The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to our 18th and final issues in national security lecture for this academic year. I'm John Jackson, and I will serve as host for today's event. To open our session, I'd like to turn the microphone over to Rarible Chatfield for her welcoming remarks. Amber? Oh, it's great to see everybody. We are delighted. David's with me today for our issues in national security, and I hope that we have spouses also on board in this targeted lecture series. I'm delighted to welcome you all to an important topic today and to be able to sit with you as we hear from our extraordinary faculty about issues that are currently very interesting in our national security affairs. So over to you, David. Yeah. So this evening, we're going to have Dean Weidman from our MWR department for the family discussion group segment, and we'll get to that a bit later. But it's good to see us all. It's been a long year, so it's kind of fun to wrap up here. And we're looking forward to this next lecture. Thank you very much. Very good. Thank you both. We've enjoyed bringing you this series as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. It's been expanded to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, including members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport, and participants from around the nation. As we've mentioned before several previous lectures, the College is pleased to offer certificates of participation to all viewers who have attended at least 60 percent of the offered lectures or 11 of the 18. We'll use the honor system and will upon request award certificates to everyone who completes 11 lectures by today. If you've reached this milestone, please send an email to Commander Gary Ross, providing the name you want to have inscribed on the document and a snail mail address we hope to get these certificates out sometime in June. Looking ahead, we will be taking a pause to allow our students to graduate and move back into operational jobs in which they will be able to put their Naval War College education into practice. But in about five weeks, we'll return to offer a INS summer series of four lectures designed to help keep our audience's intellectual fires burning. On 29 June, Dr. Tim Shultz and Dr. J. Dancy will provide a sample of two of the College's most interesting electives. On 13 July, Dr. Tom Nichols will talk about his excellent book, The Death of Expertise. On 27 July, Dr. Mike O'Hara will talk about the future of war. And on 10 August, 2021, Dr. John Maurer will talk about Winston Churchill. We'll formally announce the slate for the INS lecture series for the 2021-2022 academic year toward the end of the summer. And today, as David has mentioned, we will have a family discussion group meeting after the formal presentation. So on with the main event. During the presentation that follows, as always, we ask you to feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom and we'll get to as many as we can at the conclusion of the presentation. For more than 100 years, the United States has sought to help those in need around the globe. From natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes to complex emergencies brought about by military conflict, foreign humanitarian assistance is a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. This session will discuss how the U.S. Armed Forces are integrated into broader whole of government opportunities to support nations and people in need. The discussion will also emphasize the central role that non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations play in disaster response, as well as the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in supporting these vulnerable people. Heath Hank Breitman is a full professor in the civilian military humanitarian response program within the College of Maritime Operational Warfare, and he is the EMC Informationist Chair here at the Naval War College. From 2008 to 2016, he served as an Associate Professor, Professor and Director of Applied Research and Analysis in the Wargaming Department. He has previously served as a Tenured Associate Professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at St. Peter's University from 2000 to 2008. He now maintains a part-time private trauma and wellness practice here in Newport, where he specializes in trauma support and clinical hypnotherapy. I'm pleased to pass the digital baton to Professor Hank Breitman. Over to you, Hank. Well, thank you so much, John. And Admiral, thank you so much and so much to everyone, all my colleagues, friends, and family members for being here today to support this important topic. It's been a busy week for us as well. We actually finished up just a little while ago with a two-day course that we do in our program, the Humanitarian Response Program called MARHAST, which is our Maritime Assistance Humanitarian Survey Team course, which we actually do for the fleet. So taking a lot of that richness, a lot of that robust information that we share with the fleets and applying it as well to this meaningful audience today. So really looking forward to the opportunity to do that, to share some thoughts and insights with you, which of course are my own, and really looking forward to an opportunity to answer any questions that you may have. So with that said, on with our presentation, why do we care about this? Why do we care at all about humanitarian response? Well, I think probably the answer to that is obvious that all of us, every one of us at some point in our life, has probably been in some type of a disaster, whether it was a natural disaster or perhaps even human cause, what we refer to as a complex emergency. And what we see with increasing frequency is that natural disasters are becoming more and more of a challenge for us in our daily lives. With climate change, with some other patterns in migration, we're seeing that the world is becoming more vulnerable to climate. In fact, if you look at the map I've provided here, you'll actually see the migration of the coast. And as people migrate further and further to the coast, and we become more vulnerable to those storms and other types of events, that creates resource issues for us all. So understanding how to respond, understanding the unique role that the military plays in the response, and understanding how each of us can play a role as well, is critically important. Why that role is so important has to do with the gap. And although we have lots of wonderful folks out there who do respond to natural disasters and complex emergencies, often that takes time. And often there are capabilities that only militaries can provide. Indeed, logistics, things like lift or providing large amounts of resources to a population in need are something that often militaries are asked to provide early in a response. And that gap that you see here is really, really critical to understanding the unique role that militaries can play. That said, what I hope you'll take away today in our conversation is that although militaries play a vital role in response, we're never in charge of that response. And that's a recurring theme that we'll actually spend some time working through together. The process that we use for humanitarian response in a military context is referred to as foreign humanitarian assistance, or FHA. And I've given you the definition here directly out of the joint publication so that you can see that it really is specific. It's specific to those events outside the United States. And it really is designed to reduce or eliminate that immediate human suffering from things like disease hunger or other kinds of privation challenges. So short, very, very narrow in scope with the desire that we will do our mission to serve those vulnerable populations in need and then return to our regular operations on station. And within FHA, we actually have yet another kind of subset called FDR, which of course has nothing to do with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but rather has to do with foreign disaster relief. And this, again, focuses specifically on the role that we play in supporting those populations in need. And again, we limit that to some very, very specific activities. And as you can see here at the bottom of the graphic, there are clearly defined benchmarks, missions, and end states in terms of how we respond and for how long. So it's never an open-ended response. And there are specifically three criteria that we follow within FDR. The first one, and the one that I'd really footstomp, is the US never responds to any type of natural disaster or other emergency without specifically being asked to come in and support. So the way I like to think of it, and it perhaps it's a little bit of a way out example, is we are, if you will, the vampire. And the vampire, depending on which literature you read or popular TV show, can never come into one's house without being invited. So for us, as the vampire, if you will, we have to be invited into that host nation. And that host nation has the opportunity anytime they choose to tell us to leave as well. So it's really important to understand that we have to be invited in, in terms of the response. And that is done often because that response is just such an incredible resource drain on a host nation that they can't manage the response by themselves. Now, as you probably know, there are lots of countries that have incredible robust response capabilities. But even the most robust often will ask for help. And that's when we would be responsible for supporting that effort. And last but by no means least, there has to be something tied to the national security strategy for us. Militaries don't just respond. We respond, as you'll see, in a coordinated measure through the Department of State, because there's always some national strategic objective. That's why that's why we actually are responding in the first place. So what is the affected state to? Well, the affected state often will be the first responder. They have primary responsibility for everything that goes on within the host nation. And as I mentioned, they have to give consent not only to the United States, but any other international entities that may wish to participate or support that response. To make sure that we have a process that meets those US objectives, we actually work through the Department of State and specifically the US Agency for International Development or USAID has an element called the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance. It used to be called OFTA. You may have heard that term before. The Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance renamed as BHA relatively recently. This is actually who coordinates the response. So again, military is not out in front. We're coordinating our response through the Department of State and specifically through BHA. And the reason we do that is BHA has capabilities that they bring to the fight and we'll talk more about those in just a few minutes. But from the very beginning, they can actually do things like write a check and having money up to $100,000 right off the bat to support that response can be very critical. And while $100,000 may not seem like a large sum of money, you'll see that we have pre deployed stocks of equipment and supplies around the world. So what you're really contracting for things like trucks and other equipment that allow those ready resources to be deployed. So working through the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance is really in everyone's best interest in terms of how we respond. They have a specific element that they bring to this called the DART team or disaster assessment response team. And the DART teams actually coordinate the military aspect of the response as well. And there are three categories, as I mentioned, there's that funding piece, there's that immediate checkbook, if the host nation asks for support. And of course, they need to do that. There are commodities, those pre deployed stocks of materials that I'll share those locations momentarily. And as I mentioned, they have folks like the DART teams that it can actually respond and provide specific types of exquisite support, depending on the needs of the host nation. And here's where we actually find those warehouses. And as you can see, they're really aligned with those parts of the world where we tend to see natural disasters, where we tend to see floods, tsunamis, and other specific kinds of events. Now, if you're wondering why we really don't have a lot of capability within the United States, other than the Miami deployment for the Caribbean, that's because we have our own FEMA and our own internal processes for defense support for civil authority within the US that are different. But believe it or not, the way that these particular facilities are structured is as much science as it is art. And everything that you see here in terms of resources, whether we're talking about hygiene kits or blankets or water bladders are stored in such a way that we maximize use of that space. And it's really incredible if you've ever seen one of these facilities, just how much science goes into stocking those with every available resource for response. What's really interesting as well is that when you actually look at the responses that occur within the United States, that teal screen, at least teal on my screen, represents the BHA response and the darker blue represents DOD or military response. It might surprise you that overwhelmingly, BHA is the primary response element, whether or not there's a DOD element as well. So there are lots of responses to disasters around the world. And the military, believe it or not, actually makes up only a small percentage of those. Critically, in terms of our responses, we have capabilities that support like logistics, like lift, like airframes and ships. But more often than not, BHA is actually coordinating responses independent of ours as well. And here are some examples, many of which you're probably familiar with. The majority of which that you see here would be natural disasters. But of course, there are also complex emergencies that militaries and also BHA will respond to support vulnerable populations in need. So the way that we respond again is through BHA or specifically working with the State Department. More often than not, that means we're working with the U.S. Ambassador who has a country team assigned to that particular host nation. They're working with the geographic combatant commander, which is the physical commander on the ground responsible for that area of responsibility or AOR. And often a task force will be stood up to work with that GCC, that geographic combatant commander. And as you can see here, that lineage, that linkage and connection between the GCC and the JTF, and between USAID and that disaster response team that I mentioned, our job is to support those elements. Again, not in charge, but rather in a supporting role to that U.S. ambassador who's working closely with the host nation to make sure their needs are met, as we're making sure that our national strategic objectives are met as well. So when we talk about what that looks like, it's not just the U.S. and often it's not just international militaries that are part of that response. Often there's lots of other actors who are involved in humanitarian response, and often they're the largest percentage of the response element. They may be international governmental organizations, they may be non-governmental organizations, they may be other United Nations elements, other kinds of special organizations. And just to show you, as we start to populate those out, some of these you may be familiar with, like the International Red Cross, or the International Red Crescent, or OCHA, which is a UN element, or the High Commission on Refugees under the UN, or even UNICEF, which many of us may be familiar with. But as we build that out, we see more and more other organizations coming to create that synergy and energy to respond to that disaster or crisis, including those humanitarian non-governmental organizations. Some of these you may be familiar with. The one that often people are very familiar with is called MSF, or Medicine Sun Frontier. We call it Doctors Without Borders in the United States, who provides medical support to vulnerable populations in need around the world. Others, World Vision and some of the other organizations like Mercy Corps, you may be familiar with as well. Each of them brings special talents and capabilities to humanitarian response. International militaries, of course, again at the behest of the host nation and working with that ambassador and with that geographic combatant commander and task force may also be involved. And, believe it or not, there's the private sector, as well as philanthropic organizations as well. Whether we're talking about DHL or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, lots of different equities and interests involved in humanitarian response. And, of course, there are other organizations like USAID, UK, the United Kingdom has its own, as does the EU. And you can see, again, how all these different groups come together and work through unity of effort to try and respond in a way that has value to that population in need. What's most interesting is that those non-governmental organizations will have a specific charter or set of principles that they will abide by. Now, it's important to understand that not every non-governmental organization is a humanitarian non-governmental organization, but for those that are, they have four specific principles that they abide by, humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence. And those are important because those allow those NGOs, those humanitarian NGOs to provide support to populations in need, regardless of what their beliefs are, regardless of what they may be doing in terms of undermining a host nation. They're providing support in a way that we can't, because we're always working within the interests of the United States. And again, their focus is really on helping those populations in need, regardless of who they are. So what that often means is they'll operate completely independently from us. In fact, they don't want anything to do with the military, because that could affect their neutrality, their impartiality, or their independence. So they'll bring their own resources to bear. They'll have their own funding sources. They'll often coordinate those efforts directly with a host nation, exclusive of us, because they don't want any kind of connective tissue. And you need to think strategically about that, because they're not just worried at the NGO level about how working in that particular area may be an issue. They're worried about how they may be perceived all the way across the world, or in a future setting, if they're seen to be complicit with militaries or state governance. So really important to understand how those four principles come into play. UN OCHA, as I mentioned, looking at this from the UN level, has an aspect or coordinating function that I'll talk a little bit more about in a little bit. But again, provides kind of that broader context and container to allow for effective response. And I'll give you some examples of that in just a little bit. The way that we do that, and for our military friends or veterans who are on this today, the way we do that may sound a little bizarre in terms of the term that we use, but we actually use a process called the cluster system. And the cluster system is actually think of it like a trivial pursuit board, a series of wedges that come together in this perfect pie to allow for us to respond to a population in need. So you can see here that each of these wedges has a specific function, whether it's health protection, agriculture, sanitation and hygiene, logistics, you name it, working your way around the wheel, each of these sectors will be comprised of different organizations, whether they're NGOs, international governmental organizations, even militaries in some cases will be assigned to look at and work with different cluster elements. What's really unique about this is it's a consensus model. So many of us in the military, and I'm a commander in the Navy Reserve, are used to this really traditional command and control model where it's very, very simple, very elegant, and it's often very top down. That's not the way the cluster model works. The cluster model is very much a consensus-based model. And since it's consensus-based, that means that these organizations are working through this coordinating element, this humanitarian coordinator in the center of this pie. Believe it or not, though, this works very well. Often the people who are parts of these clusters, parts of these sectors, have worked together for years and years and are so experienced working with each other and understanding each other's strengths and challenges that they're able to effectively respond. And we actually round that out and support that in really, really meaningful ways. In fact, if you look here, you can actually see on the right-hand side how some of our ability and capability can be used to support those specific areas, whether we're talking about medical support or logistics, which are two of the largest areas, engineering or planning support, there's lots that we can bring to augment and complement the cluster system in a way that has value to us all. We do that by working as an indirect aid function. Now, you can see here, and it may be obscured a little bit by the video, but you see here there are actually three concepts that we apply when we talk about the delivery of humanitarian aid. We talk about cookie truck and bridge. And what's really interesting is that you would often think, well, of course, we want to provide that cookie. We want to be the folks to help that population in need. But remember, we're coordinating everything we do with the host nation who's working with the ambassador or working with USAID. And what that means is because we're trying to meet a national security objective, we're not going to just hand out those cookies. We may hand them out to the wrong people who are not in need. We may undermine confidence in the host nation by doing that. So what we're more likely to do is actually have large pallets of cookies that we then turn over to the host nation who will then turn them over to NGOs or other organizations for effective delivery within the country. Because the last thing that we ever want to be seen is undermining the host nation or otherwise changing the dynamics of governance in that nation so that when we leave, we create a power vacuum within that particular country. On the far right side, you see bridge. That would be building the bridges that allow those trucks then to roll to provide the cookies. That's a different function that BHA and USAID provide. That's more of that long-term civil affairs function. And they're actually very, very involved in that at the Department of State. It's a huge area of their budget. But for us, because our goal again is very specific under FDR, it's to get in, meet whatever missions that we need to and get out and return to our on-station operations. For us, that's really not our goal. So we're not going to be involved in bridge. We're going to be this truck element providing indirect aid. And just to show you a visual of how all of this comes together, you can see again that affected state in the center and red really in charge, working with any type of militaries, often in a multinational coordination center, working with the UN or a humanitarian country team. And you can see how everyone comes together through this context of a cluster system to provide the support that's necessary to that population in need. So what I'd like to do now briefly is transition from having an understanding of how foreign humanitarian assistance and disaster relief work to a game that we ran a little bit over a year and a half ago at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab down in Maryland that relates to the concept of COVID-19 response. And that's important because it underscores some of what we've already talked about in a way that has value to us. Now it's important to understand that the game that we ran really had nothing to do with COVID. It was pure happenstance that we ran this game in September of 2019 and COVID hit just a few months later in the United States and around the world. However, it wasn't that we just were creatively thinking. We had done a series of workshops with our partners at Brown University and at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and other entities. And in talking with the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, their Uniform Services University and Johns Hopkins, we decided that we really needed to have this event. And we did. And so we held an event at Johns Hopkins. It was unique because we brought together people that often never come together. We had people from international militaries. We had non-governmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, UN representatives, people from all different entities and interests, including the private sector who also provide exquisite logistics and supply service as well. So we brought these 50 folks together and we brought them together for two days. And this was a live game where we actually set up player cells. And those player cells were focused on what priorities would they would need to engage in to respond to a population in need. And in this case, the population was focused on an urban outbreak, a pathogen that I'll talk about in just a minute. And how do they actually get over those coordination challenges and communication challenges working to support that population. So this three game, three move game that we held over two days, really focused on that with these 50 players. And we did that by creating a fictional country located in a notional developing nation. And that developing nation, we call Olympia, in the larger city of Olymp, or larger country of Olympus, which was on a continent where there was a need for developing nation research. And to do that, we looked at a particular city within this nation that had about 21 million people, what we refer to as a mega city. And a large percentage of them were socioeconomically challenged. They lived in slum-like conditions, had very little access to public water, potable water, didn't really have the kind of public health infrastructure that we would have in the United States, or other parts of the developed world. So we really wanted to focus on how would we help this population that was experiencing challenges from a urban outbreak of a pathogen. So we created our own pathogen. And again, this was all long before COVID, right? It just happened that COVID lined up with this game just a few months later. And what's interesting is the pathogen that we created was not a virus, but rather a bacteria readily treatable with antibiotics, with intravenous antibiotics. But you can see here, interestingly, that R-naught factor on the left-hand side, which is the mortality rate, very, very similar, if you will, to what we've seen in COVID in some cases as well. And when we look at that and we look at the disease side, the morbidity side, you can actually see what those percentages looked like for that population. Three move game where things were definitely at their worst and moved to and started to subside and move three. And we ran this, and again, it was about communication and coordination across sectors based on priorities. What we found were some really interesting analytic data points that we can draw to the COVID response that we've seen within the United States and abroad as well. So I'd like to do that with you now. The first thing we learned is that social behaviors matter. And those social behaviors correlate with clear messaging. So if we don't provide clear messages to a population, if we're not consistent in our messaging, everything breaks down. And whether we're talking about the game that we ran called Urban Outbreak or applying that to COVID-19, that's been a great challenge that we've seen. In this game, we used predominantly radio because that was what the population really needed and used the most. But in the case of COVID-19, both within the United States and internationally, mixed messages, right? Some people saying we're all in it together. Some people applying more of that John Stuart Mill on liberty approach to individual liberties, lots of tension, lots of disparity in terms of the message that was received and the message that was sent. So really important to understand that correlation between behaviors and messaging. And again, just to kind of underscore that, it's been a really interesting ride for all of us with COVID so far in terms of what we've seen. Every system impacts every other system. And that's important to understand as well. Because think of it like dominoes or the fragility of an egg, where if we don't consider the secondary and tertiary effects across sectors, across different types of clusters to go back to the cluster model, we can very easily become overwhelmed. And a good example for us, I think we all saw early on, was the supply and logistics node within the United States. And that's important to understand because in a country that has really turned to just in time logistics, or often we talk about things like Lean Six Sigma processes, in common stable times those work well. But all it takes is a perturbation or disruption. And that can really upset that model. So understanding how one node can impact another node, whether it's how a medical node can impact a physical resourcing node or an agricultural node, really, really important to understand. We saw that in the urban outbreak game. And assuredly, we've seen that in the COVID-19 response as well. Civ mill and how civ mill differs in terms of a soothing risk. And by that, I mean, when we talk about NGOs or IGOs, what we find is they're very willing to lean into risk. And they're willing to lean into risk to support a population in need in a way that militaries often are not. Now, I'm not talking about military medical providers, whose job is to support a population in need. I'm talking about those other forces that are doing things like logistics or protection functions, where the focus tends to be on protecting the force rather than supporting that population in need. In the urban outbreak game, this was really interesting for us, because despite the spate of civilian deaths that we saw in this mega city, because there were no military deaths of the force that had responded, the commanders considered that a win. And again, where you sit depends on where you stand and vice versa, right? So looking at that through those different lenses is really important to understand and aligns very much with the kinds of challenges we've seen in COVID about how we prioritize the force and the safety of the force, as opposed to the missions in which we engage. And certainly we saw that with the deployment of some of the hospital ships. We could probably do an entire lecture. And my boss, Dave Pilatti, who was actually on active duty from his reserve job as a Navy captain and Navy emergency preparedness liaison officer, was very much involved with a lot of the response coordination piece of this in Rhode Island. We could probably do a one day lecture or workshop focused on some of the challenges we saw using the hospital ships. But they go back to this tenant that we just talked about, which is more important, supporting the population in need, protecting the force. As soon as the hospital ships became contaminated in New York, that instantly became a mission kill in many ways. And a lot of folks saw that and identified that and the way that risked was examined kind of created that dynamic. Stove piping and the challenges of stove piping and cultural resistance that we often see, what we find is the more an emergency or an event unfolds and erodes, often the more entrenched people become in their thinking, which may seem counterintuitive. You may think that people would be more willing to be agile and adaptable, but they're not, especially in those large bureaucratic organizations where they become highly rigid, highly structure, and they go back to looking within. And we saw this a lot when we look at things like the acquisition process, even with some limited nationalization of resources, acquisition processes did not become agile. You can look at something like an acquisition process within DoD to see just how complex that actually is and why that's a concern and challenge for us that we need to be aware of. So we take all of these things as wisdom that we can now apply within the COVID-19 framework so that we can hopefully get better for the next event. As we all know, COVID-19 will not be the last pathogen that we see in the United States. And all we have to do is look at the influenza outbreak of 1918 to see that that's the case. But hopefully we're learning lessons and hopefully these are lessons that will be underscored by the games we run by understanding these international response frameworks and the meaningful work that we do at the Naval War College to educate future leaders in these areas. Lastly, if you're interested in anything I've talked about today or you're interested in any of the broader resources that the War College has, whether we're talking about gaming for humanitarian response, doctrine, research guides, we have a wonderful library guide publicly available on our War College site. And I'm happy to share that resource with you here as well. So please stay connected to us. Consider us a resource at all times that is available to you to support your efforts. And again, as we like to say, it's all about one team, one fight. And when it comes to humanitarian response, there's a role for each and every one of us. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions you may have. Well, thank you very much, Hank. That was a really quick run through of an awful lot of information. A couple of questions that have arisen. One of the things you talk about are natural disasters. And they're also CEs, complex emergencies. How do you stay neutral when it's a complex emergency that's brought around by some military action? Yeah, what a great question. And it's important to understand that the majority of what we're doing are natural disaster responses. However, we do engage in complex emergencies. We are not neutral. The US is never neutral, right? Because we have national strategic objectives that we need to meet. However, those humanitarian organizations are because their focus has to always be meeting those humanitarian principles so that they continue to do the meaningful work that they do. I am not in any way saying that we as military members don't have some qualities that are humanitarian. We care. Of course, we care. We're a global force for good, right? But that doesn't mean we're neutral. That doesn't mean that we have those core humanitarian principles that you would see in a humanitarian NGO and certainly not in a conflict setting. Interesting. One of the slices of pie you showed in the cluster organization said prevention. How do we do any sort of prevention when we're talking about emerging disasters? Yeah, so there are lots of prophylactic types of things we do in terms of prevention. Public health is often part of that. So that may mean improving water potability, improving immunization output for a community, improving access to other resources that make them less vulnerable or susceptible to future events. So when we talk about prevention, we could be talking about medical monitoring and tracking, developing better public health infrastructure, or even doing things on the longer term sustainment side, like helping with crop yield or irrigation or things like that. Thank you. As the military chair of unmanned systems, I'm interested, of course, in the use of drones in humanitarian applications. Have you seen that? And is that increasing? With increasing frequency, and we actually have an elective that we run in the winter term focused on technology in humanitarian response, which has a very robust portion of discussions and exercises focused on drones or UAS, unmanned aerial systems, and other systems, because there are different types of systems. There are systems that are used for surveying and monitoring, for assessment. There are systems used for delivery of aid as well. Lots of different types of systems that are available, depending on what that population in need requires. So very much so. Of course, we never deploy drones, whether we're talking about military drones like a skin eagle that we use in the Navy or commercial drones. Those are never deployed by anyone without permission of the host nation for lots of reasons, whether we're talking about concerns of intelligence gathering or deconfliction with airframes, where if there isn't that deconfliction, you may take out a helicopter that's trying to provide aid en route. And that actually does happen, unfortunately, more often than we'd like. The term I'm more familiar with is HADR. You've shifted away from that terminology. Is that correct? Could you explain what HADR was and perhaps why the terminology has changed? Sure. Well, FHA is a doctrinal term. So it actually comes from the joint publication, as well as some of our own Navy doctrine as well. That's why I tend to focus on it, since we're the Naval War College, right? And I'm looking at it through the military lens, but certainly on the civilian side of what we do and that connection, HADR, Humanitarian Assistance, Disaster Relief or Response, depending on who you ask and their level of familiarity with the topic. That HADR perspective is very, very similar to FHA. It just doesn't have some of the doctrinal things attached to it that we talk about. Not so fun fact. One of the things that I always kind of get skivvy about is when people call it HADR, it's the opposite of that, right? So there's nothing HADR about what we're doing. We really do prefer HADR over HADR whenever possible. And indeed, question. On average, how long are the DART units deployed to a disaster zone? And do they often remain until the area is designated as restored or just for the immediate remediation? Yeah, so they're hopefully there within 72 hours, providing that on the ground support. And it's only for as limited a period of time as necessary, because again, BHA and Department of State have much longer term capabilities for civil affairs or infrastructure development through other aspects of the Department of State. So the DART teams, once there's any level of stability that can now be met either by the host nation or other civil affairs elements, that that's actually going to disappear along with the militaries as well. So really, the goal is because DART is a finite resource, they're on to the next event, just like we're back on station as a military entity. During the pandemic, forces were used within the United States. Most of what you talked about was international and away from the continental United States. Was there special legislation or anything necessary permissions to do the work that was done inside the continental United States? Yeah, great question. And we actually have something called DISCA, which is defense support to civil authority, which is a set of rules, regulations and laws that allow us to provide limited types of humanitarian response and emergency response within the United States. More often than not, that response is being done by National Guard elements operating under Title 32, as opposed to standard military units operating under Title 10, which is a different set of laws that govern our actions. There are some cases where they overlap and there are opportunities for us to mutually support each other under agreements and other kinds of rules and regulations we have. But there are certain things that we absolutely do not use standing military forces for in the United States. Any kind of a traditional law enforcement function would be a good example of that, save for some very, very limited circumstances. Those are the kinds of things that you wouldn't see, but medical support, other kinds of construction projects or Corps of Engineers projects for a population in need, you may see that more often. Can you give a little more information on the hospital ship deployment during the pandemic and was there a misinterpretation as to what the intent of those ships being used was and in retrospect perhaps should not have been mobilized? Yeah, so I'll start out by saying Captain slash Professor Dave Pilatti could probably spend a day talking about this. That said, my limited research piece and anecdotally talking to Dave about this as well, is that what should never have happened was a deployment in the way that they were deployed. It should have been known and understood from the beginning that because of the rate of spread of this particular virus that keeping the ships free from infection was virtually impossible. Given that coupled with the fact that we had standing capability at places like the Javits Center that was actually working very well, there really wasn't a need to deploy the hospital ship in the way that it was deployed or towards Los Angeles either. Respectfully, I understand the signaling piece of this that the president was looking for when he sent those ships as a sign of assurance and stability, but to really answer your question, there were a spate of military planners vehemently discouraging the hospital ship from being deployed to New York to be used in that manner. Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of capturing the hours expended and the cost when military forces respond internationally or domestically? Right, so one of the things I didn't talk about because it can be an eye-wateringly interesting subject for me, but perhaps not for our audience, is the use of the MI-TAM tracking process. So we actually have a spreadsheet, we're a very state-of-the-art, that we actually use that fills in all of those resourcing requirements and allows us to crack a lot of that information. So if down the line there's a desire to recapture those costs, that ability is there to do that. That's similar to what we see in the U.S., anytime a state is required to use a federalization process by the national government. For example, if there's an oil spill or hazardous materials spill and the Coast Guard or EPA has to assign an on-scene coordinator, often we will track those expenses plus overhead using a similar FEMA tracking process to allow us to recover those costs from the state. It's the reason why host nations have the ability to say no. If they think that the cost could be so overwhelming once this event is over or they're worried that it may not be a debt that's waived, if it's not considered to be in the best interest of the U.S. or other nations, that's part of the delivery process that they'll engage in. Good question about the use of National Guard and do you see a role for National Guard assets assisting during HADR if it's the partner country assigned or the partnership with the COCOM is interested in this preparedness assistance. So what is the role of National Guard? So as you mentioned, there are those state to partner agreements. I always like to go back to my days when I was studying joint enabling capabilities or Jack because it always blew my mind that you had the state of Georgia National Guard assigned to the country of Georgia to provide support to them on a mill to mill relationship. But you see those same kinds of agreements with other countries and states as well. So there are existing agreements that for support, whether we're talking about training and technical support, security support, there are existing opportunities for that. I'm a big believer in humanitarian response, not just because of the military objectives that align with the national strategic objectives, but also because anytime and hopefully Admiral Chatfield will agree, anytime a helicopter pilot can have that cyclic and collective in their hand, that's time in the air, right? And that's experience, whether it's in a conflict setting or it's in an environmental setting, it's still experiencing to be glad we'll ask about it. It's part of that 10,000 hours, right? So the more experienced people are getting, the better they are at their jobs. And I think there's a lot of value for us in some of these lesser threat environments providing that type of experience. Thank you mentioned, do host countries, are they subsequently billed for the aid that is provided? Is that the norm or does it depend on State Department and U.S. interest, etc.? Yeah, it's really the second answer more than the first. And my understanding, and I'm certainly not an expert on international humanitarian law by any means, is that as long as it was something within the national security objectives of the United States, there will be processes that will be discussed to either forgive a debt or portion of the debt, or otherwise determine that it's not viable for renumeration. But that really depends on the country and the issue and what's actually occurred. But I think that what's important to understand is that a host nation is really only going to look at one of these international public concern incidents when it's overwhelming for them. Because think again about if a country has to ask for outside help, there's a messaging piece to that as well. So there's a lot that goes into that deliberative decision making process. And probably our last question, Hank, is how important is what the foreign humanitarian assistance folks do important to put a positive face on DoD so that we're not always seen as a negative force in some of these countries? Well, I will say, especially now in great power competition, if we're not providing this support, our adversaries are, or our peer competitors are, or our near peer competitors are, depending on which definition you like best. So we need to be involved because if we're not, there are others that are more than happy to fill that void and potentially use that for resource exploitation or access exploitation down the road. So part of our national strategy needs to be the effective use of humanitarian assistance to support our national security objectives in great power competition. Absolutely. Thank you. And Admiral Chatfield, do you have anything to add from your experience in Micronesia and the Marianas? Yeah, absolutely. So my experience was with defense support to civil authorities in Guam and the Marianas, but also in assisting the State Department with their humanitarian assistance for other locations, including the Federated States of Micronesia. And so the presidential declarations, the importance of, for example, for an international partner of ours, making that request and then having that responded to the passage of the notes between heads of government is very important to activate what happens next. And even in internally, domestically, the presidential declaration is extremely important because it starts the federal response and it starts a certain kind of money to flow. And then keeping things within their bins, because everybody wants to help. And for the military, we want to help, but we are limited by law in how we can help. And so it really is important to be very well educated in where those lines are for immediate response and then what kinds of requests have to happen from the state government to the federal agency and to have that passed down correctly to the military before the military helps. And sometimes it's hard to wait, but we have to wait to have the right authorities to do that because we don't own the resources ourselves. And in the end, there is a mechanism to transfer funds between federal agencies. If a federal agency is unable to fulfill the request, then they can pass it to the military and then the military can perform it. But we have limited flight hours, limited shipping hours, limited resources, and we have programmed things we're supposed to do. And so being able to have those resources passed between federal agencies is very important for mission accomplishment, maybe later on. A very important topic and so important also, I will say, to have JAG resources available because having a very commander's need, close interpretation of authorities when we start to talk about doing this kind of work either internationally or in conjunction with National Guard domestically. Thank you. That was great. I would just like to wrap up by saying how important I think the efforts of Professor Breitman and Pilotti and the entire team is because when you work for an institution that has a war as its middle name, people tend to think that's all we do. And it's very interesting to see that the college has taken a leading role in coordinating some of these efforts and whatnot. So I think that's a very positive thing for our institution. So Hank, any last comments you'd like to make, sir? No, just thank you all so much for inviting me into your homes today and having an opportunity to be with you. And thank you, Admiral, for the really meaningful experiential comments as well to underscore the more academic points that I was making today as well. Okay. Well, thank you very much. So that concludes our formal presentation. We'll take about a five minute break and then we'll come back and David Scoville will introduce our guest speaker for our family discussion group meeting. So let's come back at 532 to be exact. Thank you.


What are the welfare implications of satisfying people's true preferences if they don't recognize that they are their true preferences? Does it make them happier? In fact, it might make them worse off. If somebody doesn't realize that his or her true preferences are not to eat junk food, but thinks that their true preferences are to eat junk food, then putting a tax on junk food or somehow inhibiting them from eating junk food doesn't make them happier. It makes them worse off. I'm Mario Rizzo. I'm a professor of economics at New York University and the co-director of the Classical Liberal Institute at the New York University School of Law. I thought that behavioral economics in some ways was a refreshing development in economics because a lot of things had been taken for granted in the standard new classical approach, which I thought should be questioned and should not be taken for granted. But they connected it very closely with a kind of policy agenda. So what I wanted to do was to see whether the policy agenda really followed from the behavioral foundations that they were laying and just sorted all out in terms of the theory and in terms of policy agenda. I would say the behavioral economics, the fundamental concept of behavioral economics is something called decision-making failure. In standard economics we have a notion of market failure when markets don't work well to satisfy the preferences of consumers and there are many cases, monopoly, externalities, whatever. But this is a case of decision-making failure that is to say when individuals do not make decisions that are consistent with their own best interests. And so I think that's the core behavioral economics is decision-making failure. What follows from that is the behavioral policy analysis. In fact, there's a journal called Behavioral Public Policy which is devoted to the policy implications of the idea of decision-making failure. Behavioral biases that have been catalogued by this Wikipedia page called Cognitive Biases amount to about 175. Now in all fairness the biases listed are not all separate from each other but it gives you a sense of the behavioral literature, not only behavioral economics but the cognitive science literature which has developed this idea of biases, how many they have come up with. So there are many biases. I think probably the most important of these biases is something called present bias. And present bias is the idea that people when they're making decisions for the farther future tend to make quote-unquote rational decisions but when these decisions are upfront when they refer to say the next period people tend to be myopic and they tend to make decisions which are only in their short-run interest. So it's this conflict between kind of short-run interest and long-run interest with the bias being the short-run interest that's taken the focus of behavioral economics I think. There are many others but I think I would say that's the central bias. What behavioral economists used to call new paternalism they're now calling behavioral paternalism and behavioral paternalism differs from the classic form of paternalism insofar as the classic form of paternalism was not about a person's own true preferences. It was about some objective criterion for what is good for a person and sometimes it was a moral paternalism you know you should go to church on Sunday or sometimes it was a health paternalism but it had to do with some objective criteria. Behavioral paternalism is a little different. It purports to be about not objective criteria but the true preferences of individuals of what they really want to do not what somebody else thinks they should do. So it's still rooted in a kind of traditional economics framework but has to do with preferences that people would have if they were free of biases. So it's this sort of bias-free preference. Now the issue of course is how do you discover bias-free preferences and that's where a lot of the debate is today how easy it is to discover these and whether behavioral economists have been successful. Now I've argued among other things that it is quite difficult to in fact determine bias-free preferences probably in part because there are so many biases so one have to systematically investigate a situation to determine whether various biases are present so you go through essentially a checklist and it would be a lot of things to sort of check off. Unfortunately in most of the analysis people seem to be content with analyzing one or two biases and therefore coming to rather simple conclusions about what bias-free preferences would be. So there are really important epistemic problems here that I think need to be further explored. In the junk food area there would be the so-called fat tax or soda tax. It depends on what kind of junk food you're talking about. There are some jurisdictions which have a tax on the sugar content of soft drinks or non-alcoholic drinks. So what those are supposed to do is to dissuade people from drinking sugar sweetened drinks with the idea that that will help the obesity problem. Unfortunately enough there have been studies to try to investigate whether these taxes or other nudges away from junk foods do any good and there's no real evidence that it does. Partly it's because for example in the soda case people switch to artificially sweetened sodas. Artificially sweetened sodas if you hold everything else constant will cause you to lose weight but in fact they don't satisfy your appetite as much. People tend to eat more. They feel it's a license to eat more and so everything is not constant and in fact people who consume the sodas are not more likely to control their obesity problem than anybody else. There are other examples. One example which is a little bit strange because it doesn't really involve government is setting up a default of automatic enrollment in retirement savings programs. Now the background is this. Many large employers have employer sponsored retirement programs. It used to be that you had to opt in to get to be part of the program so that if you did nothing you were not in the program. In recent years more firms have developed this idea of automatic enrollment so if you do nothing you're enrolled and you're enrolled at a certain rate in a certain retirement vehicle. Now the way it comes into behavioral economics is not in the as I say in terms of government policy but in the idea that this in fact is the reason that there has been greater enrollment in these programs over recent years. Automatic enrollment because it would seem that what's the difference. If you could sign in or sign out it's all very simple. But behavioral economists have claimed it's due to some behavioral nudge that people are greater enrolled. We have argued it's due to more information and a recommendation on the part of employers that is manifest in the automatic enrollment. So people are doing it for weakling purely rational reasons and not for behavioral nudge reasons. In economics there are certain criteria that decision makers have to fulfill in order to be considered rational. And one of the criteria is that they have to have a complete preference ordering. In other words they have to have an opinion, a clear cut opinion about every option in front of them. Other criteria are that they have to be consistent in their choices.  Now the behavioral economists quite reasonably say people aren't like that. They don't behave in accordance with all these rationality criteria. They're not mechanical, economic men or women. And so it doesn't make any sense from a descriptive point of view. But, and then they don't say this explicitly. But they in effect hold to this. That this is the way people should behave. So the goal of policy is to incentivize people to behave as rational economic agents. And we think that's too narrow. There are plenty of reasons why people might be inconsistent in their choice. That doesn't make them irrational. It may be that they're experimenting with different options. It may be that they haven't decided what they want to do. And so on and so forth. So we think from, in that sense, the behavioral economists have an incomplete revolution. The complete revolution would be to reject the rationality criteria even at the level of normativity as well as the descriptive level. Inclusive rationality is the idea that we ought to be broader about what we consider reasonable behavior. So that reasonable behavior ought to be the standard not technically rational behavior. And as I say, reasonable behavior could be simply that a person has not fully decided what they want to do. And that's why they're inconsistent. That's reasonable in a world of high information costs and things of that sort. And interesting, there's an economist by the name of Isaac Jilbaugh, I think is his name, who says his favorite definition of rationality is if you can give reasons for your choice that don't make people laugh. Then he says, then that's a reasonable choice that you've made. And he would consider that rational. I tend to go along with that joke. Some psychologists have actually, and we discuss some of this, have argued that there is a functional value to biases. That sometimes biases can inhibit people from making decisions that they otherwise would not want to make. For example, some biases cause people to procrastinate in their decisions. Now, procrastination could be viewed as a bad thing, or it could be viewed as time out. George Ansley, a psychologist, a very prominent psychologist, has argued that many of the biases have functional value and they are important and do contribute to people's broader rationality. That's a whole other approach, but I think it has a lot of vitality. I think that Knight's contribution is important here because most economists, both behavioral and neoclassical, like to model all conditions of uncertainty as if they were purely risk, so that the probability distribution is known. Now, this comes out implicitly in the idea, for example, that certain habits like eating junk food or smoking, etc., are bad for your health in the context of young people. In order to make an appropriate economic decision as to whether to eat junk food, for example, or not, in view of the health risks, one has to have some sense of what the health risks are going to be 20, 30, 40 years from now for a typical 20-year-old. This is not something which is determinable by a fixed and objective probability distribution. We don't know the future course of medical technology. For example, people in 1960 who were obese were in much worse health than people today who are obese because of all the drugs and various other medical procedures that we have now. Who knows what people who are obese in the year 2050 or 2060 are going to be like in terms of health, and therefore what the real risks are of these habits today. So, in one sense, the Knightian approach warns us not to assume that we know what the unique rational decision is for decisions for young people, for example, in smoking or eating junk food. It cautions us that there may be more than one, what reasonable decision to make under these conditions of radical uncertainty. There is a distinction that psychologists have made between sources of self-control, external and internal sources of self-control. I think the terms are kind of self-explanatory. So internal self-control, a person comes to the recognition that a certain behavior is bad or either their health or morally, etc. and they exercise willpower and self-control. Even before you get to self-control, there's something called a broader concept of self-regulation. Self-regulation is not the immediate sort of stealing yourself against the chocolate cake, but it is more subtle. You don't go to restaurants that serve a delicious chocolate cake or you put the chocolate cake on the top shelf where it's inconvenient to get and it reminds you not to get it. Things of that sort. So that's internal forms of self-control or self-regulation. External is somebody scolds you or there's a tax on the sugar or whatever coming from the outside. Now the relevance of this is that psychologists have done studies that indicate that self-external control and internal control are treated by people as substitutes. The more there is external control, the less they engage in internal control. So what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that is that it has also been found that the substitution or the reduction of internal control doesn't only occur in the area where there's the external control. It generalizes. In other words, people become more accustomed to leaving it to somebody else so that there have been experiments that show that in completely unrelated areas when people were subject to external control, their self-control was reduced and vice versa. I have to admit the research is not definitive but it could actually lead to a condition where people are less able to do for themselves than they were prior to the nudges and paternalism. The political economy of paternalism is fraught really because it oftentimes politically is a combination of what we call and has been called in the literature the coalition of the bootleggers and the Baptists. The Baptists mean the people who are truly concerned with making people better in some sense morally or here health-wise, for example. And the bootleggers are the people who have some special interest to gain out of the policy. I would add a third category and that's the category of the clueless voter. The clueless voter doesn't really know what the correct amount of junk food eating should be according to behavioral economics and its standards. It's clearly not zero because they admit that people get pleasure from this. So it would tend to be the case that in political terms it's never enough. In other words, you could always say that as long as people are eating junk food we should do more to intervene. And when the tax isn't enough then the temptation for harder forms of intervention are present. And so the idea is that because the standard is so hard to determine in practice that politically it will tend to be simplified into all or nothing and therefore become more severe in its paternalistic aspects. There are groups of economists who want to reanalyze and reevaluate the notions of rationality that have come down to us. They tend to be not in the mainstream by and large. I know INET, for example, has many economists who are interested in this sort of evaluation. The Austrian School of Economics has people and even behavioral economists. I mean there are some behavioral economists who are not particularly happy with the public policy aspect. So I think there is a growing group of economists outside the mainstream who are interested in reevaluating these ideas. I think ultimately the mainstream will get the message, but I'm not sure when and how. For a young person thinking of entering economics I think it's important that they understand and learn well the mainstream approaches. But that they take away from that some sort of critical faculty. That is to say they take away from that the idea that although this is the established mainstream approach it is not perfect, there are good arguments against it and maybe to think about how they and their careers could improve the approaches that economists take. But I think it's vital for every economic student to have a PhD, economic student, to have a good solid background on what the contemporary approach is. I know Milton Friedman used to say about Keynesianism. He said you have to understand Keynesianism better than the Keynesians in order to criticize it. So you have to understand standard new classical economics better than they do in order to criticize it.


You two team keep it clean. What's going on? It's engraving here with another video and in this video really quick I just wanted to talk about and give my picks For NFL week four and in this game that we're gonna talk about really quick really briefly. It's between the Saints shout out to New Orleans and The Miami Dolphins and I figured that we do this game first or we already did Ravens and Steelers But I figured we do this game first because it is the 930 game. So it is bright and early So shout out to everybody that'll be watching So in this game, I'm gonna go with the introduction for myself first Let me introduce me. I'm engraving vids and this is my YouTube channel engraving vids and I'm a Ravens fan But on this channel we talk about each and every NFL football team that there is So if you're Ravens fan, you can subscribe if you're Saints fan And if you're Dolphins fan, you can subscribe no matter what team you a fan of make sure you subscribe turn your notifications on and leave a Like on a video so you don't never miss any of these live streams or when they go up as actual videos, too and Again turn notifications on subscribe to the channels because we will talk about your team at some point or another Trust me. I promise you now in this game The Saints they just came off of a win versus the Carolina Panthers and the Dolphins They just came off a loss versus the New York Jets Those were the exact opposites that I picked for those two games I picked the Dolphins to win and I picked the this Panthers to win So in this game, I'm gonna go ahead and reverse. I'm gonna reverse The Saints just came off of their win So I'm picking them to lose and the Dolphins just came off of their loss So I'm picking them to win. I think the Dolphins are gonna bounce back in this game I think the defense is gonna be on point and just be too much with Drew Brees and the Saints now trust me I know Drew Brees. I know he's nice with it. I know he can score a bunch of points But I'm gonna go with dolphins in this one I think they'll be able to dial up some pressure on Drew Brees and they're gonna be able to take him out the game They're gonna be able to take him out the game and Adrian Peterson who this is this Special kind of jersey on these are my favorite kind of jerseys like always say shout out to Polly store for the two-tone jerseys man They're my favorite But he has been doing absolutely nothing for these New Orleans Saints I wouldn't be surprised if they end up cutting them that would not be a shocker whatsoever because he has had no impact No value, no anything For this team all he is and all he has been it's just been a name and that's it. He's just been a name So that's it. I Going with no going dolphins for this game. I see them with a big bounce back when Jay Cutler against that Saints defense I'll give him a I give him two touchdowns And I think a jade gets two touchdowns as well So I'm gonna go with dolphins. We're gonna go with dolphins. Do y'all let me know who you think is gonna win and why me? I say the dolphins are gonna win I say the defense comes back on point and Jay Cutler and Jay a jade get rolling big in this one We're not too big but two touchdowns for each of the two for JC and jade so Shout out to y'all man Let me know what you think is gonna win or who you think is gonna win not what you think is gonna win Well, actually, I could say what you think is gonna win Whether you think it's gonna be a sink that wins or it's gonna be a dolphin that wins So appreciate y'all coming through again Make sure you leave a like on a video subscribe to the YouTube channel and we out. Bye


Yeah, back on the Sportsman's own, guess what? It's that time again, when Jomenka's sporting heroes aren't to be recognized for their achievements over the calendar year. The RGR Sports Foundation, organizers of the National Sports Awards, have announced the candidates for the two major awards, Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year. And once again, debate rages about the proliferation of track and field athletes. Of the ten nominees, eight are from track and field. On the men's side, the only non-track and field competitor is ran-across driver Fraser Mcconnell. Here's that list. Antonia Watson, the world 400 champion. Hansa Parchment, the world championship silver medalist in the sprint hurdles. Tashay Gale, world championship bronze medalist in the long jump. Jahil Hyde, the Pan-American Games 400 meter hurdles champion. Mcconnell and Wayne Pinot, the world championship long jump silver medalist. To the women's list we go now. Let of course by Sharika Jackson, the world 200 champion. Daniel Williams, the world 100 meter hurdles champion. Shelly and Fraser Price, the world 100 bronze medalist. Rochelle Clayton, the world 400 meter hurdles bronze medalist. And Janelle Fowler, can I call her the best shooter in the world of netball and the bronze medalist at the world championships with the Sunshine Girls. So let's discuss the perceived bias towards track and field athletes with many fans disappointed that the likes of Sunshine Girls, Shamira Sterling or Regga Girl, Khadija Bohnishaw or just about anyone from the Regga Girls historic round of 16 side at the World Cup did not make the short list. Sportsmax.tv editor Lytton Levy joins us via zoom as we pick up this discussion. Lytton Levy, I personally have a lot to say on this topic, but I want to hear you first because that is what a good host does. They allow the guests to go first. All right, Ricardo, okay. So there is this perception, which is passionately true. And here's why. When the awards started in 1961, right, that's 63 years ago now. The first two winners were for 20 grand, the boxer and young Yvonne Foster, I think her name was from table tennis, she was eight years old, I think at the time. Over the years, what we've seen, especially among the men, is that there have been periods where non-track and field athletes have won that award. My column, 84 to 87, I think it was Bonick Percy Hills. A couple of summers, I think Philip Alexander was one year more recently. Nicholas Walters and Courtney Walsh and Chris Gale. Among the women, however, it's been more track and field has dominated a lot more with the likes of Merley, Naughty Dominant, for a long period of time. Veronica Campbell-Brown and of course, Noah Shadyan for the price.  So there's a perception that track and field dominates, but the reality is- No, hold on, hold on, hold on, Layton, I just want to, track and field does dominate. I don't think that's a perception. There is a perception that there is an unfair bias with the dominance that track and field has. And that's the part I want you to address, whether you feel there is an unfair bias towards track and field. I'm coming to that because here's the thing. Let me coach this by saying that I do believe that there needs to be a few new categories in the awards. For example, there should be a team award for the best team. For example, when you look at the regular girls, what they did this year, historically making the quarterfiles at women's World Cup. When you look at the netball team, the bronze medal for the first time, medal for the first time in 16 years in the netball World Cup, those that should be a specific category. The lacrosse team is number, they're finished eighth in the world in lacrosse championships. So you're looking at a situation where there are more teams involved now. Is the bias unfair? Not necessarily, Ricardo, because here's the thing. Getting to a major championship is one thing, right? As the girls did, the regular girls did getting to the World Cup, qualifying for the World Cup, which in itself is significant. Getting to the quarterfiles, which in itself is also even more significant. But how do you top someone who goes to the pinnacle of the sport in their respective field and wins? Because then that's what you're up against. You're looking up against, for example, a regular girls team that finished in the top 16 in the world. You're looking against a netball team that finished top three in the world. But how do you top an individual, for example, who wins at the very top of the sport? So it's not necessarily a non-fear bias. But what it is is that the track and field athletes, especially the last 30 years or so, have taken the sport to a brand new level. The other sports are beginning to catch up. And what I agree is that there should be more inclusiveness in the award. I don't think necessarily that there's a deliberate bias towards track and field in the sense that the track and field athletes are the ones that are winning gold medals at the very highest level. So how can you say that there's an unfair bias for those who are saying so? What I think they should say or should be clamoring for is more inclusiveness in terms of how the awards are dispensed among the athletes across the board in Jamaica. Because there are many athletes who play in team sports that will never get individual recognition. But let's go back to 1997 when Deon Burton won Sportsman of the Year award for the work that he did in helping the regular boys to get to the 98 World Cup. So it's what I'm saying. So if they have if they should include team sports more and use different metrics for individual performances, for example, you mentioned Shabir Sterling, Latanya Wilson, for example, award who were outstanding in the Sun Corp Super League. That's a league competition. The criteria for the awards are global, international, regional, domestic. And what it is is that when you look at where the track and field athletes are accomplishing their their their their their meeting their accomplishments is at the global level, which then outweighs everything else beneath it. So what I think needs to happen is that they need to be more inclusive in adding perhaps team categories and within those team categories, individual performances within those team categories that will then balance the thing a little bit more and create the not create yet to remove the perception that track and field is unfairly. It's the awards unfairly biased track and field athletes. So I think you can look at it from both ways. But when you look when you when you drill down into it, I think the reality is that is the mere fact is that the track and field athletes are the best, the very best in the world, while in the rest of the other sports, they are among the best, which is a significant difference. Yeah, well, let's have a look at the criteria then. Shall we lay it in because I think once you look at this, you see that a lot of these decisions are quite easy for those on the panel of the RGR Sports Foundation and you have hit the nail perfectly on the hit. So this is level one now. Distinguished achievement or honor earned at the level of the Olympic Games or at the level of any recognized world championships, which can be a comparison to the Olympic Games or to competitors who have achieved a record world standard in their sport or event during the review period. So and there is level two now. Distinguished achievement or honor earned at the Commonwealth or Pan American level in their sport during the review period. And level three. Distinguished achievement or honor earned at the Central American and Caribbean level in their sport during the review period. And there's a level four distinguished achievement or honor earned at the local level in their sport during the review period. So when you look at the criteria latent, it becomes very clear as you have pointed out that the track and field athletes are the ones operating as the very best in the world. What I think has happened over time is because the track and field athletes have been so consistent that the fans have become a little bit bored and in some cases are judging them based on their own history as opposed to judging them against the other individuals that they're going up against. So let me get a little bit more specific than Leighton Levy. In 2023, did the RGR Sports Foundation get the nominations correct for sportsman and sportswoman of the year? For the most part, I do believe there has been an argument that Cadizia Bonichor should have been nominated among the women and I agree that she should have been. Oh dear. Why? Because she was the leading scorer going into the to help the team qualify for the World Cup. She got to the World Cup and basically did nothing. So that I think was a mark against her. But Leighton Levy, when was that World Cup qualification period? It wasn't 2023, was it? That was 2022. So those performances would not count for a 2023 nomination. Point taken as well. Despite that Leighton, I have to add this because I am very upset about Cadizia being left out as well. Leighton, we kind of disregard what she's been doing and how she's been representing the country for Manchester City. And I mean, yes, Manchester City is not a Jamaican club, but she's putting the country on an international stage. You know, she's won the Golden Boot for Manchester City. Of course, she's gone up now. She's been nominated for Ballon d'Or. When we think about men's Ballon d'Or, we think Lionel Messi. So for me, do we disregard all the things Leighton that she's been doing apart from for her country? No, which is my point. I'm saying she should have been nominated. Would she have won? I don't think so. So hold on Levy and I want to take up both of yourself and Mariah on that point and I hear you. So yes, those are great achievements to be nominated for the Ballon d'Or. She finished 28th out of 32 competitors in the Ballon d'Or. If there was an equivalent of the Ballon d'Or in track and field, how much do you think Sharika Jackson would finish? Yeah? Well, we already know that. She is top five as she is on the shortlist for the World Athlete of the Year. Do those performances on the part of Khadija Shaw outweigh the performance of an athlete who is number one, number two, or number three in the world? Khadija Shaw, as brilliant as she is as a footballer, her performances, neither from Manchester City at the domestic level in England, or for Jamaica at the international level, does not make her a top three ranked footballer in the world, no matter how you argue that point. But every single athlete, and including the netballer, Janil Fawle, who has been nominated, have distinguished themselves to be among the top three in the world. So if you ask me, there is no way Khadija Shaw could have been nominated if the list is five for the 2023 Sportswoman of the Year award. I turn it over to you. You make a good point, Ricardo, but what I'm saying is that, and as Mariah mentioned, look, she has been outstanding in her field in the sport. And of course, she represented the country in the World Cup. And a team that went to the quarterfinals. But so is everybody else on, to the round of 16, but so is everybody else on the list, Leighton? Yeah, but let me finish my point. She's the leader of that team. So the reality is, for a nomination to recognize the work that she has done, there's a difference between a nominee and a country. I'm picking her, yeah. So the nomination would recognize her work, but the reality is that all athletes that were among the five would rank higher than she has been because they have been, as you said, the best in the world. So you should give her a token nomination, is what you're saying? I don't think you should give her a token. I don't think it's a token. Yes, but Leighton, if we have agreed that the five individuals who have been nominated deserve to be there based on their performances, then anyone else would have to be a token nomination. By the way, let me help you guys out because the player I believe was closest to a nomination would be Alison Swabie, a defensive juggernaut at the World Cup for Jamaica, where she kept what? Two clean sheets scored at the World Cup as well in a tournament that defensively, the reggae girls were brilliant. Swabie is the one for me that would have been closest to a nomination, but you still have to make a determination if her performances in Australia would outweigh the performances of the ladies who have been nominated. And that would be the question to you, Ricardo. Does she rank in the top five, as you said, in your long rebuttal a short while ago? Does her performance in Australia rank in the top five in the world? I think there's a stronger case for Swabie. Alison Swabie would be for Khadija Shull. Which is why I mentioned the team award, Ricardo, earlier. Because the reality is that the metrics as it relates to team sports are significantly different from the metrics in an individual performance sport. Because the reality is that Alison Swabie scored that goal against Panama in a team construct. While, for example, and of course when you look at the netball team, Shamira Sterling was outstanding defensively. Yeah, but hold on, I want to take off that point as well. Shamira wasn't great at the World Cup and neither was Jamaica defensively. And I think that is why Shamira Sterling has not been nominated at the World Cup. The Sunshine Girls were outside the top three in every single defensive department. And so was Shamira Sterling. And although the Sunshine Girls got a bronze medal, Shamira Sterling individually in that tournament was not great. Even though we all know she has the ability to be at the World Cup, she was not great. And so I don't know if she could genuinely displace any of the women who have been nominated. No, I'm not saying that she should. What I'm saying is that within a team construct, if they had a team award, then that would give them opportunity to be recognized within the team construct. Yes. Right? Individually, you're right. They didn't cover themselves in glory in that regard. But the reality is that the team itself did well, notwithstanding. So that's why I believe that there needs to be a team category, specifically for our team. Because what we've seen in the last 15 years or so is that there's an emergence of new, what else I don't know, non-traditional in Jamaica, non-traditional sports. Yeah, like across and stuff. And the netballers have been top three in the world forever. Yeah. Top four in the world at least. And the football team, the women's football team in the last two years have risen to a level where they're among the top 16 in the world based on their position in the World Cup. So what I'm saying is that there should be a team category that recognizes those performances. But it comes onto the individual performances though. You can't deny what the track and field athletes have done. Look, back in the 1980s, for example, Michael dominated the awards for almost half of the decade because he was the world champion, defended his title so many different times. He was clearly the best at what he did in the world. There was no male track and field athletes. There was no athlete from any other sport who could have surpassed his accomplishments. Similarly, Courtney Walsh, when he set the World Record, when he took 5,500 test wickets. And Alia Atkinson, late in the season. I think is the biggest one. She's won the female award three times and the only female non-track and field athlete to win since 1976. How did she do that? She did that by being the very best in the world, by breaking world records, by winning gold medals. And that's how you win the award. That's how you beat people who are the very best in the world. You two have to be the very best in the world, not number 16 in the world, not number 28 in the world. But you have to be number one. And in some cases, breaking world records. We're out of time, but by the way, I completely agree with you, Leighton, that the awards need to be restructured. They need additional categories like team of the year, team player of the year. And MVP of those teams. There you go. And you can decide whether you have an overall thing or you have a male-female award. But you need those because there needs to be more inclusivity for the other sports other than track and field. So very much with you on that point and completely agree. And that is where the discussion should be going. And not that there is an unfair bias towards people in track and field because simply put, the track and field athletes are just the best in the world and deserve everything they get. And they're not disputing that. Cool. Yeah, break time.