Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Back with us is Jamie Metzel.
Speaker 1: He's Senior Fellow Atlantic Council Council at the Atlantic Council,
Speaker 1: excuse me, former director on the U. S. National Security
Speaker 1: Council of the State Department, and also on the Senate
Speaker 1: Foreign Relations Committee. His book I Believe, out today in paperback,
Speaker 1: is Hacking Darwin, Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity.
Speaker 1: He joins us on the phone in New York. Hey, Jamie,
Speaker 1: nice to have you here once again. Is the book
Speaker 1: out today on paperback? It's tomorrow tomorrow, yes, but I
Speaker 1: hope people will read it. And there's like a they're
Speaker 1: practically giving it away on the book today and tomorrow,
Speaker 1: like three dollars or something. So if you're sitting at
Speaker 1: home and you want to learn about the genetics revolution,
Speaker 1: I hope you'll read it well. And I do feel
Speaker 1: like it's relevant to everything that we're going on with
Speaker 1: the virus. You know, you you had sent out some
Speaker 1: messages over the weekend taking a look at all the
Speaker 1: doctors who are working, you know, endlessly to deal with
Speaker 1: so many cases um of COVID nineteen. You talked about
Speaker 1: AI in the future that could you know, potentially help
Speaker 1: us talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's this crazy experience that we're having now, is
Speaker 1: that all of these trends that we thought would play
Speaker 1: out over ten twenty years are happening now because we're
Speaker 1: in this crisis. So you and I Carol would both said, Jason,
Speaker 1: we're all here in New York and we the number
Speaker 1: of cases is overwhelming our health care system, and not
Speaker 1: only that, our health care providers are in themselves being infective.
Speaker 1: So we're we're relatively quickly going to come to a
Speaker 1: point we have more patients and not enough doctors, and
Speaker 1: so we're going to have to shift so that at
Speaker 1: least the first point of care is going to have
Speaker 1: to be artificial intelligence, so that if you have a
Speaker 1: symptom um, you you go online and you have an
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence agent basically a program, and everybody will have
Speaker 1: a home kit of a thermometer and a scale and
Speaker 1: a blood pressure cuff and a few other simple things,
Speaker 1: and you'll put in your symptoms, and you'll put in
Speaker 1: your readings from home, and then you'll get a differential diagnosis,
Speaker 1: and if it's just um, here are some things, you
Speaker 1: should just stay home and have chicken soup and liquids
Speaker 1: and rest a. I will tell you that if you
Speaker 1: need to be escalated, then the AI will refer you
Speaker 1: to a telemedicine general consult and then perhaps to a
Speaker 1: specialist telemedicine consult and only then to a human. So
Speaker 1: this whole thing now, where you feel a symptom and
Speaker 1: go to the doctor, it's great for normal times, but
Speaker 1: it's probably not going to be possible in crisis times
Speaker 1: like this. And so I guess one of the questions, Jamie,
Speaker 1: is what of crisis time will become normal in normal time.
Speaker 1: It's such a great question. And people, a lot of
Speaker 1: people have this feeling that what we're experiencing now is
Speaker 1: kind of like a snowstorm, that big storm. We sit home,
Speaker 1: the plows come out, plows gets rid of the snow,
Speaker 1: the sun comes out, everything melts, and then we just
Speaker 1: go back to our lives. Old lives that we've had
Speaker 1: are never coming back in so many big ways. And
Speaker 1: so this shift to virtualization that we're all experiencing, it's
Speaker 1: going to happen, it's going to going to continue not
Speaker 1: just in health care, but in everything else in our
Speaker 1: companies are taking a beating. They're not going to bring
Speaker 1: all these employees back in expensive real estate across the economy.
Speaker 1: That we're going to see big, big changes that are
Speaker 1: going to change the way we live and the way
Speaker 1: we work, and certainly the way we experience healthcare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we you know, we've had so many conversations
Speaker 1: about what will be lasting. It's interesting because here we
Speaker 1: have gone through this phase. UM. You know, we certainly
Speaker 1: have it in our office as you know, these open
Speaker 1: environments where all teams can walk into one another, you know,
Speaker 1: conversations across different parts of the business, UM, and that
Speaker 1: has seen as an advantage. But we are finding to
Speaker 1: some extent that we can do a fair amount of
Speaker 1: that there our virtual world right absolutely. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, we're not going to go back toward anything
Speaker 1: that even steals normal until there's a vaccine. And I
Speaker 1: know we're hearing this, uh this twelve months as a
Speaker 1: as a possibility, but that's the ultimate dream scenario. That's
Speaker 1: everything going right with an order of magnitude better performance
Speaker 1: than we've ever had in the history of healthcare. UM.
Speaker 1: So it could be that it's eighteen months, two years
Speaker 1: until we're able to be in those same kinds of
Speaker 1: physical environments. I was doing a Denver radio interview the
Speaker 1: other day and I told them that I didn't think
Speaker 1: it was very likely there was going to be a
Speaker 1: full stadium NFL football game anywhere in this country until
Speaker 1: two and these guys they were planning on going going
Speaker 1: to the opening day later this year, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's really, this is really big change. It's so hard
Speaker 1: to fathom where we're heading. So, Jamie, when you hear
Speaker 1: the president or other officials or even business folks start
Speaker 1: to talk about reopening the economy, you say, what not
Speaker 1: even close? Well, it depends on what we mean. We
Speaker 1: can't have we can't be totally hunkered down like we
Speaker 1: are now forever um. But we're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to just say everybody goes back, because again, until
Speaker 1: there's a vaccine, if we all go back to normal, um,
Speaker 1: we're going to have this same kind of of explosion.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about is with is this exponential growth,
Speaker 1: So do I how will it work? Maybe some people
Speaker 1: will go back, Maybe we'll have some groups of kids
Speaker 1: who will go in small numbers to schools maybe Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Friday group and a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday group, and and
Speaker 1: businesses will have to work that way. And somebody in
Speaker 1: the government, very tragically is going to be doing a
Speaker 1: calculation about how much we opened the economy versus the
Speaker 1: number of people who at least until there's better treatments
Speaker 1: and a and a vaccine are going to die. And
Speaker 1: that's I mean that that's the I'm sure you've had
Speaker 1: cast On Stein on your UM, on your your program,
Speaker 1: but that kind of calculation. The government does it all
Speaker 1: the time when they say, well, what should the speed
Speaker 1: limit be? They increase the speed limit, people go faster,
Speaker 1: but you'll have more fatalities. And sadly this calculus that
Speaker 1: we're going to tragically have to do. You know, Jamie,
Speaker 1: I wanted to pose a question to you that that
Speaker 1: came to me earlier when we were talking to our
Speaker 1: colleague Andy Brown, who runs our New Economy UH program,
Speaker 1: a New Economy forum that happened last year over in
Speaker 1: Beijing or just outside of Beijing. You are a China expert.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're an expert on many things, as we
Speaker 1: have laid out UM, but you know, so much about
Speaker 1: China and specifically the relationship between the US and China,
Speaker 1: and I do think this has thrown that thrown that relationship,
Speaker 1: which already was, to say the least complicated over the
Speaker 1: trade war, into a whole other category. What do you
Speaker 1: make of it right now, especially at a time when
Speaker 1: man and I know I'm being a little pollyannish about this,
Speaker 1: but if those two superpowers could get together, I do
Speaker 1: feel like we could make some progress on this, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: So well, the good news is on the scientific level,
Speaker 1: our scientists are actually working pretty closely together, and that's positive.
Speaker 1: I was on a big, a big global call over
Speaker 1: the weekend where we had scientists from China, scientists from Italy,
Speaker 1: and scientists from the United States and elsewhere, so that
Speaker 1: that is happening. But in terms of big power politics,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really really dangerous. I mean, first,
Speaker 1: there was all the name calling, and I think that
Speaker 1: it's just undoubtedly true that China's massive failure at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this helped exacerbate this, uh, this problem in
Speaker 1: a very very big way, and we're all suffering as
Speaker 1: a result. Um, But the total failure of the Trump
Speaker 1: administration to prepare even when we had the warning signs
Speaker 1: out of China in January and US Intelligence was raising
Speaker 1: the alarm that the reason why so many people are
Speaker 1: dying here in New York and elsewhere is not just
Speaker 1: because of China, it's also because of the total failure
Speaker 1: of the U S response. That's the starting point. But
Speaker 1: we have to work together to get there from here.
Speaker 1: I was just hearing and when I was waiting to
Speaker 1: come on about Tim Cook having supplies made, uh and
Speaker 1: Apple having supplies made that are going to save people's
Speaker 1: lives here. Where are those supplies being made? You didn't
Speaker 1: mention in your report, but I would bet anything They're
Speaker 1: not being made here in the United States, are being
Speaker 1: made in China that has figured out a better way
Speaker 1: than we have to address this problem. And if we
Speaker 1: don't learn from China, in spite of all of the
Speaker 1: problems that we have in our relationship, we're going to
Speaker 1: harm ourselves. So I totally agree with you, Jason. We
Speaker 1: have to find a way to collaborate well. And I
Speaker 1: think you know China in particular, um Jamie, they have
Speaker 1: had to deal with other health issues before, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know this was a society, a country that has
Speaker 1: dealt with similar things, whether we go back to stars
Speaker 1: and some other you know, health situations, even just dealing
Speaker 1: with their air, you know. So I feel like they
Speaker 1: were certainly well ahead of us and kind of understanding,
Speaker 1: you know, how this can disrupt kind of your life
Speaker 1: as you know it. That's exactly right. And now that
Speaker 1: was one of the problems. Um. You mentioned my background
Speaker 1: in China and Asia. So when this thing first started
Speaker 1: happening and I was seeing the alarm bills coming out
Speaker 1: of China, I talked to my brother, who's a doctor
Speaker 1: here in New York, and I said, look, this is
Speaker 1: really a big deal. Found the alarm and he went
Speaker 1: and spoke to to the one of the doctors, that
Speaker 1: infectious disease guy in his hospital, and that guy said,
Speaker 1: oh no, this is all overblown. This is just the flu.
Speaker 1: And I think the problem was in China and in
Speaker 1: across Asia, when they had this experience, they thought stars,
Speaker 1: and they mobilized right away because they knew how scary stars.
Speaker 1: We were spared a lot of the pain of stars,
Speaker 1: so we thought flu. And because flu was our paradigm,
Speaker 1: we weren't. We weren't ready for it on and that's
Speaker 1: I think we're still suffering as a result of it.
Speaker 1: That's such an interesting question or that's such an interesting observation,
Speaker 1: And you're exactly right. As I think about the way,
Speaker 1: especially very smart people in business and economics and finance
Speaker 1: especially reacted to me about it, You're exactly right, that's
Speaker 1: the frame that that they've viewed it. So you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the scientific collaboration, and given that you are
Speaker 1: in touch with a lot of those folks, I do wonder.
Speaker 1: I have felt a certain sense of optimism, and I
Speaker 1: think Carol has two as we've talked to a lot
Speaker 1: of medical experts who were essentially saying a lot of
Speaker 1: the barriers that have traditionally been there in terms of
Speaker 1: collaboration are down, at least for the moment. That's another
Speaker 1: area where I wonder if you're seeing the potential for
Speaker 1: a more secular rather than cyclical change in attacking big
Speaker 1: problems as a group rather than individual lyng Well, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: I answered, or maybe on a on a few different levels,
Speaker 1: certainly on a point to point, person to person level, um,
Speaker 1: including among experts there. It's it's kind of incredible what
Speaker 1: we're seeing a lot of us. I'm sure you guys
Speaker 1: as well, and most of your listeners are spending all
Speaker 1: of our days on these zoom calls. And there are
Speaker 1: new types of communities that are that are forming and
Speaker 1: doing really, really great things. But on a national level,
Speaker 1: I also think that things could get worse between the
Speaker 1: United States and China, because if you're a country like China,
Speaker 1: country like Russia, and you probably haven't been that happy
Speaker 1: that the United States has been defining in many ways
Speaker 1: the global world order for seventy five years. This is
Speaker 1: your your big chance to change that. And maybe you
Speaker 1: change that through providing aid to different countries in the world,
Speaker 1: or maybe, like Russia, you realize, well, you interfered in
Speaker 1: the election last time, what if you if you do
Speaker 1: it again, can you just put you know, shoot your
Speaker 1: arrow into the Achilles heel of the United States. And
Speaker 1: then on a global level, um, what we're seeing is
Speaker 1: there's just a fundamental mismatch between the nature of the
Speaker 1: global nature of the big problems we face, whether it's pandemics,
Speaker 1: climate change, ecosystem destruction, or weapons of mass destruction, and
Speaker 1: how we're organized to address them, which is nationally or
Speaker 1: with international organizations created by states. And so we're going
Speaker 1: to have to just actually jumped off a zoom call
Speaker 1: to take this interview talking about can we create a
Speaker 1: third force in global politics, like a third leg of
Speaker 1: the stool, which is the democratically expressed political will of humans?
Speaker 1: Because if you ask any humans should we have at
Speaker 1: w h O world health organization that can solve problems
Speaker 1: like this, or an entity that can save our oceans,
Speaker 1: everybody would say yes, So ask why don't we have?
Speaker 1: So I've got to ask. It's what we've been calling, Jamie,
Speaker 1: are big thanker questions. So, how will the coronavirus pandemic
Speaker 1: change the world? And you know, more specifically, when we
Speaker 1: when we get out of this, what's the most important,
Speaker 1: in your view, underappreciated way that the world will be different.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking a lot about this. I'm actually just
Speaker 1: starting to write a book about it. And I think
Speaker 1: it's fundamental. I mean, one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: say that this year is more like one than it
Speaker 1: is like two thousand and one. And I think this
Speaker 1: is going to be the year when historians future storms
Speaker 1: will look back at this year and say, this was
Speaker 1: the year that the post war American led international order collapsed.
Speaker 1: And so there's a race now to see whether there
Speaker 1: can be some new kind of order then fills this gap,
Speaker 1: or it will be kind of a disorder, but will
Speaker 1: which will look like the world used to look before
Speaker 1: the reorganization happened after the Second World War, which was
Speaker 1: a balance of power between these nationalist countries where everybody
Speaker 1: was looking out for their own interest and nobody was
Speaker 1: looking out for the common good. And that's that's why
Speaker 1: this conversation about values is more important than ever before
Speaker 1: now because I don't want to go back to that
Speaker 1: balance of power world where everybody has a little hat
Speaker 1: that says in certain name of your country first, because
Speaker 1: that's what our great grandparents had and we know where
Speaker 1: it ends. But if we want to have something different now,
Speaker 1: we have to build it. And that's the challenge of
Speaker 1: this moment. Well. And it's so interesting, Jamie, did to
Speaker 1: hear you say that, because you know, we were talking
Speaker 1: earlier with another conversation had earlier was with the woman
Speaker 1: who leads all of our international government coverage, and she
Speaker 1: was telling us about Boris Johnson and the state of
Speaker 1: his else but you know, we got into a broader
Speaker 1: conversation about how Europe is tackling this, and you are seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, different leaders sort of step to the four
Speaker 1: in the same way that we're seeing different governors sort
Speaker 1: of come to the four here in the United States,
Speaker 1: different world leaders. Really you're kind of seeing what they're
Speaker 1: made of. Right, everybody is seeing what everybody in our
Speaker 1: lives is made of. Whether it's our family members, are friends,
Speaker 1: are government leaders, and there are people who are playing
Speaker 1: to our fears, and there are people who are saying,
Speaker 1: at this moment of crisis, this is when we can
Speaker 1: be our best and we humans, we are social creatures,
Speaker 1: and we can inspire each other to be better. And
Speaker 1: that's what I always say is that if you are
Speaker 1: and any listeners, if you're just sitting home binge watching Netflix,
Speaker 1: your country and your community and your world need you.
Speaker 1: This is the moment where we have to begin building
Speaker 1: on from the foundations that exist something that's better. This
Speaker 1: is an all anzon deck moment for everyone. So how
Speaker 1: do we do that, Jamie? Because we have and we've
Speaker 1: done it with you, We've done it with others, um
Speaker 1: We've done it a lot today about the inequalities that
Speaker 1: are out there, whether it's in healthcare and and the
Speaker 1: virus is really exposing. We knew the gaps were out there,
Speaker 1: but the virus is really exposing, whether it's a hotel worker,
Speaker 1: restaurant worker, service worker. You know, we're seeing really these inequalities, UM,
Speaker 1: laid bare to us. So what do we do? What
Speaker 1: do what do we need to do that we don't
Speaker 1: come out of this and kind of forget all of
Speaker 1: this that happened and don't and don't reduce those gaps. Well,
Speaker 1: there there are two things that we need to do
Speaker 1: in my view. One is we need to organize politically
Speaker 1: around our values. I had a long conversation earlier today
Speaker 1: with with Andrew Yang, who actually read that the article
Speaker 1: UM that you mentioned Carol and game Ring. We talked
Speaker 1: for about an hour about about these things. So the
Speaker 1: kinds of the processes that he had he and Obama
Speaker 1: earlier and others had pioneered of how do we create inclusive,
Speaker 1: participatory democratic structures that can push for this kind of change,
Speaker 1: Even Bernie Sanders. I'm not a fan of Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: but they've built this kind of movement based politics and
Speaker 1: it's going to look different, UM. And that's and so
Speaker 1: we have to have that. Joe Biden in his basement
Speaker 1: isn't going to be able to have this kind of
Speaker 1: movement alone. And this should be an inclusive movement because
Speaker 1: I think people in you know, lots of people who
Speaker 1: were against inclusion in our health care system are not
Speaker 1: gonna want gonna going to want to have no health
Speaker 1: care or have overwhelmed health care systems. We at times
Speaker 1: like this, we know that governance is is really important.
Speaker 1: And then globally we have to find ways of solving
Speaker 1: our common problems, and we have the networks to do it.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm trying. I'm launching, with many other people,
Speaker 1: a global interdependence movement. People can find out about that
Speaker 1: on my website Janis dot com. But we have people
Speaker 1: in twenty three countries now working together to say, well,
Speaker 1: all right, enough of this bologna. How can we come together.
Speaker 1: How can we put pressure on our governments to solve
Speaker 1: these problems, because when the problems aren't solved, we all suffer.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're seeing. Do you think it will
Speaker 1: show up in the elections in November? You know, I
Speaker 1: don't for sure. Our elections are going to be chaotic
Speaker 1: and highly contentious. Um because where people aren't going to
Speaker 1: be able to vote in the same ways. They'll have
Speaker 1: to be some kinds of accommodations, electronic voting or mail.
Speaker 1: Um are bad guy attackers are going to recognize that vulnerability,
Speaker 1: and they're going to come at us hard. Um. The
Speaker 1: Russians um interfered in the last elections and and didn't
Speaker 1: have any consequence, so they're not going to to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess we shouldn't do it again. Um. So there
Speaker 1: is a lot of pain, and as much pain as
Speaker 1: we've been through already, there's more pain ahead and we
Speaker 1: have to not only be ready for it, but we
Speaker 1: have to ask ourselves who we are and really stay
Speaker 1: true to that vision because we're all going to be
Speaker 1: tested more than in many cases ever before, over the
Speaker 1: over these coming months and years. And so what's I
Speaker 1: don't know, what's your big lesson in the in the moment.
Speaker 1: What's the one message that you really want people to
Speaker 1: understand about this, Uh, Jamie? And and you know this
Speaker 1: is a free plug for your book, I mean your
Speaker 1: paperbacks out tomorrow, right, You're sweet to say that this
Speaker 1: is a plug from my book, and I certainly well
Speaker 1: I pivot away from there to say it's not. What
Speaker 1: I'm going to say is you should read the book
Speaker 1: Hacking Darwin Enetic Engineering in the Future of You Manity.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to say that available on paperback tomorrow,
Speaker 1: pick it up. No, no, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say that, because what I'm going to say is, um,
Speaker 1: when you're listeners are ninety years old, they're gonna wheel
Speaker 1: you out onto the stage in your grandkids are great
Speaker 1: grandkids school and they can say, oh, my god, you
Speaker 1: were there in the great crisis, the great coronavirus crisis
Speaker 1: of tell me about it, and you'll tell them a story.
Speaker 1: And that story should be the story of how, at
Speaker 1: this moment you found your best, you did your best.
Speaker 1: And if you want that to be the story, then
Speaker 1: then live that story. Now. You know, it's funny that
Speaker 1: you say that, because there's a friend of mine who's
Speaker 1: got a friend I think from Brown University, and I
Speaker 1: know you went there also. But what's interesting is wrote
Speaker 1: wrote a poem or wrote just some writings about what if?
Speaker 1: What if the coronavirus, you know, is kind of teaching
Speaker 1: us to slow down and spend more time with family
Speaker 1: and rethink. And it's it's really I do wonder about
Speaker 1: that too, that this time that we're all going to
Speaker 1: look back and it created some really major and necessary
Speaker 1: changes in our world and our personal as well as
Speaker 1: our professional. Yeah, well, this is the life that we have.
Speaker 1: We could imagine other lives, but this is the one
Speaker 1: we have, and so it's up to us to find
Speaker 1: the greatest meaning and it will be a different mix
Speaker 1: of things. And you're exactly right, Carol, all these people today,
Speaker 1: I never had time enough time with my kids. I
Speaker 1: never had enough time to to learn the history of
Speaker 1: surrealism whatever somebody's saying, is now is that time? And yes,
Speaker 1: we're we're all mourning things that we may have blocked,
Speaker 1: but there's there are new there are new things possible here,
Speaker 1: and we need to explore and embrace those as well.
Speaker 1: It's so true. And you know, Carol and I've been
Speaker 1: we're talking. We were talking about this this morning because
Speaker 1: I was talking to her because as I was on
Speaker 1: a walk with my two year old daughter, who is
Speaker 1: certainly in our house, the big winner in this crisis,
Speaker 1: because you know, and and I said to her, I
Speaker 1: said to Carol, not probably said it to my daughter too,
Speaker 1: Like these are hours of the day that I would
Speaker 1: not normally spend with her, and it's uh, it's very
Speaker 1: special and I will look back on that for sure.
Speaker 1: Amid all of this, uh is something that was that
Speaker 1: was very meaningful. So um, always great perspective from you,
Speaker 1: Jamie Matzel, so thoughtful. We really appreciate senior fellow at
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Council, former staffer on the National Security Council,
Speaker 1: member there and as his book Hacky Garwin Genetic Engineering
Speaker 1: in the Future of Humanity, it's out in paperback tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Check that out. It's great reading and it will get
Speaker 1: you thinking. And he is, as you just heard, just
Speaker 1: an incredibly, incredibly uh thoughtful guy.