Robot Generals: Will They Make Better Decisions Than Humans - or Worse?

By Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch

25 August 20

 

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Note for TomDispatch Readers: Today’s is the last dispatch for August. I’m taking my usual end-of-summer break. TD will be back right after Labor Day, on Tuesday, September 8th. Meanwhile, as ever, just a small reminder that, unfortunately, this website still needs financial support. I wish it were otherwise, but the pressure is always there. Even 17 years later, I remain amazed every time a new donation comes in and always deeply appreciative. You, this site’s readers, have kept it going all these years. If you feel the urge, check out our donation page and give what you can. I’ll be back soon to face this woebegone world of ours. Tom]

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the U.S. military, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare informs us today, has had a brilliant idea -- robot generals (!) -- into which to sink yet more billions of our tax dollars as divestment in our infrastructure, schools, health care, and the like only continues in the age of Trump and the midst of a grim pandemic. Of course, given American generalship in the “forever wars” of the twenty-first century, who doesn’t feel that almost anyone or anything could have done better? Still, to turn the potential destruction of the planet itself (via nuclear arms) over to computers? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, actually, let Klare fill you in on just what could prove to be a Terminator moment for humanity.

-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch

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ith Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of U.S. service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known in the military as “autonomous weapons systems,” include robotic sentries, battlefield-surveillance drones, and autonomous submarines. So far, in other words, robotic devices are merely replacing standard weaponry on conventional battlefields. Now, however, in a giant leap of faith, the Pentagon is seeking to take this process to an entirely new level -- by replacing not just ordinary soldiers and their weapons, but potentially admirals and generals with robotic systems.

Admittedly, those systems are still in the development stage, but the Pentagon is now rushing their future deployment as a matter of national urgency. Every component of a modern general staff -- including battle planning, intelligence-gathering, logistics, communications, and decision-making -- is, according to the Pentagon’s latest plans, to be turned over to complex arrangements of sensors, computers, and software. All these will then be integrated into a “system of systems,” now dubbed the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control, or JADC2 (since acronyms remain the essence of military life). Eventually, that amalgam of systems may indeed assume most of the functions currently performed by American generals and their senior staff officers.

The notion of using machines to make command-level decisions is not, of course, an entirely new one. It has, in truth, been a long time coming. During the Cold War, following the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with extremely short flight times, both military strategists and science-fiction writers began to imagine mechanical systems that would control such nuclear weaponry in the event of human incapacity.

In Stanley Kubrick’s satiric 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, for example, the fictional Russian leader Dimitri Kissov reveals that the Soviet Union has installed a “doomsday machine” capable of obliterating all human life that would detonate automatically should the country come under attack by American nuclear forces. Efforts by crazed anti-Soviet U.S. Air Force officers to provoke a war with Moscow then succeed in triggering that machine and so bring about human annihilation. In reality, fearing that they might experience a surprise attack of just this sort, the Soviets later did install a semi-automatic retaliatory system they dubbed “Perimeter,” designed to launch Soviet ICBMs in the event that sensors detected nuclear explosions and all communications from Moscow had been silenced. Some analysts believe that an upgraded version of Perimeter is still in operation, leaving us in an all-too-real version of a Strangelovian world.

In yet another sci-fi version of such automated command systems, the 1983 film WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenage hacker, portrayed a supercomputer called the War Operations Plan Response, or WOPR (pronounced “whopper”) installed at the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) headquarters in Colorado. When the Broderick character hacks into it and starts playing what he believes is a game called “World War III,” the computer concludes an actual Soviet attack is underway and launches a nuclear retaliatory response. Although fictitious, the movie accurately depicts many aspects of the U.S. nuclear command-control-and-communications (NC3) system, which was then and still remains highly automated.

Such devices, both real and imagined, were relatively primitive by today’s standards, being capable solely of determining that a nuclear attack was under way and ordering a catastrophic response. Now, as a result of vast improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, machines can collect and assess massive amounts of sensor data, swiftly detect key trends and patterns, and potentially issue orders to combat units as to where to attack and when.

Time Compression and Human Fallibility

The substitution of intelligent machines for humans at senior command levels is becoming essential, U.S. strategists argue, because an exponential growth in sensor information combined with the increasing speed of warfare is making it nearly impossible for humans to keep track of crucial battlefield developments. If future scenarios prove accurate, battles that once unfolded over days or weeks could transpire in the space of hours, or even minutes, while battlefield information will be pouring in as multitudinous data points, overwhelming staff officers. Only advanced computers, it is claimed, could process so much information and make informed combat decisions within the necessary timeframe.

Such time compression and the expansion of sensor data may apply to any form of combat, but especially to the most terrifying of them all, nuclear war. When ICBMs were the principal means of such combat, decisionmakers had up to 30 minutes between the time a missile was launched and the moment of detonation in which to determine whether a potential attack was real or merely a false satellite reading (as did sometimes occur during the Cold War). Now, that may not sound like much time, but with the recent introduction of hypersonic missiles, such assessment times could shrink to as little as five minutes. Under such circumstances, it’s a lot to expect even the most alert decision-makers to reach an informed judgment on the nature of a potential attack. Hence the appeal (to some) of automated decision-making systems.

“Attack-time compression has placed America’s senior leadership in a situation where the existing NC3 system may not act rapidly enough,” military analysts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin argued at War on the Rocks, a security-oriented website. “Thus, it may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence, with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.”

This notion, that an artificial intelligence-powered device -- in essence, a more intelligent version of the doomsday machine or the WOPR -- should be empowered to assess enemy behavior and then, on the basis of “predetermined response options,” decide humanity’s fate, has naturally produced some unease in the community of military analysts (as it should for the rest of us as well). Nevertheless, American strategists continue to argue that battlefield assessment and decision-making -- for both conventional and nuclear warfare -- should increasingly be delegated to machines.

“AI-powered intelligence systems may provide the ability to integrate and sort through large troves of data from different sources and geographic locations to identify patterns and highlight useful information,” the Congressional Research Service noted in a November 2019 summary of Pentagon thinking. “As the complexity of AI systems matures,” it added, “AI algorithms may also be capable of providing commanders with a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace, in turn enabling faster adaptation to complex events.”

The key wording there is “a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace.” This might leave the impression that human generals and admirals (not to speak of their commander-in-chief) will still be making the ultimate life-and-death decisions for both their own forces and the planet. Given such anticipated attack-time compression in future high-intensity combat with China and/or Russia, however, humans may no longer have the time or ability to analyze the battlespace themselves and so will come to rely on AI algorithms for such assessments. As a result, human commanders may simply find themselves endorsing decisions made by machines -- and so, in the end, become superfluous.

Creating Robot Generals

Despite whatever misgivings they may have about their future job security, America’s top generals are moving swiftly to develop and deploy that JADC2 automated command mechanism. Overseen by the Air Force, it’s proving to be a computer-driven amalgam of devices for collecting real-time intelligence on enemy forces from vast numbers of sensor devices (satellites, ground radars, electronic listening posts, and so on), processing that data into actionable combat information, and providing precise attack instructions to every combat unit and weapons system engaged in a conflict -- whether belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or the newly formed Space Force and Cyber Command.

What, exactly, the JADC2 will consist of is not widely known, partly because many of its component systems are still shrouded in secrecy and partly because much of the essential technology is still in the development stage. Delegated with responsibility for overseeing the project, the Air Force is working with Lockheed Martin and other large defense contractors to design and develop key elements of the system.

One such building block is its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), a data-collection and distribution system intended to provide fighter pilots with up-to-the-minute data on enemy positions and help guide their combat moves. Another key component is the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS), designed to connect radar systems to anti-aircraft and missile-defense launchers and provide them with precise firing instructions. Over time, the Air Force and its multiple contractors will seek to integrate ABMS and IBCS into a giant network of systems connecting every sensor, shooter, and commander in the country’s armed forces -- a military “internet of things,” as some have put it.

To test this concept and provide an example of how it might operate in the future, the Army conducted a live-fire artillery exercise this August in Germany using components (or facsimiles) of the future JADC2 system. In the first stage of the test, satellite images of (presumed) Russian troop positions were sent to an Army ground terminal, where an AI software program called Prometheus combed through the data to select enemy targets. Next, another AI program called SHOT computed the optimal match of available Army weaponry to those intended targets and sent this information, along with precise firing coordinates, to the Army’s Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) for immediate action, where human commanders could choose to implement it or not. In the exercise, those human commanders had the mental space to give the matter a moment’s thought; in a shooting war, they might just leave everything to the machines, as the system’s designers clearly intend them to do.

In the future, the Army is planning even more ambitious tests of this evolving technology under an initiative called Project Convergence. From what’s been said publicly about it, Convergence will undertake ever more complex exercises involving satellites, Air Force fighters equipped with the ABMS system, Army helicopters, drones, artillery pieces, and tactical vehicles. Eventually, all of this will form the underlying “architecture” of the JADC2, linking every military sensor system to every combat unit and weapons system -- leaving the generals with little to do but sit by and watch.

Why Robot Generals Could Get It Wrong

Given the complexity of modern warfare and the challenge of time compression in future combat, the urge of American strategists to replace human commanders with robotic ones is certainly understandable. Robot generals and admirals might theoretically be able to process staggering amounts of information in brief periods of time, while keeping track of both friendly and enemy forces and devising optimal ways to counter enemy moves on a future battlefield. But there are many good reasons to doubt the reliability of robot decision-makers and the wisdom of using them in place of human officers.

To begin with, many of these technologies are still in their infancy, and almost all are prone to malfunctions that can neither be easily anticipated nor understood. And don’t forget that even advanced algorithms can be fooled, or “spoofed,” by skilled professionals.

In addition, unlike humans, AI-enabled decision-making systems will lack an ability to assess intent or context. Does a sudden enemy troop deployment, for example, indicate an imminent attack, a bluff, or just a normal rotation of forces? Human analysts can use their understanding of the current political moment and the actors involved to help guide their assessment of the situation. Machines lack that ability and may assume the worst, initiating military action that could have been avoided.

Such a problem will only be compounded by the “training” such decision-making algorithms will undergo as they are adapted to military situations. Just as facial recognition software has proved to be tainted by an over-reliance on images of white males in the training process -- making them less adept at recognizing, say, African-American women -- military decision-making algorithms are likely to be distorted by an over-reliance on the combat-oriented scenarios selected by American military professionals for training purposes. “Worst-case thinking” is a natural inclination of such officers -- after all, who wants to be caught unprepared for a possible enemy surprise attack? -- and such biases will undoubtedly become part of the “menus of viable courses of action” provided by decision-making robots.

Once integrated into decision-making algorithms, such biases could, in turn, prove exceedingly dangerous in any future encounters between U.S. and Russian troops in Europe or American and Chinese forces in Asia. A clash of this sort might, after all, arise at any time, thanks to some misunderstanding or local incident that rapidly gains momentum -- a sudden clash between U.S. and Chinese warships off Taiwan, for example, or between American and Russian patrols in one of the Baltic states. Neither side may have intended to ignite a full-scale conflict and leaders on both sides might normally move to negotiate a cease-fire. But remember, these will no longer simply be human conflicts. In the wake of such an incident, the JADC2 could detect some enemy move that it determines poses an imminent risk to allied forces and so immediately launch an all-out attack by American planes, missiles, and artillery, escalating the conflict and foreclosing any chance of an early negotiated settlement.

Such prospects become truly frightening when what’s at stake is the onset of nuclear war. It’s hard to imagine any conflict among the major powers starting out as a nuclear war, but it’s far easier to envision a scenario in which the great powers -- after having become embroiled in a conventional conflict -- reach a point where one side or the other considers the use of atomic arms to stave off defeat. American military doctrine, in fact, has always held out the possibility of using so-called tactical nuclear weapons in response to a massive Soviet (now Russian) assault in Europe. Russian military doctrine, it is widely assumed, incorporates similar options. Under such circumstances, a future JADC2 could misinterpret enemy moves as signaling preparation for a nuclear launch and order a pre-emptive strike by U.S. nuclear forces, thereby igniting World War III.

War is a nasty, brutal activity and, given almost two decades of failed conflicts that have gone under the label of “the war on terror,” causing thousands of American casualties (both physical and mental), it’s easy to understand why robot enthusiasts are so eager to see another kind of mentality take over American war-making. As a start, they contend, especially in a pandemic world, that it’s only humane to replace human soldiers on the battlefield with robots and so diminish human casualties (at least among combatants). This claim does not, of course, address the argument that robot soldiers and drone aircraft lack the ability to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants on the battlefield and so cannot be trusted to comply with the laws of war or international humanitarian law -- which, at least theoretically, protect civilians from unnecessary harm -- and so should be banned.

Fraught as all of that may be on future battlefields, replacing generals and admirals with robots is another matter altogether. Not only do legal and moral arguments arise with a vengeance, as the survival of major civilian populations could be put at risk by computer-derived combat decisions, but there’s no guarantee that American GIs would suffer fewer casualties in the battles that ensued. Maybe it’s time, then, for Congress to ask some tough questions about the advisability of automating combat decision-making before this country pours billions of additional taxpayer dollars into an enterprise that could, in fact, lead to the end of the world as we know it. Maybe it's time as well for the leaders of China, Russia, and this country to limit or ban the deployment of hypersonic missiles and other weaponry that will compress life-and-death decisions for humanity into just a few minutes, thereby justifying the automation of such fateful judgments.

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Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Puerto Rico and the Perpetual State of Emergency

By Jose Atiles, NACLA

25 August 20

“As a caucus, we feel united and ready to roll,” says Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii.

n March 2019, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer established the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis to examine the effects of climate change on the country and develop a strategy to address it. Over the past year, the committee has held 10 hearings and a dozen closed-door meetings, solicited input from several specific stakeholder groups, and reviewed thousands of public comments. On Tuesday, it released its big report: “The Case for Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People.” 

This has been a year filled to the brim with climate plans, going back to the beginning of the Democratic presidential primary. Every candidate had one (Biden is on his second), several public interest groups and coalitions released their own, the Biden-Sanders unity committee had one, and the Democratic House special committee had one. Even the most committed climate wonks can be forgiven if they don’t relish the thought of diving into another one, especially one that clears 250 pages. 

But the new Senate report is noteworthy for two reasons. 

First, it fits quite snugly into the broad left-of-center policy alignment I’ve been describing as standards, investments, and justice (SIJ). The Senate is typically seen as one of the stodgier and more conservative Democratic institutions — it’s where the 2009 climate bill went to die — so its alignment with climate activists is no small thing.

Second, where the House committee report was technocratic, heavy on the nuts and bolts of policy, the Senate committee report is a much more political document. It is focused on the political barriers to action, getting allies on the same page, and overcoming well-funded opponents. It specifically addresses unions, environmental justice communities, and farmers, and recommends reforms to the financial system and dark money in politics.

To discuss the report, and the state of climate politics in the Senate, I called committee chair Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. We talked about the extent of unity in the caucus, Democratic plans for next year, and his frustrations with the degraded state of the Senate — “I’m aware of no other significant legislative body on Earth that has so much power and does so little,” he said. 

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

David Roberts

Can you tell me a little bit about the process that produced this report?

Sen. Brian Schatz

The idea was to think through the structural challenges of climate action and to do the coalition-building necessary to actually win this thing. So we wanted it to be as deep and broad and diverse as possible. We didn’t fixate on getting the words exactly right, either from a messaging standpoint or even a bill-drafting standpoint, because neither of those are the reason we failed in the past. The reason we failed in the past is we were unable to build a broad and powerful enough coalition to overcome the Koch brothers and their friends. 

So we did the work of listening. We started with labor. We went to the environmental justice community, to American Indian tribes, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. We talked to farmers, to both small and large businesses, and to financial services and insurance communities. We had hearings, but we also had avenues for public comment, and got thousands of individual comments from the public. 

We want to enable everybody to prosper in the process of solving the problem. I think too much of the climate movement has been about preventing bad stuff from happening, as opposed to allowing people to imagine all the opportunities they will personally experience if we take climate action. 

It’s the work of politics — getting to a coalition that can win. I don’t want to overstate the case, because we still have to win the Senate and the White House, but as a caucus, we feel united and ready to roll.

David Roberts

I’ve been writing about that the left-of-center coalition in the US has aligned around a set of climate policy priorities. Biden’s plan fits in that mold, the Democratic House Special Committee report fits, your report fits. But then I wake up yesterday to find out that the Democratic National Committee has struck language opposing fossil fuel subsidies from its party platform. That’s climate policy 101. Is the consensus shallower than I thought?

Sen. Brian Schatz

I am more interested in what’s in Joe Biden’s climate plan and the Senate Democrats’ climate climate plan, and Kamala Harris’s climate plan, than I am in what’s contained in the party platform. 

I mean, I was the Democratic Party chairman in Hawaii. I would have loved it if policymakers actually implemented our platform. But the truth is that it is not the most important policy document as relates to climate action among Democrats. It probably doesn’t crack the top three or four. 

We clearly have a united Democratic Party. I can’t tell you what happened in the platform committee, or the platform subcommittee on energy, but they will not carry the day.

David Roberts

Conventional wisdom among Democrats has been that voters are concerned about climate change, but it’s not a top-tier, make-or-break issue for them. Where do you think voters are on this right now? 

Sen. Brian Schatz

As a political issue, climate has gone from a mixed bag that divides the Democratic caucus to a winner. 

It very clearly motivates young people, who are predisposed to vote for Democrats but are also more likely than other groups not to show up if they’re not sufficiently motivated. 

And it continues to be a powerful issue for swing and independent voters. In the context of the pandemic, part of what we’re finding is that people have a newfound and rather specific desire that their political leaders listen to scientific expertise. 

We had been trying to make the case that if you’re a reasonable, middle-of-the-road person, you can’t vote for someone who supports climate denial. But that’s an abstract way of describing it. Now we see that ignoring science is causing mass preventable death. We don’t have to explain why ignoring science is dangerous anymore. Everyone is living it.

David Roberts

While it has generally fallen out of favor among climate wonks and activists, carbon pricing is still beloved by several of your colleagues. I know Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), for instance, is a big fan of a carbon tax. In your report, carbon pricing plays a peripheral role — you mention it as an option. Did you get pushback on that? 

Sen. Brian Schatz

I’m a big fan, too. I still believe in a carbon price. But I think there are lots of ways to get this done. You could have a national renewable portfolio standard [RPS]. You could theoretically do it through statutory regulations under the Clean Air Act. You could do it by treaty. 

I’m not particularly attached to the technique. What I like about a carbon tax is, it is big enough to solve the problem. What I’m wary about with other solutions is that test: Is it at scale and aggressive enough. I don’t think several hundred billion dollars going to the investment tax credits or the production tax credits for wind and solar are going to get us all the way home. 

But Hawaii has arguably made more progress than any other state in moving toward clean energy, and we did it with an RPS. I’m absolutely open to whatever can get done that is equal to the task. 

Even folks like me, who have been attached to a particular solution set, have to be nimble and have an open mind — likewise, those who are advocating for “keep it in the ground” or a Green New Deal or $7 trillion for clean energy infrastructure. Everybody has to be open. The main thing is to get to 51 [votes] with something that’s big enough to make the difference necessary, and not get attached to pride of authorship.

David Roberts

Your report pegs the needed level of investment in clean energy at 2 percent of GDP [roughly $430 billion annually]. One of the ongoing fights on the left has to do with paying for stuff — how to pay for things, whether to pay for things, whether to address the issue at all. I’m curious where you come down on that question.

Sen. Brian Schatz

I personally don’t play the pay-for game anymore, because Republicans just never pay for the stuff that they prioritize. It’s gotten to the point where we don’t even ask them in any serious way how they’re going to pay for it, because everybody knows they’re not. 

When it comes to climate action, the question is not whether we can afford to pay for it; it’s how much it will cost us if we don’t take action. I do not think it is credible any longer to imagine, after a $2 trillion tax cut and several trillion dollars spent in necessary Covid relief money, that we couldn’t come up with the money to solve a planetary crisis.

There’s a whole separate conversation, which I’m starting to be engaged in as a member of the Banking Committee, about Modern Monetary Theory. 

David Roberts

I wanted to ask about that!

Sen. Brian Schatz

Here’s what I would say: I am intrigued by that particular conversation. I haven’t decided where I’ve landed on it, because I’m still learning about it. 

But even in the worst case, even if the inflation hawks and worrywarts are right, you would have a situation where we solved a planetary crisis ... and the trade-off was inflation. I’m prepared to deal with that potential negative externality. I’m not even sure it would materialize, but if it did, I think that’s a very fair trade.

David Roberts

Do you have any sociological or political explanation for why Democratic leadership in the House seems so attached to PAYGO [the self-imposed rule requiring any House bill to “pay for itself” in 10 years with tax hikes or money from other programs]? Why are they the last ones dying on this hill?

Sen. Brian Schatz

It’s a habit. It comes from serving many years in the Congress, and debt and deficit being a bludgeon that was used against Democrats in front-line districts. So Democrats in front-line districts have been told by operatives and other members to be deficit scolds, because that’s how you position yourself as a moderate.

David Roberts

There’s much more to say about that, but let’s move on.

Sen. Brian Schatz

Please. I’m gonna get myself in trouble.

David Roberts

Opposition from unions, especially old-line trade unions, has impeded climate policy in the past. I know you deal with unions a lot — they’re a big force in Democratic politics. Where are they on climate policy right now? 

Sen. Brian Schatz

I would leave it to them to describe where they are, but I can tell you that the conversations we’ve had have been extraordinarily productive. They started out rather blunt. There was a fair amount of folks describing how they’ve been treated over the years on this issue. But once they understood that we consider them central to this coalition, and we talked about the kind of policies we were envisioning, it became an extremely constructive conversation. 

I think there’s an understanding now that we’re listening, that we’re not just going to do a bunch of hand-waving about job training opportunities. That sounds like you’re blaming the person whose job disappeared, making it a matter of them lacking skills to compete in the 21st century. That’s not really what’s happening. The folks in labor who work in energy are highly skilled individuals. 

We have to be serious about investing. And we have to understand that even if our policies increase economic activity and prosperity in the bigger picture, those impacts are going to be extremely uneven. We need to think about the communities that are being harmed by the energy transition, and not think of this as a GDP question, but rather a community question. It’s got to be practical conversations about people. 

David Roberts

Do you think it would help if more clean energy companies unionized?

Sen. Brian Schatz

Yes. It’s absolutely the case that we should be supporting unionization and union jobs and not just settle for vague promises or rhetorical flourishes, like the “jobs of the future” or whatever. We have to understand that if we’re really talking about taking care of workers, we don’t have to reinvent the public policy wheel. We already have it. It’s called collective bargaining. 

David Roberts

It seems that Democrats are becoming more aware of the danger the filibuster poses to their agenda. If Mitch McConnell can block anything, he will block anything. How likely is it that Democrats will be able to muster the votes to get rid of it? 

Sen. Brian Schatz

I’m going to be a little overly precise here. My position on the filibuster, and any procedural reforms, is that the conversation needs to wait until after the election. I just have personal anxiety talking about all the great things we’re going to do, all the changes we’re going to make, and getting into those internal discussions about procedure before we’ve even taken the gavel out of Mitch McConnell’s hands. So I am cautious to weigh in on this. 

I will say, more generally, that the most radical thing the United States Senate could do if it were run by Democrats next year is to allow all of the damage that Trump and McConnell have done to stay in place, and for us to work with a traditional Senate mindset, where we do one big bill per year. It would take 75 years to undo the damage. 

By virtue of not taking action, or moving at a snail’s pace, we would be enshrining the destruction, allowing all of the damage Trump did to institutions and society in general to be made permanent. 

David Roberts

Do you think the US Senate as currently constituted is capable of something like a blitz? 

Sen. Brian Schatz

I don’t know the answer to that. But I think we’re in a time of tremendous change, and we need to recognize that the old Senate has died under Mitch McConnell. What we need to think through, as a Senate and as a society, is not how we can go back to the 1970s. Imagining that Teddy Kennedy and Orrin Hatch are going to pour a scotch and cut a deal is fantasy. Given polarization and the way politics operates nowadays, that Senate is gone, and the current Senate is broken. 

So the question for us is, how do we make this place work again? I’m aware of no other significant legislative body on Earth that has so much power and does so little.

David Roberts

Assuming the filibuster is gone and you only need 51 votes, that’s still almost total unanimity, which means the right-most senators in the caucus will effectively have veto power over what passes. Where is the right-most edge of the Senate Democratic caucus on climate change these days? 

Sen. Brian Schatz

I don’t think it’s time to do that work yet. I’m sequencing this thing with some intentionality, and I just don’t want to put the cart before the horse. 

We’ve done very well to work with every member of the Democratic caucus on this report, and work with their staffs and their offices, so that everyone, to greater or lesser degrees, is comfortable with the work we’ve done. But we still have to continue to build a foundation and then win, and then do the legislative politics that comes next. Trying to do that now, or speculating on it now, would blow up in my face.

David Roberts

Fair enough; then you probably don’t want to answer this question either. But if the filibuster stays in place, the other great hope of all progressives is a budget reconciliation bill [which only requires a bare majority]. Are you thinking about what a climate package that has to squeeze through the reconciliation process might look like?

Sen. Brian Schatz

You’re asking all the good questions, and I’m trying not to be obtuse in answering them. I will just say, we’re evaluating every single legislative pathway, and reconciliation is among them. It depends what your policy preferences are. It’s easier to do a carbon fee that way, a little more difficult to do infrastructure investment. But yeah, every legislative pathway is being considered, because this is an emergency.

David Roberts

The other big question is about priorities. If Democrats win, they are going to be entering office amidst multiple, uh ... 

Sen. Brian Schatz

Cascading cataclysms.

David Roberts

Yes. The conventional wisdom is that a new majority and a new president have a very narrow window of political opportunity in which to act, so they can only do a couple of things. Where is climate change in the priority stack?

Sen. Brian Schatz

I am prepared to reject the premise that we ought to do one or two things, after Donald Trump has destroyed dozens of aspects of our society. The political risk is that we do too little, that we come in and do some sort of tax incentive for advanced manufacturing and bump up the minimum minimum wage by a buck, hoping not to offend anybody. 

We certainly have to be disciplined, and do our politics right, and sequence things right, and communicate well with the public. But if we win, I will consider instructions from the voters to substantially undo what has been done, and try to make progress on the issues of the day. There’s just no way we can do health care one year and immigration the next, and climate the following. There’s just too much to be done to save the republic.

David Roberts

Most in the climate community have come around to the idea that Republicans just aren’t going to help and so you have to do what you can with the left. But if there’s one Democratic Party institution that forever holds out hope for bipartisanship, it’s the Senate. Do you think there’s any realistic prospect of Republican cooperation on climate change?

Sen. Brian Schatz

You always have to be of two strategic minds here. First, if we have the majority and the votes, that puts us in a position to write the bill that is necessary to solve this crisis. And because we will have the votes, there may be an opportunity to attract more Republicans, and turn this into a bipartisan enterprise. But nothing is possible if we’re short on the votes. So we have to get our own house in order. 

Secondly, I continue to be engaged in constructive conversations with Republicans. But they’re just that — conversations. They’re not introducing legislation. They’re not even co-signing letters to agencies on climate. So they’re constructive and polite, and there are a number of members who are privately puzzling through when they can make a break for it, and I will continue to cultivate that possibility and hope for it to materialize, but that is not the foundation of my strategy.

David Roberts

People are always lamenting the power of the fossil fuel industry. Is there a force lobbying for clean energy policy that is anywhere near that coordinated and powerful?

Sen. Brian Schatz 

The whole purpose of our effort is to get there. The goal is, in a couple of years’ time, to build the infrastructure necessary to actually win this thing, and not just make a living losing.