Welcome to Keith's night. Don't try it on anyone in the libertarian Institute today. I am joined by. Abigail are Hall. She is an associate professor in economics at the University of Tampa, she has her PhD in economics from George Mason University. Check out manufacturing militarism US. Government propaganda in the war on terror as well as tyranny comes home. The domestic fate of US. Military is MM, dr. Hall, thank you so much for your
time. Time. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be back. What was your dissertation on and was it under Walter Williams? No, so I actually wrote my dissertation under Chris coin, Walter Williams. And I agreed on very many things. However, I think we diverged pretty starkly on matters of foreign policy. My doctoral research was on the political economy of unmanned aerial vehicles or what are colloquially known as drones. So looking at it.
Yeah. So looking at how uavs were used within the war on terror? Kind of the the development of the political entanglement so thinking about your big defense contractors how do those relationships between say the likes of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. How do those become entrenched or entangled with say members of Congress or other political outfits and then understanding how it is that those Technologies may continue to be
used. Despite the fact that contrary to the popular narrative, they may not actually be as effective as proponents would have them be. It's amazing. We have a World War Two General and President Dwight Eisenhower. Tell us, watch out for the military-industrial complex and we're still called crazy conspiracy theorist for thinking that, you know, there's a profit incentive to what to be made in war.
It's, there's incredible research there, but if people want to find your dissertation is that available online. Yes. So it's, um, it's publicly available. I'm sure that it's through George Mason. One of the easiest ways to find pretty much. All of my work is ssrn.com, so you can download. But I think pretty much most of the papers that I've ever written for, for free. The other way that people can find at least links to some things and was also on my website.
Abigail are hall.com? Both of those links will be in the description below. What I wanted to ask you about was one of the great propaganda methods. It's is to sell things under the guise of there, only being benefits. Should we bring democracy to the Middle East? Should we defend Ukraine?
As if there's no downside, when it comes to the domestic costs of War, before we get into the foreign calls, what are some of the downsides or costs that the American population has to Bear because of an aggressive foreign policy? So there are lots of things that people talk about in terms of cost and consequences of. Conflict.
And so you pointed out that oftentimes the people are talking about the cost of foreign policy, there's a tendency to focus on either the monetary cost but then also people will talk about the the human cost. So things like the number of US military personnel who are killed or who are injured while engaged in foreign intervention abroad and those things are certainly important. But if you're only looking at metrics that you can easily
count, then you're downplaying. A lot of other elements that are are Critically important for understanding the actual consequences of foreign policy and so what my co-author. And I so Chris coin in one of our books tyranny, comes home, talk specifically about the other types of consequences or some of the other consequences of foreign intervention particularly within the domestic sphere.
So, often times when we talk about foreign policy, there's this tendency to think that it is completely divorced. Forced from what's going on within the domestic space. So foreign policy is over there, wherever there happens to be domestic. Policy is here and those two spheres are completely separate. But what we're attempting to point out in that work and elsewhere is that you can't cleanly separate those two Arenas.
And in fact, the tools and tactics of foreign intervention can and do come to be used domestically, so we can look at some specific consequences of that.
So we look at That's more specifically, things like police militarization, the use of surveillance Technologies like uavs and so on. But the more broader or the broader point that we make within that book is highlighting that one of the consequences of foreign intervention, is the erosion of constraints that are placed upon government and potential for expansion. Not just in the scale of government. So again, think about the monetary cost, how much? Are how big government is but
also the scope of government. So the portfolio of activities or the types of activities that government is involved in and that is an important consequence for thinking about foreign policy, even if you are someone who is just 100% focused on the United States and you don't have any any inclination towards thinking about foreign cost at all. When it comes to saying things like well this allows the
government to grow drastically. There are some people who will just say, you know what, there are Nordic countries that have bigger, government's things are fine there. I'm not really worried about big government is big government. Just this Boogeyman that stupid right-wingers are throwing around. Or is it actually something that the average person who Envy say the Nordic model should actually
have second thoughts about. So there's something interesting there about people talking about, Governments being threatening versus benign, let's say and you can Envision a scenario in which you have a very large government. That actually doesn't do very much or one that is not
particularly threatening. So we people talking about the Nordic States, you're talking about economically free countries with a very large social safety net that's profoundly different from the kind of expansions that were primarily focused on which again.
Are those expansions in scope? So again, you can imagine a really large government that is not doing very much but you could also Imagine a very small government that is doing a whole lot of really nefarious things and so I think that when we focus on maybe the size it's not an irrelevant thing for us to think about because a lot of times we assume that the scale of government and the scope of government are correlated. So if the scale is going growing the scope is also growing but
that's Not necessarily the case. And so one of the things that I often times suggest to people is to think about those things as potentially two separate entities and to consider each of them individually and not just consider them as One Singular unit. So the logic that Paul Krugman uses in arguing with zombies is that my spending is your income
and your spending is my income. Therefore when we have something like a war Or we really get this whole engine heavily stimulated and that leads to more spending higher incomes and therefore economic growth. What if anything is a wrong with that mindset, that type of like is prime the pump type of Economics, just causes me physical pain when whenever I hear about it because that's assuming that everything is the same. So, a dollar spent is a dollar spent, but doesn't tell you anything.
About whether or not those dollars are being spent in a way that actually satisfy the wants and desires of other human beings. And so, one of the classic examples that we use is this, if I am given an instruction as a Soviet nail Factory to produce one ton of nails, I can make one ton of really small nails that can actually be useful or I can make one as in a singular ton nail.
Both of those satisfy the, the output Target but doesn't tell me, but don't tell me anything about whether or not what I've done is actually useful. The other thing that is complicated, when we're talking about war spending, because one of my gifts, talk about zombies and it's close to Halloween. It's an economic fallacy that just refuses to die is when people talk about how World War 2 got us out of the Great Depression. No, it didn't you.
Have actual monetary prices in this war economy. There's a wonderful paper by an economist named, Robert Higgs. That really explains that particular fallacy in pretty elegant detail, so I would definitely Point people to his work on that issue. Specifically. But in thinking about, not only this idea that we are just again pumping, pumping money. It goes back to the the all Keynesian idea where if we're lagging in one area.
So if they consumption is falling, you just pump up G and it doesn't matter what G or government spending is being spent on. So whether it's war or whether it's, you know, ditch-digging that it's going to increase Prosperity. The other thing that people seem to forget about foreign conflict and war is that it actively destroys human beings and resources, which is the antithesis of actually growing wealth because you are actively
engaged in destruction. So, And if you want to make the argument well but if you destroy things then there are people who are going to be making money. Building it back. Sure. But you're now having to expend resources to replace things which already existed as opposed to spending those resources on something else that could have been value-added. Yeah. It's like the broken window fallacy.
People can appreciate that. Well yeah if you pay someone to repair the window that you're spending money but now you're just back to where you were previously with less money. Oh, so you're worse off but when it comes to lots of Windows and buildings and people getting blown up, well that of course,
is economic growth. All of us the way that I explain it is this and so I live in Florida, we recently experienced a hurricane and Victor Clark is at Florida Gulf Coast University and I wrote a small piece basically taking aim at the broken window fallacy because we kept hearing these things at like, oh like actually like these places could could build back better and like this could actually be good for the
economy. And the way that we conclude that piece in the way that I've discussed this elsewhere, is that if destruction is really great for economic growth, then my city of Tampa should actually be really sad that we missed the hurricane because think about all that economic growth that we were missing out on if war is so wonderful.
Now again, we're kind of switching from talking about the domestic side from talking about to tell you about the foreign side, but if war is so wonderful and by getting destroyed, you know, we can get all of this, you know, infrastructure built back up or we could build back better. Then would we not be disappointed when we don't see like widespread destruction? Because again, think about all that economic growth that we could be missing out on.
So part one of the fallacy is assuming a dollar spent arming job at Al nusra is just as good as taking your family to Disneyland, it's their equating money. When they shouldn't be the voluntary sector with the coercive and then the second part. This is saying that saving is basically bad. That that is the implication. Almost always that to save is to really not allow the economy to reach its full potential. What are the benefits of saving or postponing consumption?
So, I mean, one of the things that I will always tell people is that, like many economists, I am by no means a personal finance expert and so please don't ask me for personal finance advice. But in terms of the Thing that people often point to is again a Keynesian idea of the, the
Paradox of saving. So this idea that if people are saving too much than people aren't spending, and then as a result of that, there's a decline in economic activity, but that misses a a couple of different things. So one of the things that we can potentially talk about that relates to a number of different things that are happening right now, is that well, you You make different decisions and different choices when you have some savings versus when you
don't. And if you want to talk about things like future wealth creation, and you want to talk about investment and things like that, then savings are a necessary precondition for those types of activities. And so it's neglecting quite quite a lot. A macroeconomist would probably be able to give you a much more
nuanced. Take down of all of, you know, Keynesian, 's para, keynes's paradox, Has but I'd start with that when you look at but once you convince people that the military sectors way too big, they'll finally conceded and say you know what, all right, it's too big. In fact it's so big that we can't stop and we can't do anything about it because then all these people would lose their jobs and the economy would go into total recession.
So once they agree with us, they say, you know what, we actually can't do anything when it comes to the mindset of, there's all these people employed. And for us to drastically cut back, would lead to mass unemployment and then a drop in consumption and then a massive recession. What if anything is wrong with that?
So, in terms of again, like we can make all kinds of predictions about what would happen, the kind of the the knock-on effects, I think, I mean honestly like if you were to drastically decrease the size of the US military or the Department of Defense, you would be disappointing. A lot of people and so that's not. I think an invalid thing That people point out the, the relevant question I think is this one is what were those people potentially be doing instead?
And would those types of activities be more productive than the current activities in which they're engaged.
So again, not to downplay the fact that when you have significant changes or reductions in one particular sector, that that is not painful for individuals who are working within that sector but it ignores The other types of things that people could be, could be doing and other things that people people would do. And it's not mean, certainly wouldn't think if someone is working as a military or a defense contractor, who has skills in a particular area, you
know, a purchasing or something like that, but they're not going to be able to transfer those skills into an alternative, an alternative form of employment. And so it ignores the fact that you have growth then in Other sectors. Where as opposed to now channeling all of these resources into defense, you're channeling these resources into something else. How can we falsify? I'm thinking of how we can actually measure it.
So, one of the things that would come to mind is, are there any Industries in America, which previously employed a large percentage of the population, which now employs a small percentage of the population? Are there any Industries? We can look at to say used to have a lot of people here. Now we don't and it's not like they all had to be buried in Siberia. They're just working somewhere else. What is what's an example of one
of those Industries? I mean the classic example that we often times due to their principal students is agriculture and so you used to have like the vast majority of the population that had to work in order to be able to feed the small percentage of the population that was not working in agriculture. Now of course you do not have the vast majority of people working in agriculture.
It's actually a relatively small segment of individuals who are working within that sector other examples that you could look at two things. Like again using some classic examples can needle stick makers people within the horse and buggy industry. And again, it's not saying that when these types of changes occur that it's not painful for the individuals who are losing their job.
So if you're someone who you've worked your entire life as a Candlestick maker and then all of a sudden Here Comes electricity and light bulbs, that you might not have some real difficulties in transitioning to an economy where that is no longer. Something that is as desirable but we can talk About other policies that could potentially assist with those types of transitions.
That doesn't mean that you continue to throw good money after bad into something that is ineffective no longer valuable or is, you know, the product of military of the product of bureaucratic bloating That is a great response because you can say well there's there's all these jobs and if they lose their job they don't know what they're going to do. Even though there's a great number of jobs that are available today more so than usual.
But if you if your responses, well we can actually do a number of other things to increase the likelihood that people will have more job opportunities. Well, that's at least softening the blow when it comes. To how countries or how anyone can increase the number of job opportunities within a country? What are some steps? They should take.
So one of the things that I always suggest and again there's one of the things that it's very true and comes through a lot in my work, is that a lot of what I do is what I would refer to and others as diagnostic. So pointing out the problems of a particular issue, not nearly as much of it being prescriptive in terms. Like, and here is what you should do. Because ultimately, I don't have like a nice list or a silver bullet kind of an answer for how
we fix a lot of these problems. But if you want to talk about things, like job creation, or want to talk about things that just make people better off, we've returned to a lot of the basics that we think about things like trade, like allowing people, the ability to freely contract with each other giving people I think this the the permission to engage in economic activities. So some of the things that would be like low-hanging domestic fruit.
Reducing things like occupational licensing for a variety of different types of careers or different types of activities, allowing people more easily to to move. So we can talk about that within the context of international borders, specifically. But there are lots of things like that that we can do, right? Reducing trade barriers is
another good example. And these are all things that can increase productivity and not just domestically but also have some really important Global implications, as well for individuals who claim to be really concerned about global
poverty. There are some really internal policies that are inward focused that would likely be a lot more effective than a lot of our current policies which are very externally focused and Attempting to quote, unquote, fix whatever country it is. That were attempting to intervene in Have you seen any cases of countries that had very large military budgets and then drastically decrease, their military budget and did not experience significant economic
hardship. So I think there are a few different things that we would have to think about within that particular question. So obviously people think about countries like Germany and Japan who went from being very large military Powers who suddenly not only are you not a military power but you can't have him. Terry anymore. And so certainly there was pain in, you know, the post World War Two period in both of those places.
But now you see both Japan and Germany is being very successful countries from from an economic and other perspectives, I'd have to think a bit more in terms of outside of kind of a post-war scenario. If you had large countries that word take their, their militaries, get them very large and then shrink them back down. I mean, Historically, if you look at us data, you would see huge run-ups in the military in Wartime, and then significant draw Downs on military power
after conflict. But have to think more about peacetime examples. Yeah, well, there were the Roaring 20s after the Paris 1919 there. There's a great paper called the Great Depression of 1946 which is a play on the fact that there was no Great Depression. After the second World War, Or took took place. What was the most important thing you learned from your research on manufacturing? Militarism US. Government propaganda in the war on terror, call me on the most
important thing. That's him a couple of the most important, okay? I'll doing research for that bookie. One of the things that really stood out to me in researching, that book is the Contemporary relevance of propaganda Within attic societies. So I know a lot of people when thinking about propaganda, they tend to associate with autocracies and I think rightfully so or if you mention Democratic propaganda, they'll think about, you know, posters from World War 1 or World War
two things like that. But there's not really a lot of discussion of contemporary propaganda. And so one of the big takeaways from working on that book was that propaganda is still very, very much a contemporary and relevant topic within modern day. Is so that would be the first thing. And then the second, I guess, most important thing would be the implications of the use continued and historical of propaganda, both short-term consequences and long-term
consequences. Short-term consequences, being that propaganda can have a significant impact on the types of policies that people do and do not support. And then in the long run, more profoundly than that, is that propaganda. Ava, can effectively work to undermine the types of Institutions that we purport to really want to uphold and protect. How can I determine whether or not? I'm watching propaganda, or very accurate information.
That's one thing that comes out in this research, is that often times? It's incredibly difficult to know what it is that you're seeing. And well there are a few reasons for that but there are two that are I'll offer. So one is that there is as your
question actually highlights. There is a really serious asymmetric information problem, so when it comes to releasing information about defense or national security policy and Manufacturing militarism talks exclusively about policies related to the National Security and defense space. So you have these asymmetric information problems where the individuals who have Of the information know much more than the individuals who are receiving that information.
And it's difficult for the layperson to really kind of make heads or tails of a lot of it. But then the other thing that you have to is that you also, in addition to these asymmetric information problems is you have pure Monopoly on the information, from the perspective of the individuals who are the repositories of that information.
So the department of It's decides what it's going to release and when the TSA decides, what it's going to release and when and people say, oh well, you know, Freedom of Information Act request, and it's like, well and we highlight actually one of these with respect to the TSA. Sure I can I can issue a foia request or I can submit one but it might be eight years before I actually get the data that I've
requested. And so in that case is it, is it really helpful and so it's difficult just from those particular things. But the other thing I think that's difficult. Called about it is that we actually encounter it quite a lot. So if you've ever watched a professional sport either in person or on television, in the last 20 years, you've likely been subjected to what the dod calls paid patriotism, which is
propaganda by another name. If you've gone to a movie theater in the last 20 years and you've seen a movie or if you've turned on television and you've ever watched a, a Gordon Ramsay cooking show where they are. Are cooking for some branch of the military. Congratulations you've watched propaganda because all of those things are receiving assistance, in some way from the Department of Defense and yet people who are consuming these pieces of entertainment, they don't know.
Like there's not some disclaimer like hey this, you know, Fillmore this TV show was vetted carefully by the Department of Defense prior prior to are Yeah, really, you can look at articles like this is one of my favorites. Here's why economists don't expect trillions of dollars in economic stimulus to create inflation, published by CNBC July 23rd 2020. It's one of those things I saw as a screenshot on Twitter. And I go, that's got to be a
fake article. I got to look that up and here it is. All right there. No shame. No retraction. No apologies, no Mass firings. @Cn be EC. No, thank you so much. Austrian School and George Mason University. We've been wrong for decades. What else do we have to learn? It's it's incredible. It's it's all around us. Any tips for people who want to do their best to not get manipulated by Propaganda.
So at the end of the book, we offer a few different potential solutions for combating propaganda and the the piece that I think is probably most relevant for. Kind of every everyday individuals is to be skeptical of the information that you were receiving to not take the information that you're receiving necessarily at face value. So, we refer to it as kind of a,
like, a citizen inoculation. If you will the the the difficulty with that though, in one of the things that we highlight is that often times even if people want the relevant information, It's often times difficult or even impossible for people to acquire that information even if they really want to get it. So that example that I mentioned a few minutes ago, related to the TSA is a relevant example.
You can't get that data and it's not just lay citizens who don't have access to that kind of data those types of information asymmetries that. I also referenced a few minutes ago that applies at multiple levels of government. And so, if you're a member of Congress and there are certain information that you want you may not be able to access that either the paid patriotism piece that I mentioned is a relevant example there, so paid patriotism.
If people aren't particularly familiar, the Department of Defense has spent for again, a couple of decades, Money Paid outfits, like various teams of the NFL, the national Hockey League Major League Baseball Major League Soccer NASCAR to engage in patriotic displays. And so, a lot of times, like, if you've ever seen the National Guard and singing the National Anthem or a full field flag display, or a surprise family
homecoming. Oftentimes, those are not genuine patriotic displays but instead were things that were bought and paid for by the Department of Defense. So how does this relate to Congressional oversight and Congress, not having all the information. The best information that we have on paid patriotism in the post 9/11 period comes from the late Senator, John McCain and Jeff Flake Sophos out. In Arizona, there is one report that came out in 2012. It's called tackling patriotism.
And that is a valuable report because it actually gives us us data, but it acknowledges upfront that it is woefully incomplete. Like it's missing years of data that we just simply don't have and so they're not able to access that data either. Now, whether or not that data is actually been kept or not that's not clear to me.
So we have we don't necessarily always have this ability to figure out what what we have and what we don't and it's not always easy for us to get but encouraging people. To be skeptical in the information that they receive from, from really just the the channels that they get. So that doesn't mean that you have to be like wearing a tinfoil hat and, you know, thinking like everything that you are seeing is a lie and everything that you are seeing
as propaganda. But not taking everything that you're receiving, maybe at face value is a healthy helpful thing, for people who want to be informed and educated participant participate. Participate. Try it again. Participatory citizens, one of my favorite examples was how Adam kinzinger is so uppity about how there's misinformation out there that we have to tackle. So Russia goes in in February and you know what everyone's talking about.
We need to support Ukraine. And this guy, Sam hide like this comedian. Puts a picture of his face on a video game and says the ghost of Kiev Is flying and killing all these Russians and have kinzinger retweets and says, look how cool this is, Viva Ukraine, and all this stuff.
He fell for the biggest one. The only reason I mention that is we're always told well there's the information asymmetry in the marketplace and that's why government needs to step in. And and regulate it, as though, there isn't a difference in the amount of information, politicians and citizens have, it's like, people are so dumb that they can't have the right to make their own decisions. Also, they should have the right to vote on decisions that are
imposed on everyone else. It all comes full circle and that's why I think you and dr. Coin harnessing or rather harmonizing the importance of foreign policy and domestic policy is so important. Finally. Any of the major role lessons from tyranny comes home, the domestic fate of US military ISM that people should be aware of. So, one of the things that we highlight in that book, In the domestic consequences of foreign intervention and how it is that
even governments that are? Well, constrained domestically can have those constraints eroded as a result of foreign intervention. And so a lot of the Contemporary types of policy hot buttons that we that we look at are all relevant and related to those foreign policy interventions. So to give to just very contemporary Everyone's current discussions about surveillance all have links to foreign
intervention. So people who are concerned about, you know, the use of various surveillance Technologies, domestically, those have their roots in various foreign interventions, people who are concerned about police militarization and just policing in general. So use of SWAT teams or the use of other military tactics that is well has very very clear links.
To foreign interventions. And so these types of very real very intense policy debates that we are having right now are very much connected to that foreign policy space and so recognizing those consequences is helpful and then is something that we should really think about the next time that we hear or someone is suggesting additional foreign interventions because one of the things that we highlight throughout the book Is that a lot of times these consequences they're not
immediate, they're still very much tied to that initial foreign intervention but the the fruit of that so to speak might not be seen for you know 5 10. Even 20 years down the road after you've had kind of the time for the groundwork to be laid and then these various things coalesce When it comes to, if you ask people, should we be thankful for Farmers? They'll say, of course Farmers make food and without food, we
die. But we don't have this round-the-clock propaganda campaign about how farmers can do no wrong. And when a farmer tells you to do something, you blindly obey them. Because without them we'd starve, yet, when it comes to the police and military, it's literally like to question them is to hate your country. Yet blindly supporting bores in
place. Like Afghanistan where the Taliban took over after 11 days and a 20-year War, it turns out, the Patriots should have been negotiating with the Taliban for bin Laden in like 2001. So when it comes to, how can people say over. All right, look Abigail Hall. And Chris coin are right about this, but I am so terrified of being seen as a guy who hates the troops seen as a coward and a traitor. What advice do you have for that person? It's really difficult.
So, when I told people I was like if It's really socially awkward to be the person who sits down during the standing salute to the military during the hockey game.
And I say that from personal experience, being the person who is sitting down during these things, it's socially very awkward and there's actually some other there's a journalist who in the aftermath of 9/11 when the think this was right after the u.s. invaded Afghanistan and it was the national anthem and he was with his adult son in his adult son was wanting to sit. And he basically was like, I don't want to get beaten up today, like, let's just go along
to get along. And so that is one of the in the book, we talk about the functions of propaganda, is 10 to create these shared expectations of what it is that people should do and shouldn't do. I think one of the things that and it's one of the things that I try to explain to people who sometimes are make they listen to what I have to say and they say, well, you hate As of the military or they'll say, you hate police and my Ace in the Hole is always. Well, my husband is a marine
veteran. So like, clearly I don't hate them all because I marry, I married a guy who has his military experience, but beyond that to be a bit more a bit more serious about it is that there is a profound difference between loving your country and loving your government. So, Like and have a very strong passion for the ideals of liberalism in the classical sense of people, being able to have autonomy to freely, engage with other human beings.
I have very strong skepticism. And I have very strong feelings about the actions of my government and those two things I think we can talk about is not necessarily being the same
entity. You can talk about people who are operating within spaces, so you can talk about, you know, and we can talk about individual police officers and not assume that every person who is a police officer is terrible, but recognize that there are some problematic institutional structures with the within within the realm in which they
are operating. You can do the same same kind of thing, but also, I genuinely think that healthy skepticism about All layers and levels of say like the military is
important. I don't, I said I don't have anything profound in terms of like this will get you out of any argument where people might be really upset with you, but those are the things that I typically tend to think about and the things that I typically will offer to people when having this kind of conversation, Well, yeah, just recognizing that. The state is not the society. It's a parasite within the society. I think that's that, that's a
fine. Did you come across any civilian numbers when you were doing research with drones? Because I remember hearing that 90% of people killed by the drones are not the targets and even the targets have like this ridiculous six degrees from Bin Laden, kind of justification, but did you come across any civilian numbers in your research? So there's some I'm so in my original work, there's the, the best data that I could find related to civilian casualty numbers.
Those numbers are really difficult for us to find for a couple of reasons. So one that data is likely not actually kept for maybe some obvious reasons and maybe some not. So obvious ones. On the one hand, if you have those types of numbers, then you might see erratically at some point, have to make them
available. The other thing too is that it's actually Like if you're conducting say, a drone strike in rural Pakistan or in Yemen, you're not exactly going to go out immediately after and then try to like, take a complete accounting. So we have a data Gathering issue. Now, you do have things. Like, if I want to read like The Many newspaper, I'm going to get one number. If I get numbers from the United States, I'm going to see something completely different.
The truth is probably somewhere within the middle of those. The other problem that we have with Computing or with getting an understanding of Civilian casualty data is the way that the military has historically defined a military Target.
So if you are a military aged mail within a strike zone, so military-age male read like 15 to 65 and you happen to be within the strike zone, then you're considered oftentimes a military Target and so when you define a way civilians because you happen to be making, All and in the vast majority of age range, or the massive vast majority of Ages for your life, then your by definition, a combatant and so we have we have a few different difficulties there.
But the information that we do have suggest exactly what you pointed out that often times. The the Target that is ultimately neutralized, is the language that is often used is not the intended target and that often times we do have a substantial number of Civilian casualties which Cuts against this idea that uavs are you know like this kind of surgical like tool in which case you can operate them with just this
incredible Precision people. Often forget that the there even if that's the case, they're only as good as the intelligence that they're operating on. And there's a whole bunch of other issues related to the type of intelligence that often times is being acted upon Within These various scenarios in the Middle East specifically. We have about five minutes left. Thank you for being so generous with your time. What can people learn from previous foreign interventions?
Let's just talk about America because the audience is mostly American, and the American regime is provoking war with both Russia and China at this time. So let's just focus on this for now, what can we learn historically and apply it to the present when it comes? As to the donbas and Taiwan. So when we think about the United States track record with foreign intervention, it's
ultimately genuinely terrible. Now I have sat on panels, I have sat on debates with people who will immediately, they'll hear that and their first instinct will be to bring up well, but World War Two, and my response to that is always, if you have to go back to 1945, To have an example of a foreign intervention that was worthwhile given the Cornucopia of foreign interventions undertaken by the United States. That is an awful argument from a statistical point.
So, I would say that the, the general take away from looking at all US, foreign interventions is that they do not work. You cannot export democracy at gunpoint, you cannot impose top-down regime. Um, change in a way that is going to stick. So to speak. The way, the way that you want it too. Now, that's not to say that occasionally, you might not see something where you have intervention, that could be
successful. So again people will point to like Germany and Japan Chris coin, my co-author and his book after Ward is a really nice discussion of why examples like Germany and Japan are not really relevant examples in the Types of intervention that people are typically talking about because the institutional structures in those places are are different. They had kind of the pre-existing institutions
already. So I would say that the takeaway is that foreign intervention by and large is not effective at achieving its goals and I would also say that the consequences of those interventions are not just the dollars that are spent, it's not just the lives that are lost and those lives are remarkably important and I don't want to downplay those at all the other consequences though are very serious and they're very numerous and we can't know often times what those
consequences are prior to their prior to them manifesting. So again like police militarization being one, such example. Yeah. And that's a perfect example. The second world war of only mentioning the benefits on the back and they go. Okay, there were tens of millions of deaths and there were a lot in Germany and Japan alone and we gave half of Europe to Stalin and the Communists took over in China.
So can we stop bragging about this thing and using it as an example, the good War killed, tens of millions of people that's the one that they brag about and This is supposed to be patriotic to just blindly obey this tyranny, when it comes to the full list of interventions. Do you know, anywhere where we could find, like, an actual oil, a full list of interventions.
Actually some current research I'm working on, has me trying to come up with a comprehensive list of u.s. interventions into Latin America. And that task I have determined is almost impossible and let me explain why. Because you have to have some definition of an intervention.
So if you're talking about boots on the ground military type of intervention, I'm sure that their list where you can easily pull that information assuming that we know that military troops have actually been deployed there. So taking taking that as the caveat but then there are other things too. So if you're talking about cohort covert operations. So if the CIA back, Saku does that count as an intervention? Or if you are engaged in more what we would call like soft interventions.
So if you're attempting to influence elections or you're attempting to, you know, use foreign aid as like a diplomatic means, does that count as a foreign intervention? And so a lot of those things it's going to depend kind of on what exactly that people are looking for. I don't know of any comprehensive list that includes all of those things, but if someone out there, Who is
listening does please tell me? Because I would desperately desperately want to see it even if it's in very rough form. The website is Abigail our Hall.com, you will also have a link to the website which collects all her papers. What is it? Ssrn is that somewhere in.com? And I will just, I will tell people to that. Like you can find a lot of people's research on that website and it's not going to be gated like you would get at a
journal. A lot of its earlier drafts than maybe the final one, but as someone who's written, quite a few papers often times, there's not a huge difference between what Still on ssrn and what ultimately winds up in the journal so it'll it'll give you get you what you want to know. Thanks to everyone for watching Keith and I don't try don't anyone in the libertarian Institute dr. Hall thanks so much for your time. Thank you Keith. The United States age, Ukraine,
and her people. So that we can fight Russia over there and we don't have to fight Russia here. This is your moment not all they all cried. Your fight is our fight. Once I go to the 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia with super good. So I don't think we should go into the government. I don't think it's necessary.
I don't think it's a good idea. Yeah, I mean I guess you think in terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. To you, praying for my third visit in five weeks last Tuesday, in support of these very goals. This time, conducting parallel coordinated, high-level diplomacy, with EU High representative, Cathy Ashton since Ukraine's Independence in 1991. The United States has supported ukrainians.
As they build Democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European
aspirations. We've invested over five billion dollars to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and Democratic Ukraine, going to go back and tell our colleagues what rushes up to and the baltics, what they're doing to Ukraine, get briefed about Georgia. We hope to make 2017 a year of offense. We believe that Putin has hacked into our elections in America, that is trying to undermine
democracy all over the world. And it's time for new sanctions to hit him hard as an individual is energy sector. His banking sector it is, time to push back against Putin, but be a better friend to our allies over here. Including Georgia, I visit the very important trip. We just left Ukraine, where we've seen firsthand, what happens when In Russia, crosses over into a country's Independence and we saw it in our own election with the attempt to influence our election.
We will be working for much tougher sanctions against Russia. They attacked the United States of America. The hacking was an attack and we should be treated as such and we think their financial institutions and other aspects of the Russian economy should be addressed. And we we will strongly urge our colleagues to enact more meaningful and stronger sanctions against Russia because of their attack on the United States of America.