How do you know if an expert is giving you good advice? That's a really complicated and hard question, and you don't always know. And in Escape from Democracy, we give some suggestions that might help us know when we can trust experts or at least make expertise more widely trustable. We are not arguing against experts, obviously. As you say, expertise is how we build hotels like the one that I'm in right now or airplanes like I'll be flying on tomorrow. We need those, obviously. At the same time, especially in the realm of policy expertise and economic policy being implemented over the hopes and desires of the people who are being ruled, then I think this awareness problem or suggestion is an important one. And I think it's important to have some mechanisms that, again, aren't a panacea, but at least help alleviate the problem of different motivations between the experts and those consuming expertise. So I'm Sandra Peart. I'm Dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond and Economist who studied at the University of Toronto. So much happened in the 19th century and 19th century political economy. I think it's one of the most fascinating periods in economics. It was a time in which people thought about the big questions of economics, you know, why are we rich, why are we poor, how do we get out of poverty, how do we develop, how do people make good choices, how do we fix institutions so that everyone has access to the same kinds of choices and so on. There were huge reforms happening, huge economic events were happening, and just so many ideas, those of John Sir Mill, of course, on whom I've worked a lot, but Smith's ideas come into the 19th century and get worked on and made more rich and so on and put into practice in the 19th century. So it's just, and then you come to the end of the century and such huge changes both economically and in terms of intellectual thinking happen. So it's just a fascinating period. Analytical egalitarianism is something that David Levy and I have coined as a phrase to describe the idea that at least for the purposes of thinking about economics and economic policy making, people are equally equipped to make political and economic choices. And if that's the case, then the differences we observe in outcomes, so of course there are lots of different outcomes that we observe, those are not due to innate or natural differences amongst us, but instead are at least mainly the result of history, luck, education, opportunities. So that's how we talk about and use the idea of analytical egalitarianism. So the role of, we've written, David and I have written on the role of experts in policy making and as we've thought about this, it's really an extension of the notion of public choice economics. So Buchanan says, policy makers, the state can't be, we shouldn't assume that the state is this benevolent despot out there looking out for all of our best interests, but instead people who are in government are no more but also no less self-interested than we are. And what David and I have done with that insight is we've said, okay, yes, that's something that's accepted now in the economics literature, but where we haven't applied that kind of insight is to the notion of policy makers and experts who are advising them. And what we have argued is that experts who advise governments, who put policy into effect are, as Buchanan might say, no less, no more, no less, no more self-interested than the rest of us. So if we look at what experts do within society, we should be aware as ordinary people at least be aware of the fact that they may not always have our best interests at heart. The question is, do experts then have neutral and only scientific objectives? And it's possible that they do, but it's also possible that they as self-interested individuals have their own interests that they're taking into account. So their motivations are a mixture, a messy mixture of self and public interests. And we, David and I, in our work in the book on experts, we have thought it important to look at historical examples where experts actually put their own interests ahead of those they were supposedly looking after. And so we look at eugenics, for instance, or the Soviet economic growth on literature and so on. And we use those historical examples to try to demonstrate then that there have been some catastrophic effects that resulted when people simply trusted experts without being aware of or thinking about the incentives and the motivations that they face. Our notion is not so much that experts are dishonest or that they're thwarting the law. So although that, you know, clearly that happens, but we're not particularly interested in that. What we're more interested in is simply cases where experts receive a directive to, you know, put a policy into place, and then they, you know, go ahead and start doing that without any additional checks to see whether this is in fact what the people who are being ruled, you know, would agree to, so without consent. So consent is an important idea that we talk about in the book. And so there's that. And then secondly, there are situations in which experts may selectively report data, for instance, not necessarily an illegal thing to do, but they haven't made the full data array available or they haven't said that here are some additional models that we tested or, you know, thinking about, again, to go to the Soviet example, you know, finding ways to explain why the data don't actually fit the model. So, you know, saying, well, you know, yes, Soviets are, we still think the model is that Soviets are growing faster than the United States economy. However, the data don't show that and here are some reasons why, you know, the model isn't failing, but the prediction has failed. On the part of an expert, you know, finding ways to make the expert's own viewpoint actually still hold salience for the public. You could think of examples, you know, in the last few years with respect to COVID and reporting and, you know, not making the full array of uncertainty available to the public or at least known to the public by simply saying, you know, here's what we know and here's what we predict and, you know, lots of those predictions were incorrect. It's not that they're getting income, you know, as I said earlier, we're not suggesting that they're taking bribes or they're doing something illegal, but they're not, they're so struck by the goal or adhering to the goal that they're getting, you know, to go forward with implementing that as opposed to unwinding something that they see as incorrect or that people haven't agreed to or whatever. So, it's a sort of self-interest behavior, I don't know exactly how to describe what they're getting out of it, but, you know, some sort of self-worth or self-satisfaction. So, Adam Smith says, you know, everybody is motivated by things, by goods and so on, but also by fame, fame and fortune. And fame is something that we as economists don't really spend a lot of time talking about, but, you know, self-worth or, you know, something prestige would be the way we would talk about it today, but people, I think Adam Smith had an insight there that, you know, it was one that we should actually retrieve from the 18th century because people are motivated by fortune and fame, so these two dimensions, that aren't actually commensurate. It's not like you can translate fame directly into dollars. There's sort of a relationship, but it's not a one-to-one relationship. So, you know, some of the work that David and I have done has related to how to make sure that we do adhere to these kinds of expectations. So, expectations about ethical behavior and so on are ways to kind of think about constraining experts, at least to the extent that they buy in and then comply with them, buy into and then comply with such expectations. They're not, you know, codes of ethics are not, there's no panacea, and they're not a panacea, but they might be something that would be helpful. And again, it's, you know, sometimes we talk about awareness. It's having a code of ethics as a way of ensuring that people on both sides of the problem, you know, those who are consuming expertise and those who are producing expertise are aware that there are motivations that don't always align. How do you know if an expert is giving you good advice? That's a really complicated and hard question, and you don't always know, you know. And in Escape from Democracy, you know, some of the, we give some suggestions that might help us know when we can trust experts or at least make expertise more widely trustable. We are not arguing against experts, obviously, as you say. I mean, expertise is how we build hotels like the one that I'm in right now or airplanes like I'll be flying on tomorrow. We need those sort of, obviously, you know. And at the same time, especially in the realm of policy expertise and economic policy being implemented over the hopes and desires of the people who are being ruled, you know, then I think this awareness problem or suggestion is an important one. And I think it's important to have some mechanisms that, again, aren't a panacea, but at least help alleviate the problem of different motivations between the experts and those consuming expertise. And so, you know, we talk in the book about competition, for instance, you know, just having lots of expertise out there that is not always, you know, in the same tribe, so always coming from this, you know, the same sort of point of view, so different points of view. And I mentioned James Buchanan a while ago, and I'll just mention him one more time because he talked about how we have, we economists, and he included himself in this, obviously, have an ethical obligation to look at the world through different windows, use the metaphor of windows. And, you know, I don't think we do that very often as economists. We kind of have our notion that it might be efficiency, it might be, you know, economic growth, whatever, as a sort of exogenously determined goal. And then we do whatever it takes supposedly to, you know, to attain that goal. And there are many different viewpoints that we then simply, you know, aren't taking into account. We're not looking into different windows. So I think this, you know, that notion it's a little bit idealistic, but, you know, to suppose that we could all force ourselves to look through different windows or whatever, but it's something to aspire to, at least. I'm somewhat optimistic, an optimistic person, I think. And so, you know, there are ways we can improve on the margin. We're not going to have experts or policy makers or economists who just suddenly, you know, become different people. Yeah. I'm an analytical egalitarian. I think we're basically sort of the same, you know, combination of messy motives that we used to be in the 19th century and now are in the 21st century. So we have to take people as they are, all right, and then think about ways to use their expertise, put their expertise to our best use, and make sure that we're not relying. We're not unaware and relying in an unaware way in expertise that is faulty or is being driven by the expert's own self-interest and desire to obtain prestige. You know, one of the ways then, I mentioned competition earlier, but another way then to help obtain awareness and self-awareness and more neutral, less biased expertise and expert advice is to enforce transparency on the expert. So both in terms of data, selection and collection and so on make those widely available so that the results can be checked. And also then in terms of modeling. So, you know, reporting on models that have not been used as much as those that were actually used at the end, in the end, I think is a really important sort of notion for economists to embrace. So the jury system is extremely interesting in our view and one that, yes, has implications for, I think, for the broader notion of expertise and experts. It's got opposing viewpoints. Everyone knows that the viewpoints are opposed in terms of the legal system. There's transparency. Documents are made available. And the jury system is one that's randomly chose, you know, the jury, the group is randomly chosen. We, David and I have argued that the random choice of experts is actually or decision makers is actually one that hasn't had enough play in society and might be available for some other institutional arrangements. So leadership by choosing random lots and so on, which as a leadership scholar, I find that quite interesting. And it works experimentally. There's some experimental work that I've done that suggests that actually, you know, as long as people do feel that they and believe and it's belief based on probabilities that they have equal opportunity to be the leader, then random choice of leaders can actually get you some really good interesting results. I started today talking about the 19th century and, you know, John Stuart Mill is really a central figure in the 19th century. And the little book that I wrote, The Essential John Stuart Mill, caused me to revisit his ideas. And I think that his work on the harm principle really gives us a blueprint for how to think about this notion of public good, if you want to put it that way. Because as he's very famous for having said, you know, there are some actions that are other regarding and then there are some that are self-regarding.  But other regarding or socially important actions are ones that sometimes impose harms on other people. And he then goes on to talk about, well, you know, what do we do about that as a society? When might there be a role for a state and when might there not be? And what's really interesting about it is he recognizes that if we constrain people from acting a certain way, from having particular choices open to them or not, that too imposes a harm on individuals. Because people need a rich array of choices in order to flourish, in order to figure out what kind of person they want to be and then try to become that person. And so if we know we're going to impose a harm if we constrain them. And so then we have to balance that or think about that known harm to, as it relates to a potential harm that might happen if, for instance, I don't wear a mask and you don't wear a mask.  And so, you know, we've got a possible slight probability of imposing harm. But then we, on the other hand, we've got a harm that is imposed if we restrict, you know, impose a mask mandate or something like that. And so it just, it gives us a framework. He doesn't give us the answer. He doesn't say, so therefore there will not be mask mandate or there will be mask mandates. But he's giving us this framework to help us think in a very nuanced way about when we might, as a society, restrict people's liberty and when we might allow them to, you know, make their choices, even though they might harm themselves or someone else in the future. So I think Mill is a fascinating person. I'll just mention quickly, you know, his notion, his work on women and extending the franchise to women and marriage and recognizing, you know, some really important, very early recognition of the difficulty that it occurs within a marriage if a woman can own property outside of marriage. And then, of course, extending the franchise to the labor and class, what we're called the labor and classes. And then his work on the formerly enslaved people and, you know, and thinking about Jamaica and so on and talking about how it was so important that those persons in Jamaica received the same protection of law that a person in Britain would have. And so the governor air controversy and so on, all of that's in the essential mill. So look it up.


Welcome, everyone. My name is Maryam Safee. I am a senior advisor in the Secretary's Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the U.S. Department of State. It is my great honor to be with all of you today and introduce today's panel commemorating the life and legacy of Ambassador Terrence Todman. Terrence Todman was a six-time ambassador who held the second highest number of Ambassadorial appointments in State Department history. He was the first African-American to serve as an assistant secretary and the first to attain the rank of career ambassador. Ambassador Todman was exceptional both for his excellence as a diplomat and also his courage in the face of injustice. In 1957, as a student at the Foreign Service Institute, just starting his career, he wasn't able to eat with his colleagues due to segregation laws in Virginia.  His principal dissent after a sustained effort led to the eventual integration of State Department dining facilities. Speaking truth to power was a theme throughout Todman's career, and in one of his interviews he proudly described himself as a troublemaker in a good way. Ambassador Todman intuitively knew that if black officers continued to be treated like second-class citizens at home, our foreign policy would not only be less credible, it would also be less effective. As we honor Ambassador Todman, I wanted to note that today, February 1st, is also the anniversary of the Greensboro counter lunch sit-in. I bring this up because I think it's important to remember the historical context of Ambassador Todman's career, which was at the height of the civil rights movement at home. Many of the struggles and contradictions Ambassador Todman faced then in pushing for greater equity and justice continue to this day. The purpose of today's panel is to dig deeper into Todman's life and what his legacy means for us in the current moment. We've an all-star panel, and I will be introducing each panelist shortly. Each is extraordinary in their own right, and I encourage you to read their full bios on our landing page. Before I turn to the panelists, I want to play a clip from the American Diplomat, a PBS documentary that will be released later this month, featuring three black ambassadors during the Cold War, Edward Dudley, Carl Rowan, and Terence Todman. Terence was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Race was not an issue. Just being raised in the Virgin Islands, it's all that gave you a sense of who you are. He grew up very poor. We were in the same class. He was quite bossy, by the way. He was very, very smart. I remember my great-grandmother saying, that young man, whoever he is, is going places. In 1945, at age 19, Todman had been drafted into the Army. He took the officer's candidate exam in Spanish and English and passed both. Then he was shipped out to Japan, where he discovered his calling. I learned to speak Japanese, and I spoke to my fellow officers and heard the misconceptions they had about the Japanese, and I would tell them what the Japanese were like. And speaking to the Japanese, the misconceptions they had about Americans was so great that I found myself telling the Japanese about Americans. And I realized that a lot of difficulties arose from people not knowing about each other, and that became critical to my thinking about what I would do afterwards. This was the eye-opening experience that propelled his interest into foreign service. If he could be as successful as a communicator in the military, why not seek an opportunity to apply those skills as a diplomat? Parents Todman began as a foreign service desk officer in Washington, D.C., monitoring U.S. relations with three Asian nations. From the beginning, his colleagues didn't know what to make of his presence. When they came to speak to the Nepal desk officer, they'd walk in, see me behind the desk, and wonder, what are you doing there? It would be real amazement just to the idea of an African-American in an officer position. Being a diplomatic wife was a full-time job. There was so much work dealing with three countries, India, Salon and Nepal. He'd bring the newspapers home for me to read. I would underline what was important and give him a briefing. I was a part of it. Todman's first overseas assignment was India. But first, he had to take language training in Hindustani at the Foreign Service Institute. This was Virginia in 1957, where segregation was legal. My first day of the White Offices went across the street into a restaurant. And I was not allowed to go there because, like Americans, couldn't go into their restaurants. So I went to the State Department and said, this can't go. The State Department said, these are Virginia laws. A lot of people have come here and haven't said anything about them. I said, well, I'm not other people. And you're doing something that's not right. And he said to the Department of State, you have a problem. I don't have a problem. This is not about me. Todman later said, I was considered a troublemaker. And that was all right. Todman knew that institutional culture wasn't going to change in its own. It was going to change by being confronted, by being embarrassed. And he kept up such a firestorm of protests that eventually the Department of State rented half of the restaurant. There finally was a desegregated cafeteria for Foreign Service officers. Leola, I'll start with you. You were both a filmmaker and also part of the State Department family as the spouse of a Foreign Service officer. What inspired you to create this documentary and what do you hope to accomplish with this film? I came to the story through a convergence of several things.  My own experience as a black filmmaker and as part of a Foreign Service family for the last 20 years has helped inform this film. You know, we've been often been overseas and been one of the few families of color at post and I'd always wonder, you know, why that was so. And also my husband would tell me stories of early black diplomats or older black diplomats that he had met and he always thought these stories were important and largely unknown. And that these diplomats would, the stories would likely pass away with when the diplomats did. And at the same time, he had given me a book called Black Diplomacy by the fantastic Michael Cren who saw on the clip, and he suggested I read it. And that was really a jump and off point for me to dive deeper into the times in which these diplomats served, as well as their own individual stories and sort of led me down a path of, you know, a rich body of archival sources that I didn't know existed, and thought was important to put on film. And so I see the film as one an opportunity to sort of open up the work of diplomacy to a wider audience because I do think it's a profession that not many people understand and feels a little nebulous and out of reach. But I think primarily for myself and my partners, we really hope that younger viewers, particularly young viewers of color who have never seen themselves, and a foreign service career realize that there's a pathway to get there, and that it's a place for them to do their own work. And that careers representing the US overseas aren't only for a privileged few. And here are a handful of individuals that helped pave the way to make that a possibility for us. And Ambassador Todman is one of those individuals. Leola, thank you so much. It is now my great privilege to turn to Ambassador Todman's son, Terrence Todman Jr. Terrence, you grew up in the Foreign Service. So similar to, you know, you're part of the family and you're also an accomplished lawyer and even served briefly in the Department's Office of the Legal Advisor. So you know our institution quite well as well. And in reflecting on your dad's legacy in his career, what are the struggles that he encountered? And what do you think motivated him to speak up, no matter the cost? Thank you very much, Maryam. And thank you all for participating in this program and for listening to my voice and the other voices around this. You're asking a very, very interesting question because as he has said, it was not ever easy. But he was very competitive as a person and having grown up in the Foreign Service in the US Virgin Islands, he really did not accept being pigeonholed or cubbyholed or in any way limited in what he could do. He grew up believing he could, if given an opportunity, produce outstanding results. And he had always done so in his life. He was never going to be outworked. He was never going to be unprepared. And he was always curious. He was a people person. So he moved out into communities, got to know people, and he enjoyed that while he was doing it. So when he arrived at the State Department being treated having fought for the United States in the military, being treated as an alien was just quite honestly a shock. And that people would expect to acquiesce in being treated as second class citizens was just not within his inventory of available feelings. So I think the hardest part for him was knowing that many of his Foreign Service colleagues, many of whom he respected, learned tremendous amount from, he loved the Foreign Service, but nevertheless they thought of him as a second class citizen. And that idea that America had this different categories of citizenship, which then translated overseas in the way Americans were seen. So when we arrived in posts in various countries, we were treated in those posts as Americans. But they were also receiving American media, which categorized certain Americans, certain complexions, genders, etc., as not fully representative. And so he always had to overcome those hurdles. Every time he went to a new post and then had to prove himself all over again and then had to demonstrate to wherever he was assigned that in fact he was a full American and among the best United States was producing and fully able to carry out his responsibilities in those assignments. So having to overcome those hurdles inside the house and outside the house was always a challenge. Yeah, and I think your father's story still resonates today, I think for many of us. So I think why we're also inspired by him. Thank you so much. My next question is for Chris Richardson, who used to be a Foreign Service officer, one of my colleagues, and he's actually joining us from our embassy in Madrid where Toddman served as ambassador. As we can see from the backdrop. Chris, you wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in the summer of 2020 where you highlighted Ambassador Toddman's story. When the piece came out, we were in the midst of a reckoning on race, but of many, and the start of a pandemic. Can you talk more about what motivated you to publish this story? Sure. Thank you, Miriam. And it's really an honor to be speaking here from the US Embassy in Madrid where Ambassador Toddman's legacy and the work that he did still lives on, even after all of these years. I think for me, in the wake of George Floyd's killing, it was important that people understand that, you know, if we're going to have an understanding of where we're going to go, we have to have an understanding of where we've been as a State Department as a government. And I thought that there was a sense among officers who were in the State Department that they didn't necessarily understand what they were necessarily going up against. And that's something that Ambassador Toddman certainly knew and understood. And what I mean by that is I think it's important that people understand that race and racism in the country, the place where we are didn't come by accident. A lot of what we face and confront as a nation is by design. It's important that people understand that when the Rogers Act passed in 1924, that made the modern day State Department, that when the first African American passed that exam, Clifton Wharton, that the reaction among the white officers wasn't one of, this is something to be celebrated, that they were horrified by it. That these people were so comfortable in their racism that they actually asked the President of the United States to make an executive order specifically barring black people and women and naturalized Americans from being US diplomats. That's how comfortable they were with this. And when the President said no, they spent 20 plus years making sure that no African American would join the State Department. And I think that people need to understand that that is the kind of environment that Ambassador Toddman came up in. You know, we talk about Ambassador Toddman and the great things that he did. But we also have to acknowledge and recognize the things that he actually had to fight against to be successful. The things that he actually had to confront and face as a black diplomat and have to deal with the duality of both confronting and living in a country and dealing with the substance of the matter, but also having to deal with the issues that were going on in your country as an American and as a black American. And so, for me, the outbed was a way of having people understand that, you know, people like Ambassador Toddman weren't necessarily going up just against the idea of segregation, because you really had a State Department that had been designed to keep African Americans out. And he was one of the pioneers in helping to push and move the State Department in the right direction. And that's something that we really need to acknowledge and understand in terms of moving forward for the future of the State Department and the future of US diplomacy. When you think about Ambassador Toddman, here was a man who met with Mark Luther King in India and showed him around India. Here was a man that told President Reagan and told Secretary Solstice that he would not go to South Africa because he wasn't going to allow them to put a black face on a racist policy. Here was a man who stood up to secretaries of states, presidents in both parties. And while he may have seen himself as a troublemaker, these people still respected him enough to make him a troublemaker. And so they would send him to these countries, they would send him to these places here in Spain, in the Costa Rica and other locations, and he was seen as the person that could resolve a lot of these issues and problems. And so, the reason I wrote this out bed is that when we think about how do we go forward moving forward as a State Department as American diplomacy and as a government. We look at people like Ambassador Toddman because they're the ones that show the kind of leadership and demonstrate the kind of leadership that we're going to need to fix US diplomacy and to fix our foreign policy apparatus. Chris, thank you so much. My next question is for Susan. You're the acting director of the National Museum of American Diplomacy. For many of us, we might be hearing about Ambassador Toddman's story for the first time. In my case, I actually learned about Ambassador Toddman's push to desegregate the cafeteria and all of his great work through Chris's article in 2020. So I just discovered him and I think many are. What is the museum doing to ensure that stories of diplomats from underrepresented groups are being heard. So the National Museum of American Diplomacy, we are the first and only museum in the United States, maybe in the world to be devoted to the, to telling the story of diplomacy and the diplomats who conduct it. So, you know, it's really important to tell stories like the story of Ambassador Toddman, because, as you say, Miriam, we don't always know the full context that some of our most accomplished diplomats worked in. Certainly, America's diplomatic core has not always been representative of the diversity of that nation's population. And we all know that it's an ongoing challenge for diversity and inclusion. And that's why the story of Ambassador Toddman so important. The museum itself is set up because as Leola said, a lot of Americans really don't have an opportunity to know what diplomacy is, who conducts it, and how it impacts their life and this museum is set up to be an open door to build a better relationship really between the American public and our diplomats and so, you know extraordinary diplomat like Ambassador Toddman. And we already have sort of, you know, gone over some of his extraordinary accomplishments. I mean, he was six time ambassador, first time assistant secretary, you know, a career ambassador that's a very rare achievement. And we've heard some of the adjectives, you know, a natural diplomat people called him a trailblazer, a troublemaker that he liked to call himself, but you know, he, you know, his many accomplishments started in some ways, by having to break down the barriers to his own ability to bring his balance to bear on our diplomacy. And so for our museum unearthing these stories. And I think that we have to acknowledge that some of these stories need to be unearthed, they need to be collected, they need to be preserved and then they need to be to be passed on to the next generation and they should be part of how new diplomats coming in understand their role and their, their institution. We have an initiative it's called facing diplomacy, and we're, we're collecting stories. We're looking for stories we're unearthing these stories, so that we can tell, tell, you know, you know how Ambassador Toddman got to be Ambassador Toddman, or Edward Dudley or Carl Rowan all of our diplomats that are featured in Leola's documentary coming up. I also feel that when you, you know you look back at some of the lessons from Ambassador Toddman's life. I mean one of the things I read recently in one of his interviews was, you know why do we need to, you know why are you doing what you're doing in this fight for diversity. And he said something that I think is really important. He said, well, I start by asking what's, what's best for the United States, pretty extraordinary statement given all that he, all he had to face as an American diplomat. I mean, his main argument is one that we really know and that is that diversity is a strength of our diplomacy and the more our diplomacy looks like and represents the great diversity of our nation, the better it is. You can see that from his own, his own life. You know, one of the things that the museum really wants to do is to work with young people and you know a main pillar what we do is our educational work. One of the things that we do is we go out, we work in, in schools all over the United States work with teachers. And we want people to start putting themselves in the, in the, in the shoes of a diplomat to understand how complex diplomacy works, how it works what it's like to find solutions with people who don't share your interest don't share your values but you negotiate a constructive way forward. And when you look at Ambassador Todman, and the story of, of how, you know, as a young diplomat at the Foreign Service Institute I'm a Foreign Service Officer I remember my first days at the Foreign Service Institute. It's horrifying to show up and be and to find that you could not go to lunch with the rest of your, your colleagues, but we talk about these diplomatic skills and their informational skills. They are relational skills and then their operational skills. And you saw from the very beginning that Ambassador Todman had all three of those skills. It's something that we really want to illustrate to young people to sort of say that both look at these diplomats these are the skills that made them successful but also that these are skills that that every person can cultivate they can become and that we think that every kid in the United States should both look at diplomacy as something that they might want to do, but also look at cultivating in themselves those skills that allow you to get things accomplished, either when you're dealing with diplomacy abroad or dealing with fellow citizens at home. So, you know, we think that this is a really really important story we're really proud of the work that we're doing and we know that we have a lot to do to be a platform to make sure that the full complexity of diplomacy is made available to the American people. Susan, thank you so much. Now I want to turn to the department's first Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, my boss, Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley. At your swearing-in ceremony, Secretary Blinken noted that you were a diplomat who knew when to be undiplomatic and in many ways I think you and Ambassador Todman are kindred spirits. To borrow Chris's line from a troublemaker to troubleshooter, I love that. Can you tell me a little bit about what Ambassador Todman means to you personally and how you hope to carry his tremendous legacy forward in your current role? Thank you, Merrim. It's such a pleasure to be part of this discussion and I love every answer that we've received so far. I was a young diplomat when Ambassador Todman was with the department and he gave hope to us who were coming behind his footsteps as African American diplomats, women, other diplomats of color to show that there was a possibility for us to reach the highest levels in this organization. And frankly, daily we had many reminders that that was not necessarily expected of us. So some of the lessons I took away from his career and his example included being a good negotiator, hearing the word know and deciding that that was your interlocutor's opening position, not the final answer. And there are many times in my career when I was pursuing assignments or postings that I had to go back and back and back again in order to get the job or the assignment that I wanted. Another thing I think he gave all of us, as I said, was that hope of being used to, comfortable in being the only one in the room because that is often the reality for women and officers of color to this day. But going into the room with confidence in yourself, your ability, your preparation to get the job done. It was something that he exemplified and many of us try to live up to. And finally, I think it is that love of languages. As a Middle East hand, and that way I follow in his footsteps, but also being able to speak the language to use the vernacular so that I'm comfortable not only at the highest levels, but in shopping, talking to my neighbors, really getting to understand the culture in a close and personal way. And I think that adds to our knowledge and our ability to carry out our work in countries abroad. So those three things I think were wonderful examples of his and ones that I and many of my colleagues take and live. For what I'm doing now in the department with incredible support from my amazing team, Maryam, to the building itself and with the Secretary of State, this understanding that we are at a unique place. We're having an opportunity that we cannot mess up again. We've got to get this done. And so what I understand as part of my role is what he did, which is to give hope to everybody in this organization that we are all going to have the opportunity to reach our full potential. That's what this job means to me and I know that's something that he laid out and we are taking up the cudgels and continuing forward onward. Thank you so much. So now we're ready to take questions from the audience. And I think we'll start with you, Terrence. Can you tell us a favorite memory of your dad? They're probably many. So trick questions, a hard one. That's a very difficult question. I guess it comes to a lot of, I mean, he had always these pithy sayings. And he was a people person. He loved and thought of himself as an American first and he loved the country, but he had a couple of sayings that stuck in my head. The first was diplomacy is the art of telling the truth. And telling the truth because that's your only true currency in trade.  But you also have to learn how they hear and how they understand, which means knowing who they are, knowing their culture, knowing their language in order to be able to communicate effectively. And that's also true, quite honestly, about the State Department. The State Department is its own culture and its own language. And mastering that language and that culture is a challenge. The second was something that the Ambassador referred to, and that is negotiation. And his little pithy saying was negotiation is the art of letting the other person have your way. And so persistence, but also trying to find that common ground and then trying to find a solution, which you could live with both. And that was true in the cafeteria. It was true in a variety of things that happened overseas. But from his perspective, you know, you can find a way if you're willing to negotiate. And the last one that I would share is just as a favorite of mine is it's astonishing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets credit. And that was very, very powerful for him. So he was willing to share credit with the entire State Department, if necessary. Because one of the sad things about the Foreign Service and the State Department is that, you know, failure has no fingerprints and success has many fathers. And from his perspective, he was willing to take the fingerprints of every failure as his own and also to share credit for everything that he did as broadly as necessary to get it done. Thank you. Your dad is extraordinary. Thank you. This question is for Leola. What was something that surprised you when you were making this film? I think part of one that was an exciting surprise was the the archival that was available to the film. And, you know, that was the moment when I realized that we could actually tell the story on film.  The Griff Davis archives at Howard. Also run by the Griff Davis archives with his daughter Dorothy Davis, these beautiful photographs from Liberia of, you know, Edward Dudley and the, you know, the staff that worked at the embassy in the 1940s and early 50s in Liberia. So that was fantastic. The Todman family were very generous with their photographs as well that, you know, those early photographs of Ambassador Todman in the military, as well as his assignments overseas. And so I think it was just the visual archives that, you know, at first, you know, we weren't sure we're going to be available and then to discover that was just a fantastic surprise and really moving in many ways. Thank you. My next question is for the ambassador. How can the State Department build a culture of courage, one where diplomats like Ambassador Todman are the norm and not the exception. That's a hard one. Tough question, very tough question. I think we have to come at it in a variety of ways. I think the most important thing we have to do is ensure that people understand they will be supported and protected when they tell the truth. That we needed, we demanded that they tell the truth, that they speak their experiences within our organization because we want to improve the organization. In the past, we've protected the organization, we've kept things secret and quiet in protecting the organization and we are shifting our focus to protecting the employees, the members of the organization. And I think demanding it and ensuring that they're protected are the two sides to help people speak up. Thank you. And truthfully, defending the employees is defending the institution in the end, you know, it's the long term goals that your father fought for and that we're fighting in his footsteps with. So my next question is for Chris, my former colleague. As someone who recently left the Foreign Service, what do you think the State Department can do to be better at retaining, not just recruiting but retaining employees from underrepresented groups? I think in terms of retention, I think that what your office is already doing in terms of getting data and getting aggregate data and trying to figure out, you know, why are people leaving and what we can do to keep them and having an extra interview process.  But I think ultimately every officer needs to be their own chief diversity officer at every post. I think that that's something that we think about Ambassador Todman and tell his story from 57 and desegregating the cafeteria. We have to ask ourselves, well, where was his white colleagues? Where were they at? You know, we make these stories and we look at these stories and we think about how can we in our own lives make change. I think that, you know, we have to look at it from a standpoint of what can each officer do in their post in a particular time and moment to retain and keep and support the African Americans who are already at post. Because many African Americans and people of color when they are confronted and they see issues of racism and race, they don't get necessarily the support from post. Because a lot of people, diversity is a very popular topic. Everyone loves talking about diversity. When it comes time to actually support people, when it comes time to actually put the effort and time into it, everyone becomes the devil's advocate or advocates for the devil, whichever way you want to call it. And so I think that, one, what you guys are already doing is the first best step in terms of getting the data and in terms of moving the State Department forward, but also that every person needs to be their own Chief Diversity Officer at post and stand up when they see something wrong, just like Ambassador Todman did. Thank you. I want to ask one more question to Terrence, your mom, Doris. She talked about, you know, that she was part of the State Department. Can you tell me a favorite memory of your mom? Who's watching from the first silence right now. I don't know if she's watching, but I know she'll be interested in this answer. So I have to be very diplomatic, but also tell truth to the real power in the family. She was a stalwart. She was a trooper. She understood that and enlisted all of us in my father's career as a partnership. She, in the first instance, but we were schooled from the time we were young, that the State Department was watching all of us, that we were all representatives of the United States and the United States at its best or at its worst as a function of how we manifest in country where we were. But she was terrific at that and of just enlisting her own efforts as well as ours in trying to support him around the globe. And there's a wonderful story, which may be one of my favorite. So there was an audience after my father had gone through a variety of processes in India. He learned Hindustani and he had now traveled to the country. They had an opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama, which was a very big deal. So there was this huge protocol preparation for, okay, you're going to be meeting the Dalai Lama and what you do is you put your hands together, et cetera, et cetera.   And so all of those preparations of touch the Dalai Lama went out the window and she instinctively just did it and he responded graciously. And then they had a wonderful little by conversation that had nothing to do with all of the staging that was done before the actual meeting. And she was always willing to follow her instincts in whatever circumstance. So in countries around the world, she would get told stories that nobody else would get told. She would get included in settings where nobody else was there because she was her own person. But as part of, you know, if you will, Team Todman. So we were all in it together. That's amazing. I have a question from the chat from Chico Negron. And this is for Susan. It's been a long time since A100. But I hope our new episodes or Foreign Service officers are getting this kind of exposure to our institution's history. The question is, are they? I have to say that the former acting director of the museum just went over to FSI to run some of the new officer training. And I know that she's very much dedicated to the idea that people come in and know that there is a museum and this is a platform to share these stories. And I think we can all do a better job. I mean, I think that, I think, you know, Maryam, you're not alone when you say that we don't know the stories of our own institution. We're not told them in the right way. And we really hope that, you know, we're a museum in the making. We're still building out the museum that I'd very much like that every, you know, new person to the State Department, whether the Foreign Service officer or coming in as a civil servant or contractor or, you know, a political appointee, that they come by the museum so that they know a little bit more about what kind of organization the State Department was, how it's evolved over the years. I mean, we want to tell the history of diplomacy, we want to tell the practice of diplomacy, and we want to also tell the challenges of diplomacy and the complexity of it. So I really hope that when we are fully built that we will be this wonderful resource for the public. It's a national museum. It's a public free museum. People can walk in on the street and see it. But I think it's going to be a wonderful resource for our own people to explore what came before. Susan, and your successor, Jane Carpenter-Rock, who's now leading the training for A-100. Yes. I feel very fortunate, I think, we'll be having more inclusive, an inclusive history of diplomacy integrated into our training, which I think the future generations will benefit from. Another question for the Ambassador. What are some of the measures that the State Department is taking now through the, this Ardu Office, the New Diversity Office, that addresses some of the challenges that diplomats of color are facing? Well, we're doing a number of things to increase people's feeling of inclusion, and that includes every single person at the Department of State. But some of the things that I think are going to resonate for diplomats of color, employees of color at the department, as well as women and other underrepresented groups include our greater emphasis on vetting our senior leaders to ensure that we are not sending out people who have contributed to or tolerated a toxic work environment. And that's going to be helpful to everyone within the Department of State. We have changed our confidentiality provision agreement. We believe it's very important that people who have gone through experiences in the Department of State be able to talk about what happened to them, who did it, and if they received a settlement from the Department of State, how much money did they get? How has the Department taken responsibility? It is our belief that people understanding that these things are no longer going to be hidden will contribute to better behavior. So we're pretty confident in that. As you know, we're going to be putting out next month our final diversity and inclusion strategic plan, which we have opened up to the entire workforce, including contractors, eligible family members, locally engaged staff, to contribute so that we get after the things that count with people, that either hold them back, present barriers to their advancement, or will help them move forward. So we'll be putting that out for everyone to see so that you can judge our progress. Another important thing that my office has done for everyone is to gather the numbers. Chris mentioned earlier the importance of disaggregated numbers so we can see who we are and where we are and at what rank. And in that way we can do barrier analyses to remove impediments to advancement. So these are things that are going to have an impact on black officers, on officers of color, but on women, colleagues with disabilities, and others. This is going to help the entire organization. Thank you. I have another question from the audience from Alton to Chris. Chris, how do you think that entering freshly tenured Foreign Service officers, incoming officers, mid-level officers, all of the levels to the executive level can embody Ambassador Toddman's legacy? I think that we have to live by his credo, which is that you speak truth to power when you see those situations. I think that for a lot of people, especially in the State Department, we can be a very conservative with a small C organization in that people don't like to shake. They don't like to turn tables. They don't like to speak up about things, especially involving race or gender, because they think that it might hurt their career. If they actually say something, if they see something going on at their post or just in general, and I think that people need to always remember the example of Ambassador Toddman, who, you know, when presidents, or anybody said anything that he disagreed with, he was very honest about it. He was very down-to-earth. He was very direct, and he was diplomatic in the way he would do it, but he still would speak up and do something. And I think that a lot of people in State, when we see things that we know or they see things that they know are wrong, we kind of just brush it aside and we don't want to talk about it or confront it or face it. But I think that moving forward, we really have to think how can we each be our own Chief Diversity Officer in that way, but also ensure that, you know, I think that a lot of people like to put all of the eggs on the Diversity Office's basket, right? It's like, well, we made this system this way for the last 70 years. Why isn't Ambassador Winstay like, where is she going to fix all of it, you know? And so I think that people need to understand that this isn't on her as a Black woman, okay? She didn't make this system the way it is. If you want to look at what has worked for the bureaucracy in terms of changing it, it's been when people, normal people in the State Department have spoken up and done something about it. We're at an inflection point in a moment where we have Congress, you have people within the office and people outside of the office who all want to push the State Department forward. And it's rarely we've ever seen that kind of combination before. And so I think, again, to go back to that point I had made earlier, we each have to find our own way of speaking out about these issues of taking our own time to stand up for our colleagues and make sure that we don't see this as, well, what is her office doing about this? Why aren't they doing something about this in DC? No, this is your problem as a Foreign Service. This is your problem that you have to deal with at your post, your individual post. And you need to be thinking of ways that you can make a difference and make a change in that way and not expect that that change is going to come from on high. Thank you and amen a thousand times, Chris. We're clapping on the stage right now. It's everyone's job. The Secretary said this and, you know, it's important that every single person is invested in this. And as the Ambassador has mentioned, it's not just to benefit underrepresented groups. When there's greater equity, greater transparency, greater accountability, that benefits everyone. And as Terence, you said about your father, and he said this, it's about making our diplomacy more effective. That's why he did what he did. It was about equity justice, but it was also about he cared so much about our country and he wanted our diplomacy and our foreign policy to be strong. I think we're so lucky to be in this moment right now. Chris, as you mentioned, where this alignment is happening, where Congress, the executive order, you know, of last summer, where every single government agency is being tasked to come up with concrete plans to move the needle forward. And I think that's extraordinary and that's unique. And yes, we've had, and Chris is a historian, we've had the conversation of diversity many times under Kennedy, but this is the first time that every single federal agency has been tasked with marching orders to do something. And we have this extraordinary opportunity and we can't, as the Ambassador said, we must rise and meet the moment. So I have one more question, or a couple more questions. The last one is for you, Terence, just warning you. But before we, the next one is from Nadia Douglas. Thank you for this incredible event. This is to the Ambassador, to all of us. She's a Black and Latina junior in the college, in college, wanting to pursue a career in the Foreign Service. However, she's concerned with the speed at which changes come. What measures of accountability are currently in place to ensure that this organization is truly changing and diversifying? Thank you for that question. A number of things are in place now. One of the most important is a clear message to the entire workforce that this counts now, that we are serious about improving diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. For the Foreign Service, starting in April, May of 2022, your support, your ability to provide concrete examples of how you support equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility is going to be a major part of how you are judged as ready for promotion. And this is going to be at the senior levels, the mid-level and the entry level. And we'll be messaging this and talking about this so people understand it as the new rating system and season begins. But we are sending a clear message. This work counts for everyone, not just for brown people, people with disabilities or women, but for everyone. And this is a way of ensuring that each and every one of us understand what we've heard today. It's everybody's job. We are also working to put it into the working elements of civil service because this isn't just a Foreign Service issue. This is a Department of State issue. That means everybody in this organization. And I think these two things are getting after a large portion of our workforce and send a clear message. And I think they're going to be the beginning of the change that we all want for our organization. We'll be ready for you. Thank you. I have a question for Leola. Tell me a little bit about, so the documentary comes out on February 15. What are your plans or just to educate the broader public through the American experience? Yeah, so the documentary airs on February 15. And I know that the American Experience platform generally has a PBS educational component that goes with it. So I think they're going to be educational materials that people will be able to access through the PBS site. And I know that they're looking for partnerships as well and trying to reach younger viewers. And so we have some ideas that we're working on right now to help develop that. And I think once the film comes out, I know my partners and I really want to develop some sort of outreach for universities and high schools to see if the film could be used in classrooms as well to start conversations like we're having today about representation about diplomacy, what it means to represent the United States and what it means to create an inclusive diplomatic workforce. So, you know, we have some ideas that we're still developing, but that is a key component of what we'd like to do with the film. Thank you. And I hope this reaches far and wide. This question, so this is from Marissa Scott. She has a comment and a question. Wow, I have, I've not heard of Ambassador Toddman's story. He was an authentic maverick. She is a question for Ambassador Abercrombie-Winstanley. How can we leverage stories like Toddman's to recruit and retain our officers of color and underrepresented groups more broadly? That is a great question, Marissa. And these stories are part of the fabric of our organization and the bottom line, my dear, we've got to know them. We've got to share them. I cannot recommend Professor Crinsbook Black Diplomacy more strongly. I found it. I went to the library because I was going to be giving a talk on black history. And I went to the library to do research and they handed it over. This is probably more than, well, more than 10 years ago. And read it and had my eyes opened and felt so much better about the challenges that we have faced in this organization and our intent to overcome them. So reading the book will give you a great basis. Every single diplomat, every single member of the Department of State should read that book and it will help you be able to tell these stories. And that's really what's going to make the difference. Know them, share them. Thank you. And I think we'll, we have, I'm going to move to the next question for Terence. My final question is for you. This is a powerful one. And what do you think your dad who was sitting here today would say about the current moment we're in? And what advice do you think he would give my ambassador and all of us in our office in our efforts to promote greater equity and accountability in this institution in the State Department that you also were most part of? No pressure. Well, thank you. And I think that he would, he would say today that he is dismayed, quite honestly, that the struggles that he was facing 30, 50, 60 years ago are the same struggles enunciated in the modernization of FSI and the appointment of Ambassador Wood Stanley. I think that the fact that we are still kind of trying to address those issues in the institution speaks to the inertia. And I guess from this advice standpoint, the thing about him was he was always a can do person. He was always a, you know, forward looking person. He was those people who know him know he was a very clear eyed realist, but he always tried to put a positive frame on things. And so I would have said, you know, sort of echoing something that I heard Chris say, which is people in the State Department have to advocate for each other. He was always acting to serve and lift up his colleagues. He was completely committed not to success for himself. In fact, he said his ambition was just to do a good job at whatever job he was given, but rather to see his colleagues and where possible, lend a hand up, lend support and advocate for his colleagues. And I think that rather than think of diversity and inclusion as an interim, as, you know, if you then, you know, don't then this bad thing will happen. The fact of the matter is he believed, and I think he believed to his core, that if we had better connections both in the country and around the world, better people, sort of representing the entire strength and diversity of America, doing the foreign policy of America, America would be a better place. It would be a better and a more secure place. The State Department would be a better place.  It was rather, if we do this, we can do that much more. We can accomplish that much more. We can make the world, frankly, a better, safer, more equitable and more secure place. So, you know, my advice would be finding ways to engage the entire Foreign Service family in an effort to just do better, see more clearly, listen more respectfully, and speak more truthfully. You know, it's at the end of the day, you know, from his perspective, foreign policy was a people-to-people activity. The diplomacy was. Foreign policy is all of the strategy and all of the framing that goes around your choices and the allocation of resources. But I think he was dismayed that the State Department, you know, didn't have more resources. He was dismayed. He used to say, you know, what we could do with the budget for one aircraft carrier group, you know, we're always fighting limited resources. But in order to accomplish that, you really had to engage a broader audience and to engage, you had to develop a natural constituency for the State Department and its activities. And so from, I think he would say, is there is an amazingly positive outcome that comes from engaging the American people fully in a diplomatic effort to create space for all of us. And so my advice, quite honestly, trying to channel him is find that face and that's the face to put forward in, you know, the effort to include more diverse voices, invariably honest voices. He would always have, you know, there's too much hemming and hawing and prevarication and sliding around the issues.  He thought his job was, he thought he was being paid to speak truth to power. He thought his job was get the best information you can and give it to the people who have to make decisions so they can make the best decisions they can. And if you try and tell them what they want to hear as opposed to what they should and need to hear, you're not actually helping American foreign policy and you're not actually helping the country. You might be trying to navigate and maneuver, you know, a personal career, but frankly, it's at the expense of the country.  You know, he loved the ideals. He knew this was a work in progress. But I think if we could find that positive face. Thank you. Listen, respectfully speak truthfully and lift others up. I think that those that motto, I've taken my notes. This is for our office, but for me and your father really, I have to say when we were pulling this event together, there was just such an extraordinary groundswell of just inspiring people are so inspired. He's almost creating this just extraordinary. I feel like revolution in a sense inside or inside all of us. So I just want to thank you for being here in particular Terence. You traveled all the way here and I appreciate it and the channeling of your father and your mother, your extraordinary mother. So with that in closing, I want to thank our panelists and to all of you here who are watching this recording. Many of you have asked will stay on the web page. So those who've been here live, thank you for your questions. If you found this discussion informative and inspirational, I know I have. I encourage you to share with others and to learn more about the State Department's work to building this more inclusive diplomatic history so that we can be continually inspired by our predecessors, the troubleshooters, as Chris said, Ambassador Todman and others. I encourage you to visit the National Museum of American Diplomacy and you should check out their facing diplomacy initiative. Our office is going to be collaborating with them. It's something in store for the future where everyone can participate so we can channel the legacy of your father and the many others who have lifted us up in our institution. So thank you very much for joining.


I was gonna ask you about privacy in general with the with the blockchain and I know we have our own zcoin or zcash And there's Monero and all this do you see a second layer protocol for Bitcoin to render those not needed? I guess in essence or do you see do you have a one of those protocols that you see be in the most promising to? Actually be able to obfuscate the keys and keep your your transactions private That's a great question. I think privacy is probably one of the most fundamental things that needs to be done And it needs to be done in the base protocol of Bitcoin and it is on the roadmap honestly I've made some controversial statements before and I'll make a controversial statement now, which is privacy before scaling and The reason privacy before scaling is because you can do scaling in layer 2 and you can't do privacy in layer 2 if layer 1 isn't private and We learned that lesson the hard way with the internet and it has been a disaster from that perspective IPv4 did not incorporate privacy features And as a result the correct economic incentives were there to turn the entire internet into a giant surveillance machine now There are parts of it that are encrypted, but most of us don't use those parts And so as a result we all suffer Privacy is so important. It has to be done first. Fortunately. There's a lot of research being done in bitcoin to do that And bitcoin can also benefit from some of the research that's happening in other systems That's the beauty of a big open source ecosystem Is that we can all dip in the ideas of other teams and learn from what others are doing If we're not too caught up in the screaming tribalism Of of the cryptocurrency tribes, which is one of the risks but There's also second layer privacy technology lightning network significantly improves the privacy profile of bitcoin use And it's also getting better. So the combination of those two technologies I think will give us better privacy and furthermore I expect we will see the second layer networks eventually become Multicurrency routing networks meaning that all of the blockchains will be connected in a higher layer So that you can move between currencies in milliseconds transparently for almost no fees or no fees at all And at that point the privacy currency is one swap away from the one you're using now Um, and it becomes very easy to be fungible I would prefer to see privacy in every currency. In fact, I think currency without privacy is a bug And it's a dangerous bug, which if not fixed will have consequences Frank asks about schnore signatures after a quick reminder of what doors schnore signatures will open for bitcoin And why could there be any reason not to want them implemented into bitcoin? Can you also tell us how you think this would be rolled out in bitcoin soft fork a hard fork? Is there any possible timeline for these changes? If you're really interested in the technical information around this I would strongly suggest that you watch a video produced by peter wool For the san francisco bitcoin developers beat up, which I was the founder of a long time ago I'm no longer involved in that but they seem to be doing a pretty good job Getting some very high-level technical high quality technical Seminars on that. So peter wool talked about schnore signatures Signature aggregation as well as upcoming changes to the sick hash mechanism within bitcoin. It's a fascinating presentation It's very technical, but you will still learn a lot about schnore signatures So what are schnore signatures schnore signatures are actually a predecessor to ecdsa the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm in fact dsa was invented as as peter wool talked about in his presentation in order to overcome some of the patent encumbrances of schnore signatures, but Snore signatures fell out of patents Um Maybe a few years ago. I think it was 2010 or somewhere around that and since then people can use schnore signatures and they have some Significant advantages On a security level schnore signatures are equivalent to the security of ecdsa They use the same fundamental security assumption, which is the difficulty of solving the discrete log The discrete logarithm problem um over a a prime order field With a very large prime number and basically that discrete logarithm problem is the basis of The digital signature algorithm and elliptic curve cryptography because what it what it means is that you can do multiplication, but you can't do division for example Because that's the discrete logarithm problem and that is a hard problem Hard meaning that it can it cannot be solved in polynomial time So schnore signatures and elliptic curve digital signature algorithm have the same basic security They depend on the same basic security assumption and so they have equivalent security However schnore signatures have some very interesting properties one of the really interesting properties and i'm going to paraphrase this just to give you an idea is the the sum of A set of schnore signatures is equivalent to a signature on the sum of the messages Made with the sum of the public keys So you can do this thing called aggregation if you have a series of messages Let's call them transactions and you have a series of public keys to sign those transactions Instead of signing each message with each public key and having a series of signatures You can add all the public keys together add all the messages together And then sign the whole thing with the sum of the public key Signing the sum of the messages and this produces a sum signature Which is the same as the sum of all of the signatures if you had signed each message independently I'm using the word sum In a slightly broader term than than simple arithmetic addition, but Let's just assume that it's an equivalent arithmetic operation The bottom line is that you could do some interesting things for example If you have a transaction in bitcoin that has five inputs Instead of having five signatures, you could provide one aggregate signature That can be evaluated in a fraction of the time For all of the inputs theoretically you could take that one step further And if you have a thousand transactions in a block that are all based on schnore signatures And there's one signature per transaction aggregating all the inputs You could then aggregate all the signatures in the block and have one signature per block that is stored It also means that you can do aggregate verification. So You could basically take the sum of all Signatures and verify it once against the sum of all messages and the verification algorithm can either tell you Okay, they're all correct or one of them is wrong But I don't know which one at which point you could test each one of them independently This is useful because in bitcoin when you receive a block with all of its signatures in it The assumption is that it will be valid meaning that it's very rare that you reject a block because it has an invalid signature Because it's unlikely that block would reach you because the previous node has already done that validation Or hasn't forwarded the block if it fails. So if a block reaches your node 99.9999 percent of the time or some very high Probability that block will validate. So if you just validate the sum of all signatures and it says yes, they're all valid And you don't have to waste time checking each signature. So that's a very interesting Thing the other thing you can do with schnore signatures, which is even more interesting Is the aggregation of signatures across signers meaning that If we have a multi signature, which is a k of n structure or m of n structure where you say Three out of 15 people have to sign Then you can construct that with schnore signatures so that it looks like It's a single signature on a single public key That allows you to take multi sig and make it look like a single signature payment Which is really a great privacy improvement You could take all complex multi sigs and make them all look that they're simple Single signature payments from one person to another and they'd be indistinguishable The structure proposed for that is this ingenious mechanism that that was created by Greg Maxwell, uh, I believe peter wool andrew polster and a few others called tap root And uh, an additional aspect of that called graft root and these are some really fundamental Cryptography innovations that are very very exciting the combination of schnore signatures tap roots graft roots and signature aggregation with the multi sig Structure that was created called new sig for schnore signatures. This is a package of upgrades And it's likely that they're going to be done all in one go or at least as many of them as possible Peter wool explains the um The logic behind doing all of offering all of these upgrades is one and part of the reason is that you get the maximum privacy benefit If you can do one but not the other part of this, uh, then uh, you can start differentiating between those users Who are trying to do privacy because it's visible that they're trying to do privacy From those who are not and that puts a target on the back of people trying to do privacy Whereas if suddenly all of the transactions can do this and it looks indistinguishable from a single sign or public key Uh, that's a great, uh tool which gives you privacy without showing that you're trying to get privacy So This will be done by a soft fork. It doesn't require hard fork at all part of segwits script versioning Upgrade allows you to introduce completely new signature mechanisms and new sig hash types and All of these functions that I just talked about in a soft fork an opt-in soft fork Um, given the past history of soft forks. I'm going to go out on the limb and say that This will not be activated by minor voting um because of the disaster Of the uasf, uh, bip nine version Minor vote for segwit the first time I expect that this is going to be an opt-in change with a specific date meaning that um as of date x anybody who's operated to The latest version of the client who chooses to turn on that feature can use it Um, and that's it as simple as that so that will be a soft fork with a specific date As for the possible timeline The bits have been written the specifications are being finalized Peter wool and others have written Implementation code so the first The first prototype code has been written. I would expect we could see this as soon as Six months from now As an implemented feature and then we have to wait until wallets start supporting it Um, and it becomes broadly available very very similar to how segwit was rolled out All right. Next question comes from kino kino says Kino asks about privacy crypto in parallel to transparency crypto And he says if the people will have an untraceable and anonymous cryptocurrency with a high degree of privacy Don't we also need a traceable and transparent cryptocurrency for the state the NGOs the politicians And the political parties and could you do atomic swaps between them? That's a really interesting question. This is one of the big conundrums in this space Which is that people are afraid that if you have a private and anonymous currency People in power will abuse it in order to do money laundering and influence peddling and political corruption Um, of course, if you look more carefully at the history of our species in pretty much every country The powerful already have access to that Um, it's called banking And with the appropriate license you can do as much money laundering as you want And as long as the regulators are well coddled and paid off nobody goes to jail So political corruption happens today and it happens with our current fiat currencies very effectively So it doesn't take an anonymous cryptocurrency to introduce political corruption. Of course corrupt politicians will be able to use anonymous cryptocurrencies But so will everybody else so the masses gain a benefit of privacy that today They don't have there's a strange situation where The people in power who should be accountable have complete secrecy and regular people who are innocent of any charges have not been charged with anything And have no reason to be suspected of anything Are surveilled and have no secrecy or privacy at all in financial systems That is getting reversed with cryptocurrencies. We will live in a world where private individuals have privacy and hopefully those in power Don't have the ability to maintain secrecy as as much as they would. How do you do that? It doesn't take two currencies You don't have a privacy and a transparency cryptocurrency because really you can achieve transparency in a very private cryptocurrency what you have to do to achieve transparency is to Is to force those who are essentially Working for the state And therefore accountable for their actions to provide records of what transactions they've done and to reveal their transactions They're doing as part of their official business so you can force transparency in a private system quite easily What you can do is you can't add privacy onto a system that doesn't have it So a private system can be transparent But a transparent system can't be private Therefore if we do have a cryptocurrency that works for both situations It will be a private cryptocurrency one that has privacy and then you have to through Through legislation or through policy have or through perhaps even constitutional law You will have the obligation of those who have public accountability to be transparent in their transactions Now that doesn't mean they're not going to evade those rules and do private transactions for bribery and corruption And of course that would be violating the law and then you punish that accordingly You can't stop people from breaking the law with the law so The the problem is that even if you have a transparent cryptocurrency That's completely transparent People can choose not to use it and they can choose to use the private cryptocurrency instead So therefore you can't enforce That everybody only uses transparent cryptocurrency. In fact, that leads to a totalitarian surveillance system And effectively that's something that's going to be imposed onto those who are least powerful Rather than as accountability to the most powerful So I'm more interested in how do we gain privacy for the masses? And whether we have transparency for governments or not is a completely different problem And it's not a technical problem. It's a political problem and you can't solve it by adding a new technology