 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Arby Kelly. In our show this time, we'll give you the second part of our series on the 2018 meeting of Pacific Forum at the Sheraton Waikiki a few weeks ago. Last week, we showed you the first part of Richard Armitage's remarks on U.S.-Asian relations. This week, we'll show you more of what he said, along with the comments and reactions of those who were there. We'll also show you the video tribute to Pacific Forum's founder, Admiral Joe Vasey, that was shown that night. The meeting was historic in that Pacific Forum's founder, Joe Vasey, recently passed away. Its relationship with the Center for Strategic and International Studies has ended, and its president, Ralph Kosa, will be retiring. Pacific Forum was established in 1975, envisioning an Asia-Pacific region where all states contribute to peace and stability, and all people enjoy security, prosperity, and human dignity under the rule of law. Through the years, its mission has been to find better ways to enhance mutual understanding and trust. The Forum conducts policy-relevant research and promotes dialogue in Asia-Pacific through a network of bilateral and multilateral relationships on economic, security, and foreign policy issues. Its analysis and policy recommendations are aimed at creating positive change among the nations of Asia-Pacific and beyond. Pacific Forum has made huge contributions through its research and reports and its articles and programs on U.S.-Asia relations. With its remarkable professional staff, fellows, interns, and supporters, it is positioned to make increasingly valuable contributions going forward. The meeting featured a conversation between Ralph Kosa and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage exploring U.S.-Asia relations in the world today. Last week, we presented the first part of that program. Here is the second part of the program, with the comments and reactions of the people who were there. You've covered North Korea to a certain extent, but lots more questions about North Korea. Bloody nose, does that make sense? Do we need to preempt? How do we handle it if North Korea, in fact, gets nuclear weapons and starts deploying them? Well, I thought the bloody nose was a little overhyped for a while. And of course, now that the administration is running from that terminology like a scalded cat, Secretary Mattis, until it's at the time, were dead against it. Mr. McMaster's or General McMaster's and the President were alleged to be mildly forward. And the concept was we could get away with a very discreet strike. This was the stated context, to take out a certain facility. Well, that's a little facile that presupposes that we know the response mechanisms of the North Koreans. And I don't think we do. At least we never did when I was the Deputy Secretary, and I doubt that we know it now. Second, that Kim Jong-un would have perfect understanding that we're just trying to solve one small problem and send a message. Something that is questionable. Third, it's a very big bet that you're making. A very big bet that there won't be a response, there won't be a misunderstanding, and that our 100,000 citizens in Seoul, the Japanese, more than 10,000 citizens, our soldiers, our service people, and Republican Korea citizens would be completely unharmed in all of this. It boggles the mind, in my view, that people thought about it. Victor Chai has written about it, and very persuasively. Thank God. The question of nuclear weapons, I'm not sure what we're going to quite do. I personally favor a very hyped up covert action. I was never a person who wanted regime change. I wanted a changed regime. You guys all know the lingo. I'm no longer there. I don't think we can have much worse than we've got now. And besides, we may not have a say in it. This is a guy, Kim Jong-un, who's about four inches or five inches shorter, and I am in ways about 100 pounds more. That is fairly unseemly. This is why you generally see pictures of him from the front, because if you get him from the side, oh my God. But he's not suicidal. If he's anything, he's hedonistic. This guy, life's his life. He likes his whiskey, I'm sure. He likes his cheese, likes some other things as well. So he's not suicidal. But I think the only way we can get this character and change things is to keep working on the covert issue, as I don't think a military strike, except in reaction, is a good thing. And finally, I hate to bring this up. I'm not, people would never accuse me of being too pristine when I was in office on these matters, but there is a matter of international law. Under international law, a preemptive strike is OK on a threat that you know with certainty is going to come your way or your ally's way. But a preemptive war is not. It is not legal now. That's a nice thing maybe people want to ignore. But I don't think the international community would necessarily ignore it. We have a couple of questions about the southern half of the peninsula, the advisability of keeping US forces there. Are we treating President Moon like an ally? And where do you see the moon Kim Jong-un talks going? If they agree to some type of a confederation, how do we deal with that? So as lacking of enthusiasm as I am for a Kim 3 Trump meeting, I have very much enthusiasm for Kim 3 Moon Jae-in meeting. And I think this is a very good first start. And we'll get a lot of intelligence out of it. We'll learn what they have to say. Japan will learn what they have to say. So I'm very bullish on it. Should we keep US forces in Korea? Well, look, we just gave Kim Jong-un, at least rhetorically, something that his grandfather and his father sought for years and years. A meeting equal standing, as it were, for the US president? It's not equal. But what's one of the North Korean citizens going to see? So we gave that away for free. I wouldn't want to give away the removal of troops for free. Now, is this wise to remove troops from Korea? I say no. The linchpin for us, and we use whatever term you want, is Japan. And if we had no forces on the Republic of Korea, this puts quite a bit of pressure, could put a bit of pressure on Japan for their hosting of US forces and our use of their bases. So for both of those reasons, and finally, it could very well be misread in the North as a weakness and a provocation. It was June 1950 when the last time we encountered this problem, when several months earlier our Secretary of State said Korea was outside of our defense perimeter, hence an attack. We'll step back from Asia for an interesting question. I found that our questioner says that many people believe that the deep state controls the government. What's your view? Are you a member of the deep state, I guess? Well, if I wasn't, I would be now. There's my experience has been there's not a deep state. There is. There is a sometimes hidebound bureaucracy. There are no question about that. And sometimes this bureaucracy makes difficult for people to do things. I have never seen a president, and a lot of them, who didn't at one time or another rub up against the State Department and say, those guys, every time I want to do something, they stop me. Well, there's another way to say that. Every time the president wants to do something, maybe some in the State Department have a view that he needs to listen to. They're not always right, but at least they've got a view. They've got the historical context, et cetera. So I can see where people think there is a deep state. I've never actually seen it. At the end of the day, people who work in our bureaucracy, and I can't speak for the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, any of that, but State, Defense Department, CIA, the civilians, they go to work in the morning and think they're doing the Lord's work, the government's work, and the people's work. And I'm mighty thankful for them. Final question. What should I have asked you that I failed to? What sort of closing comments or points would you like to make that we weren't smart enough to ask? Ralph, the combination of you and the audience, I think you've covered the issues here in Asia quite well. But when we have a discussion of the difficulties and the problems that we have now, let me tell you a story. I told it at lunch. One time I had, among other things, responsibilities for the Middle East. I used to go to Israel quite often. Lot of interactions with Shimon Peres and Isaac Rabin. And one day I went complaining about something or other to Shimon Peres, who's now passed, and said, Shimon, I've got so many crises out there. It's just terrible. And he looked at me and said, in his sort of Israeli accent in English, which, which we don't have crises. We have problems. These are problems which we must resolve. Crisis, that is war. So I was chagrined and embarrassed and moved on to the next topic. We don't have crisis of war right now. And I don't think we should take counsel of our fears. So I think the question you should have asked and maybe put it that way, Ralph, is how are we gonna get out of this temporary spiral that we're in right now? My own view is the first place we get out, how we get out of it, is to realize that, you know, this could be a real spiral. And it's not. It's ugly. It may not be efficacious, but think about what is working. Our judicial system is working. Our courts are working. When the president administration has attempted to overstep, the courts have stepped in. And they've said, hold it, let's take a look at this. This was what envisioned, it wasn't envisioned by our founding fathers. Look at the press. You could say, I talk about fake news and all of this other stuff, but the readership of the major organs in the United States has gone way up. As the Washington Post says, and this is what Ollie North used to call the Washington Compost, the fact of the matter is, they get at the facts as often as not, and on their masthead they have now the saying democracy dies in darkness. So we've got some things that are working. If you travel around, if you stay in Washington, you're gonna have an awfully unhappy life. But if you go out and travel in our country, you see people actually wanna make decisions. You have mayors who run to be mayor to make decisions. And governors or states who actually wanna do things, oh my God, this is so novel. But you have to get out of Washington, you have to pull your head out of the bucket to see that there's a lot going on in this country. Look at those Parkland students. Don't care where you come down on the gun issue, I've got guns, that's probably most of us have some or many of us, but those Parkland students are articulate, they're motivated, they're gonna come to Washington on Saturday, and I hope March and the hundreds of thousands, as this is people that are coming behind us. These are people who are gonna take up that banner for us. They're gonna stop the spiral. The spiral may start to stop in 2018 depending on how the elections come out. And this coming from someone who used to be a Republican. So Ralph, I think we need to take a little time, we should, all of us, to think what's going right in our country, cause there's plenty going right. And there's no reason for long-term pessimism. There is a reason, however, to realize that we've got to be engaged in this struggle, every single one of us. Thank you. The issues are not going away, they're getting more complicated. America relatively, even if you put a good face on it, is now just one of a big crowd of serious players. And Hawaii's the closest America part to it, and we're gonna have an important future. So we'll see. UNIJ will probably not be a part of it, but there's some very inventive young people here who I think are gonna be. I think I mostly believe, mostly support what he said. I think he's a realist. He really knows the scene. He's not beholden to any particular view. He can go on both sides of the aisle and bring out what he thinks is true. One of the things I liked that Rich brought out was that we have a strong country. Sometimes we see and talk about the things that we'd like to fix, we'd like to change, but we need to remember we have good systems and we're not in a crisis, but what we are looking at is ways to change and make the country better. I agree with Lauren. I think Rich always, you know, he's an optimist and he strikes the right note and we need this kind of optimism at this particular time. But I think this particular meeting was infused by the spirit of Joe Vasey, the founder of Pacific Forum. And when you think of he who was one of the greatest of the great generation, I think we can, and what he's accomplished, what he did accomplish, I think we can be enormously proud of his accomplishment, but more importantly, the optimistic, just like Rich suggested. I hope that in many ways, because we're splitting off with CSRS, right, perhaps we will be able to look at things a lot more on what really affect Hawaii. And that's what I'm hoping. Before we were looking at the national picture, what might affect Washington and so on and so forth, but now if we can focus more on Hawaii. Well, there were a tremendous number of thought leaders in the room tonight, which is a rare treat, especially here in Hawaii, people who have both experience and knowledge about the issues. And for me, that means our future is hopeful. If we can come together and think through the ideas that need to have a sentencing and then act on them, I think that Hawaii can be the center of real change for the country and the world. And to me, the takeaway is really the whole sense of describing China in two words, coercive economics. I thought that was a gem, a concept that, you know, you don't say communist, but you say, well, look at the course of economics. And they are all over the world building railroads, building towers and everything, and it's course of economics. In other words, they're making people happy, but they're making them sad the way that they're delivering and expecting things. So I thought it was a great evening. Well, I think the Pacific Forum is great. I first participated in a meeting to Australia. We went together. Jim Kelly was sitting next to me for 14 hours, and I was so impressed with him, and we had the meeting over there. I think the Pacific Forum is just fantastic. And Joe Vasey started that, and he had stories to tell that I can't repeat, but how they collaborated with others in China and so on. And each one knew that the other one was intelligence, and, but that's the way diplomacy is made. You have to talk to your enemies, to your adversaries. Other, if there's nobody talking, then you only have bullets left. I always love hearing Richard Montage. He's never boring. He's spot on point. And this is special to me because of my long association with the Pacific Forum at Admiral Vasey. I've actually known Richard Armitage for three decades. He sent me out to Bangladesh on one tour and sent me to Jakarta on another tour, Adache-type tours. And of course, I've always had the highest regard for him. But I will tell you something. His talk tonight helped lift a cloud from over my head. You know, in other words, you have faith in the way the system has been set up. And my students that I teach at HPU and my students, a lot of them are telling me the same thing. So he's right about that next wave that's going to come along and they're going to stop this spiral. You know, we can be viable. We can do good things for both Washington and for Asia and show that Oahu is the gathering place that we can make the connections to Asia and keep Asia relevant to the United States. We wanted to pay tribute to Joe Vasey, to his memory, to his legacy. And everyone in the room was here for that same purpose. I couldn't have asked for a better person to talk with than Richard Armitage, one of the world's greatest straight shooters and great intellects. So at the end of the day, I thought it was a very fitting tribute to a true American hero. When Joe was 11, his father, Commander Robert C. Vasey, was stationed on a seaplane tender in the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines where he met a couple of submarine officers who took him down to an old S-boat. The informality and comradeship of the submarine crew instantly appealed to young Joe and convinced him it was the life for him. Joe's first boat was the leaking R-20, an obsolete World War I sub. It was no match for his next one, the new USS Gunnell. Here he met the boat skipper, Lieutenant Commander John S. McCain, who later became an Admiral and Joe's lifelong friend. While on patrol in the Pacific, his submarine was being depth charged by the enemy and dangerously running low on oxygen. As the sub was forced to surface, Joe thought to himself, there's got to be a better way for people to settle their differences. If I live through this, I'll try to find that way. 30 years later, when he retired after a distinguished naval career, he kept his promise and started the Pacific Forum. It's important that we look beyond our shores and see Hawaii not just as an isolated island state, but as a multifaceted center of Asia Pacific, a center of education, diplomacy, and business, as well as a center for hospitality. Hawaii can and should be a gathering place for Asia Pacific. This can yield a new global role for us and will serve U.S. interests and also the interests of Hawaii. Pacific Forum has been and will continue to be instrumental in those efforts. Want to see the first part of this program? Check out thinktechhawaii.com and YouTube. Want to know more about Pacific Forum? Check out pacform.org and see how important it is for us to be part of U.S.-Asia relations. And now let's check out our thinktech schedule of events going forward. Thinktech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekend. And some people listen to them all night long and on the weekend. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on thinktechhawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to thinktechhawaii.com slash audio and we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit thinktechhawaii.com for a weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links or better yet, sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisory. Thinktech has a high-tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our shows, contact shows at thinktechhawaii.com. If you want to pose a question or make a comment during a show, call 808-374-2014 and help us raise public awareness on thinktech. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at thinktechhi. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. And now here's this week's thinktech commentary. I'm Kaley Iacina and although I'm a trustee in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the views I expressed today are purely my own and do not represent any government organization. Transparency is a difficult area for politicians and policymakers. Typically, they profess to understand the value of open government, but it's astounding how quickly they can carve out exceptions to withhold information from the public. Consider House Bill 1768, a bill currently working its way through the state legislature. If enacted, it would disclose salary information about government workers in the form of broad ranges as opposed to exact compensation. Supporters of the bill, like the Hawaii Government Employees Association, cite the need for some level of privacy for state employees, which many people can sympathize with. On the other hand, early versions of the bill didn't specify the ranges that should be provided. Making any information it would provide virtually useless for the purpose of studying public employee compensation. Salary information was crucial to the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii's efforts to expose excessive overtime pay on Kauai and it has been at the heart of other overtime scandals. To reduce this to a question of privacy overlooks the strong public interest in knowing how taxpayer money is being spent, especially when corruption and self-dealing might be hidden in those salaries. In its latest incarnation, the HB 1768 caps the range at $15,000 in improvement on its previous versions. However, in the effort to balance privacy and the public interest, we must remember that government employees are in a different category than the typical private citizen. They hold a position of public trust and with that comes a higher standard of openness about the details of their employment, including their compensation. Ehana Kako, let's all work together. I'm Kaley Akina. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we wanna thank our underwriters. The Atherton Family Foundation, Castle and Cook, Hawaii. The Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education, Collateral Analytics, The Cook Foundation, The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, Hawaii Energy, The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, The Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Hawaiian Electric Companies, The High-Tech Development Corporation, Galen Ho of BAE Systems, Integrated Security Technologies, Kamehameha Schools, Dwayne Kurisu, Calamon Lee and the Friends of ThinkTech, MW Group Limited, The Schuyler Family Foundation, The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust, The Volo Foundation, Yuriko J. Tsukimura. Okay, Arby, that wraps up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it, just like Arby does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit thinktechawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussions of tech, energy, diversification, and global awareness in Hawaii. And of course, the ongoing search for innovation, wherever we can find it. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Arby Kelly. Aloha, everyone.