Examining the Dark Side of Progress
Is progress always beneficial? In this episode, I delve into the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time considered by many to be the most perilous 13 days in human history. While the arms race between global powers led to the development of a necessary parallel spying industry for global security, this crisis highlighted a critical question: is progress always beneficial? The potential for destruction brought on by this crisis demonstrated that progress may not always lead to positive outcomes.
Tune in as I explore the unanswerable questions about the future that the Cuban Missile Crisis brought up, and ask some of the most critical questions we face today: Despite our technological advancement, why has our common sense failed to keep pace? With so much logic at our disposal, why do we often choose paths that lead to suffering? And what implications does this have for the future?
And as with everything I share on the podcast, this is what I believe based on what I’ve read and researched. But please don’t take my word for it. Keep what sticks, discard the rest and for goodness sakes, go out and test drive it!
What You’ll Learn In Today’s Episode:
How the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly led to the destruction of the world.
The birth of a spying industry as a result of the crisis for global security.
How technological advancement has outpaced our common sense.
The unanswerable questions about the future raised by the crisis.
The paradox of choosing paths that lead to suffering despite the abundance of logic available.
The potential implications of progress on our future.
What Was Mentioned:
The Soviet Role in World War II: Realities and Myths by Mark Kramer
The Atomic Bomb That Never Was: Germany’s Atomic Bomb Project by Matt Easley
Historical Dictionary of the Cold War by Joseph Smith
The Open Letter to Stop ‘Dangerous’ AI Race Is a Huge Mess by Chloe Xiang
How technological progress is making it likelier than ever that humans will destroy ourselves by Kelsey Piper
The Vulnerable World Hypothesis by Nick Bostrom
Making Sense of Existential Threat & Nuclear War – The Essentials of Sam Harris
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“I must confess that it was tough to hold any kind of scientific wonder for more than a moment or two before a much larger, and chilling reality set in making me wonder, just what in the hell were we thinking?” – Christina Sestan
“Perhaps by now, you have a better understanding and appreciation for how, when the two world powers play at an arms race, there was a very, very good and necessary case for developing a parallel spying industry.” – Christina Sestan
“With each new step one side took, the other had to at least match if not better. If a move was not matched, the resulting vulnerability would have been untenable for the other side.” – Christina Sestan
“When I reflect on the Cuban Missile Crisis, the end of ww2 and the push for a new kind of “super” weapon, when I think about the nature of the term ‘arms race,’ what I see is a sort of damn the torpedo’s push forward. We ask, “can we split the atom?” not “should we?”” – Christina Sestan
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Speaker 1 0:01
Hey, it's Christina. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to the Squeeze. We ask, can we split the atom? Not should we, I So today I'm going to tell you a story about a time that some refer to as the most dangerous 13 days in the history of mankind. You've probably already guessed that I'm talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and what I find interesting to note is that as I'm writing this, just a few weeks ago was the release of Chat GPT Four, and if somehow you've managed to have no idea what I'm talking about, Chat GPT Four is a large language model, LLM system, and it's using AI technology to do things like pass the bar exam, write papers, debug computers, and endless other things. And according to writers, it netted 100 million active users in just two months. For comparison, it took TikTok about nine months and Instagram two and a half years to reach 100 million users. Its rapid growth has been met with a lot of concern, even prompting many high-profile tech personalities to publish an open letter calling for a six-month pause on further developments. Anyway, enough about that. Let me get on with the story. So, the year was 1960 and Cuba had just declared itself a socialist state under Fidel Castro, and if you've ever read anything about Che Guevara, or maybe you've had the opportunity to watch the 2004 film that was called Motorcycle Diaries, which is just so brilliant, by the way, you know that the Cuban Revolution was a long time in coming, and one that was watched very closely by the US, who had deep interests in this region, but of course, to fully appreciate any kind of geopolitical significance of the revolution, it's really actually quite useful to go backwards in time and consider the conditions during and immediately following the end of World War Two. Personally, I watched a lot of World War Two movies growing up. I'm not exactly sure why, or if I was typical of my generation or not, or if Hollywood just happened to be prolific with the topic at the time, or perhaps it was because my mom had been in London during the war and my dad was in occupied Denmark, and I grew up hearing stories, whatever the reason, I found myself drawn to the stories that focused on the drama on the Eastern Front and the impact that Russia's treacherous climate and terrain had on the formerly victorious German troops near the end of the war. One interesting film of note was Enemy at the Gates, that was from 2001 and it depicted a famous Soviet sniper during the battle for Stalingrad, and he was referred to as the hope of all Russia, and perhaps I'm just a sucker for unlikely alliances that form in the face of bigger enemies, even if new friends used to be old enemies, and those enemies were a shifting, but because, of course, the Soviet Union had actually colluded with Germany to annex Poland in 1939 which started the whole conflict in the first place. The two countries had a secret agreement whereby Germany would enter Poland first, with the Russians 16 days behind them, both setting up brutal occupation forces in their respective halves of the country. The Soviets didn't stop there, and they entered Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, replacing the governments with puppets who voted for quote unquote voluntary incorporation into the USSR. Sure, they did. Finland, who had declared themselves neutral, became a fascinating impediment to the Red Army, and one that I learned about while visiting Finland last year. The Finnish forces were vastly outnumbered during the three and a half months of fighting that took place between 1939 and 1940 Yet they managed to inflict devastating losses on the Russians due to their resilience and their understanding of the terrain and just their general resolve. The Finns may have ended up ceding 11% of their territory, but their prowess in such an incredibly imbalanced fight is a matter of national pride. The Finns, by the way, are also responsible for that well-known incendiary grenade that they named after the Soviet Foreign Minister Vale Lashlev Molotov. Cocktails, anyone?
Speaker 1 4:39
But, of course, sleeping with the enemy was not a great move for the Russians, who were then invaded by Germany two years later in the largest German military operation of the war that pushed all the way to the outskirts of Moscow. Hitler viewed the original alliance with Russia as a temporary tactical maneuver, but. Operation Barbarossa, as it was called, was to be a war of annihilation. Germany was after land for long-term German settlement, and that meant annihilation of its people, the Russian people. Stalin failed to heed the Western intelligence about the German troop buildup along their Western border, which gave the Germans a lot of tactical surprise. The Russians then suffered catastrophic losses in the first six weeks. What I think most people don't really know is that Russia had by far the greatest number of casualties during the war. Not all accounts agree on the exact number, but it is likely around 27,000,020 7 million, 19 million of those were civilians. In spite of their strong push, the German army met with unexpected resolve, and they were not able to stick to their timetable. As a result, the German army began running out of gas, literally and figuratively, and with so many troops spread over such a large area, they became vulnerable. The Western allies began to lend air and naval support, and the Russians eventually gained the advantage, leading to quote the bloody push by the Russians all the way back to Berlin end quote. By the way, this is, of course, all notwithstanding the horror of Stalin's ruthless implementation of totalitarianism that saw countless souls relegated to the dreaded gulag, but that's another story for another day, and so the Russians ended up playing a deciding role that drew the war to a close. Looking at that famous photo of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 discussing the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe, I wonder if anyone had any confidence whatsoever about how things would proceed geopolitically from that point, and it wasn't, of course, but the blink of an eye, after all the singing and dancing and drinking and kissing and making of baby boomers had died down, that something nefarious began to take shape, to say that Europe was in shambles at this point is, of course, a colossal understatement. Following the Potsdam Conference in 1945 the post-war borders had been redrawn, placing Western Europe under a US-led Western bloc. Russia had, of course, also suffered massive casualties and destruction, and was busy collecting smaller Soviet republics to add to the motherland, considerably expanding their land holding in terms of war reparations. The Russians pushed for the severest compensations from a defeated Germany. Understandable, I suppose, but the other Allied partners disagreed, perhaps possessing a longer lasting memory of how the impact of extreme penalties on Germany following World War One, and may have inadvertently fostered the cultural conditions that gave rise to the Nazi Party in Germany. It was during this time, immediately on the heels of World War Two, that the United Nations Charter was established, becoming a new international body whose aim was to maintain peace in the post war world, 50 nations signed the charter to maintain international peace and security to promote social progress and better standards of life. The US devised a European recovery plan that was better known as the Marshall Plan to invest billions of dollars in the reconstruction of America's so-called sphere of influence. Russia was offered US aid, but declined, focusing instead on rebuilding their own sphere of influence, which, of course, all ended up neatly tucked behind the iron curtain. And just like that, the old colonial empires were replaced by two new superpowers. Perhaps the inspiration for the board game Risk. So, what's the next move? One might wonder, then, was this the best time for President Truman, who was, of course, Roosevelt's successor, to remind Stalin about the nukes. According to Matt Easley from the online article, The Atomic Bomb That Never Was quote in the early days of the war, the fear existed that Germany would develop a powerful new weapon, end quote.
Speaker 1 9:09
Even though it turned out that Germany was unable to marshal the necessary resources to undertake the project, the possibility itself undoubtedly propelled us scientists to hasten their work within the confines of the US-led top-secret research and development initiative that was called the Manhattan Project, and that was an endeavor that included support from the UK and Canada. This massive undertaking employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak, and it cost nearly $2 billion The world's first nuclear bombs were, of course, detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan to lower the curtain on the last act of World War Two. The unprecedented destruction was chillingly summed up by the now famous words of Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist at the center of the project, as he quote. Did the sacred Hindu text quote, 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds, end quote. Scientists of the Soviet Union had, of course, been aware of the potential of nuclear weapons and were busy conducting their own research when President Truman briefed Stalin about the Manhattan Project. During the Potsdam Conference, the US government were pretty wary of any requests they might receive from the Russians to share specific details about the technology, but how do you tell your wartime ally that sharing intel is no longer part of the program? But Stalin didn't appear surprised during the briefing, and of course, this was because he'd been developing a pretty sophisticated and growing net of Soviet intelligence that had planted spies throughout the entire Manhattan Project, keeping him informed the whole way along, because you see, the Soviets had been secretly working on their own atomic weapons, and voila, welcome to the Cold War. Of course, you probably recall the pictures of the nuclear tests conducted by the US at the Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. The name, of course, so famous it inspired a French designer to create the now ubiquitous two-piece bathing suit. Writer Patrick Keigar, in an article entitled Seven Surprising Facts about the nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, described a detonation event. Quote, the second test in 1946 created an enormous dome of water that reached more than a mile in height and triggered a tsunami with a 94 foot wave. End quote. A Russian observer was apparently not impressed, remarking to a US scientist that if the purpose of the test had been to frighten the Soviets, it hadn't worked. I'm hard pressed to imagine anyone watching a mile high dome of water not being blown away. Pardon the pun, but of course the US-Russian collaboration had long since transformed into the world's largest pissing match, and no one ever shows their true cards in a pissing match. Of course, this test paled in comparison to the biggest one of all in 1954 The Castle Bravo device was the largest nuclear weapon ever tested. Scientists had predicted a six megaton explosive yield, but due to a pretty major miscalculation, the actual explosive yield was 15 megatons. That's 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb used in Hiroshima. The radioactive fallout was greatly amplified and drifted over a much larger area than expected. Clearly, Bikini Atoll had been chosen for its incredibly remote location in the South Pacific, but I think about those 150 or so people who had called Bikini Atoll their home, to say nothing of the residents of the Marshall Islands who were impacted by fallout and experienced a catastrophic environmental impact. Obviously, the residents of Bikini were relocated, but when they asked why they had to go, they were told the tests were to prevent future wars. Oh, okay. 15 years later, when their atoll was declared safe for them to return, their homecoming was short-lived when residents showed a 75% increase in the levels of radioactive cesium 137 in their bodies. So, pack up your things, you're off to Kili Island, 450 miles away. To this day, without a major cleanup effort, Bikini Atoll is not considered safe for human habitation in 2010 UNESCO declared the atoll a world heritage site to remind us of the fearsome power of nuclear weapons. Well, at least you tried, UNESCO. Soviet nuclear technology had been progressing much sooner than the US had predicted, undoubtedly helped along by spies like Klaus Fuchs, a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy, that's quite a business card.
Speaker 1 14:08
He was one of the top suppliers of information leaks about the Manhattan Project over a period of seven years. In 1955 the Russians tested their first true hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb, a much more powerful type of nuclear weapon. As I dip my toe into the most superficial descriptions of nuclear technology, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, uranium, plutonium, I must confess that it was tough to hold any kind of scientific wonder for more than a moment or two before a much larger and chilling reality set in, making me wonder, just what in the hell were we thinking? I felt like Linda Hamilton's character in Terminator Two. What exactly were the rules of engagement for this so-called Cold War? The term Cold War, by the way, was coined by George Orwell, yes. That George Orwell, from an article he had published in 1945 about how one would go about predicting how superpowers made unconquerable by having nuclear weapons, i.e. the US and USSR, would conduct future relations. This comes from the book by Joseph Smith and Simon Davies, entitled Historical Dictionary of the Cold War. Fast forward now to Cuba in the 1950s the largest island in the West Indies. Cuba is just 90 miles, or a four hour boat trip from Key West, Florida. It was occupied by US military at the turn of the 20th century, before declaring independence, but remaining a US protectorate for many years after Guantanamo Bay, which everyone and their dog has heard of for more recent nefarious torture techniques, was established as a US naval base in 1903 For the first 30 years of the 20th century, Americans invested heavily in the country, even intervening militarily several times to put down coups and generally keep things the way they were. The government of the time was supported by the US, but the increasing repression of Cuban people erupted into a general strike that overthrew the government in 1933 And then, for the next 20 years, an increasing gap grew between the growing communist movement and, in latter years, the Cuban military officer cum president, cum US-backed military dictator Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro, a law student, made his first appearance in the late 40s, going on to lead many rebel attacks against Batista. He met the infamous Che Guevara in Mexico City in 1955 and their common fate was sealed when they landed in Cuba in 1956 to attempt unseating Batista, but the US were unanimous in their decision to oppose Castro's revolutionary movement, successfully holding the revolutionaries at bay for a few more years. In the end, though, Castro's charisma, coupled with the destabilizing corruption in Batista's government, led to big cracks in the foundation, and the US eventually withdrew their support. And then, on New Year's Day in 1959 Batista and his supporters fled Cuba, and a week later, a triumphant Castro entered Havana to build a new government right out of the gate. Castro set about nationalizing American businesses, which is really just a nice way of saying these are mine now. His next order of business was to change Cuba's Facebook relationship status with Russia from it's complicated to in a relationship, even though arguably no one in Moscow really knew who Castro was at the time, clearly all of this was looked down upon with alarm by the US government, who promptly retaliated by cutting diplomatic and economic ties and enacting a trade and travel embargo that largely remains in effect today. But that wasn't enough, and a year later the US launched a failed land invasion on the southwest coast of Cuba by US-backed Cuban exiles intending to overthrow Castro. This was known as the Bay of Pigs, and it must have made Castro really mad. And this was even in spite of the fact that Khrushchev had sent him a congratulatory letter and gift basket, because shortly thereafter he declared Cuba a socialist republic, and I'm just kidding, Khrushchev did not send a gift basket, just the letter. Hey, you're listening to the squeeze, and if you like what you're hearing, there's a whole world of citrus couching to discover. We've got an online leadership program, it's called Citrus You, and it features those three key tools you need to be a better leader. Well, to be a better human. We also have a number of mini learning bundles that you can get into, and there's plenty more.
Speaker 1 18:50
If you're interested, you can follow us on Instagram, or check out our website@www.citruscoaching.com And the show resumes now, and now we're back to where I started in the story. Initially, the Cuban-Russian relationship, it just consisted of I'll give you sugar if you give me fuel, and that resulted in a nice little exchange that helped sustain the Cuban economy for years to come. During that time, it is speculated that the defense of Cuba became a matter of prestige for the Soviets. Likely, the Soviets had never conceived of having any real influence in the Western Hemisphere. So, this was probably an unexpectedly juicy opportunity that just kind of fell into their lap. Castro was only too happy to make things more official, and in 1962 after signing the Soviet-Cuban Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Defense Treaty, I can't help seeing a group hug in there somewhere. The duo began constructing a secret Soviet Armed Forces presence on the island, ensuring nuclear missiles were in place before going public. Kept with their defense pact, perhaps by now you have a better understanding and appreciation for how, when two world powers play in an arms race, there was a very, very good and necessary case for developing a parallel spying industry. Enter the U-2 spy plane capable of flying at 70,000 feet and able to capture pretty good photographic data of any areas of interest. By the time the Cuban Revolution had rolled around, you can bet the U-2 aircraft had clocked many, many, many miles above Cuba. The photographic data deciphered back at the NPIC, which is the National Photographic Interpretation Center, was technologically capable of identifying potential construction sites for nuclear missiles. Let's just take a beat here. This pissing contest, or cold war arms race, whatever you want to call it. Once it was set free, it had no choice but to expand with each new step one side took the other had to at least match, if not better. If a move was not matched, the resulting vulnerability would have been untenable. And I'm having one of those emperor's new clothes moments, where I feel like we're all pretending that we're not just watching a couple of boys posturing in the sandbox. I'll talk about mutually assured destruction a bit later in the episode, which in and of itself is kind of a preposterous solution to me. Okay, back to the story. And then one day, on october 16, 1962 the U-2 spotted something: nuclear missile sites on the island of Cuba. Missile transport trailers that were 65 feet in length were identified from a high altitude photo as a perfect match for the Soviet SS four missiles that had a range of 1100 nautical miles, think Washington, D.C. Perhaps, if the Russians had not been so fond of their enormous military parades, US intelligence wouldn't have had as much intel on those missiles as they did, but they'd photographed them in those parades and knew exactly what they were looking for. So, the Russians had just gained a big leg up in the pissing match by being able to target the Western Hemisphere directly. You have to think that in moments like this, the whole concept of nuclear engagement went awfully quickly from concept to reality, the communists from the East were suddenly on America's doorstep. I like to try to imagine what Kennedy felt during that briefing. Did he stand calmly for a moment before walking into the Oval Office bathroom and throwing up? I would have to tell the rest of this story, I am relying heavily on the online digital archives of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Kennedy and his advisors decided to keep the U-2 spy plane intel under wraps until they had sufficient time to plan how they were going to respond. Kennedy was briefed on all the options, military, diplomatic, or nothing at all, and so as not to raise public suspicion, Kennedy stuck to his public meetings in the day, but spent long hours in secret meetings with a lot of hot-headed advisors, who, like General Curtis LeMay, Air Force chief of staff, and Kennedy's frequent antagonist, wanted to calm down hard when asked what he wanted to do about the unfolding situation in Cuba, LeMay was quoted as having said I'll fry it and hit the Russians with everything we have.
Speaker 1 23:29
Let's just hit pause here for a second and remember that at this moment in time Kennedy had only been in office not quite two years, having been elected at the very, very young age of 43 How he held his own when most of the chiefs wanted to go hard is kind of incredible, but he did preferring the idea of a naval blockade comprised of a ring of ships around the island of Cuba that would act as a quarantine. The intention of a blockade was to prevent Russian ships from delivering the remaining supplies required to operationalize the nuclear sites. The blockade was dubbed a pretty weak response by LeMay, who was concerned with how the US would be viewed by neutrals. The advisors were divided, but in the end the president had to choose, and he chose the blockade at 7pm on october 22 Kennedy addressed the nation in what has been called the scariest speech ever given. Here is a very short excerpt from the 18 minute speech, which I recommend you take the time to listen to in full and is easily accessible online. Quote, but this secret, swift, extraordinary buildup of communist missiles in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy. This sudden and clandestine decision to station strategic wide. For the first time outside of Soviet soil is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo, which cannot be accepted by this country. The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. End quote. Up until this very moment, the Russians thought they'd gotten away with their military action in Cuba, and now the jig was up. Who would blink first? This was the closest the world had ever come to nuclear war. The Doomsday Clock, one of the most recognizable symbolic timepieces, indicating the world's vulnerabilities to global catastrophe caused by man-made technologies showed two minutes to midnight, which marked the theoretical point of annihilation. Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and the University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of atomic scientists created the Doomsday Clock. The clock is set every year by the Bulletin Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 10 Nobel laureates. I don't want to drop a spoiler here, but the current setting in 2023 is actually 30 seconds closer, though, with the introduction of second strike capabilities, such as nuclear submarines, nuclear risk may actually have decreased. MAD, or mutually assured destruction, is a military code that basically means if either side attacks, the other would retaliate with equal or greater force, resulting in both sides' mutual, total, and assured destruction. Unacceptable losses for both parties, a very tense but stable global peace. Nuclear war would be prevented if neither side could be expected to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange as a functioning state. Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister, sat across from Kennedy in the Oval Office a few days later, reading from a carefully prepared text that insisted that the Soviet Union favored peaceful coexistence and opposed countries interfering in the domestic affairs of others. I picture this interaction with a lot of hand-wringing and submissive behavior on the part of Gromyko. I don't know, how does one like Gromyko prepare for a meeting like this. It seems impossible to imagine that both Kennedy and Khrushchev wouldn't have recognized the devastating possibility of one wrong move at this juncture. By this point, Kennedy had known about the missiles for six days. Had he slept during that time? Had he even had a moment alone with his thoughts? If he'd had a Fitbit, what would his heart rate have registered at? Just one missile launch had the potential to kill hundreds of 1000s of people. From Kennedy's letter to Khrushchev on October 20-second, he writes, quote, since I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would in this nuclear age deliberately plunged the world into war, which is crystal clear no country could win, and which could only result in catastrophic consequences to the whole world, including the aggressor. End quote.
Speaker 1 28:11
In reference to the blockade, Kennedy writes, quote, the fact of this minimum response should not be taken as a basis, however, for any misjudgment on your part, end quote. The following day, the ships of the naval blockade were moved into place around Cuba. Soviet submarines threatened the blockade by moving into the Caribbean Sea. Soviet freighters bound for Cuba with military supplies stopped dead in the water. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I write this. The next day. Khrushchev writes back to Kennedy, quote, 'I must say frankly that the measures indicated in your statement constitute a serious threat to peace and to the security of nations. End quote. His letter goes on to accuse the US of violating the United Nations Charter, insisting against that armaments in Cuba are intended solely for defensive purposes. Kennedy responds by writing, quote, I think you will recognize that the step which started the current chain of events was the action of your government in secretly furnishing long-range missiles to Cuba. End quote. He goes on to say he hopes Khrushchev will issue instructions to the Russian ships bound for Cuba not to challenge the quarantine. Khrushchev's next letter on october 24 brings to mind spittle flying quote. In presenting us with these conditions, you, mr. President, have flung a challenge at us. Who asked you to do this? By what right did you do this? He goes on, no, mr. President, I cannot agree to this, and I think that in your own heart you recognize that I am correct. He continues, the actions of the United States with regard to Cuba constitute outright banditry, or if you like, the folly of degenerate imperialism. His last line is a doozy. We will then be forced on our part to take the measures we consider necessary. And adequate in order to protect our rights, we have everything necessary to do so. End quote. Is he talking about nukes? Does no one remember the dome of water one mile high? Amazingly, Kennedy remained steadfast. The kahunas on this guy from his response on october 25 Quote, I ask you to recognize clearly, mr. Chairman, that it was not I who issued the first challenge in this case, and that, in light of this record, these activities in Cuba required the responses I have announced. I repeat my regret that these events should cause a deterioration to our relations. I hope that your government will take the necessary action to permit a restoration of the earlier situation. A hastily organized UN Security Council meeting was taking place simultaneously, and Adlai Stevenson, the US Ambassador to the UN, was giving Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zoran a very public and very newsworthy tongue-lashing, quote, you the Soviet Union has sent these weapons to Cuba. You, the Soviet Union, has upset the balance of power in the world. You, the Soviet Union, has created this danger, not the United States. End quote. And where might mr. Cuba himself be during all of this? Geopolitics is such a fascinating jigsaw puzzle. It is, in fact, a real-life game of Risk. Cuba might be just the linchpin in the middle of the world's largest pissing match, but a lynchpin is not without its own power, which might account for Castro's strategy behind his letter to Khrushchev at this point in the crises, I can't help but think that Castro felt pretty confident and even smug, knowing he had the considerable might of the Soviet Union behind him. In fact, at the start of his dealings, his secret dealings with Khrushchev, Castro had wanted to do it all openly, not secretively, believing he had the right to defend himself. Khrushchev, understandably, was not in favor of this, rightfully concerned that the US could and would retaliate. In Castro's letter to Khrushchev, he writes, quote, "If they, the US, managed to carry out an invasion of Cuba, a brutal act in violation of universal and moral law, then that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever. An act of the most legitimate self-defense, however harsh and terrible the solution, there would be no other. End quote. However harsh and terrible the solution. Geez, cut from the same cloth as Kennedy's Air Force Chief of Staff, LeMay.
Speaker 1 32:37
Did these guys not have children to think about, I want to pause for a moment again and consider the experience of the average person during these 13 days in October of 1962 How would you be feeling from NPR's Childhood Memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Michael Martin interviews Marta Maria Darby, a Cuban American who had been a child in Miami at the time, and Maria Salgado, who had been a child living in Cuba. Darby remembers her family's reaction, believing the world was going to end and wondering where they were going to strike first. She talked about the duck and cover drills that were hastily organized at school, as she described it, the fire alarms would be turned on, and the students were told to dive under their desks. She remembers that even as a child, she wondered how this was going to protect them from a bomb, but by the same token, she describes everything at that time as having gone crazy. Salgado describes her experience in Cuba, quote, "You're sitting there on this very small island with nuclear weapons pointed to a huge, huge country with a possibility that they're going to bomb each other back and forth, and you know there would be talk that this would have been much greater than Hiroshima. End quote. I grew up in the shadow of this crisis with movies like The Day After heavily influencing my notions of global security, I can remember debating with friends about how thick the sheet of lead would need to be and what angle it would have to be leaned at in order to offer any kind of protection from the blast. Just where the hell we were going to get our hands on a sheet of lead didn't really enter into it. We joked about cockroaches being the only life left on the planet. There was an air raid siren, not far from my house. I never heard it go off, and for a long time I didn't even have any idea what it was. Khrushchev's next letter to Kennedy was long, eight pages long, and aside from his usual posturing, his tone had shifted subtly, perhaps sensing the ground was ripe for negotiation. He writes, quote, I got the feeling that you have some understanding of the situation, which has developed, and some, in brackets, sense of responsibility. I value this, end quote. But being an eight page letter, it is, of course, not going to be without a lot more stomping and snorting and offensive displays. He writes, quote, youth. But you well know that the very least you would get in response would be what you have given us. You would suffer the same consequences, and that must be clear to us, people invested with authority, trust, and responsibility. And, mr. President, you and I should not now pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the harder you and I pull, the tighter this knot will become. You yourself understand perfectly what dread forces our two countries possess. End quote. But then there it is, midway through the letter. Remember that all the way through, the Soviets have been absolutely unwavering on their position that the weapons in Cuba are defensive only. Khrushchev writes, quote, in the name of the Soviet government and the Soviet people, I assure you that your conclusions regarding offensive weapons on Cuba are groundless. It is apparent from what you have written that our conceptions are different on this score, or rather we have different estimates of these or those military means, in reality, the same forms of weapons can have different interpretations. End quote. Bam, there it is. He's giving an inch, well, probably only a millimeter, but from there he goes on to give a weird example about a cannon, and then he makes a bid quote, if assurances were given that the US would not participate in an attack on Cuba. If you were to recall your fleet, this would immediately change everything, unquote. He's implying that if the US were to promise not to invade Cuba, then Cuba would have no need for defensive weapons, so the question of armaments would disappear. His final proposal: any Soviet ships bound for Cuba will no longer carry armaments, and you, the US, declare you won't invade, and suddenly the need for having military specialists in Cuba would disappear.
Speaker 1 36:53
Did Khrushchev just blink first? I mean, it was an incredibly obtuse face-saving narrative, but I think he blinked first in a telegrammed response. The next day, Kennedy is clear. Okay, but you need to go first. He lays it out, quote, cease work on offensive missile bases under UN observation, remove promptly the quarantine, end quote. And then it starts to sound, well, like a bit like a couple of business people discussing project deadlines. Quote, if you will give your representation similar instructions, there is no reason why we should not be able to complete these arrangements and announce them to the world within a couple of days. End quote. So weirdly calm sounding when we can be sure it was anything but. And then just when everyone was ready to exhale, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba. Kennedy's advisors immediately ratchet up the pressure again, calling for military action. Honestly, if Kennedy wasn't on blood pressure medication after all of this, I'd be astounded, but he girds his loins, remains steadfast, and insists US sites in Turkey will have to be part of the negotiation. Khrushchev had recently raised the issue of the US nukes on the Russian doorstep. I'm no geopolitical strategist, but he does seem to have a point. That night, secret meetings ensue between Bobby Kennedy and Ambassador Anatoly Doberin, and a basic understanding is reached: the Soviets will remove missiles. The US agrees not to invade Cuba, and the US also agrees to remove missiles from Turkey. The next day, Khrushchev writes to Kennedy, quote, "The Soviet government has given a new order to dismantle the arms which you describe as offensive, man, he's still holding that line, and to create and return them to the Soviet Union, I regard with respect and trust the statement you made in your message that there would be no attack, no invasion of Cuba. Then the motives which induced us to render assistance of such a kind to Cuba disappear. End quote. And just like that, it's done. Kennedy issued a public statement, quote, I welcome Chairman Khrushchev's statesmanlike decision to stop building bases in Cuba, dismantling offensive weapons, and returning them to the Soviet Union under United Nations verification. End quote. He goes on, quote, It is my earnest hope that the governments of the world can, with a solution of the Cuban crisis, turn their urgent attention to the compelling necessity for ending the arms race and reducing world tensions. End quote. The crisis, of course, has been referred to as the most dangerous 13 days in the history of mankind. In a quote from the PBS documentary Three Men Go to War, quote, We always knew we would get to the brink, we just didn't know what we would do once we got there, end quote. The brink is the terrifying possibility of our age. We clearly have, and have had for a while, the technological sophistication to do some pretty serious damage, and we live with this fact every day. A slight communication error, or a split-second decision by a commander, could have thwarted all of the diplomatic efforts of Kennedy and Khrushchev, plunging the plan. It into God knows what, but we got lucky. When I reflect on the end of World War Two, the push for a new kind of super weapon, and the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis, when I think about the nature of the term arms race, I see a sort of "damn the torpedoes" approach to invention. We ask, can we split the atom, not should we during development, many experts cited big holes in the general understanding of how nuclear weapons worked, but that didn't slow the rush to test them. Yes, fire and the wheel and the printing press and electricity in the car and the internet have all gotten us to where we are now, which is a long ways from perfect, obviously, but arguably we are more prosperous overall than we ever have been. I'm not a technophobe, but it also seems like our technology demands a certain level of psychological resources to help navigate and safeguard the development. At the beginning of the podcast, I referenced an open letter just released addressing Chat GPT. The letter comes from the Future of Life Institute, whose stated mission is to reduce global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies.
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The letter, signed by a confusing and large list of high-profile tech people, makes the call for AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT four. The call is to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols. Now, sure, one could take the cynical view here and imagine a profit motive. Open AI is first to the post in a market that is currently valued at around $100 billion and predicted to grow 20 fold by 2030 up to nearly $2 trillion In Barry Weiss' interview with Sam Altman, he's the CEO of Open AI. She introduces the topic of ethics of running a company with such potentially world-changing technology. She asks if the incentive in a kind of AI race is to be the fastest, you alluded to other companies that are already cutting corners in order to do that. What are the guardrails that can be put in place to prevent people from becoming corrupted or incentivized in ways that are dangerous? Altman answers, government insights, ability to audit whatever training runs models produced above a certain threshold of compute or above a certain capability level, I think you should trust the government more than me. At least you get to vote them out. End quote. But I appreciate that Weiss hangs in there, because it's not actually a satisfying answer for me. She asks, quote, given that you are the person running it, what are the things that you do to prevent corruption of power that it seems would be the biggest possible risk right now? You are overseeing a technology that a lot of really smart people are warning at best will completely revolutionize the world, and at worst will, as you've said, lights out for everybody. How do you deal with the burdens of that? How do you know that you're making the right choices and decisions. Altman responds, I don't have shares at all. I don't have a special vote. I serve at the pleasure of the board. I like to think I would be the first to say if I, for some reason, thought I was not doing a good job, and I do think whoever's in charge of leading AGI efforts should have been democratically elected somehow, but it's not like I have dictatorial power over Open AI, nor would I want it. Barry pushes back a little. Quote, that's not what I'm suggesting. In the firmament of the galaxy, that seems like all of the wealth, all of the ideas, all of the power, not in the Washington, DC sense, power over the future is emanating out of this group of this particular group of people, and you are one of the stars in that, in, in that firmament, and you've become brighter and brighter, and like, how has that changed you? End quote. Altman responds, quote, it definitely feels surreal, end quote. And then he tells the story about an astronaut that would, decades after going to the moon, stand in his backyard and look up at the moon and think it was so beautiful, and then randomly remember that decades ago I went up there and I walked around on that thing, quote, that's so crazy, he says, and I think I sort of hope that's how I feel about Open AI decades from now, that I'm living in this wonderful world, this wonderful, fantastic AGI future, and thinking about how great it is, and then I remember that I used to run that thing, but you're probably overstating the degree of power I have in the world as an individual, and I probably under perceive it, but you still just go about your normal life, and the stakes elevate around you, and you're aware of it, and I take it super seriously, but then I'm running around a field laughing, and I forget it, and then I remember it, it's very strange, and then subjectively not that different, but I do feel the weight of it. End quote. Having worked with people's psychology my entire career, his answer is not what I hoped I'd hear. Now, granted, this interview is just one blip out of Altman's life, and it is obviously ludicrous to judge someone on a small audio clip, but I'm going to a bit. I've worked in the realm of power. Something I'll cover in an upcoming podcast.
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There was a way that Altman neatly sidestepped his very real, at least everyone else, power. He negated it somehow. Sure, he referred to the burden on his shoulders, but I wish I had heard him actually take ownership of it, because then he might envision a different level of responsibility in a Vox article, how technological progress is making it likelier than ever that humans will destroy themselves. Gee, that's a cheery title, isn't it? Writer Kelsey Piper reviews The Vulnerable World Hypothesis, a new working paper by Oxford Professor and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, Nick Bostrom, describing progress. Piper writes, quote, "When we invent a new technology, we often do so in ignorance of all its side effects. We first determine whether it works, and we learn later, sometimes much later, what other effects it has. End quote. This begs the question, Is progress always beneficial? In the New Yorker article, The Doomsday Invention, will artificial intelligence bring us utopia or intelligence? Writer Rafi Kachchadorian quotes Bostrom, quote, "Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, and that's a speculative event in which an AI gains the ability to improve itself, and in short order exceeds the intellectual potential of the human brain, by many orders of magnitude, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. End quote. This comes from Bostrom's best-selling book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. To describe the process of invention, Bostrom analogizes an urn filled with balls, and for each technological invention we remove a ball. Some are white balls. These are technological discoveries that do nothing but good for civilization. Some are gray balls. These are technologies that can be both good and bad. An example of this would be nuclear power. Black balls, which hypothetically could exist in the urn, represent a technology so bad it would destroy the civilization that created it. According to Bostrom, if black balls do exist within the urn, then it is only a matter of luck that we have not withdrawn one thus far. If, on the other hand, we've arrived at this level of technological sophistication without offing ourselves. Is it really just dumb luck? And why does it seem like good sense is not really a part of the equation? How did we ever find ourselves in a nuclear arms race where the only thing keeping us from the abyss is a kind of global stalemate? And what happens when the old superpower framework starts showing cracks and nuclear codes end up in the hands of an unprecedentedly non-presidential-like president on one side, God help us. In a recent episode of The Essentials of Sam Harris, entitled Making Sense of Existential Threat in Nuclear War, I heard about something called the Drake equation. This equation is used to calculate the presence of extraterrestrial life in the universe, and has been referred to as the second most famous equation in science, after Einstein's E equals mc squared. It was conceived in 1961 by astronomer Francis Drake, not to be confused with Sir Francis Drake, from the 16th century, given Drake's understanding of the size of the cosmos, he created a formula to calculate the probability of how many advanced civilizations we should expect to be out there in the cosmos right now. It went like this: he took all the stars in the universe and separated them into two piles in one he put only those that have planets orbiting them and discarded the rest from consideration. Then he separated out only those planets suitable for evolution of life and of those kept only planets that would have a probability of life emerging. Lastly, he sorted for the probability that intelligent life could advance to the stage of a technological civilization. Even conservatively, Drake estimated that between 1000 and 100 million advanced civilizations could exist just in the Milky Way galaxy alone. And, of course, there are billions of galaxies, just like ours in the universe. By reasonable estimates, there should be millions of civilizations out there in the cosmos. While the podcast didn't reference the potential of the overconfidence effect in Drake's equation, I think it's worth noting, just like it sounds, the overconfidence effect is a common error of probabilistic reasoning about low probability effects. In essence, you're guessing numbers for likelihood whose mechanism is simply not well understood.
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Later in the same podcast, I learned about Enrico Fermi, an Italian American physicist who famously asked, if this is true, where is everybody? Me, from my subsequent research into Fermi, I read about something dubbed Fermi's paradox, which is a conflict between the argument that scale and probability seem to favor intelligent life being common in the universe and the total lack of evidence of intelligent life having ever arisen anywhere other than Earth. Back to the essentials of the Sam Harris podcast, for the three possible hypotheses that science has surfaced to address the paradox. Number one, we're early, everyone will show up, but we're just first of the party, humans are quote early risers. Number two, intelligent life is actually rarer than was thought, maybe Drake's numbers needed to be more conservative, perhaps there are only a small handful of civilizations out there, and given the size of the universe, we've just never bumped into anyone. Number three, lastly, and for me, anyway, this is the disturbing one. In a direct quote from the narrator, Megan Phelps-Roper, quote, What if there is a certain unavoidable technological phase that every intelligent life's advancement must confront a technological phase that is just so hard to get through that almost no civilization successfully crosses the threshold, and that explains why it appears that no one is out there. We humans may be on a typical trajectory and are destined to be erased, and soon. End quote. Carl Sagan famously referenced the study of cosmology as a humbling pursuit, but anyone who reads history knows cosmology doesn't have the lock on humility. From one angle, history can look like one long, horrific report card of death and destruction interspersed with moments of inspiration, clarity, and poignant beauty, where you want to believe so badly that this time it will be different, but turn the page and wham, there we go again. More senseless and disturbing havoc wrecked on our fellow humans. As I referenced in earlier podcasts, my profession arose from within the human potential movement with a zeitgeist of transformation and terms like second tier spirituality, and a lot of thoughts of saving the world. It was pretty positive Kool-Aid, if I don't say so myself. I feel a bit silly saying this now, but back then I believed that I was going to be part of an evolutionary wave in human transformation. We were going to set humanity on the right path and take things to the next level, whatever that meant, a kind of Eden or Xanadu or Nirvana, the state, not the band. I never considered anything like extinction or a failure to adapt or Ballstrom's Black Ball. I never really seriously considered Earth without us on it. But after all my researching and deep musings for this podcast episode, and trust me when I say this has probably been the hardest podcast episode to prepare. I realize that I have nothing to add to what I've already shared. I don't have a nice, neat hypothesis that I can navigate. I don't have any trite things to say, like, oh, it will all work out fine, as if I would ever say anything like that at any other time. Either, the complexity of this topic defies any kind of boundary that I can put around it. Admittedly, there is just so much I still do not know, and at the same time, I can't wait to continue engaging in such a compelling topic about progress and technological innovation. Above all, I adore plumbing this experience of being human. And as I start to wind this episode down, I'm going to borrow something Weiss says at the end of her podcast with Sam Altman. If you listening now were provoked by this conversation, if it educated you, if it excited you, if it concerned you, that's great. Share this conversation with your community, then use it to have a conversation of your own. But before I go, I want to share something else with you. Recently, my husband was in Poland for a competition. Afterwards, he decided to travel around and see a bit of the country, having never been there before. Before he left Canada, I knew he wanted to visit Auschwitz. When he returned home, he showed me his pictures and described his experience, which changed him somehow.
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Though I can't quite pinpoint how, he said, "You've heard all the stories, you've seen all the movies, you've read all the books, but nothing really hits home until you're actually there in person. He said that all over the site were these plaques in the ground. They all read the same thing, but in a multitude of different languages. They read, quote, "Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe, Auschwitz, Birkenau, 1940 to 1945 And this reminds me of two things: Carl Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot, and the poem, a poem by Percy Shelley. I'll start with the poem first. You may have heard this one, it's called Ozymandias. I met a man from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read. Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed, and on the pedestal these words appear. My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Nothing besides remain round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far, far away. On february 14, 1990 Voyager One was just about to exit our solar system. Earth was 6.4 billion kilometers away as Voyager turned around for one last photo. Earth appears as a tiny speck of dust in a ray of sunlight. Carl Sagan was inspired to write the following based on that photo. Look at that dot, that's here, that's home, that's us on it. Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives, the aggregate of our joy and suffering, 1000s of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forger, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark in our obscurity. In all this fastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least not in the near future, to which our species could migrate, visit, yes, settle, not yet, like it or not. For the moment, the earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our teeny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. May we continue to advance without tripping over ourselves. Enjoy the ride. See you next time. So you've been listening to The Squeeze. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to continue tuning in, don't forget to click subscribe, and as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and challenges. If there's anything you don't agree with, thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
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Bye.