What is required is a holistic approach that does not seek to isolate open systems from their environment, but apprehends their profound interconnectedness.
—ANTOINE BOUSQUET, THE SCIENTIFIC WAY OF WARFARE, 2009
ONLY SIX months after I visited the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia to discuss the army’s study of Russia new-generation warfare, the NSC staff and I became objects of a new facet of the Kremlin’s sustained campaign of political subversion. Building on the vitriolic political discourse on social media surrounding Donald Trump and his new administration, Russian intelligence agents employed many of the same bots, trolls, and American accomplices it had used during the 2016 presidential election in an effort to undermine the effectiveness of the U.S. government. Members of the NSC staff, especially those who did not possess last names of northern European origin, were slandered and harassed on social media. The emphasis was on reinforcing the “deep state” narrative, which asserts that disloyal civil servants were actively undermining President Trump’s agenda. The Kremlin apparently saw me and a well-functioning NSC staff as impediments to its foreign policy agenda, from Syria to Ukraine to Afghanistan, and to its efforts to secure relief of U.S. and European Union sanctions. The Russians accordingly took advantage of what the Atlantic Council’s digital forensics laboratory described at the time as “the most well-organized campaign in the history of the alt-right” to remove me from the White House and undermine the confidence of and confidence in the NSC staff. The alt-right, like the Russians, saw me as an obstacle to advancing its agenda, so it collaborated using social media under the #FireMcMaster campaign.
Consistent with the Russian “firehose of falsehood,” the conspiracy theories and slanderous, bigoted content of the Fire McMaster campaign were often inconsistent. For example, one caricature on social media portrayed me as a puppet of billionaire George Soros and the Rothschild family (both of whom are frequent targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories), while articles in the pseudo-media charged me and others on the NSC staff with being “anti-Israel” and soft on Iran. Because I believed that calling terrorists “Islamic” masked their perversion of the religion and reinforced the terrorist narrative of fighting infidels to establish the caliphate, I was, despite having fought directly against terrorist organizations for many years, portrayed as soft on jihadist terrorism as well.1
Although I was concerned for the targeted members of the NSC staff, I paid scant attention to the attacks because there was work to do. But the experience amplified the urgency of entering new arenas of competition. The cyber-enabled effort to erode the effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy through disparagement and dissension would, with the advent of deep fakes and other new technologies, become only more prevalent and more dangerous. We would have to understand better these emerging technologies and how adversaries were likely to employ them against us.
In February 2017, the NSC staff worked with the president’s cabinet to identify crucial challenges to national security. Some were geostrategic. Others centered on functional competitions, such as those in space or cyberspace. As we developed integrated strategies for those challenges, it became clear that the same elements of strategic narcissism that had disadvantaged the United States in competitions with revisionist powers, jihadist terrorists, and hostile states had also put us behind in technological and economic contests important to future security and prosperity.
Our team prioritized the competitive domains of cyberspace and space, but we also worked with colleagues on the National Economic Council to determine how to promote American security and prosperity in areas such as energy and trade and across what we labeled the National Security Innovation Base (NSIB). We defined the NSIB—every initiative in government seems to require initials—as the network of knowledge, capabilities, and people, including academia, National Laboratories, and the private sector, that turns ideas into innovations, transforms discoveries into successful commercial products and companies, and protects and enhances the American way of life. We recognized that technologies (such as those associated with fifth-generation communications (5G), artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biogenetics) would be vital to maintaining America’s advantages in defense and in the global economy. But staying competitive did not mean foreclosing on cooperation, especially with the private sector and other free and open societies. We would even have to find new ways to cooperate with adversaries and rivals, especially on preventing the proliferation of the most destructive weapons on earth and tackling the interconnected problems of climate change, pollution, health, and food and water security. Competing effectively while fostering cooperation required a conscious effort to overcome narcissistic tendencies, in particular by rejecting optimism bias and wishful thinking.
THE ADVENT of the internet initially generated tremendous optimism. It transformed the global economy and accelerated communications and the transfer of data. But it also had unanticipated political implications. The internet was supposed to make autocracy untenable. At the turn of the twenty-first century, U.S. President Bill Clinton scoffed at the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to control the internet. “Good luck,” he said in a speech to students at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.” He predicted that, in the new century, “liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem.”2 Clinton was not alone in assuming that the internet would change China. It would have been difficult to imagine at the time the extent to which the CCP and other authoritarian regimes would change the internet. But like all technologies, the internet was neutral. What mattered most was how people would use it. In China and elsewhere, rather than foster political empowerment and freedom, the exponential increase in internet usage and smartphones actually gave authoritarian regimes new tools for repression and controlling their populations.3
In democratic societies, the free and universal internet was supposed to be liberating and empowering. And in many ways, it was, unleashing dramatic change through instant access to an endless supply of information and connecting people electronically in a way that had profound and positive effects on social interaction, productivity, and education. But it was not an unmitigated good. Social media companies lured citizens into forfeiting their privacy as those companies mined personal information to manipulate behavior for profit. Internet platforms proved ideal for amplifying hate speech, fomenting division, and even inciting violence, as in the case of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar starting in 2016.4 Moreover, as people became better connected than ever electronically, they disconnected from each other socially and emotionally. The internet was supposed to foster humaneness, but terrorist propaganda and other distressing content glorified the murder of innocents and desensitized people to violence. A significant number of young people abandoned playgrounds and athletic fields for their game controllers and smartphones.5
By 2020 it was clear that the cyber warfare threats to us and other democracies extended far beyond Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For example, in 2017, Iran began using its state media to pose as independent news outlets to promote anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian sentiment in the United States.6 North Korea launched disinformation campaigns to influence international negotiations, such as the inter-Korean dialogue and denuclearization talks with the United States.7 Beginning in 2019, the CCP initiated campaigns to discredit Hong Kong protesters on the mainland as well as a failed operation to influence the outcome of the presidential election in Taiwan.8
But it is not only dictators who exploit personal data and violate privacy. So do internet companies who sell that data or use it for highly lucrative advertising. The United States and like-minded countries should demand standards and develop technologies that preserve privacy and prevent the misuse of personal data. Europe and the state of California have passed laws to protect personal data, but those should be refined and expanded to other governments that value privacy and due process of law. Improvements like protecting data through encryption and defaults to privacy are vital to protecting citizens from external as well as internal cyber-related threats to freedom. They are also vital for individual and societal health.
Viewing the internet and social media as an arena of competition rather than an unmitigated good is a mind-set we need in order to take advantage of the free exchange of information while protecting against dangers. In addition to the defensive measures identified in chapter 2, defense against cyber-enabled information warfare should also have an offensive component, to introduce information into closed systems, counter disinformation, and challenge government-approved narratives. Democracies should develop the means to bypass control mechanisms such as China’s Great Firewall or Iran’s internet restrictions. Technologies such as space-based broadband communication may make it harder for dictators to shut off access to information.
Perhaps most important, citizens should not wait for political leaders or the media to counter cyber-enabled information warfare. Individuals can decide to reject the toxicity and disinformation in the social media ecosystem and reintroduce civility into the discussions important to a thriving democracy. Engaging with those who think differently should be valued as part of a vibrant civic life, not only in cyberspace, but also in classrooms, cafés, town halls, basketball courts, and rugby pitches. As people argue about the issues that divide them, they might devote equal time to celebrate what they have in common. Citizens of free and open societies might cherish the freedoms and opportunities their forbears bequeathed to them while acknowledging that no democracy or free-market economy is perfect and that all are works in progress. And all might take an interest in self-education concerning the crucial challenges to their security, health, and prosperity as a means of inoculating themselves against disinformation.
THE CYBER warfare threat will only get worse due to advances in artificial intelligence. AI technologies allow systems to perform tasks usually reserved for humans. Machines will learn from data and use algorithms to make decisions free from human intervention. Combined with high-speed mobile communications networks such as 5G, supercomputers, and the “internet of things” (i.e., the internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects), this could affect everything from power grids to public transportation to financial transactions to global logistics to driverless cars to home appliances.
AI technologies could make cyber attacks easier as more of the physical world becomes connected to cyberspace and the malicious actors who operate within it. In December 2019 alone, ransomware attacks (attacks that present the victim with a choice of either paying to regain access to their network and data or incurring millions of dollars in costs to restore them) crippled America’s largest wire and cable manufacturer in Georgia, a health network in New Jersey, and the city governments of Riviera Beach, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana.9 In 2019, the city of Baltimore chose not to pay a ransom of $75,000 and incurred an estimated cost of $18 million.
To deter attacks, the United States and its allies must be prepared to act against hostile cyber actors beyond the cyber domain. But sanctions or other threats of punitive actions are often inadequate. They require holding something of value to an adversary or an enemy at risk, and that proves difficult with elusive terrorists or criminals whose organizations hide their leadership and other important assets. And as hostile regimes like Iran and North Korea come under increased international and internal pressure, their leaders may conclude that they have little to lose. That is why deterrence by denial—that is, convincing adversaries that they cannot accomplish their objectives through a cyber attack—is essential.
Deterrence by denial requires a combination of offensive and defensive capabilities, improved resilience of systems, and a high degree of cooperation across government, businesses, and academia. Unfortunately, such cooperation is a challenge in our decentralized, democratic systems. According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, when North Korea hacked Sony studios in 2014, the response had to go “through some other country’s infrastructure, the lawyers went nuts, so we didn’t do anything on the cyber front.” Instead, “We ended up sanctioning a bunch of North Korean generals.”10
During the first year of the Trump administration, our NSC staff worked to remove these bureaucratic impediments. I was frustrated with the slow progress, but once appropriate authorities were granted, the United States became more responsive and competitive. Cyber defense of the 2018 midterm elections, directed under Gen. Paul Nakasone, the hypercompetent director of the NSA and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, was effective. As Nakasone reported to Congress in February 2019, “We created a persistent presence in cyberspace to monitor adversary actions and crafted tools and tactics to frustrate [the Russians’] efforts.”11
A counterintuitive but key defensive action is ensuring that cyber networks and systems are designed for graceful degradation under the assumption that they will be attacked relentlessly. When Russia attacked Ukraine’s power grid in December 2015, the antiquated nature of the system actually proved an asset, as it permitted the restoration of electrical services in less than six hours through an analog backup. Exquisite systems based on the latest technology may be prone to catastrophic failure. Resiliency must be a critical design parameter for communications, energy, transportation, and financial infrastructure. Resiliency requires keeping suspect hardware and software off networks and continuously identifying and, when appropriate, preempting enemy attacks. A first step is to recognize that allowing companies such as China’s Huawei or ZTE into our communications networks is tantamount to opening Troy’s gates to the mythical Trojan horse. Vigilance should be habitual and integrated into company and governmental operational culture. A best practice is to reward hackers who expose flaws. Microsoft, for example, changed its policy from threatening hackers with lawsuits to inviting them to security conferences and paying them “bug bounties” for uncovering security vulnerabilities.
There must also be a high degree of cooperation across the public and private sectors. As Jason Healey, an expert in cybersecurity at Columbia University, observed, “America’s cyber power is not focused in Fort Meade with NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. The center of U.S. cyber power is instead in Silicon Valley; on Route 128 in Boston; in Redmond, Washington; and in all of our districts where Americans are creating and maintaining cyberspace.”12 U.S. government relations with the technology sector, however, are often contentious.
Competing effectively in the cyber domain requires common understanding. It is important for engineers at tech firms to know how adversaries use cyberspace and emerging technologies and to be aware that their firms are competing against not only other companies, but also hostile nations. Companies that reject opportunities to work with the United States and other democratic governments, while helping authoritarian regimes repress their own people, may not realize the dangers they promote. The decision by Google employees to protest the company’s participation in a U.S. intelligence contract while Google was simultaneously helping the CCP empower its surveillance state must have been based in part on ignorance of what was at stake in the U.S. competition with the CCP.13
Private-sector companies that specialize in cybersecurity and countering cyber espionage hold promise for bridging the divide between the tech sector and government. One example is Strider, a cybersecurity company founded by Greg Levesque, who has experience in both government and industry. Strider uses proprietary data sets, machine learning, and human intelligence to combat intellectual property theft inside companies. More and more private-sector companies will likely conclude that they need to be active on adversary networks to detect and preempt attacks on their systems or intellectual property. And private-sector efforts that overlap with those of governments could lead to better civil-military coordination and cyber defense burden sharing. Because companies that go offensive in cyberspace risk incurring foreign government penalties, assuming liability for harm inflicted on innocent third parties, and sparking an escalation to armed conflict, public- and private-sector coordination is essential for integrating offense and defense in cyberspace.
IN THE last century, space was the new competitive domain. In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit, U.S. leaders feared that they were losing that competition. Fear inspired a range of reforms, including a rejuvenation of science education, an intensified focus on missile development, and the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).14 In the wake of the Cold War, however, U.S. commitment to leadership in space waned as some assumed that space would become a benign environment in which the world’s powers would cooperate for mutual benefit.15 Showing optimism bias similar to that about the free and open internet, the United States assumed that if it chose not to weaponize space assets, that others would follow its example. Predictably, this bout of strategic narcissism applied to space caused the United States to fall behind. After the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, the United States became dependent on Russia for manned spaceflight. International cooperation in space did expand, but recognizing that space capabilities gave the United States significant economic and military advantages, Russia and China chose not only to develop their own programs, but also to build weapons to disable or destroy those of the United States and its allies.16
In 2007, China shot down one of its own satellites with a missile. In the ensuing years, Russia and China developed a range of disruptive counter-space capabilities, which ranged from anti-satellite laser weapons and missiles to orbiting weapons to electronic warfare jammers.17 Countries friendly to the United States are developing their own capabilities to deter hostile actors. In March 2019, for example, India used an anti-satellite missile to blow up one of its own satellites and show the world that it, too, had offensive counter-space weapons.
In 2017, recognizing the need to compete more effectively in space across the government and commercial sectors, the Trump administration reestablished the National Space Council under Vice President Mike Pence. I asked the NSC staff to work with Vice President Pence’s team to develop a strategy for reinvigorating our space program. Our team got to work under an extremely knowledgeable and effective air force officer, then-Maj. Gen. Bill Liquori. Bill understood that the stakes were high and that cooperation with allies and the private sector was necessary to combat the potential dangers stemming from the militarization of space and to take full advantage of opportunities associated with the commercialization of space. The Space Council established objectives to deter and, when necessary, defeat adversary space and counter-space threats; to ensure that American companies continued to lead in innovative space technologies; and to use space exploration to “transform knowledge of ourselves, our planet, our solar system, and the universe.”18
As in cyberspace, deterring aggression depends on convincing an adversary that it cannot accomplish objectives through offensive action against U.S. space assets. The U.S. government and industry should protect technology that might assist China or Russia in developing advanced space capabilities that could be used against us. U.S. companies should be suspicious of foreign investors like the Chinese company Tencent, which has taken large stakes in U.S. space start-ups such as Moon Express, Planetary Resources, NanoRacks, and World View Enterprises.19 Tencent, the company that owns WeChat and QQ, two of the largest social media applications, acts as an extension of the CCP by censoring, monitoring, and reporting private communications and personal data. It will continue to act as an extension of the party in space.
Despite these dangers, space competition provides real opportunities to improve security and prosperity and address some of earth’s most pressing needs. Systems delivered into space will deliver persistent global access to the cloud as nongeostationary (NGSO) satellites (satellites that move in relation to Earth’s surface) process data and communications. These satellites can provide real-time persistent remote sensing of the surface of Earth, which can contribute to environmental protection and rapid response to natural and man-made disasters. Planet, a company founded in 2010 by a team of ex-NASA scientists, aims to image the entire Earth every day and make changes visible, accessible, and actionable. The transparency its 150 earth observation satellites provide can identify diverse activities important to security, such as missile activity in North Korea, destruction of rainforests in Brazil, wildfires in Australia, pollution and damage to ecosystems in India and China, and protests in Iran. More opportunities to use space for solving problems on Earth are reaching technical feasibility and economic viability. One example is space-based solar power generation.
To take full advantage of opportunities and protect against dangers in space and cyberspace requires an understanding of how technologies interact with one another and humanity. Too often the application of a promising technology lags because it is viewed in isolation of others that, when combined, unleash tremendous potential. That is why collaboration among scientists and between scientists and policy makers is vital for innovation. The need for collaboration on crucial challenges to national security is growing because technology-based innovation is shifting away from governments and toward the private sector.
PRIOR TO the end of the Cold War, the U.S. model of technological development was relatively closed, meaning that the government funded and controlled access to major initiatives such as nuclear weapons, jet fighters, and precision-guided munitions. These programs were protected by security classifications, patents, and copyrights. When the government decided to declassify technologies such as microchips, touch screens, and voice-activated systems, private-sector engineers and entrepreneurs combined and refined those technologies to kick-start new industries such as the smartphone.
In the twenty-first century, technological innovation truly opened up. Innovations increasingly derive from diffuse publicly financed research. Meanwhile, China has implemented its top-down military-civilian fusion strategy to steal technology and direct investments with the intention of surpassing the United States in strategic emerging industries (SEIs) and military capabilities. A new model for applying new technologies to national security challenges is overdue lest the United States and its allies find themselves at a significant disadvantage.
Much of academia, the private sector, and the government has been oblivious to how adversaries can steal and apply technologies developed in the United States to threaten security and human rights. I have discussed many of these in my earlier chapter on China, but I would emphasize here that U.S. capital is accelerating the CCP’s efforts to surpass the United States in a range of critical emerging technologies, such as AI technologies and others, important to achieving military superiority. Seven hundred Chinese companies, the majority of which are state-owned or controlled, are traded in the U.S. debt and equity markets. U.S. citizens fund companies that are building the next generation of the PLA’s military aircraft, ships, submarines, unmanned systems, and airborne weapons. In 2018, U.S. venture capital investment in Chinese AI companies exceeded investment in U.S. companies. Many U.S. and allied executives and financiers go beyond the quotation attributed to Vladimir Lenin that “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” They are actually financing the CCP’s acquisition of the rope.
In 2017, it was clear to Matt Pottinger, Nadia Schadlow, Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, and others on the NSC staff that it was past time for the United States to reenter the arena of technological competition. Any decisions involving technological and infrastructure development must consider how the proposed technology and infrastructure would interact with geopolitical competitions. One of the most important competitions is over control of data. Whoever controls 5G hardware will have access to data flows and influence over establishing data protocols that could not only impinge on privacy but also bestow unfair economic advantage. Control of data, when combined with AI technologies, can permit dominance of key sectors of the global economy.
But even an expansive view of Chinese designs on AI and military technologies may be too myopic, as the CCP’s ambitious strategy is to control physical as well as digital infrastructure to achieve dominance of future global logistics and supply chains. The vanguard of this twenty-first-century conquest is China’s state-owned and state-sponsored enterprises, including telecommunications, port management, and shipping companies. Democratic, free-market economies continue to furnish the CCP with “rope” as China has set about acquiring a global maritime infrastructure that complements its control of communications infrastructure. China has targeted EU countries and other U.S. allies such as Israel for control of ports. And many of these ports under Chinese control, such as Antwerp, Trieste, Marseille, and Haifa, are located near clusters of scientific and industrial research facilities. By 2020, according to China’s Ministry of Transport, fifty-two ports in thirty-four countries were managed or constructed by Chinese companies, and that number was growing.20
The United States and other nations are at a disadvantage due to a failure to understand China’s ambition holistically and the growing cultural, philosophical, and business process gap between their national security communities and innovation ecosystems such as Silicon Valley. That cannot continue. In the United States, tech executives and senior government officials are beginning to acknowledge that their lack of cooperation has helped shift power from free societies and free-market economic systems to closed, authoritarian systems. They have identified three obstacles to cooperation: the misalignment of government and business processes, a lack of understanding among scientists and engineers concerning the security implications of technological competitions, and the difficulty of moving people between public- and private-sector positions. Overcoming those obstacles requires action. Organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit, which gives the U.S. Department of Defense a presence in Silicon Valley, is an organizational best practice that could easily be replicated.
The United States, China, and the European Union are all taking different approaches to the degree to which the state, companies, or individuals control data. The United States should work with like-minded countries on a policy that ensures access to needed data while safeguarding privacy and maintaining consumer trust. Free and open societies should have common standards for how their governments interact with the private sector and with one another when it comes to how data is managed and how it is collected, processed, stored, and shared.21 There is a growing rift between free and autocratic models of data governance. The United States and other free nations should agree on common standards consistent with their democratic principles.
SOME CHALLENGES require cooperation not only with allies and partners, but also with competitors and adversaries. Cooperation is necessary to prevent the spread or use of the most destructive weapons on earth. Halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons to hostile regimes like Iran and North Korea should be in all nations’ interests. So should nuclear arms control agreements that put in place confidence-building measures critical for preventing a misunderstanding or miscalculation that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Arms control agreements and international conventions can limit nuclear stockpiles and arrest the development of, or eliminate, destabilizing classes of weapons such as chemical or biological weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their precursors. The New START treaty of 2010 between the United States and Russia reduced the number of strategic missile launchers each country had by half while also establishing a new inspection and verification regime. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1988 eliminated land-based intermediate-range nuclear weapons, but since 2014, Russia has violated the agreement, and China, which was not a signatory, has developed the prohibited missiles.
Obviously, an arms control agreement to which only one party adheres is an imaginary one. In 2017, the State Department let Russia know of the U.S. intention to withdraw from the INF in the hope of motivating the Kremlin to return to compliance. It did not work, and in February 2019 the Trump administration announced the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty, a decision I believed was right and long overdue. Concerns mounted that the New START, which expires in 2021, would suffer the same fate. By early 2020, it seemed that efforts to renew START and engage both Russia and China on a successor to the INF Treaty were strong possibilities. Arms control agreements that limit nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, if well monitored and enforced, besides helping to reduce the risk of the unimaginable, can make funds available for projects that benefit humanity rather than threaten us with Armageddon.
But as nuclear weapons and long-range missiles proliferate, missile defense becomes even more important for safeguarding the American homeland as well as allies and U.S. citizens overseas. In 2019, the Trump administration completed a missile defense review that concluded that there was a need for significant investment in improving homeland and regional missile defense. It should not be controversial to support science and technology research programs to deliver cost-effective solutions to expanding missile threats. As the 2019 review directed, these solutions should integrate “offensive and defensive capabilities for deterrence” and ensure the ability to “intercept missiles in all phases of flight after launch.”22
Other threats that place civilian populations and infrastructure at risk are proliferating. Autonomous aerial and subsurface vehicles pose a significant danger, for which defenses are immature. The 2019 swarm drone attack on the Saudi Arabian Aramco facility, which cut oil production by about half (approximately 5 percent of global oil production), should serve as a warning, as should the drone activity around London’s Gatwick airport that shut down airport traffic in December 2018. Autonomous and swarm attacks threaten to force our citizenry to live in fear reminiscent of that which Londoners experienced during the Blitz in World War II from V1 and V2 rockets, first-generation drones launched by Nazi Germany.
A THEME in this book, strategic narcissism, and the corresponding tendency to artificially separate interconnected problem sets, encourages short-term, simplistic solutions to complex problems. Bias against the long-term approach, like other maladies affecting U.S. policy, stems from a lack of empathy. Jamil Zaki, professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, observes in his book, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, that both time and distance diminish empathy because humans’ “caring instincts are short sighted.” Our ability to feel empathy about future developments is limited because “we tend not to feel for our future selves. It goes against our instincts, therefore, to tackle problems that we have not yet been forced to confront. If the consequences of action or inaction are far off and afflict strangers yet to be born, we are less likely to sacrifice or invest today.” That tendency is evident across the globe on the interrelated problems of climate change, pollution, energy security, and food and water security.
Like discussions with President Trump concerning the Iran Nuclear Deal, those concerning the Paris climate accord were animated. I was far from an expert on the subject, but it was clear to me that the issue of climate change tended to move people toward polar extremes. Climate activists endorsed impractical measures, while climate deniers and skeptics disregarded compelling evidence that global warming is happening, that it is caused by humans, and that, if unchecked, it will have disastrous consequences. Perhaps naïvely, I thought that if we simply focused on what Americans agreed on, we could develop options for a climate strategy, get beyond disagreements between those on the fringes of the issue, and make real progress.
I recommended to the president that the United States stay in the Paris Agreement, an environmental accord adopted by nearly every nation in 2015 to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and limit the global temperature increase in the twenty-first century to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. I believed that climate change was manmade and that we had to develop a sound, multinational solution. The agreement was nonbinding, so I did not see the downside of staying in it. Besides, I felt that withdrawing would result in a loss of American influence not only on the range of climate-related issues, but also on other challenges that required multinational efforts.
Those who argued for leaving, however, believed that if the United States failed to meet its targets for carbon reduction in the agreement, activists would initiate litigation against the government and industries. They also believed that meeting the targets would limit economic growth and impose costs on the American people even as the world’s greatest polluters not only agreed to less ambitious goals, but also received payments from the United States and others as an incentive to convert to renewable energy sources. The agreement, like the Iran nuclear deal, was not ratified by Congress; many saw it as an infringement on sovereignty. In Trump’s Rose Garden speech in June 2017 announcing his decision to initiate the withdrawal process, he said the deal “disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers, who I love, and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.”23 In short, the president believed that the accord would be an economic burden to the United States and, additionally, that it would result in a large-scale loss of jobs, putting the U.S. at an international disadvantage, all the while doing nothing to stop climate change in the long term.
I disagreed with the decision, but as I learned more about what action was needed to protect the global environment, reduce carbon emissions and methane, ensure access to energy, protect against health risks, and improve food and water security, I concluded that the cloud over America’s reputation that followed the withdrawal from the agreement had a silver lining. Withdrawing might draw attention to the agreement’s inadequacies and help persuade not only the United States, but also other nations to take a fundamentally different approach to climate change. The Paris Agreement, I came to believe, represented a danger because it fostered complacency. Although being a signatory allowed proponents to feel good about themselves, the nonbinding, unenforceable nature of the agreement did nothing to reduce what would be the greatest sources of human-induced global warming in coming decades: burgeoning carbon emissions from China and India and potential future emissions in developing economies in Africa. In the four years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, emissions increased by 1.5 percent per year.24 What we needed were inexpensive and profitable solutions that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in China, India, and across all developing economies.
In December 2019, a conference in Madrid, Spain, intended to finalize rules arising from the Paris Agreement, ended in disappointment. Like previous efforts to address global warming, discussions focused largely on nonsolutions that were either impractical or inadequate to address the complex problem set associated with climate change. Conference attendees voiced support for the Green New Deal, an unrealistic proposal that called for fulfilling all U.S. power demand through zero-emission energy sources; eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture; renovating all existing buildings and constructing new ones to improve energy efficiency; guaranteeing adequate housing, high-quality health care, and jobs with a family-sustaining wage; and mandating family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security for everyone in the United States. Some proposed that Europe adopt a similarly unrealistic approach. A fundamentally different proposal was needed, but the trend seemed to be toward doubling down on non-solutions. Although advocates for environmental justice recommended vast capital transfers to developing economies to compensate for historical competitive disadvantages, energy solutions that are clean and profitable are the best way to right previous wrongs, create opportunities for economic growth, and address issues of environmental justice. The goal of reducing the ratio of carbon dioxide emissions to GNP would highlight the need for solutions that are applicable to the developing world rather than proposals to transfer capital from the taxpayers of developed economies to countries that are negatively affecting the earth and their own people.
Once again, strategic narcissism obscures solutions as some climate activists imagine a world consistent with what they want to achieve, but take no practical steps to seize opportunities to address the problem. Their conceit leads them to overlook political and economic realities that would shatter their dreams. Climate deniers evince a different form of strategic narcissism; theirs is based on willful ignorance. What the world needs is a comprehensive strategy based on the recognition that countries will not suppress their security and economic interests to join an international agreement. Proposals must have broad commercial and political appeal not only in prosperous nations, but also in developing economies.25 And those solutions must avoid focusing on only one aspect of this complex problem set and thereby creating problems in other areas.
One common flaw with many climate proposals is that they pose single-country solutions to a global problem. Because pollution does not respect borders, solutions must apply globally. Climate scientists generally agree that global coal power generation needs to be reduced by 70 percent by 2030 and completely by 2050. Coal supplies 72 percent of India’s power. And between 2006, when China surpassed the United States as the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions, and 2020, China built the equivalent of fifty to seventy large coal-burning power plants every year. China is now the world’s largest coal user, and in 2019 it had 121 gigawatts of coal plants under construction, more than the rest of the world combined. Each plant burns about a ton of coal every ten seconds.26 Although Xi Jinping talks a good game on the environment, in 2019 China produced more carbon emissions than the United States and the European Union combined. Even worse, China is exporting more than 260 coal-fired power plants across Asia and Africa. One of those plants, in Kenya, fifteen miles from a UNESCO World Heritage Site, will be the largest source of pollution in the country.27 The polluting effect on the African environment is as devastating as the increased carbon emissions are to the global environment. The trends in India are just as bad.
Other proposals are flawed because they avoid a systemic and holistic understanding and choose to focus on a single aspect of the problem. But challenges of the environment, climate, energy, health, food and water security, and even poverty and migration are interconnected. For example, agriculture affects climate, and climate affects agriculture. If cattle were a country, they would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Deforestation is undertaken to make land available for cattle or to grow crops that are converted into biofuels. But deforestation removes trees that pull CO2 from the air, and when burned, these trees release all their carbon and greenhouse gases back into the atmosphere.
Climate change induces food and water scarcity and spreads human and agricultural disease. The effects can be immediate as well as long term, especially given that human-induced stress factors, such as war and criminality, can both be triggered by food and water scarcity and aggravate it.28 The ongoing tragedy in Yemen is a case in point. The effect of these interrelated problems on migration affects not only Africa, but also the Greater Middle East, Europe, and Central and North America. As a recent Hoover Institution study concluded, “[W]e are seeing a global movement of peoples, matching the transformative movement of goods and of capital in recent decades.”29
Efforts to address only one challenge can exacerbate others and perpetuate rather than ameliorate threats to security and prosperity. In China, the anticipated explosion of electric vehicles will actually increase carbon emissions and worsen already deplorable air quality because an electric car that charges its batteries with electricity from a coal-burning plant produces more CO2 per mile than a gasoline-powered car.30 In India, President Narendra Modi promised drinking water to every household in the country, but potable water accounts for only 4 percent of the total water used in the country. Nearly 80 percent goes toward the irrigation of cropland. An estimated 200,000 people perish each year in India because of acute water scarcity, and approximately 600 million others endure severe water stress. By 2030, the demand for water is expected to be twice the available supply.31 So, focusing just on water security without enacting reforms in agricultural techniques treats only symptoms while the underlying problem grows.
We need a dose of strategic empathy to develop solutions that address the interrelated nature of this problem set. And these solutions must generate incentives that lead to their broad adoption. A realistic approach that focuses on the following four objectives should minimize polarized political discussions that provide ammunition to climate deniers, obscure points of agreement, and delay initiatives that could make the choice between economic growth and survival of the planet a false dilemma.
There are many innovative solutions that advance toward these four objectives. One with which I am familiar is Zume, a company headquartered in San Francisco. I serve on its advisory board. Zume strives to integrate existing and mature technologies into new systems to revolutionize the entire food supply chain by better balancing supply and demand, saving on food and transportation waste, and integrating new agricultural technology to emit much less carbon. Integrated solutions such as those that Zume is pursuing could have a dramatic positive influence internationally across the nexus of environment, energy, climate change, health, and water and food security.
While international organizations and forums can help coordinate and inspire multinational solutions, the real progress must happen inside sovereign states. It is worth noting that during the global climate protests of September 2019, massive crowds totaling an estimated four million people worldwide called for action in New York, Seoul, Kabul, Istanbul, and elsewhere.34 There were, however, no protests in China.35 International organizations and nations whose citizens are victimized by irresponsible behavior must bring pressure to bear on nations that fail to be good stewards of the planet. Informing populations of potential solutions and of the consequences of inaction may help generate social pressure on autocratic regimes from within.
Discussions on these topics should begin with points of agreement. The vast majority of Americans can agree that climate change is a problem; that it is caused by humans and associated with carbon emissions; that there is no one exquisite solution; that solutions need to create economic incentives that lead to widespread adoption; and that the conversion of coal-burning plants to natural gas or another low-emission source should be an urgent near-term priority. And to generate the empathy necessary to impel action, we need to think about our children and grandchildren while recognizing that this isn’t a future problem set. It is a right-now set of intertwined problems that include climate, energy, environment, health, food, and water security.
ENERGY IS the largest of the components associated with climate change, and may afford the greatest opportunity. The largest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, for example, came not from a large government program or regulation, but instead from the fracking revolution in the United States. Fracking is the process of drilling into rock and then injecting highly pressurized liquid into the holes to create fissures, which allow gas and oil to escape and be captured. It was an unforeseen technological innovation that suddenly made cheap natural gas available in large quantities. This cheap supply provided an incentive to make the capital investments necessary to convert coal-fired plants to natural gas. Coal’s share of U.S. electricity generation fell from 48 percent in 2008 to 22 percent in 2020. U.S. utilities do not build coal-fired power plants because natural gas and renewable power plants generate cheaper electricity.36 The conversion of coal to natural gas worldwide presents the greatest near-term opportunity for carbon emissions reduction in the power and industrial sectors.
Advanced nuclear reactors provide another opportunity to achieve dramatic reductions in greenhouse gases without slowing economic growth. These Energy Multiplier Module (EM2) reactors provide a grid-capable power source that takes just over three years to build. They are also more efficient and safer than standard reactors, which send spent fuel out for geologic storage. EM2 reactors recycle used fuel after removal of some of the fission products. No liquid reprocessing is necessary, and no heavy metals are separated. Even better, these fission products require only about five hundred years of storage before decaying to background levels, compared to the ten thousand years or longer required for current designs. In addition, EM2 has the potential to reduce our waste stockpile because it can be powered with this spent fuel.37
Advanced reactors would also provide an opportunity for the United States to regain its ability to compete with others, including China and Russia, in the global nuclear power market. Only two nuclear reactors are under construction in the United States, while China is rapidly building out its nuclear capacity. Russia dominates nuclear reactor exports, though China is catching up.38 The last successful export and construction of an American reactor design was to China, which modified that design and now exports it. If we build reactors that are safer, cheaper, newer, and better, we can regain the lead in the industry and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse emissions.39
One can easily identify other competitions that are critical to defending the free world. There are geographically based competitions for influence and control of resources, such as those ongoing in the Arctic, Antarctica, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Ideological competitions between free-market capitalism and socialism are intensifying in the Western Hemisphere. Consider the autocratic regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua; the failing dictatorship in Venezuela; discontented populations trying to end statist economic practices in Ecuador and Bolivia; and those advocating for their return in Mexico, Argentina, and, to a lesser extent, Chile. Battlegrounds of criminality and organized crime in Mexico and Central America are perpetuating state weakness, inflicting human suffering, and driving large-scale migration. Many African states are battlegrounds between aspiring, young populations who are demanding a say in how they are governed and those who would expand autocratic governance to preserve power for the privileged few. The novel coronavirus pandemic in 2020 highlights the need for international cooperation on health. Preserving peace and prevailing in these and other competitions will require a rejection of strategic narcissism and an effort to foster understanding of complex challenges as the first step toward crafting solutions.
I CONCLUDE with what may be the most important competition critical to future security and prosperity: education. It is time for a new initiative similar to the National Defense Education Act, passed in 1958 in response to the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik. That event motivated bipartisan efforts to prioritize not only science, but also history, political science, and language. Lawmakers back then recognized that education was a national security matter. Given China’s advantages in AI and other emerging technologies, lawmakers should approach education reform with similar urgency today.
We might remember that education is not only for the young. As the historian of technology Elting Morrison observed in 1966, “the development of the instruments of industrial organization and our emotional and intellectual responses to them—cannot be learned once and for all in high school, college, graduate school, one Sloan Fellow year, or ten weeks in a senior executive development program. To live safely in our society, let alone manage it, will require a continuous education until a man dies.”40 Education is also critical to preserving our competitive advantages, because educated citizens are entrepreneurs who start new businesses and scientists who create medical breakthroughs and develop solutions to complex problems like climate change or the coronavirus. Educated citizens learn languages to connect with other societies, foster strategic empathy, and build a peaceful world. Educated citizens appreciate the great gifts of our free and open society as well as what we must do together to improve it. Educated citizens are best equipped to foil efforts to divide communities and pit them against each other. They are also best prepared to exercise their sovereignty in our democratic system by electing principled, thoughtful leaders and holding them accountable to strengthen our republic.