So it's my pleasure to introduce the last speaker of the day, Ewan Burney, the director of EMBL EBI, and the deputy director general of EMBL. He's one of the world leaders in bioinformatics and genomics. He has won numerous awards. I just mentioned some of the highest honors. He's a fellow of the Royal Society. He's a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the commander of the Order of the British Empire. He's the non-executive director of Genomics England, and I think also very importantly for our network, he's the chair of the executive committee of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. So there's hardly any better person than him to tell us about the grand vision for genomics and medicine and which the role in machine learning could play in that. So thank you for agreeing to speak here and we are looking forward to your talk. Okay, well, thank you for inviting me. After some thought, I'm actually gonna give you an example. When I put this together, I thought it would be better to give you an example, partly because I think it's good to be concrete and partly because I think it's important to realize what we're trying to do in machine learning in biology, but I'm gonna kind of open up and frame it in a variety of ways. So my first piece of framing is just reminding you about this amazing organism that we studied. So these are humans. We are pretty cool. We're actually pretty standard mammal. If you want to understand mice well, you should study humans as well as vice versa. And just to say, we have changed the way we can measure humans. So to remind you about humans, if you're a geneticist, we're outbred, that means that we mate randomly. We mate seemingly randomly. And we have pretty standard and pretty good genetics. There are a large number of humans around the world and we get measured by this amazing thing called healthcare. And that means that we get phenotyped and we get genotyped by the process of healthcare. Actually, another interesting thing about humans compared to other organisms is we're quite big. This is annoying if you're in imaging because you need quite a big thing to image us, but it's really useful if you're in molecular biology. You can actually get quite a lot of a human, in particular blood, but if you ask nicely, you'll be amazed what you can get. So you can study humans in ways that are quite accessible. And so there's a huge amount of opportunities around studying humans. And a lot of this ends up being about, now choose your phrase, machine learning. I've decided to call it machine learning because that's the name of your course.  And if you want to be super trendy, you can call it AI or deep learning or something like that now. In some sense, this is all just very high dimensionality, extremely high, lots and lots of measurements at the same time, often highly correlated with each other. And these are very large-scale data sets. And I would like to draw your attention that we're trying to do two different things often when we do this either multivariate statistics or machine learning or deep learning. So one is effectively a describing process. So that is, in some sense, recognizing the correlation patterns inside of the variables that we have and coming up very often with a smaller dimensional space that represents that higher dimensional space. So that smaller dimensional space is a kind of description, is a mathematical description of the higher dimensional space. And you can think about this in lots of different ways. So maps are a smaller dimensional space of what is happening on the real world geology geography. Again, there's a whole bunch of sort of smaller dimensional spaces, for example, in video compression. Video compression is a smaller dimensional space of the higher dimensions, which is the final video shown to you. But description is not the same as understanding. And that's a really important thing. Understanding is when we can understand why this high dimensional space operates in the way we want to do it. And just creating a lower dimensional space is not enough. And I really encourage you to read this book called The Book of Why by Judea Pill. I don't actually agree with everything he says, but I think his fundamental facts are absolutely right. That is that in these complex and multivariable systems, correlation is commonplace, but what is key is understanding what is causal. And Judea in this book lays it out extremely well. Like I said, I don't agree with all of it, but I really recommend it. So I actually want to go into a particular case here. And I'm just going to introduce the set of humans that I look at. So these are half a million people. They are middle-aged, middle-class British people. They were recruited between the ages of 40 and 60, and they are now between the ages of 60 and 80. And in fact, they include both of my parents. So amazingly, I was studying at some level my parents here. I do not know, of course, who, which two of them out of the half million were my parents. But that will tell you immediately that this is slightly ascertained for healthy, healthy British, healthy on recruitment groups. They underdid a intensive half-day phenotyping on recruitment. So they spent half a day wandering around, getting measured in all sorts of different ways. Lada and Yorin and other things were taken then. They have all been genotyped. They are all being exome sequenced, and they will soon all be genome sequenced. So we have their full genome. And lots of other phenotypes have been measured on them, including 100,000 MRI scans, so imaging. And there's 18,000 of these available now. In fact, that's gone up since I wrote these slides. And I'm a little bit biased, because my parents are in this, but I think if you go around, you'll find that it's not so much bias, but probably the best human cohort in the world. The only other one I would highlight here, which I think is amazing as well, is the Danish healthcare records, which is sort of rather remarkably all of Denmark. But it's a really wonderful cohort. And what we decided to study here was an observation made actually by one of Europe's first scientists, Leonardo da Vinci, these beautiful pictures of the human heart, and actually cow's hearts as well. And in some of these pictures, he noticed that the human heart was rough on the inside. There was a rough surface on the inside of the human heart, in particular on the left-hand side of the human heart. This is a picture of that cutter. This is a human heart peeled away on the left-hand side here. And you're seeing this really quite rough surface of the heart, and they're called trapeculae. And we developed from the MRI scans in the UK Biobank a way of measuring this. And to do this, it's worth noting that the MRI scans are actually sort of 2D sections that are then reconstructed into a 3D section. So we take these 2D sections, and we're particularly interested in the left-hand side, which has a much rougher surface to the left ventricle. And because there are 18,000 of these things, one cannot do the next steps by hand. And so a very talented cardiologist developed a deep learning mechanism for recognizing the boundary of the left-hand side of the heart, and then tracing out the blood-muscle boundary, which is shown in this blue line here. And then we took a statistic developed actually in geography called fractal dimension, which aims to describe how rough a surface is. So the fjords of Norway are far rougher than the coastline of the Netherlands, and exactly the same thing can be applied to this inner surface of the heart. This is called fractal dimension, and it gives us a single number for each of these slices. And now I'm gonna skip over two years of work about getting this image analysis robust. And so it's two years, a clinical cardiologist, an image expert in deep learning, and then this fractal analysis. And this is some of the diagnostic plots that we use to ensure that the measurement works correctly. So I'm sure in your course, you're doing some of this, and please do, it's the kind of engine room of machine learning is doing this transformation of datasets into a set of metrics that you can use further on. Be reassured that we could transform these images into a view of how rough the insight was.  Just to say, across the heart, we kind of standardized on nine different sections across the heart, basal, mid, and apical, each with three sections. So we have nine measurements per heart. And you can see now the GWAS of all nine measurements here. So if you haven't come across a GWAS, this is actually incredibly straightforward statistics, which is a linear model of your measurement against a genotype association. The complicated thing, but it's now quite well established, is where you draw your statistical cutoff, and plenty of effort has gone into five times 10 to the minus eight, that's being an appropriate genome-wide statistic. What's being plotted here is what's called the Manhattan plots. On the X axis is every SNP that was tested in the human genome. It's about a million such SNPs in this scenario, so there's a million points on the X axis. And the Y axis is minus log 10 of the P value of the model. And the little line there is the threshold at five times 10 to the minus eight. And so what you can see here is that we have different places in the genome, which go above the line. And this characteristic business of having a number of points at the same place is due to the structure of the human genome variation, which is called linkage disequilibrium. It's actually a sign that your GWAS has worked out well. So you can see here that we've got some nice signal in slice two and slice three and slice four, et cetera. You could also see that, for example, that signal on slice two is echoed on a signal in slice three, but is not present by the time we get to slices seven and eight. There's a signal in seven and eight on chromosome three. It's just shifted to the end of chromosome three. So we have different genetics up and down the heart, but the dimensionality here is not perfect. We explored a number of ways of how to combine this. And actually we did a matter analysis. So this is where you consider each readout as being one way of estimating some underlying distribution called mTag. And this came up with a single discovery set shown here and the plot below indicates where the significant hits happen. And when there's an orange plot, it was significant only in the matter analysis and was never significant in one particular analysis. So those are the orange lines that go across, for example, on chromosome one and chromosome, further into, yeah, the two on chromosome one. So we have a number of different pieces of genetics that underlie this roughness in the heart, in different places up and down the heart. And I will not now bore you, but we went through replication to prove to ourselves and the pesky reviewers, reviewer three, that this was all kosher. And indeed we found that this replicated in separate cohort. And if you're a cardiologist, this are the places on the genome and the other phenotypes that this is associated with. And each one of these is a little story and a little drama in of itself. And for some people, you stop here. This is quite interesting. We have taken now a high dimensional dataset, these images of the heart, we've reduced the dimensionality into a lower space. We've analyzed that lower space with genetics and we've found some places in the genome that are associated with it. One could end the story here. We actually have an answer to the question, what is it actually doing? Why is our hearts rough? Why are our hearts rough? And one of the observations made by us and others is that people who have rougher hearts, so this fractal dimension FD, have better hearts in terms of the amount of blood that are pumped out. And that is a correlation between these two things. Rougher hearts on the left have better, are better pumpers, but we don't know which way ran. Maybe when you pump more blood, your heart becomes rougher, maybe it's a response, or rougher hearts are actually better at pumping blood. And there's actually a physical model of this that can be created and colleagues in the University of Padua and Milan created a physical model of the inside of the heart. And they suggested that there's good hemodynamic dynamic principles that suggest that rougher hearts should pump better. And my naive view of this is it's a bit like golf balls with their dimples. And their dimples seem to catch air and create a liquid-liquid interface, or sorry, an air interface for golf balls. Here the roughness of the heart might capture some liquid and create a liquid-liquid interface in that key pushing moment of the heart. So we have a suggested hypothesis that trabeculae levels impact cardiac levels. But remember the correlation and all of this dimensionality reduction cannot tell us the opposite, that it's not the opposite way around, that cardiac output inputs stroke volume. And more irritatingly, it can't even take another thing that there's a third factor that we've not measured, exercise or pollution as a trial, which both makes your heart rougher and means that your cardiac output is higher or rather for pollution, maybe it's the opposite way around. Pollution reduces the amount of cardiac trabeculation and means you don't have such great hearts. And we often see this in human data sets that those unmeasured factors that influence the things that we are measuring. This is where bringing genetics in really helps because we know that genetics can be associated with both or either. And then importantly, we know we can convince ourselves that genetics is not associated with many of these other factors in society. And the best analogy here is with randomized controlled trials. So in randomized controlled trials, you take 100 people, you randomize and very often you make it a balanced randomization. So 50 people get a drug, 50 people get a placebo and we measure the outcome. So I'm actually on a randomized controlled trial. I'm on the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine trial at the moment for SARS-KV2. And I do not know whether I got the actual vaccine or a dummy vaccine which will protect me against meningitis but not SARS-KV2. So I am in one of these trials. We can think of genotypes as a very similar sort of aspect. So you take now many more people and the reason why is sadly the assignment of genotypes is not random, perfectly random. It's not 50-50. So very often on a genotype, you'll get 50 with one variant and many more with another variant. I am now skipping over the fact that we actually have two alleles because we have two parents. This all generalizes when this becomes a genotype with three options. So, but just to keep it simple, I've just imagined that we have only two alleles or haploid and then measure outcomes. The great thing about genetics, there's two great things about genetics is we don't have to actually administer this drug. So the genetics ends up being like a tiny drug with effects. But the other thing about it is that we can often find many different variants. So variants that associate with each of these, with the same aspect, but it's a different set of 50 people in each case in the sort of smaller arm or they only overlap by a very small amount. And this process of using genotypes as like a drug trial is called Mendelian randomization. And the way it's shown is by these plots and I should go through these plots. Maybe the bottom one is the top one, the PowerPoint screen grab did not work quite so well. So the bottom one shows each dot here is a SNP and I'm plotting, or my student in fact is plotting Hannah, is plotting its effect on one measurement. This is an eye measurement called interocular pressure and its effect on another measurement. In this case, it's an eye disease glaucoma. So up here, this is a SNP. I don't know, can you see my cursor? I don't know about that. We can, yes, we can. Up here is a SNP, which has this amount of effect on interocular pressure and it has this amount of risk on glaucoma. Now it's interesting that one SNP associates both with this endophenotype, this phenotype we can measure on the eye and on this risk disease, but what's even more impressive is that many SNPs that influence IOP, in general, they influence glaucoma, they influence it in the same direction. That's really important. And you can see that you can fit actually a reasonable linear model of all of these SNPs. The SNPs lie on a straight line. This is another example here where the endophenotype that we're using is lipid in chlorasterols, chlorasterol lipids, and the outcome here is coronary heart disease. Now in both cases, we happen to know that disassociation between LDL-chlorasterol, so again, each one of these, think of them as like a little drug trial where you're making, there's some people here who have slightly more pressure in their eyes, that's interocular pressure, and then they're slightly more likely to get glaucoma. On these SNPs up here, there are people who are slightly more likely to have high LDL, and therefore they are, well, not therefore, they end up being slightly more likely to have coronary heart disease. Well, the only is that true for one SNP, but it's true for all of these SNPs on aggregate. And the way we show that aggregate behavior is this meta-analysis, what this is showing now is being plotted basically is the slope of the line of the line for each SNP. So each SNP implies a particular slope, and the red points here are the best fit line, and there's a variety of ways of doing that best fit. You can just do the best fit, imagine it's a regression, that ends up being not so sophisticated because some SNPs have bigger effects than others, and you also get biased by certain, there's certain systematic biases that can come into these measurements. And these different ways of doing the meta-analysis are different ways of coping with systematic bias. And importantly, for these red lines, the confidence, so what each plot here is the point estimate is the slope of the line defined by that SNP, and then the black bars are the confidence interval. Of course, if the confidence intervals crosses zero, we're not confident that there is no association. You can see across the SNPs, this is kind of biased towards the top right, but there are some SNPs that actually show the opposite direction. When we take all the SNPs together, the meta-analysis is pretty confident that it is not, sorry, that it's not zero, and therefore there is association between LDL and heart attacks. Now, both of these are sort of positive controls because in both cases we have drug trials, in the case of LDL and heart attacks, they're absolutely nailed down that if you lower LDL, you reduce heart attacks. And in this case, there's actually a surgical procedure on interocular pressure that if you do this surgical procedure to relieve interocular pressure, you reduce, in fact, the progression of glaucoma. So this is also quite nailed down. You can see the meta-analysis here is good. I want to point out that this analysis works in the opposite way. This is meta-analysis, I'm showing now the meta-analysis for many SNPs in many different cohorts. For HDL, this is sometimes called good cholesterol. Now, good cholesterol observationally has been found to be counter-correlated to LDL, low cholesterol. And so people observationally, people who have high HDL have had less heart attacks, but we've never really known whether high HDL is directly protective for heart attacks or whether it's just a correlation with other aspects of lipid metabolism. Now, a number of drug companies made drugs to the HDL pathway and they performed very expensive trials, billions of dollars of trials. A number of people also did this genetic analysis, which was aiming to use SNPs in different places in the HDL pathway to estimate whether there was any effect. And what you can see here in the meta-analysis, which is this diamond right at the bottom. So the one means there's no effect. It's an odds ratio of one. The SNPs are neither protective or non-protective to heart attacks. And you can see rather depressingly that it is bang on one. Just to cut to the chase, the three billion pound dollar drug trials also discovered the same thing. That is drugs that change HDL do not affect heart attacks. So now going to my original question. So back to this question here. Is it this way or is it this way? Do you want to know? Or is it this? We were able to do the same analysis here between fracture dimensions and stroke volume and later on in a different phenotype called QRS. Now it's not as good as interocular pressure or LDL. So that these straight lines are convincingly not zero. And that is what these red lines show you here. It's not quite as beautiful as LDL or glaucoma, but it's convincing that this association is really the case that the trabeculi difference leads to changes in stroke volume. And there's a different phenotype that we measured or other colleagues of ours measured about electrical conductance. And there is reasonable good evidence about this case, though it's actually down to pretty much one snip drive set, oops, yeah. So I've just talked to you about hearts and there's no reason not to do this on everything. So I jokingly, I will do this on any part of the human physiology and my current student is working her way through the eye. And there's all the different ways of measuring eye morphology also in UK Biobank. And this is a picture of some of the different parts of that eye and here are the GWASs. And in this case, actually, she is showing that these endophenotypes are not involved in some of the classical diseases that they were thought to be involved with. So the opposite way round where we sort of disprove our hypothesis rather than improve hypothesis.  It was biology. We developed a robust way to measure cardiac trabeculation and we found many low size associated with these anatomical features. And from machine learning or multivariate statistics process this involved an awful lot of machine learning and multivariate statistics. But we are able to go beyond the descriptive view of this towards a causal view by using both physical modeling and medelian randomization. We have strong evidence that these anatomical structures have a role in cardiac output and electrical conductance. So just to acknowledge the people who contributed to this. This was work done by extremely tarnated student in my lab. She now runs her own lab at Coltsman Harbour, Hannah Meyer. But she worked with a great set of colleagues led by Declan O'Regan and Stuart Cook in Imperial College London with many patients being measured through the NHS here as well. And I'd highlight Antonio DiMarbo and Timothy Dawes who spearheaded this analysis. And that goes to another aspect of this kind of machine learning. It is definitely a team sport. Individuals here very rarely have all the knowledge and expertise. So some people may be good at the statistics but less so the data production and data management. Some people are good at the data management but less the logistics of the people coming in and out or the measurements. And some people are good at the measurements and not so good at the statistics. And you really need a team to deliver some of this. And this has been a great and wonderful team. So thank you very much. And I'm very happy to take any questions. Good. Thank you. We have two ways of asking questions. One from inside the network is by raising your hand here in the Zoom channel and the other is through Slido. This is for the audience on YouTube in case they want to ask a question. So is there a question from within the network at the moment? So maybe I'll start with the question then. So you emphasized this interpretability and understanding very much. So that's a bit at odds with the current trend or you could say hype in machine learning, this deep learning. So do you see or which role do you see for deep learning? So I, like many people, so I have made my piece with deep learning. So I think if you'd asked me that question a year ago or two years ago, I would have said it's so, we're really misleading ourselves by having these sort of black box, uninterpretable in some sense that had their high dimensional non-linear models that transform one space to another. But so there's two things. Irritatingly, they really work really well. So that's one really annoying thing. And so image analysis and other things. And then colleagues in, you know, Oliver Stegel and Anshil Kunjai and Ian Holmes and who's that friend of course from Harvard? Oh, I've got his name. No, I'm so well. They've all done some very clever things where you can do two different things. The first thing is you can often embed a deep learning model inside a more interpretable model. So then the deep learning model becomes a kind of way of modeling, you know, something which is really quite hard to capture otherwise. So splice sites or these other things. And then you've forced the deep learning model to sort of output a probability distribution. And then the other thing happens where you can put little phylogenetic trees or little mechanistic models inside the deep learning model. And then there's like a whole class of cases where you have little parts of your deep learning model have tiny little bits of mechanism in them because you understand how that little bit of the world works in much more detail. So I don't see there being now a big gap, a big difference between deep learning versus non-deep learning. It's really a question of modeling and appropriate modeling in appropriate times and places. I'd like to emphasize that both of those don't get a causality. So, you know, interpretability is in some sense is the lower dimensional space, can I talk about the lower dimensional space? That's one way of interpretability. But actually causality is a different thing from interpretability, which is, do I understand what I need to change to change another part of the output of the model? And again, both mechanistic models and deep learning models don't magically give you interpretability. I mean, it's easy to think about causality in mechanistic models. But it's not a given. It's not by definition because you've used a mechanistic model. Will you have made causality components? Chloe has a question. Please, Chloe first, and then Lukas. Okay. Hi, Ewan. Thank you for the talk. So I have a question because you showed several hypothesis and then I think you only dissented gold two possibilities. So you had, is this heart... That way or that way, yeah. Is this influencing heart disease or conversely? But you also had the possibilities that there was a hidden factors that was influencing growths. And then you're able to say anything about that? Yeah, actually, in Mendelian randomization, what it actually does is it takes away the hidden factors in many ways. Okay. So in some sense, the harder thing is actually going to have the direction of the arrows. But in a lot of these things, there's an easier... Once you've decided these two things are causally linked, that truly one of these things is driving the other side, then usually there's a different thing which is a temporal progression of these things. Yeah, okay. Which is that very often disease happens after you can measure the physiology. So it really can't be the case that the disease trivially influences that. There are some times when disease is the causal factor. But then you see the temporal direction in the other way. You see the... Okay, yeah. Then it happens the other way. So I skipped over that. There is a technique which is basically which way does the correlation stronger called MR-STIGER to work out which way the directionality goes. But actually the kind of logic model that is... Well, it's as important to think about the logic model of causality here for this. What MR really does well is it excludes other factors which is very, very complicated in observational humans. Okay, thanks. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Then there is another question by Lucas Miranda. Lucas, please. Hello, everyone. Thank you very, very much for your talk. It was very interesting and clear. My question is this one. As you mentioned, the UK Biobank is one of the best. It's not the best port in the entire world right now. I was wondering if you're aware of how much effort you're putting into the generalizability of the models and the analysis today. Yeah. So I think that's a good question. This is a great thing for the UK that the world's biological machine learners come to play around with healthy human Brits or not so healthy now in some cases, sadly. I think there's two sides of that generalizability question. So one is a kind of human biology generalizability and actually humans are pretty much the same all across the world. So that one is sort of reassuring. We're a very, very tight species. I have rarely seen something which when it's grounded in mechanistic cellular and molecular biology does not generalize. In fact, I've never seen it. But I do think one does need to caution some of the things.  You know, human society is much more varied. And then the peculiarities about how a particular healthcare system works. So the NHS works in a particular way. Some was completely different debate about whether it's appropriate. But the important thing to realize is that it won't automatically go to somewhere else. So just to say that for some, particularly some diseases that the sort of diagnostic pathway can be quite different, actually, in different countries. So you do need to worry about it. But actually those are, for me, a second order of facts. It's totally fine to make a lot of your discoveries in the UK Bar Bank and then to kind of bring them back and try and work out whether they are still consistent in your local setting. So there you can leverage the measurement and discovery power in the UK and bring it back locally. And I actually think we don't do enough of this. There's a kind of myopia sometimes that we have about these things. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. So now we have a question on Slido that I'm reading out by Rahul Tiaghi. You talked about either confirming or rejecting known hypotheses for common conditions. Are there cases of novel hypotheses that can be confirmed by others? That's the Slido question. I mean, I think the universe of hypotheses in this world is very, very big. So in some sense, it's always... In some sense, you can, this data leads you to creating new hypotheses. One does need to be slightly careful here. So often to create a new hypothesis, you get inspired by a piece of data analysis, exploratory data analysis. It's really rather important that you do not use that same data set to then go off and confirm your hypothesis. So you do need to sort of be kind of clean about how one goes about doing this. I think that's less of a problem in cohorts the size of UK Biobank, because you can just split the cohort in half and do some things like that to convince yourself that you're not misleading yourself. But there are many other cases where you need to be careful about where you do your hypothesis generation versus where you do your hypothesis testing, even if it's sort of logically a very similar sort of test. And then, you know, at some level, there's some attractive thought about trying to write down every single possible hypothesis in the world. And then we kind of do some Bayesian estimation over all of them. But actually it ends up being a bit unfeasible and just not the way science... I mean, it's just... You just can't do that hypothesis enumeration very easily. So this goes back to thinking about this is where do you do your hypothesis generation and where do you do your hypothesis testing and understanding how you do those two different things? Following up on this thought, so you presented these genome-wide association studies between an image phenotype and then all SNPs in the genome. Have you seen a convincing study where this is done the other way round where you restrict the genetic space to SNPs that are, for instance, involved in i-morphology? And then you look for image phenotypes that are associated with these SNPs. So have you seen this in the other way round in any... So that way of kind of turning the axes where you look at a particular SNP and you look across phenotypes is often called FIWAS in the field, phenotype-wide associations. And in general, we tend to... We do a lot of this when we do it. Actually, practicing geneticists are, and I'm definitely part of this, a little bit allergic to restricting our genome hypotheses too much. And the reason why is because, you know, one of the beauties of the genome for this is that it's kind of all-encompassing. I mean, it's not perfect because we don't have variation in every single part of the genome at the frequencies that we want to see. Okay, so it's not a perfect thing, but it is kind of one of the most unbiased ways to do these hypothesis generations. So the way of kind of taking a SNP and asking what are all the other phenotypes it's associated with is commonplace, but it's built up from, of course, many from the full matrix, all SNPs, all phenotypes. And that full matrix is sort of at the heart of some of these big browsers and called... And cutting it out... But even if you consider all patches in an image, so that would be a very big matrix. Have you seen that? Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen that. I mean, that goes to something that we have tried a little bit with the eyes, which is trying to use the genetic space to help you understand the dimensionality reduction problem. So I think that's an interesting, I think there's some really interesting research to think about this, where you say, I am convinced that these seven SNPs work together. Now, which patches of the genome, not genome, the image, maximally associated with these seven SNPs can happen in some specific way. And so you can think of this as this dimensionality reduction problem. So what is the smaller space that represents these SNPs rather than this other way around? I think there's a lot to be done there. And with Hannah Meyer, confusingly, both of my students are called Hannah. So with Hannah Meyer, she explored this a little bit. One of the slightly irritating things is that once you're powered to do it without clever dimensionality reduction, it's actually easier to do it with little, without sophisticated dimensionality reduction. So that's what I found with my current student, Hannah, current, we explored this. And at the end of the day, we just said, I'll sort it, we'll just use what the clinicians use, which, and it makes the conversation with the clinician so much easier because you're not trying to explain to them what you're measuring and stuff like that because they know what you're measuring in these things. So I think there's a rich thing to get into there. And I've touched it, but I encourage all of you to get stuck in because I think there's a good space, there's a good set of questions to be asked there. I agree. And I quickly checked there are further questions from Insight Network as seen no raised hand and on Slido Nider, we have had a longer discussion. We thank you very much, Jun, for presenting your work. That was very exciting. Thanks a lot. And we send you a round of virtual applause for that. And thanks again for joining our summer school as a speaker. I'm, thank you very much for inviting me.


Welcome to Digital Asset News, where we take the top stories in cryptocurrency and digital assets and bring them down to bite-sized pieces. Today, we're going to talk about some important levels that I think everybody needs to be aware of as far as like what is going on with Ethereum and why the 25th of June is so important as options are set to expire. We're going to take a look at a couple of different levels and where things should be. On top of that, on positive news, we're going to take a look at Guggenheim CEO Scott Menard as he tweets out that cryptocurrency is the future. This is kind of odd because Scott in the past has given some conflicting information. And then finally, on the good news of the day or the uplifting news, we've got Charles Hoskinson saying that Ethereum will beat Bitcoin in the long run. Crazy. So we'll take a look at all those things, but first, take a look at what's going on into the markets. Today, it is the 18th? Yeah, 18th of June, about 10 a.m. I'll pass with Texas time and markets down again. We're at 1.5 trillion. And again, this is going to play into what we just saw with the options expiration. So it's important that we take a look at these levels just to make sure that we're on the right track and what's going on. Everything is down. Let's just call a spade a spade. We're going to see Bitcoin roughly 366 might fall even lower. We're at 5% just in 24 hours. Ethereum is down. Tether's tether. Nobody cares. Nothing's up in 24 hours. And we might see a little bit more bloodshed. Tether's up. And remember, Theta, they're launching their mainnet 3.0 at the end of June. So I think Tether's going to keep going up until that happens. But that's what's going on. Let's just jump into today's top story. And oh, actually, before we do that, just so you know, I had a great interview with the team leads over there at Silo. And I'll be putting together the video and editing it and putting it over at Dan Clips. This, I think, is a huge sleeper. And to me, this is kind of like one of those projects that is a it's a super app, really, it's digital wallet, plus a totally encrypted messenger app that you can actually download right now and use. I have it on my phone. I have been using it. It works great. So I'll release that hopefully by tonight or tomorrow have to have the team look at it. And it'll be over there on digital asset news clips, where we do all the advancement things and all the things that are up and coming. Anyhow, this, my friends, is what's going on 25th of June. We've got to this is next Friday. So this is a pretty important level to take a look at. So 24th of June carries significant importance as it may assist Ethereum in reaching its all time high range, potentially, but in the past, it's on the exact opposite. So according to SKU, 646,300 ETH options will undergo expiration on the 25th of June, which is worth over $1.5 billion in open interest. And some people may say, well, who cares? You know, because it's only $1.5 billion and Ethereum is like way beyond that. But just like we saw with iron finance, when you just see a bunch of of sales going on, even whales, people who have a lot of those, those that cryptocurrency, and in this case, you know, options, once you start seeing things just go sideways or go down, people start selling to make everybody starts to sell. So it is a domino effect. And sometimes it is what it is. Sometimes it's just an it's an overvalued asset, or sometimes it's just panic selling, whatever you want to call it. It could not be good news potentially for Ethereum as things start to slide off. So this is what we're going to have to look at. Expiration is our expiry is 33% larger than the one that took place on 26th of March. And here's how the market unfolded after that first quarterly expiration. And what I'm going to do, let me blow this up so you can see what I see. So here, we're looking at 2021. We're talking about March 26. So there's a little bit of a just kind of like went down, down, down. And then that essentially is what happened as far as like, it just kind of took up a little bit of a dip. Five days prior to the expiry, Ethereum's value had dropped 15% in the charts, in the charts, the chart. However, between 26th of March and 15th of April, its price surged by 60%. So down, down, down as all the expiration wins came about, and then boom, just started to take off and then off we go. So be aware of what's going on here because a lot of people will just they'll they'll look in and go, okay, well, we just lost 15%, 20%, whatever else it is. And they start to panic sell and everybody starts to sell. But if you take a look at the history, not like it's going to definitely happen again. Remember, this is investment opinion, not investment advice. You can see what happened in the past. So we had a bit of a drop and then just kind of took off again. Now, unfortunately, if you take a look at the same chart, where are we again, we're still went down. So this is a good idea to lock in your profits. Nobody ever went broke, taken profits, but it's just important for these levels so that you're aware of by next Friday. And then to finish this up, according to data from Bybit or Bibbit, how do you say it? Bybit, there is a huge amount of call options at 2200 with higher strikes. It means that Ether's price needs to be above 2200 when the expiration takes takes place for these 97,000 call options to come into play. Otherwise, they'll be completely worthless. And it's so and also similarly, if the strike price at 2100, at press time, Ethereum is consolidating near 2400. So the upper hand is on the bullish side, but a lot can change in a week. So we're looking at $2200. And just as we saw over here, trade the chain, we are looking at a price today at 2242. Now look, in seven days, a lot can change, a lot can change. But if you're taking a look at what could potentially happen, once we start to dip down below that, just be aware that we could see some downside volatility, but it is normal. And this is one of the reasons why. So let me know what you think in the comment section. Let's move on to our next piece, which is scum and hard chief investment officer for Guggenheim been around a long, long time. He's been in the traditional market and he's been a convert to crypto and digital assets. And it's kind of weird because he's been one of those guys who has randomly just put out tweets. And some people say that he's kind of like manipulating a little bit with his tweets, which maybe, but he does. He's been a supporter of crypto for a while, but just not too long ago, during that weekend, when we're supposed to have this huge dip, he put out a tweet and said something like, Hey, be careful, massive volatility coming in. And for all you investors, just make sure that you're aware of what's going on, which is pretty sweet and nice for a guy who runs a company that has like, it manages over $270 billion. That's nice. Some people said, nah, we think he's just manipulating, but maybe he's a nice guy. Maybe I'm just naive. Who knows? Anyhow, this is what he said. Scott Menard, CIO of Guggenheim said that while crypto is a volatile asset, it's the paradigm of the future. And he's right. When you're looking at these different YouTubers out there and you read different reports and all these different things, you have to understand there is two sides of the story for everything as far as like crypto, even traditional markets and equities and things like that. There are traders who are really just, they're just obsessed with a short-term type of trade again, whether that be on the hour, on the day, on the week, swing trades, whatever else it is. And then it's the other side of people like me who are just investors. And we just are in for the long haul. I'm not a big, I don't really care too much about the short-term volatility because I see where things are going. And when Scott is talking about this, he really is putting on his investor hat and going, this is the asset of the future. So when he says things like, hey, expect volatility, he's right. He was 100% right. And there was huge volatility in those last two weeks ago. So take it for what it is. He says crypto will tend to be volatile, but as a paradigm of the future, he noted that the, and this was interesting. He also noted that the potential for an attack on our payments infrastructure is one of the largest external threats to the financial system as a whole. And he states, the possibility of an attack on the global payment system is one of the biggest exogenous risks to the stability of the financial system. I never thought about that, but now it makes a lot of sense. Everything that is so centralized in the banks, we see a lot of things that are going on with ransomware and different hackers from across the world. And they're really getting into these, these corporations and these entities and they're demanding all this money because they're shutting things down. Why couldn't they do that with Swift? Why couldn't they do that with the infrastructures as far as like the payment system like Scott is talking about? A great way to get around that probably decentralization. So I mean, if you're going to talk about these things, I think we should talk about everything. And I'm going to put that in a little feather in my cap to try to remember those things as I'm debating people on the benefits of crypto and digital assets because as far as, as it pertains to decentralization, makes a lot of sense. And then lastly, he says, why am I so sanguine, optimistic about inflation? There's three words, demographics, debt and technology, our shrinking workforce, slowing birth rate, rising debt loads and adoption of tech that improves economic productivity are all deflationary. Debate that in the comment section. I'm not for sure. He also said that Guggenheim has seen no evidence that inflation is contributing to increase in prices and that the bond bull market is over. So look, I'll agree with Scott on the very first parts, which is crypto is the future. It makes a lot of sense to me and that we should use it as far as like to protect the payment system that we have right now because it is ripe for an attack. And I think that's a nation's they could really just do a lot of damage with just cyber warfare. Totally agree. As far as like the inflation things, I see a lot of things around me that are going up in price. The dollar's still strong and we had Nick Mancini on from TTC yesterday and he pretty much laid out a pretty great case as far as like assets and the strength of the dollar. But I just can't get my head around that the Fed can print 30% of the entire circulating supply of the dollar in the last year and we're not going to see inflation. Maybe I'm wrong. Let me know where our opinions differ in the comment section. Let's finish up with our last piece, which is I think like a pretty good article. I like this one. Charles Hoskins. Everybody's favorite person to to rip on besides Mark Cuban lately in his DeFi thing. But there was a good interview between him and Lex Friedman and he just comes out and says, Hey, Ethereum will beat Bitcoin in the long run. And I thought it was it's good to know what I'm glad this the Herald sheets brought it up. So during a five hour interview with AI researcher Lex Friedman, and I'm going to link this in the comments or in the description below, it's five hours. It's a five hour interview. And I've been breaking it up. I'm at over just about an hour or so now I'm trying to get the other four, but it's fascinating. And it's really interesting where they talk about where things started as far as like Hoskinson with, you know, where he got into with Bitcoin and then a little bit in Ethereum, then how Cardano works and how the whole infrastructure is going to work and everything else. But he's very positive about Ethereum. So I think that's good. We need more of those things in this community because as you know, just go over Twitter and you'll have no shortage of people poo pooing all over other projects. So he states this problem with Bitcoin is it slow? Well, let's be honest, it's kind of slow. It's like the mainframe programming of the past. The only reason it's still around is because there was so much invested in keeping it around, I was kind of happy to leave it there. Okay, so that's that's one part that Charles will say, and I can understand what he's saying here, but you know, he does have a good point here. A lot can be done to improve the Bitcoin network in order to make it a system to beat. He said Bitcoin is too slow and it's methodical development process is a huge hindrance to its evolvement. Charles said that Ethereum doesn't have all these shortcomings due to the fact that its developers love evolvement. Ethereum is getting to a point where it has a similar network effect to Bitcoin. Very true. I mean, we see a lot of things being built. I mean, everything is built on Ethereum. What am I saying? And as far as like DeFi, things that are locked up. So yes, the only thing is can they roll out Ethereum 2.0 and really get things going? And let's see how that EIP 1539 works out as far as burning gas fees and tipping the miners. I don't know. Hopefully, it reduces those crazy gas fees. And then to finish up. And so that means if you look at the trajectory of things, if I had to bet on just those two systems, Bitcoin or Ethereum, I would say nine times out of 10, Ethereum is going to win the fight against Bitcoin. It was the only competitor. And it makes sense. Ethereum, it seems like, you know, if we said really well, was Terry Crews the actor. And they asked him, you know, how do you differentiate between Bitcoin and Ethereum? He goes, well, Bitcoin's gold 2.0, really, it's like gold. He goes, but Ethereum is the oil for my machines. He goes, I like to create, I like to build things, I like to get into businesses. So I need that oil to run the machine. And that's what Ethereum does. And I like, it's a pretty good way to look at it. You know, Bitcoin's like a store of value. It's like gold. And then Ethereum kind of lubricates everything and makes all the engines run. And then to finish up, Charles says, but obviously, we're here and a lot of other people are here. So there's different things going on. It's a much more complex game. And look, I don't know if one, if there's one coin to rule them all, if it's just going to be a one game system, I don't think so. Because I mean, we have so many different projects where blockchain and decentralization and smart contracts and DeFi and digital ID and all the good stuff that comes out of this sector can do. I just don't think that one, one project can rule them all and really encompass everything. I think it's going to take a community effort. And that's why I'm hoping that we can drop some of the tribalism and just get on board with each other. We're like brothers and sisters, if you think about it.  That's just my two cents. All right. So that's it for today. So look, if you made it all the way to the end, thanks. I appreciate it. Consider liking the video. If you liked it, consider subscribing, because a lot of things we talk about are time sensitive on this channel. Over on Dan Clips, we do more of the advancement stuff and more of the up-and-coming projects. We've already taken a look at world mobile token, which thing is going to change everything in Africa. Take a look at Charlie and card starter and Indigo protocol. And we're going to be doing one with Jiro wallet. And we just got done with the wallet silo, or as I call it, the super app.  So check it over at Dan Clips. Links in the description. Thanks so much. See you on the next one.


Oh yeah, well there was some, our second year as the acting company we performed in Saratoga and somebody had crabs and somebody didn't take care of it and the crabs went from him to the costumes to all of us. We were in these horrible dormitories in Skidmore with this, everybody, all the showers had this massive, I don't know what you used at the time to get rid of crabs. We don't know either. Well it was, I had crabs once that had nothing to do with the acting company and I remember it was Nicky Marchiano and he gave it to me three times. I believe it's give me crabs once, shame on that guy.  I remember I went into a pharmacy because I was working at Civic & Sons with Elizabeth, I can't remember her name because she was Argentine and I went, Elizabeth, then let me see your pencil. She looked down and she went, she pulled it up and she went, you got crabs? Elizabeth, so she told me to go to the pharmacy and I went to the pharmacy, my pharmacy in the corner like 86th and 3rd and I was so embarrassed that I remember going, yes, I have crabs! I screamed it at the top of my lungs and they gave me something and that took care of that but then I got crabs again from the costumes. We had, you know, we had Elizabethan and Jacobean costumes and you don't know where the crabs were. That still doesn't explain how you got crabs the second time. Nicky, Nicky gave me crabs. Nicky said, Nicky, I have crabs, stop what you're doing, whatever you're doing. On Long Island in Mastic Shirley, just stop it. Okay Patty, you're my girlfriend. Nicky, I've got crabs again. Nicky Marciano, I don't know where Nicky Marciano is. What about the third time? Nicky! Again! Nicky! I finally broke up with Nicky. I'm glad the crabs got you out of that relationship. Me too.  No.


Well, you know, I'm from Montana, but my first career actually was as a country singer. And I was singing all of these romantic stories about farmers and what great lives they had. But as I was traveling around the country, what I was hearing from farmers is actually their lives weren't that great. And it was a really tough time to be a farmer. So I went to work for Senator John Tester, who's a farmer and also a senator from Montana. And he introduced me to this group of farmers who were doing organics. And it wasn't because they were hippies. It was because it was better for their livelihoods. So I was really curious about that, and that led to this research. So for farmers in the American heartland, they're stuck in a situation where they mostly have to grow one crop. It's the only thing they can market. And this isn't good for the environment, because if you grow one thing over and over, that's going to attract pests. It's going to generate disease. It requires a lot of chemicals to support that kind of a system. So what these farmers started to do is rotate other crops into their major cash crop. So they had to find other markets. But they found that this was beneficial both for their livelihoods and for their land. What I thought was so interesting about what these farmers were doing is that it was multi-dimensional. They were interested in food that was healthy, food that would support their livelihoods, but also entire farming systems that would respond to the challenges of climate change. They have really volatile weather, and they also have dry weather. So they may not get any moisture in a given season, and these farmers have figured out how to farm productively, even with that uncertainty. And the amazing thing about lentils is that they can actually grow their own fertilizer. So you don't have to apply synthetic nitrogen, because lentils can take it from the air and work with bacteria to supply it to the soil. So this key nutrient comes from the plant itself, rather than coming from chemicals. Well I think we're accustomed to thinking that the most sustainable food choices are local food choices, and in a lot of cases that's true. It's good for us to have really robust local food systems. But one of the surprising things I learned when I was researching this book is that transportation to the final point of sale only accounts for four percent of the emissions in the food system. So what we really need to tackle are these greenhouse gas heavy processes on the farm and even before the farm. So things like nitrogen fertilizer. And since lentils make their own nitrogen with bacteria, buying lentils from a producer who might be hundreds of miles away from you is actually a more sustainable choice than conventionally fertilized produce or grain that's closer to home. I think the next wave of the food movement of organics is actually coming from the middle of the country from some surprising spokespeople who might be Republican, homeschoolers, church goers who want to sustain their land for the next generation. Berkeley is such a hotbed of interest in the food system and I've been really lucky to work with a number of people who are at the top of their field working on food systems issues. Michael Pollan who's a professor at the journalism school has been a mentor for me, a number of faculty associated with the Berkeley Food Institute and the Department of Geography where I got my PhD and they've all helped me think about how this particular story about Montana where I'm from fits into the larger picture of how we solve these big problems in our food system.


It's a €300 DAG using the ES9038 chip and LO thinks it will more than satisfy both critical listeners and those that listen with measurement equipment. That's a nice challenge. LO became known for their DAGs, Toslink and USB interface boards for the Raspberry Pi. Last year they introduced the ready to use Streamer Annex Network Bridge, the US Bridge Signature Player and now they come with the ready to use DAG, the Revolution DAG. Where in the past was a DIY product, both the USB Bridge Signature Player and the Revolution DAG are ready to use and form a nice pair. I have reviewed the US Bridge Signature before, this time we look at the Revolution DAG. So let's see how you can use that. The Revolution DAG is to be connected over RCA cables to a line input on your amplifier. Line inputs are all inputs on an amp safe phono. Speakers are connected to the amp of course. As a source you can connect your computer directly to the Revolution DAG using a USB to micro USB cable. A 25 cm cable came in the box. If you don't want a computer in the listening room, you can use a network bridge or Streamer like the LO US Bridge Signature I mentioned before. That is connected to the Revolution DAG over the USB A to micro USB cable that comes with the DAG. On the other side it is connected over your network router to the computer elsewhere in your home. Depending on the player's software you are going to use, a tablet or smartphone usually will be the remote control. See the review of the US Bridge Signature or for instance the SOtMS 200 network bridge for more information. The Revolution DAG comes in a very compact housing, measuring only 125 x 138 x 47 mm while waiting only 470 grams. On the front we see an infrared sensor, a multi-function display and a tiny joystick for menu control. On the rear the 5V DC power input, a ground terminal, the micro USB input and the left and right analog output sonar CA. That's all. When we look inside we see a number of components being shielded off, which is great but makes it a bit hard to see what components are used. What I did find was the ESS ES9038 Q2M DAC chip with, left of it, the analog output stages that uses the TI-551 op-hams. And there must be an XMOS USB chip, probably hidden under the shield directly behind the USB input. But there is another thing that caught my attention. There are supercapacitors all over the place, like here two one third farad ones, here one farad ones and here a stack of four, the lower two being one farad and the ones inside are half farad types. Supercapacitors are devices in between batteries and capacitors. They do not have the same capacity as batteries but clearly higher capacitance than a capacitor. The important benefit is that they are able to deliver current almost instantly, which is important especially in devices where both analog and digital circuits are present, like in a DAC. In total eight farad supercaps are used, resulting in very stable power lines for both the analog and digital circuits. If you want to use it with a Windows computer, you might order it with the XMOS ID firmware, so you can use it without installing drivers on the computer. If you use any other computer, mobile device, stream or a network bridge, order it with the TICECON ID firmware. You can still use it with Windows computers but then need to install a driver. All other devices don't need a driver. Another ordering option is the flex cable for use with a USB-Signature. Any USB-A to micro USB cable will do but the flexible print cable is a better choice. Furthermore a $7 remote control can be added to the order. If you have clumsy hands like I do, order that remote. It is more convenient than the tiny joystick on the front. Normal use is very elementary. Just connect the DAC to a computer streamer or network bridge over USB. Connect the analog outputs to your amp and hook up the power supply, that's all. The power supply is not included so you can select your own depending on your budget and tasteful perfection. ELO offers a cheap switch mode power supply, the nivana audio file switch mode power supply and the Shanti linear power supply. Alternatively you can use any 5-fold DC power supply like products from iFi, sBooster, Uptone and so on. Money spent on a power supply is almost always immediately audible but be careful with digital only devices like network bridges and network switches. In those cases often a quality switch mode power supply is the better choice in my experience. I use the ELO Shanti to power the revolution DAC and the sBooster BOTW PMP first generation for the ELO US bridge signature. I said there's no need to set anything if you don't want to but ELO wants to please both people with ears and people with measurement equipment. Unfortunately the best measurements don't always give the best sound quality so ELO offers the user all kinds of settings for optimization for either measurement or listening. Let's start with the sync async setting. Normally the ES9038 DAC chip uses a so called digital phase lock loop which is a circuit that chases the incoming digital data by slightly varying its clock frequency. This is a normal practice for almost all DACs and is called async mode by ESS. But varying the clock frequency is causing jitter and since the only input is asynchronous USB data there is no need for this. The audio data is stored in a buffer that is read by a clock. If this clock is very precise and not only clocks the buffer read out but also the master clock input of the DAC chip, jitter will be very low. This can only be achieved if separate clocks are used for 44.1 and 48 kHz based sampling frequencies, like in the revolution DAC. This mode is called sync and should theoretically sound the best. But I like the async mode better. Perhaps this is because ELO has set the async mode to its lowest setting. Apparently there still is some jitter in sync mode and async mode solves this. Depending on the source you use there might be a setting to be adjusted to avoid clicks in between tracks, the pop mute setting. You can vary it from no mute between songs to 100ms mutes in steps of 20ms. Leave it to zero if you hear no pops or clicks in between the tracks, especially tracks of different sampling frequencies. If you do hear clicks or pops, increase the setting step by step until it doesn't occur anymore. H2 and H3 harmonic control is a remarkable setting that lets you choose for more or less second and third harmonic distortion. It is also an option on the ESS DAC chip and used by manufacturers to voice the DAC to their own taste. ELO has made this option also available to the user. Second harmonics make the sound warmer while third harmonics makes the sound sharper or brighter. Another setting on the ESS DAC chip is to switch on and off oversampling. I wonder if this is done for commercial reasons since non-oversampling DACs are hot within certain circles. The ESS DAC is a Sigma Delta DAC so in the end it will be converted to a high sampling rate anyway. But it is very democratic that ELO offers you the option to choose for non-oversampling if you like. More important might be the selection of filters that can be chosen. These filters change the character of the DAC clearly and there is no best choice. Most of these offer just another approximation of the truth and the one that you like might be not the one that I like. Again these are options on the DAC chip that ELO gives you access to. Every DAC has to have a so called reconstruction filter set at half the sampling frequency. This transforms the staircase waveform into a smooth waveform it was originally. But the filtering, especially with the steepness needed here, can't be undone without introducing some distortion, mostly in the form of disturbance in time. There are many ways to construct filters and not a single one can please all people. So ESS has included eight different filters in the ESS 9038. Often the manufacturer of a DA converter that uses this chip chooses one filter as well other manufacturers that you select your filter of choice, like ELO does with this DAC. There are eight different filters to choose from.  Behind the names you see the impulse response.  Don't expect giant differences depending on the quality of your stereo, it will vary from just noticeable to good refinements. There is so much to tweak on this DAC that to you it might seem impossible to give a good sound quality judgement. But that's not the case. The main quality of a DAC has to do with good circuit design and circuit board design, quality components and proper power supply. The ES9038 DAC chip is such a good component but I have heard DAX using this chip that sounded a lot worse for the same money or more even and I have heard ones that were more refined for more money. The staging is impressive for this class as is the focusing. The sound character is partly up to you since there is so much to tweak. Combined with the USB signature I ended using filter setting 6, async, second harmonic set to 2 and click pop to 1. This gave me a sound character I liked and find in the Mitre Brooklyn bridge with syntax power supply. Of course the revolution DAC isn't as refined as this combo but it offers good musicality, relaxed listening, deep lows and good sibilance control, which in this price category is quite remarkable. This DAC belongs in my setup too, somewhere in the middle and that's an achievement for this kind of money. The revolution DAC is ideal for the audiophile on a reasonable low budget that loves to experiment with sound options. It takes considerable time to compare all combinations of settings but for those that love this there is no better choice. As said you can alternatively use the default settings if you're not into tweaking for they offer a very good sound. For those that listen by measurement gear, eat your heart out. Find the best settings for your measurements and enjoy that fact even more than a good sound. So the revolution DAC is a friend to all? Well, you do need a power supply with it and a decent one is bulky. So you have two boxes. If you then use it with the L.O.U.S. bridge signature, as I did, you need another power supply so you end up with four boxes and a lot of wiring in between. But there is also an advantage for someone on a real-time budget. For you can start up with just the revolution DAC with cheap power supply connected directly to your computer for slightly over €300. Then save for the other components over time, each step improving the sound quality. You'll end up with a stream and network bridge with DAC costing around €1000 and sounding like a more expensive setup. Which brings me to the end of this video. I love to see you back next Friday at 5pm central european time in a new video. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed on new videos around. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you like to support my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.


So our next session is about how Congress should think about the military of the future It's going to be moderated by Heather Herbert who is a director in the political reform program at New America She's a contributed in New York magazine. She has senior positions at the State State Department of White House dream bill Clinton's presidency And we're going to turn it over now to Heather Thank you, Peter. Thank you all so much for sticking around for the part of our day where we dispense with the panels and we go one-on-one It's a great pleasure for me to be up here with representative Moulton who as many of you may know Holds multiple degrees from Harvard served multiple tours in Iraq is a multiply Decorated Marine has served three tours in the United States Congress and you may have heard from last week He has another little project. He's gotten started So first I'm going to ask that we put up our poll question We have one or two more poll questions today and for those of you who have been here all day You know the drill you text to the number on your screen and you can pick a B or C And congressman just as fair warning We are going to come back and talk about this question as the the audience ponders it But but while everyone is voting on this question I'm going to ask you the question that I've been asked repeatedly as I was getting ready for this conversation So you're not the only service member running for president We've also got two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee running for president one individual who put in decades on Senate form relations Yet you say you're going to build a presidential campaign around national security the issues that all of us live and die on so How's that going to work? First of all, thank you very much for having me here Heather It's great to be here and in honor to have a discussion with all of you. I'm looking forward to the questions and answers So don't be afraid to ask me tough questions. I will get very tough questions as the weeks go on here To answer your question Despite the fact that we have 20 candidates out there now. I think I was number 19 I'm the only one who is actually talking about national security and really taking on President Trump on National security issues, and I think this is critical not just because of where we are in the world Not just because I believe he's a reckless commander-in-chief, but frankly because I think it's where he is weakest I don't think Donald Trump is going to be so easy to beat as many Democrats like to believe So I think we have to confront him on these issues on what it means to make the country safe and strong on what a National security vision is for Democrats and fundamentally what it means to be an American patriot For a long time Republicans have kind of taken ownership over these issues and Democrats have been unwilling to challenge them And yet we have truly the most reckless commander-in-chief in American history in the presidency right now And we have to show how we would lead on these issues. My background is also different I am the only candidate who has led troops in combat has had the challenge of bringing an extraordinarily diverse group of Americans people from all over the country with different religious beliefs different political beliefs in Getting them united behind a common mission in extraordinarily difficult circumstances in the middle of a war that Probably about half of us Disagreed with and I think that that kind of leadership is exactly what we need from the next president in this incredibly divisive time in American history so This is a fascinating result. This is not necessarily what I would have predicted So the audience isn't given us a clear hint here So I'm gonna ask you two questions number one What should the US defense budget in 2030 look like compared to the defense budget now? just after the end of President Moulton's second term and then more concretely you've you've said that Spending 16 times more money on aircraft carriers than cyber defense makes more sense makes no sense Been a long day So tell me specifically what should happen to the defense budget and what should we be spending more on and what should we be spending? Less on specifically. What do we spend less on well? I would like to see the defense budget go down because we're making much smarter investments That means a lot less ways fraud and abuse like everyone every politician likes to say but much more importantly It means investing in the next generation technologies rather than the legacy systems that consume so much of the budget today So what do I mean by that? Well? I think that ironically China and Russia actually have a bit of a leg up over us An inherent advantage in that their defense budgets are constrained because they are not trying to compete with us in today's world in other words, they're not going to try to build 13 or 14 aircraft carriers to match our air number of aircraft carriers. They're just going to build the missiles to defeat them 1238 is a number I like to use That is the best estimate we have for the number of anti carrier missiles that China can purchase For the cost of one US aircraft carrier Now I'm not saying that we need to get rid of all aircraft carriers But we at least need to have a serious debate about their efficacy in the modern world the reality is that a lot of these next generation technologies investing in autonomous airplanes and Autonomous underwater vehicles investing in artificial intelligence These are investments that we have to make just to maintain our economic competitiveness with the rest of the world But they also tend to be cheaper weapons systems So you mentioned the high-tech Systems in particular and we had a very interesting panel earlier today on what the shape of cyber defense should should look like What is what is a democratic platform on cyber security? Look like what what's the current administration doing right? And what's it doing wrong? Well, first of all the current administration is investing in all the wrong things and their priorities are completely backwards President Trump has designated more money for the southern border wall Which is? Somewhere around a fifth century BC technology at least as he has envisioned it He's been visit. He's invested more or designated more allocated more money for that wall Then for all cyber security across the United States Department of Defense It makes no sense at all We are getting attacked every single day through the internet By Russia and China We are not getting attacked by our great adversaries through the southern border Now there are all sorts of other reasons why the southern border wall is a political ploy Not a smart investment not helpful to immigration the immigration crisis etc. Etc But if you just think about it in terms of protecting our national security and where this administration is putting its priorities I think it shows you just how backwards the investments really are So there are a lot of investments that we need to make in protecting American businesses American military installations from cyber attacks and the fact that these continued to happen on a daily basis Is more than enough evidence that we're that we're neither investing in this proper security? Nor I think responding appropriately to the threat I'm gonna try to tempt you to wait a little more deeply into the bureaucracy on this question But how would you reorganize the way we're doing cyber in the government right now? And if so, how I think we we probably should now I'm not gonna sit here and say that we I have all the answers because I think we frankly failed as a Congress to Investigate this seriously enough. We have not really held serious hearings on how we might want to reorganize things But while I disagree with the president in his advocacy for a space force for example I do think there is an argument a much better argument for a separate cyber force So let me just go into that for a second The Air Force has a mission that essentially now includes space a lot of Air Force Hardware goes into space and comes back down in theory and so I'm not quite sure where you kind of draw the dividing line between The Space Force and the Air Force and I think that that probably it's a mission just better handled by one entity The Air Force already handles it today. It's clearly the Air Force is opinion on all this as well But cyber on the other hand Cyber is distinct enough I think from the missions of the existing missions of the other services that it would probably make sense to have it a bit more centralized So that we can respond more clearly to attacks and so that we have a much clearer chain of command I Used to work before I got to Congress. I used to work at a high-speed Rail project in Texas and my office Was on the 42nd floor of a building in downtown Dallas and I could look straight out At the top floor of the AT&T world headquarters Now I had an AT&T cell phone at the time and I used to drop about two or three calls a day I noted that AT&T didn't have any cell towers on the top of its building Which made me wonder about the science they say about how to sell towers are totally safe But in any event because I was dropping calls, but in any event, you know There are times when I was so frustrated with AT&T that I wished I had some of that paraphernalia that I had in my Infantry platoon to take out their executive floor But think about it seriously if if a Chinese squad came and had the same frustrations as me and decided to attack The AT&T world headquarters with a few rockets We know exactly how we would respond But if the Chinese attack the AT&T world headquarters through the internet and Properly perhaps do even more significant damage or take More information. I don't think we know as a country How we would even respond to that in terms of who's in charge? I mean, is that an NSA responsibility? Is the DOD responsibility? Is it a is this CIA is an FBI responsibility? Does it engender a military response? Or is it something under the Department of Homeland Security? We haven't even figured this out as a country and by the way the responsibility for that is Is with us in Congress specifically folks on the Armed Services Committee? But I think that illustrates just how far we have to go in developing not just our cyber capabilities but our whole our Whole cyber structure our whole strata cyber strategy in theory of the case and I think this is Perhaps an argument for why it would make sense as General Petraeus has proposed an old mentor of mine To investigating having a separate cyber force Well that logically leads us to think a little bit about the relationship between the public and private sectors when it comes to Cyber I mean whether or not we are whatever. We're thinking about the AT&T building, but the the year example does highlight the ways that Defenses increasingly were were sort of entangled public and private sectors in the high-tech spaces how In your current role and in the role you aspire to what do you have to say about the way the private sector Needs to contribute to national defense well You're not supposed to sit and take tough questions and make them tougher, but I think I should hear really You know really the elephant in the room here is is what do we do about like these Google's and Google employees who have refused to work with doD? and there are other companies as well and I think that is a Very difficult question that by the way we should be discussing in the midst of this presidential campaign Because this comes fundamentally back to our competitiveness as a country to our national security and To how we think about our moral leadership in the world These Google employees just to single them out for a second have taken what they believe is a very firm moral stand They said we do not want to contribute to the Department of Defense We don't agree with everything that the Department of Defense is doing But I think this is very dangerous for our country Because obviously tech employees in China are not taking that view now. They don't have the option I get that but the fact of the matter is that China has Very successfully married it's tech. It's high-tech. It's economic piece with its military piece And they give that gives us a significant that gives them a significant advantage so how do you get Google employees and The doD to work together Well, I think it fundamentally comes back to a vision for national service Where you inspire? Americans to understand that their work on behalf of our country on behalf of our Defense on behalf of our national security is an opportunity for them to contribute not just at a technical level But at a moral level as well. I didn't join the Marines Because I thought it was a perfect organization and I certainly Did not go back to Iraq three times after my first deployment for the invasion because I thought it was a perfect war I Went back because I thought I could make it a little bit better Yes, because I didn't want anyone going in my place But because I felt that my presence on the ground in Iraq Would have more influence on how the war was fought than sitting back here and complaining about it And I think we need to inspire these young people at places like Google and Microsoft and Apple and other countries Companies to have that same sense of commitment to our country Not believing that it's perfect Not believing that doD is doing all the right things But by being part of the team They can make us better and stronger and fundamentally more moral in pursuing our missions around the globe Well speaking of Thinking of ourselves as more moral in presuming our missions around the globe You've also talked a bit about the future of NATO and how how we think about the future of NATO and how we talk about it And you've been maybe Maybe a little more willing to push the crockery around than some and you said that there's a need to rethink NATO's strategic role and purpose and maybe re-examine our troop commitments in Germany and Japan So what is NATO strategic role and purpose? Well NATO of course has been extraordinarily successful at not only maintaining military security in Western Europe but really economic security as well and it's been a core alliance probably the core alliance for the United States of America For the last 70 years Many people in the national security space myself included have been quite dismayed by President Trump's approach to NATO Disparaging it disparaging our allies threatening to pull out Really undermining the shared commitment that we all have as member nations And if you'd asked me about this a year and a half ago As I was in a speech I gave on national security about that time I would have said that the first priority of the next president has to be simply putting everything back together the way it was To restore the same commitments that we had before President Trump came to office Now I'm afraid that things have gotten Too bad. They've gone too far But we have to take this opportunity To actually Strengthen the foundations that NATO was built upon and fundamentally make them more relevant to today The fact the matter is that the 1949 framework for NATO is outdated not in the ways the president says in terms of folks not meeting their commitments because we already had a plan Fashioned under the Obama administration to restore those commitments but because NATO simply didn't anticipate the fact that here in 2019 Russia would be attacking our Eastern European allies not by running tanks through the fold of gap but through the Internet By undermining their democratic institutions By sending the quote-unquote little green men into these countries to undermine local politicians by attacking these countries Through a technique called hybrid warfare that was never envisioned in 1949 and the problem for NATO Is that we don't know how to respond to that? Does do those types of attacks trigger the mutual security guarantee or do they not I? Think the fear that many of us have is that that Putin and his allies are sitting in Russia Saying look we're attacking these guys every day, and they're not doing anything They're not doing anything to respond so clearly this mutual security guarantee on in under NATO is by the by It's not relevant anymore and Worse, maybe it's not even serious So I think the opportunity and also the obligation that we have is to restore NATO But to also do so in a way that makes it relevant for today So we're coming to the audience soon. So you start to think about your questions What does that imply that the US presence in Japan and Germany looks like in 2030? Well, I think again two terms of the successful molten administration I think that it probably can be reduced because the presence there Was really anticipating some sort of you know ground warfare type attack What we need to do is have folks that are in in Europe not conducting tank drills Like this great unit that I visited in Poland and by the way the Polish were thrilled to have the Americans there Conducting tank drills when the Americans arrived with their tanks they were lining the roads with American flags saying we've been waiting 60 years for you to show up and And then they were really absolutely thrilled But the fact the matter is that when you talk to the tank company commander said, you know, we're conducting tank drills While rush is just attacking us through the Internet. We're not we're not responding effectively at all and so so what I would rather see is An American or an Allied Western troop presence in Europe. That's more adapted to the threat So it probably means fewer people. What does that imply for the Asian theater? If you are both Getting rid of character carriers as the anachronistic platform They are and shrinking troop presence in Japan. How do you how do you help? What's your what's your strategy for China? Well, I don't think 30 seconds or less. I don't think we should get rid of carriers entirely That's not what I'm saying, but I do think there's a real question as to their operability in the South China Sea I mean I think actually where aircraft carriers could be much more useful vis-a-vis China is where China is expanding on the periphery, you know, the fact that China now has a presence not technically a military presence But for all intents and intents and purposes of military presence in the Panama Canal Think about that think about their military presence all over Africa This is where China is actually expanding the idea that we are going to go to war in the South China Sea with China With a massive invasion force. I think it's just actually totally unrealistic And so the fact that our military is so focused on preparing for that eventuality Rather than thinking about where China is dramatically expanding its influence and frankly has less strength On the outskirts of its empire. I think it's a misallocation of resources. So I've also talked about a Pacific NATO I get the fact the terminology doesn't quite line up But this is the way folks understand it and a Pacific NATO would work to bring together Some often contentious allies But allies nonetheless who can help us contain a rise in China and in North Korea I think we should pursue that framework for the exact same reason that we pursued it in Western Europe And when people say to me it will set how do you get South Korea and Japan to sit down at the same table and be in The same alliance you could very well have said that about France and West Germany as well But we did it it was successful, and I think we should pursue a similar model in the Pacific audience questions I know Okay, so let's start with the gentleman right up here and wait for the mic to come to you, please Hi, you said you're running on national security Why can't I just assume that another larger name candidate even if their focus is on economic or immigration policy won't once they're nominated as the Democratic nominee Just bring on a whole load of really great national security staff And say and bring on a great Secretary of State bring on a great Secretary of Defense, and they've got it there Why do we need a national security candidate? Not just a good candidate all around who's good people on national security end? Well, I think that's a fair question and to be to be clear. I'm not just running on national security I've been very outspoken about health care this week as well as one of the few candidates who's not just subscribed to To Medicare for all for example as the blanket proposal that we force everybody into So don't think that I'm not running a campaign that's more broad than national security but the fact that a matter is that national security is an issue that should be at the forefront of the debate and You have every right to vote for a candidate not knowing what his or her health care policy would be and just say Oh, we're gonna bring on you know important people to figure out health care or not know what their economic policy would be You know, I don't really care if we have a socialist system or a capitalist system I'm just gonna vote for this person and they'll figure it out. Sure. That's fine I don't think that's a responsible way to choose a commander-in-chief There's two parts of this job one is president United States the other is commander-in-chief And I think we have the most reckless command and she's been chief in American history So one we have to be able to conf we have to be willing to confront him on that if we're gonna beat him But two we ought to know what the next commander-in-chief will have for national security policy We had another question right here Little clarity, so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do tell us who you are gale Fisher. Thank you so on the one hand you're seeking sort of a reduction in force levels perhaps a reduction in big equipment and It would save defense dollars that I think that's what I heard you say For example and shift to like cyber Capabilities to counter adversaries But then on the other hand I hear and perhaps I misunderstood that we would need Capabilities elsewhere for example to counter our adversaries So maybe the carriers aren't useful in the South China Sea because we're not gonna have a big major conflict there But we may have to deploy them elsewhere. I'm just can you just clarify a little bit? What is it exactly that you globally? How do you see this? Is my question The fundamental answer is is that it's both that I think that we're both fighting today's battlefields on yesterday Sorry today's battles on yesterday's battlefields in a sense and we need to rethink our approach But it also means that we just we need to adapt to the way the world is today And I don't think we've really successfully done that My hope would be that we could do it in an efficient enough way that you can reduce the defense budget overall And I don't think that that's an unreasonable goal if you just look at the high level Some of the big-ticket items that we're talking about here in the high-level approach, but fundamentally Fundamentally, I think it's time to take a totally new generation approach next generation approach to one our arms To our arms control and three our alliances I've talked a bit about our arms And that was embedded in your question I've talked a bit about our alliances and how we need to rethink them for a new world We we also have an opportunity to rethink arms control and Done, right arms control doesn't just make the world safer by reducing weapons on all sides, which it does It also gives us a strategic advantage and it puts us in the driver's seat for determining things like how What rules of the road will we have for autonomous weapons systems? What rules of the road will we have for cyber? You know the recent Paris call about six months ago Gave France the opportunity to really lead on on rules the road for cyber that should be us We should be setting those rules setting those rules. I advocated especially a couple years ago for a worldwide convention on the use of drones and I and I'd Push that especially a couple years ago for two reasons one Because I think it would make the world a safer place if we didn't rely as much on drones for everybody But two because at the time we had such a strategic advantage in drone technology That I think that was the point at which it would be really advantageous for us to say stop Everybody draw the line where we are Well, we're still ahead of the rest of the world And and put that and make that agreement and put that agreement in place. I hope that answers your question Gail Thank you so Being as the president just has supposedly suggested that we would have a new generation of Russia China arms control If you could tell him what should be in those agreements, what would you suggest? Well, I would say that we should It would be highly advantageous for us if we could reduce Our ICBMs just as we're about to go into recapitalizing them because that could save us a lot of money Right here and now so that's a place where we would get not just I think you know a good agreement for the The future of mankind, but also an agreement that would be highly strategically advantages of advantageous to us not just militarily but economically But the second thing is that I think we have got to start having this conversation about arms control With regards to these other areas and if I were to pick one amongst all the ones that we've discussed It's artificial intelligence. I mean the fact that Fleets of autonomous weapons conducting warfare against another is no longer a matter of science fiction But merely a matter of development timelines and military budgets. I think should concern everybody in the world, frankly I think we had a question. Yes all the way in the back here Thank you very much for this fascinating discussion Cynthia Schneider from Georgetown University I have a question about a conflict that's kind of a combination of new and old and that is in West Africa specifically Mali They have by the way a novel approach to countering cyber threats They just have such bad internet that nobody can use it good or bad. I don't know how practical that is But I've been going there since 2015 and I've watched the security situation get worse and worse and What's happening there doesn't involve Russia, but it involves outside a kind of toxic mix of different terrorist groups Arming people who have had age-old disputes specifically the herders and farmers and Arming them with machine guns so that now whereas if you were angry that someone was using your land Previously you might hit them you might hit them with a stick you might yell at them now they shoot them and This it's getting worse and worse. I wonder What is your approach to the whole West Africa region and Mali in particular? Thank you It's a great question and your comment About their cyber security reminds me of of our security system for our nuclear Command and control system, which is basically that they rely on eight inch floppy disks And so it's very hard to hack the system Which is ironically not only true But but an interesting challenge as we recapitulate Your question is important and I think it actually plays into a much broader question about how we fight terrorism around the globe I am a veteran of the war on terror. I did four tours in the Iraq war starting in 2003 This now is the longest war in American history specifically our presence in Afghanistan and And yet there are four times as many Sunni extremists in the world today as there were on 9-11 If that doesn't represent a clear failure of our war on terror, I don't know what does So we've talked mostly about great power competition about how we meet the rising threats of Russia and China Which must be a focus of the next president? It should be a focus of this president and has to be a priority in the Department of Defense but we also need to fundamentally rethink our war on terror across the globe and I have some ideas on that. I'm not going to try to give a whole You know dissertation on it, but frankly it's another place where we need to hold the hearings in Congress We need to have this transparent debate before the American people Because a lot of the things that we have done as a country and frankly that many other of our allies have copied in the Days since 9-11 have not only be ineffective. I think they've been frank. They've frankly completely counterproductive We can sneak in one more question super fast in the back Yes, just on commander Boiko from a French war college. So if I understand your strategy China is Now contesting international world order they deny freedom of navigation in Taiwan straight for example They're building their third aircraft carriers. They're doing huge Neville show forces in order to get rid of any of the foreign influence And so your answer is to get rid of your aircraft carriers and military presence in the China sea How can you deter China for taking control of Taiwan this way? So you're oversimplifying a bit which is a which is a very complicated Complicated problem again. I'm not advocating for blanket. We just saying okay. We don't need aircraft carriers I am questioning their strategic role in a in a close-in fight in the South China Sea In a frankly in a wartime scenario that we're preparing for that I don't think is likely to really happen There are a lot of other strategic ways that we defend China that we defend Taiwan other than aircraft carriers Our undersea presence for example is something that's very important in that defense plan and without going into anything classified You know, I think there are smart ways that we are prepared and ready to defend Taiwan and we will continue That commitment one of the ways that we strengthen commitments like that is by building alliances In in that part of the world Which is a huge part of my vision for our security strategy for the Pacific Fundamentally what I think we need to do is be more realistic about what actual wartime scenarios there would look like Think about where we can pressure China effectively Develop more range and our weapon systems so that we can attack China without them hitting us Which does not mean having an aircraft carrier close-in in the South China Sea But it does mean investing in drone technologies and autonomous vehicles and things like that So the point is more broadly that I don't think that we're ready to go to work today in a way That's of as effective as we could be To meet the threat of a rising China And so it's important not to sort of simplify that into you know a simple trade-off between aircraft carriers or not It's much broader than that But the point is more brought the point is more generally that we need to really update our thinking to have to bring a new generation of thinking To these potential clients to the conflicts that involve next-generation arms next-generation arms control and a new set of alliances and with that a half an hour has flown by So please join me in thanking congressman