognizing a month later, a country like ours with millions of people crossing borders

00:17:48.940 and trade and commerce and ideas and people moving, uh, was going to get to fortress America.

00:17:53.720 So I sort of put the never again standard, uh, uh, to one side, but what, what resiliency

00:17:59.300 isn't as well is the, is the exact opposite of that, which is the sort of, you know, keep

00:18:05.380 calm and carry on and, and, you know, the sort of, um, what will be, will be attitude.

00:18:10.760 Um, people remember the keep calm and carry on mantra sort of started emerging in about

00:18:15.660 2005 as the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, um, show, uh, a government very unable to, uh,

00:18:22.840 keep us, um, uh, uh, that was very incompetent.

00:18:27.160 Keep calm and carry on was understood.

00:18:29.020 And I understood it when I started writing the book as a, um, uh, uh, a propaganda campaign

00:18:35.180 coming out of the war council and Churchill, uh, during world war II as a way to tell the

00:18:41.600 British public, uh, about how to face, uh, and the attitude that they should have in the

00:18:47.720 face of what truly was for them an existential threat, which was Nazi Germany.

00:18:52.280 I believe that this was how they got through it.

00:18:55.180 And then I started doing some research and learned that the keep calm and carry on, which

00:18:59.680 as you know, had Mary, many variants to keep calm and call me Mary, the keep common, yeah,

00:19:04.500 call me, uh, call me maybe the keep calm and eat chocolate.

00:19:07.320 I never was released by Churchill and his war council.

00:19:09.800 Uh, they had a million of the posters made, um, and they sat on it.

00:19:14.760 Uh, it wasn't discovered until 2005 when a bookstore bookstore owner opens up some old boxes

00:19:21.020 in his bookstore, um, and discovers them and he puts them up on the wall.

00:19:25.420 People love them.

00:19:26.180 And then, uh, they became sort of a world phenomenon and going back and discovering, or why would

00:19:31.020 Churchill and why would the war council have done that?

00:19:33.500 And, um, essentially it was because, uh, the keep calm and carry on mantra philosophy was

00:19:40.680 exactly, uh, not what a society needs in the face of, of mayhem, whatever it may be.

00:19:46.820 It was too passive, um, that in fact, uh, what Churchill needed at the time was obviously

00:19:52.900 for the men to go to war and the woman to, to enter the manufacturing and commercial market 0.98

00:19:58.480 and for them to send their kids to the countryside of all things.

00:20:01.960 Uh, and so that idea that keep calm and carry on was passive, was really not about resiliency,

00:20:07.820 uh, really did, um, animate, uh, a notion of resiliency that really derives from the word

00:20:14.140 itself.

00:20:15.140 Resiliency means re means again, of course, but salient means jumping.

00:20:19.740 It's very active.

00:20:20.940 It means essentially investments in our society, in our capability to respond and our, and recover

00:20:28.000 and then, uh, build again better.

00:20:30.620 Uh, that is what are the policies behind, uh, resiliency.

00:20:35.600 It is very active.

00:20:37.140 And if I could, through the stories of Homeland Security, get people to understand that a nation

00:20:42.560 that too focused on stopping all bad things from happening was not going to nurture its

00:20:48.420 response, recovery, and resiliency efforts, that, that, that would be in the, in the long

00:20:53.860 term, a bad investment.

00:20:55.080 You know, I want to stay with this, this issue because it's, I feel like there's a paradox at

00:21:00.180 the, at the heart here that we, we need to somehow grapple with.

00:21:03.140 So as you say, we obviously can't protect ourselves against everything and the mere attempt to do

00:21:09.760 that would be stifling of more or less everything we care about.

00:21:13.620 We can't live in some kind of panopticon, you know, self-imposed prison where we subject ourselves

00:21:21.400 to, you know, truly Orwellian intrusions just to keep us safe from, from our enemies.

00:21:27.860 But the paradox for me is that there, I think there's a, a rational fear to have of irrational

00:21:36.320 fear.

00:21:36.820 So it seems rational to me to be quote, irrationally concerned about specific risks, given that

00:21:45.820 we can be more or less certain that everyone else will respond irrationally when these events

00:21:51.260 actually happen.

00:21:51.960 So, so you take something like, and this is, this is an example, I don't know if you

00:21:55.900 do this in the book, but my friend Bill Maher has, has made this point publicly and I thought

00:22:00.380 it was, it was quite insightful.

00:22:02.460 He pointed to, to Hurricane Katrina and he's, he asked us to remember how we responded to

00:22:08.180 this.

00:22:08.520 And, you know, as inept as our response was, this was a, a discrete problem that, that we

00:22:15.900 just kind of, once we got our act together, we cleaned it up.

00:22:19.080 A thousand people died or, or, you know, a thousand plus people died and there was billions

00:22:24.200 of dollars in damage and we, we rebuilt New Orleans and, and it's over.

00:22:30.420 If that had been a terrorist attack that created precisely that level of damage, it could have

00:22:36.920 been a, a, his, another history defining event where we would launch multi-trillion dollar

00:22:42.400 wars and the, the, the global economy could have been plunged into a depression.

00:22:48.120 I mean, who knows what would happen with another terrorist event that scale.

00:22:52.360 And so his point, of course, is that it's, we should have our response be more in register

00:22:59.200 with the, the actual costs of the events and not overreact.

00:23:04.060 And so, and, and the, the, the difference between a natural, quote, natural event and

00:23:08.020 a man-made one shouldn't be as big as it is.

00:23:10.920 But I think that given that I, that it will inevitably be that big, that we'll, we won't

00:23:17.840 actually be able to, we can't reach the dial in our brains that will make a hurricane equivalent

00:23:24.480 with an act of terrorism or an act of terrorism equivalent with a hurricane.

00:23:28.500 Given that there, there will be mass panic and economic damage that is in the final analysis

00:23:36.820 irrational, it seems rational to build those costs back in to our planning for these events.

00:23:43.780 And so I just want you to reflect on that a little bit.

00:23:46.200 It's, it's a great point and it does in some ways reflect where, you know, I call it in the

00:23:54.320 book, the Homeland Security Apparatus, which is both maligned and misunderstood.

00:23:59.280 So, you know, and rightfully so maybe in both instances, but, oh, so just to explain the

00:24:06.000 thinking for those in the field.

00:24:09.540 2005, Hurricane Katrina was a pivotal moment for Homeland Security, not because, as you know,

00:24:18.920 people didn't die from the hurricane, right?

00:24:20.960 They don't die from the hurricane, they died from government incompetence.

00:24:25.340 And for those of us in our, in, in, in, in that world, looking at it, analyzing it, studying

00:24:31.580 it, you know, realize there's a lot of systemic reasons for New Orleans.

00:24:35.460 And, you know, it was a city that, that had no, that had no resiliency built into it in the

00:24:41.040 first place, just given, you know, centuries of neglect, including the fact it was built in

00:24:48.680 a tub basin, essentially, but that, that it really moved the apparatus towards thinking

00:24:56.660 about an all hazards approach to response.

00:24:59.660 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 0.98

00:25:15.600 for any shit happening, right? 0.98

00:25:18.780 That any big thing happening. 0.73

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.

00:25:28.960 There's up to 2005 and after.

00:25:30.480 And if you look at the polling that Iraq was bad, but Bush's polling never bounced back after

00:25:38.680 Hurricane Katrina.

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,

00:26:08.580 the harm that occurs.

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

00:26:28.500 public for being terrorized by terrorism.

00:26:32.360 I mean, in other words, if, if after San Bernardino, you saw the polling go absolutely nuts, that's

00:26:39.240 the terrorist, you know, goal, right?

00:26:41.420 And, and government and good government.

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

00:27:01.680 somewhat rational.

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.

00:27:10.540 So it's purposeful.

00:27:11.420 And that does have a different impact.

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.

00:27:39.520 So people, no one, no one watches 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

00:27:46.040 very few people watch CNN.

00:27:47.500 And so that, you know, so, so big, so I, so that distinction is, is, I think, important

00:27:53.480 for, for government to do.

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?

00:28:02.520 That, that, that there are black swans, 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.

00:28:34.840 But if my child is that 0.0001%, right?

00:28:39.100 If my child is, is the one that sees the black swan, that is an existential crisis for me,

00:28:45.100 right?

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

00:29:25.380 next hurricane as quickly as possible.

00:29:27.660 Whereas with a terrorist attack, you, it's, it's ongoing, it's emblematic of the next

00:29:32.480 thing your enemy is attempting to do.

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

00:29:51.920 a better example would be like a plane crash.

00:29:54.080 So flying is very safe and, you know, famously safe and yet famously feared by many people,

00:30:00.680 even most 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

00:30:07.700 more horrible ways to die.

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. 0.74

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,

00:30:22.460 less than a hundred on a, on a yearly basis.

00:30:25.140 This is tiny.

00:30:26.080 Yeah.

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

00:30:39.440 air.

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.

00:31:09.660 We should be making roads 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

00:31:20.820 the engineering of plane engines.

00:31:22.400 And we're going to spread this around.

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

00:31:44.940 halt.

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.

00:31:58.160 I think that's exactly right.

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

00:33:22.440 on the other side of the boom, right.

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

00:33:38.060 they have no control over.

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.

00:33:43.120 It's not just purpose.

00:33:44.220 It's also, oh my God, I have no control over this stuff happening in Syria. 1.00

00:33:49.580 And I don't even understand what ISIS is.

00:33:52.280 It feels like an amorphous blob, but all I know is it can show up in my kid's school,

00:33:56.520 you know, one day.

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

00:34:48.600 change.

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

00:35:18.960 be more resilient from that harm.

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 0.98

00:35:28.900 no resiliency into our, um, into how we live our lives that we don't accept that shit happens. 0.65

00:35:34.880 Uh, and therefore any time there is a disruption to the system, we have the kind of, uh, proposals 0.95

00:35:41.660 that are being made, um, by Trump specifically, but even Ted Cruz, uh, that, uh, will make us

00:35:49.340 more vulnerable over time.

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

00:36:09.000 safe?

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?

00:36:31.020 So it's clearly our oceans.

00:36:32.480 We, you, you can't drive from Boston to Damascus.

00:36:34.820 I get that, right?

00:36:35.520 So one is our oceans.

00:36:36.960 The other is our ability over, you know, over centuries, not perfect.

00:36:44.300 We definitely have counter examples.

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.

00:36:58.400 We, we have a problem in this country.

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - May 02, 2016

#36 — What Makes Us Safer？

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