 Aloha and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Pauline Schachmachin, your host for Outside In. Last month there was quite a bit of excitement here in Hawaii, all because somebody pressed the wrong button. But, frankly, my guests and I don't understand what all the drama was about. Joining me to discuss this nonsensical non-event is Ralph Casa, president of PAC Forum. Good afternoon, Ralph. Good afternoon, Pauline. We're going to have a little bit of a light-hundred conversation today about what happened on January 13th, and just before I ask what you were doing that morning, I'm going to tell you what I was doing. So a lot of my guests on ThinkTech are aware that I don't really use mobile devices too much, usually just when I'm driving in the car in California. So at around eight o'clock, I'm usually having a cup of tea on the lanai. And from where I am here in Hawaii, I have a beautiful view of Fort Darussi, you see the greenery, and you see the lovely ocean from my vantage point. So I was actually completely oblivious to what was going on until about an hour later when I walked back in and pour myself another cup of tea and turn on the television just to see what was going on. And I found out what happened, and then I said, oh, well, that's Hawaii. That's typical. So that was my reaction. It wasn't such a dramatic reaction as we saw from people being interviewed on the street. So what were you doing that morning, and what was your reaction to it? Well, I was on a plane flying from Switzerland to LA on my way back home from a conference. And by the time I landed, it was essentially all over. But when I heard that there had been this alert, my first reaction was it must have been a hack or a prank, because I was pretty confident that North Koreans, even during the period of tension, wouldn't be launching a missile at us. And right now, where there were diplomatic truce for the Olympics, it was even less likely. And I was particularly struck. One of the gentlemen who makes videos for us, Tim Apachele, he went out into the street and did several long segments about people's reactions in Hawaii. And most of them were fear-oriented, because it's always fear first. And then the anger sets in. But I didn't experience either of those two emotions because I'm used to traveling quite a lot. And I've stayed in, visited, and lived on several islands. And island communities operate differently from continental communities. It's a lower market. And that's not a judgment on my part. It's just true. And every single well-traveled individual knows that. So I think there are two factors at play here. There is the lack of understanding that a lot of mistakes, a lot of things like this happen on small islands. This isn't a small incident. This is quite serious. And I'm not dismissing it. But it's typical. That's all I'm trying to get across in terms of my reaction. And the other factor is a lack of awareness of the true capabilities of North Korea, regardless of what is put on the television, because I think sometimes news broadcasts kind of feed that fear and promote that fear and then bend the anger into the public. And really, there is nothing much going on. So I read your comment in the Star Advertiser that you stated that there is a less than one percent chance of Hawaii actually being a target for the North Koreans. So is that conclusion that you've come to based on their true capability, your knowledge of their true capabilities? Yeah. I mean, an attack, when you assess the likelihood of an attack, you look at capabilities and you look at intentions. If you don't have the capabilities, then it doesn't matter what your intentions are. You can have the worst intentions in the world. And all that's going to do is cause you to be a grumpy person. But if you have the capabilities, then you have to assess whether the intentions are there. The North Koreans, in my view, don't yet have the capability to put a nuclear warhead on a missile, fire it thousands of miles away, re-enter the atmosphere without burning up and actually hit a target. The day they have that capability, they're still very unlikely to use it because it would be suicidal and they're not crazy. So I sort of combine those two together to come up with my significantly less-than-one-percent chance. Yes. It is significantly less than one percent. I mean, nonetheless though, if you look at your thing and it says, this is not a drill, there's a missile coming, it's got to get your attention. I know I talked to my wife who was out jogging at the time and she got that and she said, this must be a mistake because she remembered what I had told her and actually believed it, thank goodness. That's still said, but I better head home just to see what's going on. So you have to have a little bit of trepidation. But the less aware you are of those kind of facts and the more you buy into the hysteria that Trump's going to start a war, Kim's going to start a war, he's crazy, no, he's crazy, no, which one is more crazy than the other, the more you buy into that narrative, then the more you worry that something like this is more than one percent chance. Yeah. See, I think the real people who are crazy is the media because they're adding this drama to something that doesn't exist and that's what makes people anxious because I was watching the reports when the actual alert was canceled and everything was fine. And I was hearing about all sorts of strange things that people did like they filled up the bathtub with water so they have sufficient water, that's pretty logical. But then one person put his whole family in the bathtub so I don't really understand how that would help and then people were sort of giggling and laughing at what happened to me because I was completely oblivious to it and this is because I didn't see the cell phone alert and they were laughing, they said, oh, well, all you're going to see from your lanai is a mushroom cloud and I said, well, that's kind of the ideal scenario if it was true because you just want to see the flash of light and go. You don't want to be hanging around for the aftermath because then you have to worry about toilet paper and cannibalism and things like that. I noticed among the people sort of more in the know they've been trained in these sorts of alerts, military people. They seem to be rather less flustered by it and more calm. And there is this calm to a military individual because their mind is prepared for these sorts of incidents. And I know talking to such persons that they have everything mapped out in their mind. They know exactly what they're going to do very logically. They just said, I'm going to get in the car. I'm going to find out where the missile is headed. I'm going to go to the target and I just want to see a flash of light because they know it's much worse if you hang around afterwards. Well, actually, I mean, that's sort of silly, quite frankly, because the reality is, unless you're very close proximity to ground zero, your chances of survival are pretty high. So if it were to hit, say Pearl Harbor and you're in Hawaii, you're going to just hear a lot of noise, but you're you're not going to be an immediate casualty. You want to close your doors and everything else. The last thing you want to do is sort of rush to it to see. This is like the crazy people in my view here in Hawaii, who when there's a tsunami warning, rush to the beach. So they can watch the way you say, you know, that's not the best thing to do. That's only if you're really convinced that really isn't a tsunami warning. So there's nothing to rush to the beach to see. But if if there is one, I'm comfortable that I live on the fourth floor and I can look at my window and watch the ocean. But I'm not too worried about running to the beach. Yeah. So at the time when this was supposedly all happening, I was looking outside. There was nothing remarkable about that day for me. It was just as beautiful as every morning. I have my cup of tea and it was just as pretty. There was no screaming. I didn't hear people panicking in the building I am in. So I think most people just slept in and then there's a lot of people slept through it and a lot of people didn't believe it. Or they assumed that this was just a hack or something. Keep in mind that while people got their email alert, that only works if you happen to have your iPhone with you and you're reading it. What's supposed to happen is that the sirens are supposed to go off warning you of an attack. The sirens didn't go off. So if you, a normal person, didn't hear the sirens, didn't worry or read this, then saw that there were no sirens and assumed that this must not be right. So I think there were more people panicking who were tourists. Yes. Or, you know, if you get a million people, there's got to be a couple of people who are panicking and they're the ones that are going to get the press attention. And if you just said it's no big thing or I was having tea and missed it, you're not going to make it on the evening news. But more tea, anybody? So I noticed some people, they came to this realization because some of the reactions were, oh, my gosh, I'm going to die. And I said, well, yes, we all are one day. But this business about the media and what's driving the panic even more and making people worried unnecessarily, it reminds me of the film Being There with Peter Sellers and Shirley McClane. Yeah, that's right, Chance the Gardener. So for anybody who hasn't seen this film, I recommend you see it. It's it's a little bit quirky. It's highly entertaining. It's a bit esoteric, but I think it brings home a very important point where the lead character, his name is Chance, Chance the Gardener. And he was the gardener for a very wealthy gentleman on the estate. And he's lived, he's never come out of the estate. He's never left the grounds of the property. And his whole conception of the world is what he gets from the television. So this reminds me of that film, because if you knew better, if you knew certain things like, for example, I went to an entire conference on North Korea, it was about a decade ago. But I don't think much has changed where we were discussing the actual capability and they were telling us from the people on the inside who've been on the ground there and who have certain connections that they carry plutonium rods on oxen. So it's not that advanced. And every time a missile does go up, it just lands in the Japan Sea. So I don't see what the real threat is, as you say. Yeah, I mean, I I think that one of one of the problems is that if you're an intelligence officer and you're assessing North Korea capabilities, you're going to assess the worst case because you have to prepare for the worst case. So worst case, they're capable of doing that today. Next to the worst cases, they can do it next Tuesday. And the realistic case is that they're still six months away or something like that or six years away. We don't know. It would be wrong, though, to underestimate the North Koreans, because every time we've underestimated them, they've done some pretty remarkable things. They've had six nuclear tests now. They've had long range ICBM tests. They've actually had a submarine launched ICBM test. So they're mastering the technology. They're getting there. Whether they can strike Hawaii today, I don't believe so. But certainly they're much closer today than they were 10 years ago. So you can't dismiss the threat. I think you just have to put it in perspective. But then you have to look at the intent as well as the capabilities when we assess how worried you should be or not be. OK, so the North Koreans are getting there and we're being there. So we're just going to take a very quick break and we'll come back to discuss the button pusher. Yes, our famous button pusher. We'll be right back after this quick break. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Freedom, is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? At DiveHeart, we believe freedom is all of these and more regardless of your ability. DiveHeart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, DiveHeart has helped children, adults and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. DiveHeart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search DiveHeart.org and share our mission with others. And in the process, help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. Hello everyone, I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome back to Outside In, everyone. We're discussing the button pusher now. So let's talk about this poor chap. It's at the end of quite a lot of abuse. So there are all sorts of strange little facets to what's going on. We're getting bits and pieces here and there every day about what actually happened on the day. My suspicion is we're not gonna know the full story until a larger amount of time has passed. Or ever. Or ever, yes. Well, isn't it 30 years for declassified? So we have to wait 30 years to find out what actually happened with the JFK assassination. So the story we have so far, these kind of strange elements at play. And one of the peculiarities I've picked up is this business about Governor E. Gaye, he couldn't locate the password for his Twitter and that's why he couldn't cancel the alert. Which I find strange because, I mean, I'm not in the executive branch of government here, but my understanding with diplomatic heads, ambassadors, the staff are in charge of those sorts of things, not the actual chief person themselves. So things like that don't really make any sense to me personally. What do you think is going on here? Well, first of all, I think there's enough blame to go around that we can find lots of people to blame. I mean, the most important thing is that whoever is responsible for pushing that button, if you will, should have had a second button which said disregard the first button and he should have pushed it rather quickly. I think the thing with the governor, he wanted to send something out or tweet something or put something out on his Facebook page which would only be useful if you followed the governor. So that would maybe tell a couple of people, but what you have to do is make sure that the same people who got the first alert get the cancellation and that has to come through the same vehicle and the fact that there was apparently no way to do that as far as we know is sort of inexcusable to me. I mean, this is basic early warning 101. Yeah, you're right, it is inexcusable objectively on the facts, however, people do make mistakes. This is a human being, a robot could probably make a similar mistake if the robot is hacked. So my concern, I'm just trying to explain the emotional reaction. I didn't have an emotional reaction to this because I just said, oh, that's typical of Hawaii because I'm used to New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, these places, they're work-like machines. These are big cities full of the creme de la creme. They're the highly skilled people working. And if you, the system deployed in these kinds of environments is if this idiot doesn't do their job properly, you just fire them and bring in the next idiot. The problem with an island is that pretty soon you run out of idiots. So this is one of the issues here. People just have to be aware whether they're tourists or living on the island just temporarily or in fact, if they live here all year round, those people already are aware of this. That is just a lower market regardless of the ethnicity of the people living on the island has nothing to do with that. It could be an island in Europe. It can be an island in the Asia Pacific anywhere. Just small island communities operate a few notches lower than large city professionals. That's the standard is generally higher. Don't you think? I mean, first of all, I think there are a lot of smart people on this island also. So it's just a matter of having the smart person in the right job. Secondly, it's in this case, I think it was a system failure more than it was an individual failure. People can screw up, but once they recognize their mistake, they need to have a vehicle for correcting it. And that seemed to be the problem. I think they understood pretty quickly that it was a mistake. But what they didn't know how to do was to let everyone know immediately that it was a mistake. And that's a systemic failure, I think more than an individual failure. And I've lived in big cities. I grew up in New York. I was a social worker in Harlem in the day. Believe me, big cities can screw up just as easily as small cities do. In fact, there's a lot more people involved. That means there's a lot more opportunities to screw up. So I'm not sure I would buy into your thesis that it's just because Hawaii is full of dumb people. Small islands don't have a deep bench. No, we do have highly intelligent people. It's just, it's a numbers game. The population is smaller. Things operate differently on an island. It's based on relationships. So somebody's idiot son or idiot cousin or idiot so-and-so has to get a job and that's how they get the job. It's not necessarily skills-based. Yeah, I have, A, no idea who the individual is. I have no idea what his qualifications were or his training was. So it's hard to make that kind of a judgment to me, at least. Just to be fair. Important jobs normally have good people in them. And I know personally Vern Miyagi. I've known Vern for many years and he's a smart guy. So I wouldn't say it was, he was incompetent, but obviously there were systemic failures that he didn't catch. And he took responsibility for it and resigned. Yeah, just to be fair to the button pusher, I was shocked at the number of death threats that he got death threats. Yeah, that's not appropriate. That doesn't help. The incident is now over. There was an error, so it's finished. So there's nothing we can go to go back in time to repair that. So I'm really shocked at the abuse he got because one of the things that, this is something we talk about more in my other show, we like the 1%, but one of the things that separates a good executive or a good CEO and one that is more respected generally, is you don't yell at employees who've done something wrong. It's, I think, appropriate to become irate if the person has some capacity for improvement. I only get angry at employees or colleagues when I think they could have done better, when there was a scenario that they could have done better and they didn't do the best they could. That's when anger triggers a person, is triggered in a person. If a situation is hopeless, whether that's the actual individual or a particular scenario, it is not fair to continue this and sort of abuse the person because he's gotten enough abuse. He's already embarrassed himself. I feel sorry for the guy, quite frankly. Yeah. So again, this is the bad side of human nature. If you're frustrated, you want to blame someone, so he's the, I guess, the easy target, the free kick. Yeah, so it's an easy target because people are, you do things like that when you're scared and confused. So this is an unfortunate thing, but I think they've calmed down a bit now that he's stepped down from his position. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, I think now cooler heads are starting to prevail. I mean, the one thing that I've learned through life is that the first version of any story is likely to be false, not because someone's trying to deceive you, but the fog of war, as the military would call it, there's a lot of confusion going on. Everyone's trying to sort it out. They're trying to solve the problem, and people are asking them 100 questions, and they say, well, I think this, and that becomes the first story. So the first story is almost always wrong. It seems to me it's taking a long time to get to the second, third, and fourth story. And the other thing that we used to learn was that bad news does not get better with age. So if there are additional screw-ups there, the sooner people get them out there and then start dealing with them, the better off we are as a society. But people have a habit of not wanting to get bad news out there too quickly. Yes, so. I'm sure the governor wishes he had never talked about but being able to find his password, for instance, which, in the greater scheme of things, probably wasn't really relevant in the first place, but certainly didn't make him look like a great... Ralph, one doesn't even know if that was his idea. It could have been his PR team. I don't think he's like that by nature himself. He's a very quiet, nice person. So you don't know where these ideas come from sometimes. And we have to be patient. Always Hawaiians say outsiders have to be patient with them, but we have to be patient with Hawaiians as well. And that's why Hawaii is the only U.S. state to have two saints, because you need the patience of two saints here. Maybe that's it. I haven't thought of it that way, but I guess I can probably do that. Father Damien and Sister Marianne. Yes, we need the patience of two saints. So moving on, Ralph, just one more thing about the media and we won't really know what's gonna go. So I would encourage people not to watch news porn over this subject because you're gonna get half truths, you're gonna get embellishments. And it's kind of an, with the media, it's interesting. This is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing. Remember when the Malaysian Airlines flights crashed? And they were talking about... Disappeared. Some people say they saw it land on an island somewhere or whatever. We get the, it was going on and on and people were discussing it left and right for a long period of time. Until I noticed that when these experts started talking about how the engines on the plane were Rolls-Royce engines and how each Rolls-Royce engine has a tracker, then for some reason the story went out of the scope. No, nobody seems to talk about it really that much anymore. So it's always the case with these sorts of things and I would encourage people not to be in a panic so much, don't let fear consume you over anything, be aware of it, but don't let it overtake you. Things like this probably will happen in future, not necessarily in Hawaii, but it could be elsewhere. I think so, but I also think the press has a role to play. I've been reading the continuing drama here and for the most part I think they've been trying to do a decent job of figuring out just what happened and the emphasis needs to be on how do we make sure this doesn't happen again. And I think the press has a role to play in that and my sense is that our local folks here have been doing a decent job of trying to cover it and be objective as to what happened. Yes, and hopefully we'll find out the truth further down along the line in a few years to find more longer. So in the few remaining minutes we have Ralph, I just want to talk about your work at PAC Forum. So what is PAC Forum about? I know you've been a guest on Think Tank before, but for those viewers who are tuning in to this particular show who have never heard of PAC Forum, tell them a little bit about your work there. Yeah, we're a foreign policy Think Tank. We've been here for 43 years now, founded by a retired admiral named Joe Vasey who's 101 years old and still as sharp as can be, he's still writing articles, et cetera. So Joe wanted to find a better way of solving problems other than people dropping bombs on one another and that's what we've been doing. So we hold regular dialogues with the North Koreans. We're one of the few organizations that actually talk with them and they talk back. And you go to North Korea yourself. I've met North Koreans in other places. I've met with them in Switzerland and Chiang Mai recently and in other places. And we have dialogues with the Chinese and the Taiwanese. We have, you know, U.S. and Russia, South Korea, working a lot on U.S.-China relations in China, you know, things like the Nuclear Posture Review and how do we square that circle and stay on track. But it's all, I joke, we have sort of an overactive Mother Teresa gene. We're trying to make the world a better place. You need many saints here. And you've got your big annual fundraiser coming up in March. Tell people about that if they want to attend. Yes, absolutely. Go to www.packforum.org and you can get information on it. This year we'll feature a conversation with Rich Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State, a very outspoken individual. He was deputy under Colin Powell, been Assistant Secretary of Defense prior to that. Very knowledgeable, very outspoken and will do the conversations like you and I are having, but on a stage in front of three or 400 people. And all of the money will go toward helping our fellowships and helping us survive and continue to find a better way. So apart from your annual big do that you have in March, normally, people can become members of Pack Forum, right? So what happens during the normal cycle of events, the schedule of events, what kind of speakers do you get at Pack Forum? Well, we bring in a variety of speakers. We start off each year with a year that was and will be where we, from our internal staff, we will sort of talk about what's happened in the last year and where things are going. And then we bring in guest speakers from time to time. We've had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff here. We've had the former Ambassador from Korea. We've had, I think, later this week, actually we're doing one of our fellows who's just written a book comparing Myanmar with North Korea and how both of them were sort of pariah societies and one came out of the cold and the other still stays in the dark. And we'll have a session on that. And these are breakfast meetings and people are welcome to come in and they're all off the record but to give our speakers absolute freedom to express views. And we do this probably 15, 16 times during the year. We also publish our Pack Nets and other commentaries never more than two pages because we understand no one in Washington is short attention span, short attention. Speaking of which, we're out of time, Ralph. Everybody go to the PAC Forum website, go to their events, go to the annual fundraiser. You'll meet very intelligent people there, I promise. There are lots of those on the island as well. And I'll see you on outside in next Wednesday at 2 p.m. Thank you very much. Aloha.