can live without. so wow is there for our customers with speed reliability value and choice now more than ever it all starts with great internet. wow. wow, along with these television companies support c-span 2 as a public service. welcome and thanks for joining us. we're here to discuss with harlan omen the fifth horseman and the new mad how massive attacks of disruption became the looming existential danger to a divided nation and the world at large lots of of issues in there harlan. thanks for joining us. harlan is a strategic thinker and innovator whose career spans the world's a business and government. he is a csis alum harlan's the chairman of two private companies and an advisor to the heads of major corporations and governments. he holds an ma mald and a phd

from the fletcher school of law and diplomacy at tufts university. he was a distinguished visiting professor at the naval war college a professor of military strategy at the naval war college and is up eyes arnold deborah grove distinguish. columnists arno, of course also an alum of csis. so thanks harlan for joining us and welcome to csis. welcome back to see. many happy years there. let me first start off harlan with with the title of the book. you've got two. a concepts to phrases in there that i think would be worth unpacking for folks. the first is the fifth horseman and then we've got an and then the new mad, so can you first tell us what you mean and by the the fifth horseman and then walk us through the new mad because it is not the mutually assured

destruction of the cold war. thanks, and i'm going to add a third part of the title a divided nation, which is critical. people understand and know the biblical four horsemen of the apocalypse. well about two and a half years ago a fifth horseman emerged carrying a new man. and this fifth horseman has been extremely destructive. because of what i call massive attacks of disruption, you mentioned mad of the cold war mutual assured destruction what that meant was because both east and west had so many thousands of thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. a war would have been catastrophic but nobody died under a nuclear cloud. under covid almost a million americans have died. that's more than every american who was killed on every battle. we fought since 1775 if that's not massive disruption. i do not know what is and while covid is only one of many disrupters what we have to realize is that taking

comprehensively disruptors that include failed and failing government just look at both sides of pennsylvania avenue climate change. cyber, social media drones terror and debt all these are operating together. and unless we understand the coherence of this overarching threat of disruption. we will approach each one singularly and that's not going to be helpful. what really makes life difficult. is that on virtually every issue in this country? we're divided 50/50. the supreme court associate justice. my bed is going to be confirmed 50/50 and that's represented the divided america. so how does it divided america deal with these massive attacks of disruption which are the new threat and i believe in many ways more dangerous than china and russia or at least encompassed china and russia because the strategy of both countries is to disrupt the world order in the united states and the book goes into great detail. not only describing the problem but the last three chapters describe how we can fix it

beginning with and i hope we'll get into this a major investment fund i call the 1923 fun because after the 1918 19 20 spanish flu the united states entered into the greatest economic boom in its history. it was short lived, but we can create recreate that and then there are also a large number of recommendations about how we need to reorganize our government both branches and what this means for a national strategy national security and national defense. so let me pick up harlan on the you talk briefly about the seven powerful disruptors. yeah, you you name them as failed and failing government climate change cyber social media terrorism exploding debt and drones and i wonder if you could do two things if if you can briefly talk about what why and how they're disruptors and second how and in what ways they may actually feed together. so they're not sort of

independent concepts. that's a very good point seth because these are synergistic in other words one one exacerbates the other founding government. we did not do well dealing with covid that was enormously disruptive. we're not doing well with the resolving the economic and social issues congress can hardly decide on anything that has got to be enormously disruptive to a society at a time when inflation is reaching eight or nine percent gasoline prices of soaring. we have all these domestic problems. so without the ability to fix that everybody's life is becoming far more disruptive climate change some people disagree, but you can't disagree with several facts. the ice caps are melting temperatures are rising and sea levels arising you take a look at the huge storms fires disruptive weather patterns that are increasing in intensity some people believe their existential. i'm not sure that they're existential or not, but i am certain that they're changing life.

arizona could become the notion front property. i say ingest, but the point is that we need to take this very very seriously debt over 30 trillion dollars in rising what happens when interest rates reach four five or six percent debt servicing will encompass a huge part of the budget. so, how do you deal with social programs? how do you deal with defense cyber? supposing you lose yourself and supposing you lose internet supposing you lose access to your banks supposing you lose access to everything power. you name it that's very possible in terms of cyber. social media. i plan a deep fake view doing something that's illegal. and how do you deal with it? very very difficult tara tara has now shifted to the domestic front. what's interesting when you go back and take a look at 1918 to 1920 in my book. we're in the midst of world war one. there were 24 letter bombs that are mailed two people were killed. this country was in greater panic than than it was after september 11th and with this edition and espionage acts

people were arrested without due process. in fact, you could be charged for criticizing army uniforms. so terror is not new, but it's taking the new domestic form with which we have to deal and ask for drones. supposing on january 6 the insurgents had a handful of drones in each carried to stick a dynamite they could have destroyed the white house and we see the impact of drones right now. what's happening in ukraine? how do you deal with drones there are about two million? you can build them in your in your in your basement. you don't have to register them what happens in the future, you know, if crime increases and you want to make sure you're protected instead of having a bodyguard. you have a robot. or you have an aerial drone flying overhead? can that be armed? or is that going to be a second amendment issue? so we're getting into all these issues over drones for which we're entirely unprepared. and as we really don't have a good cyber strategy. we certainly don't have one for drones and these can be unbelievably disruptive that the

general shorthand and what we have to do is understand we have to look at these comprehensively and therefore build a strategy that deals with these and by dealing with these reform a more peric society because we're able to deal with these disruptions, which i arguing to get much more intense in the future. so just briefly what are some examples harlan of how of the the synergy between them because you you talk a little bit about again not as in not just as independent factors, but the synergy about so can you provide an example or two of however at least several of them come together and and haven't even greater impact sure. let's take debt. what happens when interest rates go up? that affects everything. congress is not going to be able to pass laws. you're not going to be able to to deal with so many many issues or take cyber. supposing i decide i'm going to disrupt gas pipelines. how do we deal with that think

about of the all-reaching consequences when you can't get gasoline in your car? or cyber turns off the chips and the gas pumps. so this has tremendous consequences across the board and that's going to cause even more disruption because you have a significant part of the public that's already dissatisfied so that you're going to see far more protests. we're not being able to deal with these things and they become cumulative. it's right like somebody who smokes 25 packs of cigarettes a day and after 10 years wonder why he or she has come down with cancer. these are all cumulative and they're interactive. thanks. i wanted to touch base a little bit on the the first of these disruptors. yeah, and and actually go go to the way you start the book. so one of them is failed and failing government and interestingly. you start the book with a series of quotes after the dedication. i'll read the first two the first is declaration of independence when government becomes destructive it is the right of the people to alter or

abolish abolish it and establish a new one and then the second is abraham lincoln, june 16th, 1858 a house divided among itself cannot stand you also have quotes from charlie wilson from vladimir putin and then from a potential future american president and jackson bennett, and so the question here is is why the quotes and how do they actually then feed into the argument? i mean i can see the the thread here with failed and fail. over but but if you can unpack that. sure. one of the fundamental problems i go into great detail in the book is that i'm not sure that the constitution is any longer fit for purpose this gets to lincoln and this gets to the into declaration of independence. the reason i say that checks and balance balances only work when one of several conditions are in place one political party can have a super majority and both ends of pennsylvania avenue and

five folks in the supreme court, that's not going to work. second you can have a crisis. pearl harbor unified a very divided nation in december 1941. what did covid do like the opposite. or you can have civility compromise and consensus in congress. when's the last time we had that before example? lyndon johnson's closest friend was ever dirksen johnson a democrat dirks and a republican. linden-funded dirksen's campaign and supported with dirksen as a republican that's not going to happen. so we've got a constitution that's not working that gets the first two and you're gonna have people who are going to take to the streets and i'm gonna say quite legitimately when government becomes destructive this is right of people to alter abolish it. it's in the declaration of independence and you're seeing bits and pieces like that because as civil society becomes entirely dissatisfied with government. what are its recourses? they can't elect people who can make a difference. what does it then do and you

refer back to 1776 and how this country got started. so what i'm suggesting here, is that the combination of a government that's not working based on a constitution that may not be working with any divided nation that against each other we have here toxic mix that we have to address because if we don't two things will happen standard. living will decline probably dramatically for most americans and the american dream will be far-reaching and what the consequences are. i can't predict but certainly that's a situation we wish to avoid. so we'll we'll get into some recommendations and some of your thoughts including on the constitution a little bit later. i don't want to jump too far into the back part of the book, but i do want to hit a couple of things up front that i think are interesting and one is i found interesting the way you started the book from the perspective of a future us president and jackson bennett in 2029. so the question here is did

writing your book in this style. how did it impact how you retroactively analyzed previous events in us history. what? why did you choose this? genre? and and how did you feel it was actually an important to make the point that you did? what i wanted to do is write this as a warning if you go just before that i noted in the introduction going back to vietnam. we're in front of lyndon johnson. i opposed the war i oppose nato expansion. i oppose going into iraq the second time. i was supposed to afghanistan and i was a voice in the wilderness. and so what i wanted to do was to tell people here's what could happen. this is a warning you have to understand. this is the trajectory and while not all these things might happen a number of them will and i take what really could be plausible so that you have a diminution of american power. you've got all sorts of difficulties riots in the united states, which have already happened. so i wanted to get the attention shocking off of the reader.

to paint the picture that we've got some real problems i go into the assessment of those problems and they say okay how then do we deal to resolve them. how do we make this a better country? so this is a point here to get the reader's attention. so i do want to pick up actually on you. you talked a bit about the author's note and it is interesting. there's a there's an interesting broader question that comes out of the examples some of which you just outlined you you highlighted some of the warnings that you and others provided around the time of the vietnam war you highlighted the warnings about the expansion of nato you highlighted a that in 2002. iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. you highlight it some of the debates going on even why i was in government around the time of the afghan pakistan study in the review about the center of gravity pakistan. you had a number of comments

during and around the trump administration and then you say essentially, you know these like other warnings had little impact. so part of this is what is i mean, what is what is going on? because you're not the only one that's saying these what's the what what why are we having problems historically and learning lessons in in having individuals like you and others? uh, you know warnings that are regularly ignored what why and and what's the broader implication of that? well, the board application is going to keep on making mistakes, but that's a very good question. there are a number of reasons that i go into the book. first since george hw bush, i do not believe we have had elected a president one exception who was qualified experienced and had the proper judgment for the job.

and when joe biden got in who could have been more qualified eight years as vice president 36 years in the senate chairman of the judicial and foreign relations committee. but unfortunately president biden has made a huge number or number of mistakes, and i think one of the problems is that first of all the white house is so constrained not only in terms of the number of issues and bandwidth it has but the skill of people too often. we take former staffers who are loyal and don't really take people who are broad-minded enough to have to send because politics at the same time has become so partisan that you want people who with you. so who do you have in any administration? who is the center we go back to jack kennedy. bob mcnamara was a republican. and you did have some people who descended but that was not necessarily good enough to deal with vietnam, but since then you have virtually no dissenters in any administration because of the nature of politics. how do you fix that?

one way that i've argued to fix that which gets to the decision-making process is to change the nature of the national security council. and how it operates and put in place one person who's in charge of red team analysis. that is to say when you have program or policy you red team to this in the most adversarial way. we don't do that. second i argue that what we need to do in the pentagon is to separate the joint chiefs of staff from being chiefs of staff to service. i don't think you can do both jobs because it's a conflict of interest. how do you take off your hat the center of the army navy air force marine corps and then become a cheap it's almost impossible to do and the chiefs would function full-time on strategy. that would be your board of red team a lot of people would dislike that because they're military people. they should have no real role in the politics. but unless you can really red team things. it's important. i also would change the structure the cia and state department because sometimes you

have too many clashes of different bureaus without having any kind of person to reconcile in a serious way. so i go into the book about how we do that now will this be fixed overnight? no, and the reason it won't be is because we're so partisan administrations are more concerned about having people loyal to the president. than necessarily to the larger america simply because there's going to be so many attacks from so many different directions. and so until we can heal that we're still going to be suffering from lack of lessons learned for example you have studied nuclear weapons and deterrence since i don't know when okay, i would argue that we have not put together and i don't know this but i believe it sufficient contingency plans right. now. what happens in russia uses a nuclear weapon in ukraine or chemical weapons, and we should be able to do that. but we don't have any process to guarantee. and so what i'm saying is that we need to have a process that gets knowledge and understanding as the basis for decision making and by putting in red teams and

other things we then elevate knowledge and understanding rather than political whims or ideology which too often dominate the choices we make so just to be clear. the administration is has noted that it is a drafted and it's redrafting a national defense strategy in a national military strategy. the focus has been as the secretary of defense is highlighted the indo-pacific and a us shift towards the end of pacific. i think there have been a lot of comments since the russian invasion of ukraine to increase the focus on us posture and us competition with the russians, but your argument in in a sense is very different from the direction that the us is going in which is both the last administration and the current administration. they've used different words competition pacing threat but

focuses a lot on the chinese and the russians you don't agree at least. can you explain how your view differs a bit? well, i've done a question. i don't agree look. strategy had been to compete deterrent of war comes defeat russia or china. how you gonna do that? nobody is defined what this competition mean. and if we think deterrence is working look at what the chinese are doing and look the russians are doing and tell me how we defeat both china has a population of one and a half billion people russia's got 6,000 nuclear weapons. so those metrics in my mind are wrong. i talk about something that applies much more broadly to prevent defend and engage. and in that regard i argue for something that i call a porcupine defense the problem with the current strategy. is that not only is not executable. it's unaffordable. if we were to spend $800 billion dollars a year on defense the force would still shrink.

we had this irony that the more we spend the smaller the four shrinks why first of all we got uncontrolled cost growth of about five to seven percent in the pentagon real because the cost of everything people escalating weapons f-35 highly capable a hundred million dollars a pop aircraft carrier 15 billion dollars without an airway use a terrific systems. we can't afford them. and so we've got a shift and the whole idea of porcupine defense take a look at ukraine. whether the ukrainians done with relatively inexpensive weapons. and so what i would do would be to have a force that has part conventional defenses tanks fighters so forth and another part that has got tens of thousands of missiles of drones of different types of electronic systems for deception to disrupt so forth. for $100 instead of buying one at 35. you could buy a hundred one million dollar tomahawk. or 10,000 hundred thousand dollar drones and what i'm

saying is in this world. numbers are going to overwhelm and we can have numbers that are cheap unexpensive very very deadly systems that will raise the cost of any aggression. to make it too expensive. i'll give you a case in point taiwan. first of all, there's no way that china will have the military capacity to invade taiwan during world war two. the operation that was meant to to take over taiwan call for 400,000 troops. double normandy. china does not have the capacity now. china's got all sorts of other options. they could embargo it could use political pressure. it could obliterate but the point is for a very very cheap defense taiwan could use porcupine problem is the generals are not happy with that sort of defense because they like their tanks and they think they're having some means of reaching out to strike. china is the best to turn that's their choice, but when i'm saying is the strategy is wrong and the forces we have are unaffordable. this is what we need to do and i think that this will work far

better in the future. yeah, thanks. we'll we'll talk a little bit about some of these broader international issues and i do want to come back to the homeland and get to a number of your specific conclusions and ask you to unpack them. but what let me just let me just go to the the reality here that you trace several historical bellwethers of vulnerabilities to us infrastructure you highlight at 1980 csis report vulnerabilities the national electricity power grid us secretary of navy 2000 study on the chinese cyber threat march 2020 cyberspace solarium commissions finding on vulnerabilities from cyber crimes. so just just one question. we talked a little bit about russia and china here, but what's a plausible future scenario of an adversary exploiting these vulnerabilities and how can the us prepare to

prevent deter or even? up such an attack from occurring. well, the good news is that our adversaries are not as adept as we thought they are and i think one of the fundamental problems china has could be an implosion believe it or not because it's international system. they've got a half a billion underclass. they've got so many internal issues that we ignore. so the question i think i i actually think just to interrupt for second that the direction we're seeing russia in with the with the extraordinary sanctions and some political pushback may put the russians in that category as well. like really that's it. i mean, that's a huge problem that we we got to think about it all starts with knowledge and understanding. we do not have enough in that knowledge at the highest levels of russia or china. because too many of our appointments are political their data to support an administration both sides and so the experts often get crowded out and i go into some detail about about this book. look what putin has been doing

was predictable. i've got a chapter on putin as you know, and two chapters on she go back to 1999-2000 his millennial speech we read it, but we don't do anything about it. and so we have to be able to have a government that execute you noted a number of reports the most chilling example 9/11 report was terrific and at 35 recommendations. how many have actually been implemented a handful so i agree with you adversaries are going to see the way to exploit this country and the way they're going to exploit this country is in terms of political divisions or obviously opportunities for cyber and other infrastructure issues. but if i were advising russia or china, i'm not i want to exploit the political divisions which is what they can do and what they have been trying to do and there's no magical formula. that's why we have to get government that no longer fails in his failing. that's what they're going to try to do. they are not as adept as we think but we cannot rely on that. so what we need is a strategy

that's based on full knowledge and understanding and we have to focus our government to be able to bring people in. really have that and too often. we don't. and part of this goes back to the educational system for years seth. i've been trying to reform military education. we're just not doing a good enough job. we should start there. so you you mentioned at one point in in your comments right now that that we don't understand in many ways the chinese or russians. it is interesting that the largest circulating newspaper in china is a translation of foreign newspaper articles including from english sources, and we is that there's a huge amount of money in china that is devoted towards learning english among other languages. we still don't see a lot of mandarin in in us universities in particularly secondary schools a lot of focus on french

and and spanish little bit on mandarin, but not a lot one of the things that is striking is is how little the us compared to the cold war even translates chinese documents into english, so we we saw for example during the cold war that the us had a us information agency the us had a foreign broadcast information service or fibis the translated massive amounts of soviet and czechoslovak, and he's german newspapers radio programs television stations into english and made it publicly available. the open source center prize is shut publicly budget is tiny and there is no us information agency. so this is a leading question here, which is how do we how do we put ourselves into a better

position even to understand many of these key countries? not even this is not even about competition per se. i'm just about understanding. how do we how do we educate americans about the countries? we're dealing with because they don't read languages. we don't translate that. so, where do we where do we start and where do we go? that could be a book we could coauthor as the next book sets because that's a huge issue the six legal argument about about china and russia both china and russia's strategies are disruptive. i mean, they do understand massive attacks of disruption and that's what they're based on. what's what's interesting? however, is that they understand far better if you want to understand american military strategy go back and read unrestricted warfare by two pla kernels 1999. a people who really understand war ironically are the russians. read their stuff in war colleges and read their technical documents. they really understand this. i just can't implement it.

and so what's interesting here. is that while they understand they can't implement. we don't understand. and often we don't implement, how do you do that? you got to start in the government by really creating expertise take the foreign service. tell me what the military edge at. the educational aspects are the foreign services when you join what are their programs? part of their programs. there's slim they do not have the same kind of robust educational system as the us military or the cia. what is the cia educational process for making sure and in fact in the cia too often you have to have managerial positions for promotion. so the real experts often don't get up to senior enough levels and in the us military we've got to refocus our education uncertain issues. i mean, it's huge. it's vast we spend huge amounts of money and we have a lot of really well educated people. problem is learning is different than education.

you can have had many degrees and not have learned anything. and so the simple answer to a very difficult question is we have to focus much more on learning i argue in my book that we got to get rid of the education department or cease rename it learning because you're not after education you're after learning and therefore it takes an entirely different context. that's one way of getting the ball rolling. we have to go back to first principles and we have to realize the executive brands in some ways is still organized as it was under george washington. that's one reason why it's not working department of agriculture. how many independent farmers do we have? they're not statistically relevant. please tell me why do we have 15 cabinets? well, the reasons are numbered similarly on the hill how many how many committees and subcommittees do we have you take a look at the armed services committee? there's still organized like it's 1947 and how do you make change so that's what you have to do. it can't be comprehensive but you start in the department in the in the executive branch in congress, and then you make sure that you're developing things

based on knowledge and learning and i would make some changes in the executive branch to focus on that. so community colleges trade schools become far more important under the current system. they're not really considered education. they shouldn't necessarily be they're learning and that's what you want learning. that's what this book is about learning. yeah, not just about education, but about learning more broadly. absolutely. so i'm gonna turn a little bit to to or to keep the focus on the domestic component you talk about the rise and conspiracies including qanon sure compounded with these disruptors that we've talked about including social and political divides there that we have in the past had periods of division including the vietnam war era where americans have grown frustrated and distrustful. maybe not at the same levels, but have grown frustrated and distrustful the government. so let's start talking about

then solutions that you see. how do we start to bring american unity together and it goes back to some of the quotes you highlight at the beginning of the book. how do we start to do that? you've got a 1923 fun for example, but can you talk to us a little bit about how we start to bring american unity together? yeah the answers we may not do it simply and quickly the fundamental recommendation the book. i'm glad you brought it. i argue that the way we have to start this is by. completely overhauling and improving our infrastructure and by infrastructure. i mean infrastructure writ large 5g's artificial intelligence all sorts of things education beyond bridges roads and so forth. how do we do that? congress is just appropriate at 1.2 trillion dollars. i'm going to argue that a lot of that's going to be wasted why no oversight. they'll oversight. it's being sent back to the state. so, how do we fix this? i have argued for a national infrastructure investment fund

that i call 1923 for the reasons. i said at the great economic boom the way it would work would be you take the 1.2 trillion dollars roll it in and then offer bonds just like war bonds during world war two that would pay 2% over prime rates go for 30 years guaranteed by the government. and they would be used to fund this massive infrastructure across the board, but that also would require civilian oversight. i'm on the board have been on the board of number of country companies and companies that succeed have strong oversight. that's one thing now. how do you pay for all this? so i raise four trillion dollars in the 30 years it comes too. you do it by user fees and toes but more importantly the us government has got to be more creative and entrepreneurial and it was during the 2008 financial crisis and paulson and ben benarki benanki invented the talk troubled assets relief program 800 billion dollars went into financing the banks with the banks had to go public meaning they had a public shares.

and what did the government do they took? slices of equity in terms of fundable debt and so what happened was when the banks got well they paid up $1,800 billion dollars. and all this convertible debt made about a 200 billion dollar profit the government. so while we're investing in infrastructure and certainly in the companies that are going to be part of this infrastructure. why don't you take a slice in terms of convertible debt so we can make a lot of money. this is creative. it will get the entrepreneurial juices going and it will have oversight and will be substantial enough to be able to make an impact because it's 1.2 trillion. i'm afraid a lot of it is going to be wasted if you do that you could be improving the lives of all americans and i don't like the notion as sea levels rise boats rise, etc. etc. no you're going to be improving the living standards because people have more access to 5g to all the things that they need to learning to all the things that are creative society now, this will take a long time.

but we are we are in a whole. and you got to stop digging when you're in a hole and you got to find your way out and it's not going to happen overnight the way the politics are headed seth. i think the 22 election is going to be hugely nasty 24. i really mourn and you're not going to turn that around covid didn't do it. crises won't do it. we don't have a galvanizing leader like george, washington or a neighborhood lincoln, even if one were to assist so i think we got to start with the foundations of society which are the infrastructure work from there and over time we can turn it around but there is no quick fix. there's no intermediate fix. this is going to take time. so let me then then ask you the follow-up question and it gets to the books endnote which issues a pretty dire warning and that is if the dangers that you're outlining and the threats posed by your version of mad and the seven disruptors that you

outline if they are ignored or dismissed or underestimated then the dire. prescript that the dire conditions that you describe in the preface will prove altogether present. so who will listen you ask and yes, we'll lead you ask so my my question to you is who will listen and who will lead. well, that's the next book. i hope that this book sells enough to raise these issues in these prospects because galvanizing political support is exceedingly difficult in this divided nation. and so what i have said is here's the problem you're the solution and here are the consequences and i hope that enough americans will become engaged to realize run along course, and it's within their hand to be able to make a difference. we'll see what that happens. so that the last question since we're we're wrapping up now

harlem the last question. is this a specific? question if you could put yourself in the position of any of the individuals watching this whether it's live or in perpetuity what can individual people do some of the things that you outline are massive in in importance, you know that would require significant changes whether it was the tuition or a new goldwater nickels act but what can individual people do that can make a difference that your outline that maybe they can't make all those changes at this time. but what can individual people do that's a very good question first they can vote. and they can ensure the people they're voting for are qualified and try not to vote along party lines. second they can take a really harsh. look at the republicans and

democrats and perhaps become independence for a lot of real independence for a lot of reasons and therefore mobilize central the center part of america politics in america today are 70% of americans are left of center right of center center. but wings the extreme left and right are dominating politics how do you reverse that? i argue at an earlier book. universal voting would reverse that simply because of americans had to vote the senate would prevail and you wouldn't get a lot of these characters from the left to the right. that's probably not going to happen. so people have got to inform themselves understand the nature of the danger and then do what they can either to let their elected representatives know right there newspapers and fun and join networks in which americans are demanding better government. it's almost that simple and it's a very very difficult task obviously because the visions are so great and quite frankly. given the nature of today's society people do not have a lot of free time on their hands,

especially in a in a covid environment. but this is the nature of a democracy in a democracies and experiment and unless americans are prepared to fight for that democracy as ben franklin said you have a republic as long as you can keep it and we're not at the stage of losing it, but we're losing a significant part and the purpose of this book is to inform people where we are and then to encourage and give them motivation to try to do something about it. well, hi. i i think you achieved the first part of the purpose of the book which is to inform. we'll have to come back in a year or two or three to see if you've achieved in influencing the actions of americans, but it really appreciate you taking some time to talk through your book the fifth horseman and the new mad how massive attacks of disruption became the looming existential danger to a divided nation and the world at large harlan. thank you very much for

returning to csis. it is was your home it always will be your home and thanks for coming back to it. you're here. thank you. here's a look at current best-selling non-fiction books according to romans bookstore in pasadena, california topping. the list is orthodontist, dr. kami haas's thoughts on dental health in if your mouth could talk. after that is crying in h mart a memoir by michelle zahner. and then it's university of houston professor brene brown's thoughts about making meaningful human connections in atlas of the heart. that's followed by the great recess nationally syndicated radio host glenn beck's critical look at the world economic forum and the global economy. and wrapping up our look at romans bookstores. best-selling. nonfiction books is susan cain's thoughts on embracing loss and sadness and bittersweet. some of these authors have appeared on book tv and you can watch the programs anytime at

booktv.org. weekends on c-span 2 are an intellectual feast every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors funding for c-span 2 comes from these television companies and more including charter communications. broadband is a force for empowerment. that's why charter has invested billions building infrastructure upgrading technology empowering opportunity in communities big and small charter is connecting us. charter communications along with these television companies support c-span 2 as a public service recently on book tv's author interview program afterwards wall street journal columnist. jason reilly argued that the trump administration improved

the economic lives of black people. here's a portion of that interview. i mean, there are people out there who want to say oh to the extent that we did have good economic growth under under trump. he simply inherited this from from his predecessor and it really no matter who it's exceeded obama things would have turned out the way they did those first three years under trump and that's oh that's a revisionist history. i would argue, you know in 2015. the economy just the second to last year of the obama presidency the economy grew at 3.1 percent. the next year the last year of the obama presidency 2016 it grew at 1.6 percent. about half as the growth was about half as much and and so that is the economy that donald trump inherited. that is an economy that was slowing down dramatically slowing down to the point where

you had leading economists like larry summers the former treasury secretary under president clinton saying there was a 60% chance that we were going into a recession. you had the federal reserve and the congressional budget office saying, you know, we're already at full employment unemployment can't go any lower growth. can't be any stronger. uh, we're at the end of a business cycle they were talking about a soft landing. that was the top. that was the economy that trump inherited and what happened he blew away all those expectations unemployment. didn't that go lower dramatically lower than the congressional budget office and then the federal reserve had predicted growth was stronger than the federal reserve had predicted trump exceeded those expectations. and so this wasn't merely a continuation of what was going on under obama. this was an acceleration. i mean one data point i point to

is for the lowest earners the in the lowest income brackets. under the first three years of the trump presidency. their incomes grew at double the rate. then they did in the second term of obama. so this wasn't just a continuation. this was an acceleration and i think that the people who are who are making this up this continuation argument are making a sort of head's eye when tails you lose type of argument in other words if things had gone sideways those first three years under trump, i doubt they would have blamed president obama for that. but because they went well they want to give obama credit and i don't think they can both ways. afterwards is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. to watch this program and others

visit booktv.org slash afterwards. next on book tv's author interview program afterwards atlanta journal constitution political editor, greg bluestein looks at the events that led to georgia turning purple in the 2020 presidential election and talks about its significance in future state and national elections. he's interviewed by washington post national political reporter eugene. scott afterwards is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. greg is so good to have you here with us to talk about flip this book about such an important moment in our political history in the state of georgia. i've been a fan for a while and obviously if all of you quite a bit on social media and so it's it's an honor to be able to ask you these questions that we can't fit into tweets. is honored to be here, thank you for having me. greg