 Well, good afternoon and welcome to the sixth and final lecture of our online version of the issues and national security lecture series. I'm Professor John Jackson, the series coordinator and will once again serve as master of ceremonies. I kind of feel like the cast of a long running television series. And we're wrapping up this current season for Admiral Chad Field has said that we probably will be called back in the fall. So we're all holding our breath. So we're glad to have you either in person or in on zoom in the fall. We'll see how the situation exists. So we are pleased to have Admiral Chad Field and her husband David online with us. And I'd like to give them the opportunity to offer their greetings. Well, it is the end of the series and I just want to express my appreciation for all who have joined in. It's been wonderful getting to know people and sharing the time and being educated while we're doing it. So I want to thank Professor Jackson. Thank Commander Gary Ross, our PAO and coordinator for the tech here. John Odegaard and Lewis who did a lot of work up front. Amanda, our ombudsman for joining us. And my husband David, who has been very active and who has really gone the distance to get us connected with benefits partners and to have a conversation. In the spouse network about how it is that we can improve our quality of life here and our time in Newport. So thank you, David. And thanks to all of you. Yeah, I really don't want to take the credit for that because it's about the, our best partners and spouses. So it really is each of our great associates stepping up and giving a nice presentation and making time out of their day to answer questions. So to all of you, some of you did this more than once. I just want to reach out and say, thank you. It's a nice little team we built up. I'm kind of excited about doing this again. And I am eager to try the bus tours once again someday after all of this is behind us. So maybe we'll get more spouses on the little sightseeing and we had some wonderful, not deficits, but some of our historians to give the tour of Newport and that was a lot of fun. I hope to do that again one day. And today for you, we have just wanted to go ahead and jump right into the last session so we have two guests. Everyone knows that Ann Champney, she is our coordinator, our specialist at the fleet family service. I'm sorry, Resource Center and and we also have Sylvia Colpa with the PPPO and her title is traffic management specialist. And she will be here from the PPPO to talk to us today at the end. So hope everybody enjoys and ask some good questions for them. Thank you all. Thank you. Well, as we've done over the past six weeks. So while you listen to our guest speaker you're invited to send in questions using the zoom chat function. We'll gather these questions and relay relay them to the speaker during the question and answer period. Following the end of the Q&A session will pause for about 60 seconds and then commence our family discussion group meeting. Today's lecture is entitled Farrell cities, which is a term used to describe large urban urban areas in which the state has lost the ability to maintain the rule of law. Here is Dr Rick Norton, a member of the College's National Security Affairs Department. He holds an undergraduate degree from Tulane University and two master's degrees and a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and diplomacy. He's also a retired US Navy commander. While in uniform he served extensively at sea on cruisers and destroyers, as well as shore tours and the Navy's Office of Legislative Affairs, and the Navy staff. He's already on decision making and his regional expertise is in Africa and South America. His ground-breaking scholarly work on the concept of Farrell cities is recognized worldwide. Okay, Rick, your audience is zoomed up and ready to go. The digital podium is yours, sir. Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm going to try this. I have two disclaimers, one of which is standard. Anything I say today as a result of my own work and in no way reflects that of the United States government, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, the United States Naval War College or any organization I am, have been or ever will be associated with. The other one is that I am not a digital native and I'm going to do my best to step through the electronics and please bear with me. So let's try to start by sharing the screen. Okay, hopefully everybody can hear and see a little bit about Farrell cities. This is my definition. And the origin story is actually kind of traces back to the war college and that I was in South Africa at a conference that the Naval War College Foundation had been very helpful in giving me to attend. And I went through several South African cities and nowhere other than Joburg that I was more impressed and we're struck by what appeared to be something out of Blade Runner or dystopian science fiction. And I began at that point to think about what would happen if a state lost control of the city but the city was still somehow connected to the global grid. And since then that's what I've been working on. And what it was at first a notion is now much more of I think a firm idea something we see actually happen. So let's start off by recognizing that human beings are now urban animals are you may love little house on the prairie and the idea of pushing back the frontier, but that's not the reality. By 2030 50% more 75% of the world will live in an urban center. By the way, this is not a, this is not a question of simple say no that's fake news or bad science. Everybody from the United Nations on the down says yep that's the way the demographic trends are moving. There will be more than 400 mega cities which has more than 10 million people on the globe by 2050. And one thought for those of us in security. If war is an activity between humans where humans live. That means we are going to have war still around in these urban areas. So cities, cities have long captured the imagination of poets artists architects, and you have two very contrasting kind of images. One is a city as a poem and steel and glass and rebar, the front of wisdom and activity, where else can you get a slice of pizza in the morning or find a bookstore to vote it only to detective novels. These are, these are the best of cities, but cities can also be really grim places. Dickens knew this when he talked about sooty gritty grimy dangerous parts of London. Verne understood this about certain parts of Paris. There's been this duality to cities, particularly informal cities that have grown up too fast and unregulated will talk about that. But this is kind of the canvas on which we get to work. Right. Cities are a growth industry. And as it happens, 10 of the world's fastest growing city the top 10 are located in India and Southeast Asia is where we're going to see a great deal of urban growth. It doesn't mean they're all going to be feral or terrible, but we are moving on this track toward more larger and more populated cities. Okay. When I first did this back in the early 2000s, my dystopian view was, yeah, we're going to see a lot of cities that aren't controlled by their states, etc. And this was a little bit after political scientists have become enamored of this idea of the failed state. Well, both these issues have a question of, where are they? How come we don't see more failed states? We've seen some, and I will argue we've seen some cities that are pretty close to feral. But we haven't seen them yet. But this graphic, the red dots indicate where there are very fragile cities bordering on feral. And the yellow countries are those that are seen to be fragile or failing. So there is some correlation, but not a one-to-one correlation. And what I think, the reason why we don't have more is that both those who looked at failing states and myself, we describe kind of an ultimate in-state. And so many cities are trending that way, but not all of that many have reached that point yet. When you talk about feral cities, I get excited, so I'm going to try to be slow, or when you talk about feral cities, Mogadishu still comes to most people's mind as the poster city. Things were terrible during the Civil War. Everybody, most everybody seemed black-hawked down. We knew that it was a very grim place to be. And right now, Mogadishu is better than it was, but it's still certainly a city that's fragile, that's trending toward ferality. And yet things went on, and Mogadishu, life went on on Mogadishu. Let's talk a little bit about that. So, and I pardon, excuse me if this is an eye chart, but one of the things I came up with originally was this diagnostic tool. You can see my Navy background and that green is good, yellow is not good, red is bad. Just a kind of a stoplight chart. And originally there were four columns, governance, economy, services, and security. Civil society has been added in the years since then, and I'll tell you why. But just real quickly, governance, green is they have effective legislation, resources are appropriately directed. The city is controlled all the time in terms of law and order, corruption is detected in punishment, and then things get worse. And when the city's in the red, it only has negotiated zone control, or there's no real governance. This is not a snapshot, it should be seen as a mosaic and trends, because any city can have a bad day as it were, so to speak. Civil society, by the way, is part of the reason we haven't seen more feral cities. Civil society is the glue that holds people together. In a really great city, civil society is rich and robust, it has constructed relationships with government. It does perform in some ways watchdog or overwatch functions, but it's integrates the life of the city. When cities go red, when they begin to go feral and fracture, civil society fractures as well. So you see identities based on clan or ethnicities, cartels, local elites. So we'll look at how this can happen and what does it look like, but this is the tool and we can come back to it. So for governance, transparency national is a pretty good job of detailing which of the more corrupt countries in the world. And although it doesn't go to the city level. It gives us an idea of where governance is weak and where it's strong right now the best governed countries in the world is a tie between Denmark and New Zealand. In Europe or go to the Antipodes, the United States, we've slipped a little, we're down to 23rd, we used to be 22. The worst right now would be Syria, and above that South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, etc. Not too surprising when you think of what's going on in those states. Economy going back to Mogadishu. When I first started my research, I began to think that in a feral city, the only economy you had would be illicit. People would sell drugs and guns and there would be no real commerce. I was wrong. Now, certainly that happens. This is the in the lower left. This is the cot market of Mogadishu, where every day. This cot is a mild narcotic that's chewed the cot planes come in the morning they sell their wares and during the day and by the afternoon evening everybody's buzzed. There were weapons markets and there used to be kind of a grim statistic that compared these economies based on how expensive a hand grenade was and at its worst you could buy a grenade for $5 in Mogadishu. I'm not sure the price today it's much more well regulated the young man with a shark that fishing went on people had to eat. So there was that. But the two that surprised me the most upper right. There's a rich telecommunications business going on there and without regulation, it's kind of a Wild West of telecommunications. And when you think about it, there's not a lot of structure that goes in. There's a need for people to be connected and some I own Mogadish would not be the first policies where people jump from landlines to cell phones. So you actually do have tele firms marketing. My favorite though is in the upper left. This is Mogadishu University. So Mogu, and even during the height of violence in Mogadishu Mogadishu University continued to educate students occasionally they had to hit the deck because of straight bullets, etc. But it was a going concern and that meant that people and parents wanted their children to get an education, even in Mogadishu, even this city of ferrality and would send their children or themselves very young adult to school to have a better shot at life. So even in Ferro City's life goes on. This is pictures of Mumbai and Davi, which is the largest slum in the world, Mumbai is a city in India, and it is difficult to provide services to the millions who live in here. And what the Indians have done and many other countries as well as they have turned to NGOs NGOs have stepped in to do a lot of the things that we usually consider government's responsibility. And here you have everything from toys for children battered women helping battered women lawyers helping people who can't afford them. They're having just looked at the resources how to do better sanitation. There are NGOs that handle people who need prosthetics and the list goes on there are hundreds. Now what's interesting in fact there's also a people's court that the kind of this that the government and he has authorized to hear minor cases and like civil cases and determine the outcome. But to some degree, countries that follow this model have surrendered some sovereignty and have turned over functions that we think are usually done by the state, or private enterprise to these non government organizations are not implying that this is a bad thing the people are probably probably much better off because of the NGO involvement, but technically, it's a little bit of a weakening of government bonds. And when it's not I think a huge deal in Derby we'll see places where it is. This is Lagos. It's a bad way if anybody's been the leaders you know it's a bustling exciting city teams with activities, but it's also huge. And there's a couple of interesting things about Lagos they're have, and there have been issues with governments, but I don't think anybody really knows how big Lagos is we take a picture from space we mop out areas. We sort of know what the population is because it's a very big moving target. Lagos is, and most major growing cities, particularly ones that are growing rapidly have this in common. Lagos had a really interesting crime issue for many many years and it's still a booming business. It was the, the, the site of internet crime. So if you were to get a message saying from someone hey my my father Colonel Bobi left $5 million in a shoebox if you send me $5,000 I'll split it with you. This is our came from Lagos and by the way one of my favorite gangs there was called the Yahoo Yahoo Boys they were internet thieves, and perhaps not great for the United States. People who worked in that industry had a lot of disdain for us citizens because they thought we were easy targets, and we were quick to part with our money we were gullible. But they did find tough though, and it was a big deal in terms of I guess, bragging rights, if they get somebody from France to kick in on their scams because the French were evidently much more suspicious, suspicious much more careful and cautious. So we were like fishing a barrel the French were were tough to land. Security is another big issue in a feral city, as you might expect. And part of the things that happened in a feral city is that normal security breaks down because we would expect in a regulated city that the state of the country, the county would provide security forces law enforcement. So what do you see in cities as they become feral. As first you see the police become militarized. And for those of us who were Victor were veterans of the drug wars back in the 80s. You watch the DEA for example go from people who were three piece suits and carrying small pistols and a very, very kind of unassuming way to people dressed up in black, no mix and flying helicopters and looking a lot like seal teams and screen beret and very militarized. So, this is a reaction to a growing threat and criminal that the police feel they have to have that kind of response to match. But you also have malicious case of Lebanon. And tell me, but in Beirut, we saw different, everything from communities and neighborhoods having real militia to different religious factions and sex. So that was part of the security landscape. If you can afford them there are private security forces who will protect your home and your property. You would have a very nice home with a large fence topped with broken glass and razor wire, and there would be people like the folks down the lower right. Equip with a variety of weapons who made sure that the occupants of the home were safe. And then you have well armed criminal gangs in some cases. So many of the towns in the northern tier of Mexico, you have criminals who are packing military grade firepower in terms of assault rifles, RPGs, 50 caliber machine guns. In fact, a year or so ago in Paraguay, there was a disturbing event when a Paraguayan military patrol came under fire by a drug drug elements of drug runners who are using a 50 caliber, which is an escalation of armament in that area. This complicates the security terrain. And I'm going to go to Joe Berg as an example. One of the things that really tips my interest into this subject was when I went to Johannesburg, this in the lower right is the stock exchange. The country and the city was in the process of moving the stock exchange from Johannesburg to Stockton. To put that into context, that would be as if we were to take the New York Stock Exchange, take it off Wall Street and move it to Rye, New York, where the Tappan C bridges. And why did they do this? They did this because stock brokers, any stock broker, black stock brokers, white stock brokers, Indian stock brokers, were being assaulted or robbed and mugged, going to and from work. So for physical security, the decision was made to move the national stock exchange from a capital to a suburb. That's kind of riveting. When I was there down the central business district like something on a play run or lots of empty space, Joe Berg is better now by a long shot than it was. But as an example of how these things worked out in 2010, the South Africans hosted the World Cup. The big goal, their aspiration was that there would be no cup related murders, while the cup was in town, and they were successful. But Chief Nicobo at the time, the police chief authorized the use of deadly force for such things as breaking and entering. There were pretty draconian sweeps of the homeless to reposition them, which in some cases was about 150 clicks into the bush and saying, you know, good luck. So it took some substantive effort but they were successful. And this will come into play over there. Just before I came online, I was in frenzy because this is 2018 50 most violent cities in the world. It's compiled by an organization in Mexico. It's got worldwide attention. And so, as you can see, most of the most violent cities are in Central America, South America, etc. But this has changed because actually now it's the 29th effort this 2019 numbers are out. And this is now the most dangerous city in the world. And it goes down. Actually the top 50, St. Louis is number 15 St. Louis is the most dangerous city in North America. The other three US cities that made the list were Detroit, Baltimore. And what I think it was my cultural hometown, because my mom's people are from there, New Orleans. There are more cities in South Africa. There are no another 50, the top 50 are in Asia, or in the atypides, which is interesting. And I suspect, although I would never say this as a hard and fast rule, that a large reason for that is that the civil societies are different. And also has to be noted that just because your governance is that of authoritarianism or even dictatorship doesn't mean you have to have a violent city. The Chinese are pretty good at maintaining this kind of control in their cities. In fact, we're seeing this play out in Hong Kong and personal opinion, but I don't think I bet on the rebels. I think the PRC is going to exert its will in the in Hong Kong, which is too bad. This used to be the most dangerous city in the world, which is interesting because when I was growing up in Southern California as a Navy brat, you went to Tijuana for excitement and you went to you went to Cabo for high end vacation. But it probably doesn't take a lot of imagination to forget what's going on. Drug cartels are bringing violence to the cities. That violence tends to remain until one cartel establishes itself as the dominant cartel, in which case violence tends to dip after that. After it was before it was Cabo, there was Caracas and Caracas and Cabo both remain in the top 10 of dangerous cities in the world. In Caracas, it was everything from drugs, but I think basically the failure of government under the first the Chavez Chavez and then the Maduro regimes and Caracas remains extraordinarily violence. Before that it was San Pedro Sules and Honduras. Again, this was very much a drug issue San Pedro Sules near the border. And it also remains a violence. Why would a feral city be so violent? And starters, getting weapons is not that difficult in the world today. We're not talking about MIGs or F-22s or Aegis class cruisers, but basic handguns, white weapons are not hard to find. This kind of is a traditional pose of law enforcement that have made a major bust. The only thing that's missing is the mountain of blocks of cocaine that the weapons rest on. We see this a lot. Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily mean that the forces of law and order are winning. Then there's a question of how well the security forces in these areas are trained and what's their cohesion. For example, in the northern tier Mexico, and I think it's important to note that Mexico has been fighting a war on drugs, a war that looks like a real war for more than 10 years and they've lost more than a division's worth of law enforcement personnel trying to do this. This isn't, this isn't the fact that Mexico is just letting this happen. It's understandable perhaps that a small town sheriff's department or police department, when faced with more firepower and an enemy that's prepared to kill your family, might have second thoughts about going to a war with the physical terrain of the city, the federal cities included, is extraordinarily difficult to the point where military planners and army and Marine Corps to have a rule of thumb that says, if you're going to fight in the city, the defenders have a three to one advantage, even if they're not crack troops because they know the city it's a difficult terrain. There was a general named Robert scales that said us asymmetric advantages tend to melt away inside these narrow streets and confines of the city. So that when what he called the last mile, it's close in fight. We couldn't rely on the usual edge that we bring to come. And then finally, cities have any city has extraordinarily complex human training I mean that in a bad way but knowing who's aligned with who who owes other people loyalty. I'm trying to understand Newport for example, unless you lived here had some insight could be challenging. And so for a culture that's very, very different. It's even more complex trying to figure out who is who and who worked for whom and who's opposed to whom. I can also make for some very tough criminal challenges. About 20 years back, there was a heroin ring out of Nigeria. It was run by women of families. And so how do you penetrate that and not get caught. These are real challenges, particularly if you don't speak the language and know the culture, etc, etc. I'm going to go to Brazil in Sao Paulo in 2005 and Rio in 2020 the PCC the primary all come undone the capital is a terrorist criminal organization that is in Brazil. In 2005, there are many of the leaders were in solitary confinement in jail from that confinement using illegal cell phones they orchestrated basically an uprising on part of the game, more than 500 buses were burned the main thorough first to Sao Paulo were closed. It became an extraordinary challenge. And the way it resolved itself was not through the defeat of the PCC, but through a negotiated settlement, we saw something very much like that in 2020. For those who are familiar with the favelas of Brazil, the center picture of the electrical conduit. This is electricity being stolen by gangs and supplied to the favelas they control. A friend of mine now passed away who worked on the, who was a member of the progress Council of Foreign Relations were tight. We're talking about this. And he said, Rick, I don't understand my daughter is a healthcare professional. She goes into the worst of the favelas every year for several months, and she has a clinic, and nothing has ever happened to her. So that's really interesting. It's a very dangerous thing, a noble thing to do. Why do you think that is. And I think being aware, but the local crime boss would hurt anybody who dared lift a finger against her because the people see him as bringing her health to the community. In which case I said, well, I think you made my point. And this type of control where the, the, the, the state and the town, the city may control parts of its territory than others. The term you said is patchwork control. So parts of the city can be safe and tourist friendly to go to Rio Ipanema is usually pretty safe. Miami, the beaches are, sorry, but the beaches are pretty safe, but there are parts of the town that are not safe at all. And so you have this kind of patchwork arrangement and you have to know where the patches are. Cities, particularly for all cities or cities that are trending towards for all the real environmental health issues, they can be petri dishes. The poor woman in the upper right is sobbing, because her livelihood, her ducks are all being destroyed as a result of crackdown on avian flu. These cities can become petri dishes. And the fact that I'm talking to you from my home underscores the fact that we have, we're dealing with a pandemic that originated in a city. And I'm not going to speculate on the origins of COVID-19. I don't have that kind of background, but it's a city bread disease. One of the things I realized was we think SARS before that from Guamashu, the people in the middle are carrying out livestock. Some cities livestock are allowed to roam free and now you've had some complications to health. The unborn that boat is picking through plastic trash in a river looking for stuff that can be sold. So this is a potentially major area that doesn't affect just the city, but the country, the region, even as we've seen today the globe. So this came out with this idea. First off, I learned about the blogosphere. Some of the blogosphere said, well, Faro cities, farming in cities and urban agriculture is a wonderful thing. And like I think it was Eddie Albert and Green, Green Acres growing corn on his balcony, but the whole we can, we could turn cities green. I thought about that. And the answer is yes, you can, but you have to have real controls in place. If you're going to have animals, you got to have vets and you got to have vaccines and you got to make sure they're healthy. You got to make sure how you're growing your, your produce. And while community gardens are wonderful and encouraging, that's a very positive sign. It's pretty hard for a city to feed itself. And so along with this you have, and this is a fairly recent 15 cities from India among the 20 most polluted places on the globe, but if you're going to urbanize if you're going to develop, you're going to make waste. And for particularly developing countries, the idea that you're going to have to put strict environmental controls on really increases the cost and a small anecdote, which is related. So being a kid from Louisiana, or a lot of time in Louisiana, I got familiar with shrimping. And the problem in the old days where was that if you, if you drag your shrimp nets along the bottom like Bubba Gump, you would catch a lot of things that weren't shrimp, including dolphins and sea turtles. And sea turtles are almost all endangered. So the United States came up with this thing called the turtle exclusion device, the Ted, and the Ted's just a big aluminum box that the turtles went through you lose some shrimp but it's okay. And of course of the normal season, the Ted cost around $500 so you may go through three or four of them. It's an extra $2,000. In the United States we pass that on to the consumer when I buy shrimp at the supermarket that somewhere in there is the cost of a couple of tests. And I'm glad with and Honduras said, wait a minute. This is not about the environment. This is about the United States trying to get a leg up on us for fishing for shrimping, because our strippers can't afford this. So this this idea that sometimes what we would consider small things that help the environment are simply unaffordable in the eyes of those who are developing. But this will be a this will be an issue that's going to have to be dealt with the cities get bigger and bigger and more and more. Closer to the United States than you like to think if you lived in San Diego, particularly a long time, you might recognize the Tijuana River. And when I was a kid, this in the lower left, this kind of informal housing that wasn't there but after NAFTA and explosion of job opportunities people flooded the Tijuana, they overwhelmed the school system. New people around the sewer system. And even today, if you get a massive rain, the Tijuana River overflows the sewage systems are compromised raw sewage goes directly into the river and the river goes into the ocean. So in the upper left what you see is called a fecal bloom and it's as nasty as it sounds. And this brown water was moving north, north to Silver Strand, north to Coronado, north to the great beaches of Southern California and all that tourist industry that comes with them. The initial thought of the good people in San Diego was let's skim the stuff up and ship it back to Mexico wasn't very effective. So what's happened since then is that there have been a lot of efforts cross border efforts to build up the sewage processing facilities and Tijuana so things like this don't happen. But they still do occasionally thanks to Mother Nature when they hand, and it points out that some of the problems associated with cities, the Faro cities are going to not be able to be stopped by an artificial border. We talk about climate change. Last week we had a great presentation on the Arctic and what that's going to look like as the pack ice melts and we now can move shipping and a whole new geopolitical ecological structure emerges in the top of the world and somewhat to the bottom of the world. This these predictions are the most dire. If you get a 30 foot rise and sea levels. This is what happens, Florida disappears. I don't know if we disappear or not, but I may be looking instead of being on the top of the island enforcement I may be having each for property. The issue here is, while these maps are stark. This is the big issue, and this is a much more moderate and reasonable prediction. If there's just to centigrade the two degrees centigrade of warming, because so many urban centers are close to the coast. People get put in motion. In the United States, we're looking at 1 to 8 million people having to move around because of the two degree rise. China is looking at 3686 or so, millions of people moving from the coast to somewhere else. Where do they go, they go to cities. So urban hypertrophy becomes worse. The strain on resources becomes worse. The focus toward for routing becomes stronger. And I think will be people don't often talk about this notion. The kind of the off the cuff snide joke is, at least those of us in the maritime security business will have employment because there'll be a lot more maritime or territorial operations to worry about. Civil society, last column that my answer to why hasn't this happened more often. I'm more pervasive than I gave it credit for and much of civil society is extraordinarily positive. Stop nuclear power. Let's have, let's have sustainable green energy. Religion is a source of civil society. So when the Pope goes to South America, new Catholicism is a strong force which finds people. Community and women's rights, voting, all these things have civil society proponents from people who are trying to build a better society. Facebook is a new issue that is a vehicle for civil society to grow. Someone figured out that if World of Warcraft were a country to be the fifth largest country in the world, but this particular picture is actually a criminal cartel family sharing good news. And then some civil society can be extraordinarily dark. You have Al Shabaab in Somalia. Boko Haram and we all remember the child locked girls were kidnapped, etc. In fact, how about those who remember Coney 2012. We're going to fix Coney and find him. He's still around. And my last example is Los Colomias, who was one of the more new cartels in Mexico. There have been many sense. And this isn't also a darker element, but it's still civil society is a civil society is something you have to look at. You know, is it a positive force for a city is a negative force. Which brings me to COVID-19. By now we're all familiar with the kind of spiky red and white bug. What I've got to say is the data is all over the map right now. And I've been looking at this since this be window lockdown. I spend a lot of my spare time seeing what's going on with cities. I apologize for the chart. We can't go into that. But it's basically what happened is that urban areas have seen a real spike in excess death. And so there's a question of why, and I think it's because in cities you live cheap by jowl. People are social and cities is social on steroids. You know, you go to a deli in New York and you're sitting, you're not sitting three feet apart sitting 16 inches at four inches apart. There's a, so it's a little hard to a little early to draw conclusions, but I think we're going to see is that cities who are, which are in the yellow tending toward feral or in the red are going to be struck. To some degree, far more heavily by COVID-19. But yet there's the puzzle of New York. New York is a highly developed fully functioning, most would say in the green city services are good, etc, etc. Why has New York had such a disproportionate set of deaths involved with COVID-19. So anyways, there are two pieces, one of which applies I think to the United States, my personal opinion, we weren't as prepared for the pandemic that we might have been the second one that was more interesting to me as a researcher. And that's this issue of how well we had it before the pandemic in the United States. And we're going to look at perhaps retirement homes, etc. There are people who live in the United States with into their 80s and 90s, with a myriad of medical conditions that are still alive and more or less healthy. But they're at extreme risk from COVID-19. And so it's not a secret that if, if you're in your 80s, if you're 60 or above, if you're overweight, if you have a medical condition, your risk factors stack and stack on each other. So as things begin to break down, these people who are very fragile, unfortunately die first. Then parts of the world, again, think about Mogadishu, a lot of these people wouldn't be there, not to be callous, but they would have been already they were already passed away from other causes. And we saw this actually we had a we had a warning there was a, if you were looking for it. It was a member hurricane Katrina. And as a, as a member of knowledge, and someone who likes gumbo and, and be nice and caffeine and more. It was, it was tragic. But there were pockets of high fatalities in the New Orleans area at the nursing homes. In this case, it wasn't because the patients were more vulnerable, it's because and they were pretty horrible. They ran away and abandoned their, their, their patients and they died. Those who were on oxygen, the oxygen ran out medicine. And if you think about it, we live in these kind of glass bubbles. And so first people who run oxygen and I see you go away, but eventually, a lot of folks at the war college who are on Lipitor blood pressure medicine that runs out and you have to deal with. So, when I first started this research, and it became more and more fascinating. One of the things I walked away with with a conviction that it could not happen here that the United States was safe from a feral city. And then I was wrong. It's an extraordinarily painful thing to talk about. I love the world. I grew up there and my mom was from there and have Cajun. You know, it's, by the way, no Cajun ever blackened a red fish until Paul proved on the side. It was a good idea. But for at least five days. New Orleans was outside the reach of us law. It was a feral city. We brought in the army under general honor a the Coast Guard Coast Guard was magnificent. In fact, they spent very little time on decision making their mandate quote, we go where the water is today the waters in New Orleans we're going to New Orleans and they were they were heroic. But things broke down in the world. The police force was already problematic it was the least paid and perhaps the most corrupt United States. They had done things such as, in order to save money on batteries, not surprisingly they had, they had bought rechargeable batteries and battery chargers that were in police stations. But when the police stations went underwater, so did the chargers, and they lost communications with their police, as the surrounding areas were stressed and when the police stay at home and I try to keep the articles g rated, but in New Orleans you tend to bury your people above ground because it's pretty much underwater and you get the water have a pretty quickly. So these kind of macabre sites of coffins floating in city streets etc. The city is much better now. And part of, you might argue, how fast can you recover how resilient are your populations. The United States is pretty good about that. But there are people say New Orleans has never fully recovered from from Katrina. So, with that, I think I'm pretty much where I'm supposed to be about that. I would certainly welcome any questions you have. Thank you very much for listening to me. It's been a great honor to talk about something I'm passionate about. And, and it's nice to think that the one of the things that puts the word college on the map is we did come up with this as one of our contributions to the greater discussion. Well, thank you very much, Rick. It's a very cheerful story but something we need to understand and I appreciate it. We do have a number of questions that people have written in so let's walk through these. First, your comments about St. Louis and being a dangerous city. Does that data represent only the city itself or is it the surrounding areas. So look at the people that put this together or an organization that we had out of Mexico. Again, their research has been validated, etc. I'm not sure where they draw that circle. I'm sure that the city proper is in it but to what point the suburbs begin to fall out. I don't know. But it's, it's, I would have to check on that, but I would guess it's predominantly the metropolitan area. That's the exact requirements for, for, for St. Louis, but St. Louis has been on the list consistently for the last four or five years. Thank you. Second question, what role does culture play in promoting a peaceful society. You touched on that a little bit do you want to amplify it all. I'll do my best shot. I'm, this is, I guess the word culturalist. I think it's a critical component of understanding where cities go. If you have a culture that's based on mutual respect on tolerance. And I would, if you're, if your social structures are rigid, in terms of there are things you do not do. And I would, I would look at places, you know, might be able to talk to us about Guam. Japan, Japan has had for centuries this idea of how do you maintain privacy in a country that is so populated that there is almost no privacy. Cultural norms are very powerful. If you have norms of tolerance, as opposed to perhaps those of aggression. And certainly it's no secret in South America that the cult of machismo has left a mark on how people interrelate with each other. I think culture is what keeps many cities from going through and it keeps many cities from starting in that direction because the culture of involvement and engagement education tends to identify problems early and demand solutions to them. So I think, I think that's, and for me that was one of the big surprises in the research, because, you know, first two years I didn't even think about that. But more and more, as I said, it was like, no, no, it isn't important. This is the 800 pound gorilla that explains a lot of the things that are otherwise possible. Very good. Thank you. This is a very interesting question to me. Is there any correlation between how long a city has been established and the degree to which it might be a feral city. And basically do the older cities kind of mature over the years, decades, centuries, and some of these younger cities have not had that opportunity yet. Okay, John, if you thought of that, that's a great question. And if somebody else thought of it, that's even a better question. Somebody else. Yeah, well, congratulations whoever it was. That's really fascinating. And I would say what I, what I think, right, I'm not anywhere close to saying one, I'm sure about is that there is this issue of newer cities, particularly newer cities that exploded in growth. And it's not always the case, Nairobi Legos is one back in the colonial period, which had its own problems and then some it was a small city of several hundred thousand. But once you start slamming the city with populations and you get urban hypertrophy this explosion of growth. You get informal settlements, you get in the case of Tijuana, for example, once the school systems were inundated, what happens to children between the ages seven and 15, they go off on their own. So I think new cities, particularly those that are marked by massive growth are particularly vulnerable. And one aspect you see this, and again, China tends to be an interesting case. Their cities are very logically laid out to look at their grids, etc. But I think there's a reason why in China you get the school that falls down because it turns out they forgot or didn't put rebar in the construction. There's a lot of cuts, a lot of corners being cut. And again, it's this issue to make money to get things done quickly. So I think that issue of newness and growth, particularly that that uncontrolled growth are real warning signs to go to Brazilia, the city is gorgeous new wires dream and concrete, but the informal cities that are around it are giving that are worthy. I think part of the main source of its problems right now in terms of the indicators that would lead one to think maybe it's going in a wrong direction. Another question know what actions could be taken based on the research that you've had you know if you're a leader, what do you do to address these situations and in large refugee camp situations. Do they frequently exhibit Farrell city characteristics. That's a, again, that's a great question. There are people who studied refugee camps specifically, I happen to be married to one who are much better at answering that but I think there is a, there is an issue, right and part of it is how long is the refugee camp stay. And it's my understanding that the UN says, if you don't get a camp indeed in six months, you have a real potential for it remaining and it gets kind of melt it melted into the city or the local landscape. Sometimes refugee camps can cause resentment because the refugees are perceived to be being treacherous better treated and people locally. And here there was some refugee camps that were disbanded or they were shut down years ago, people still live there. And so, I think that's an issue. One thing you want to avoid, and you see it sometimes is refugees go from city a to city B to city C. So, it's kind of having to sound hokey but better security, a sense of equality, where nobody is marginalized, where there's no where you can go to the state and the security operators of the state, you trust the justice system. I mean something as simple as the trash gets taken away ambulances come when you call. Even in the green city, you know, there's a park where you can go to live in the city. And so I think these basic human needs. If they're equally, if they're trying to be equally addressed for everybody as one way to do this. And when you start getting haves and have nots. For example, in Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo has more helo pads than any other. I used to make sure that's still the case, but several years ago I had more helo pads in the other city in the world. Oh, that's really interesting why. And the answer is those who could afford to literally flew above the city's problems to get from point to point. So while their children were having $100,000 Disney theme parties. Other people were, were having to brave the gauntlet of going to work through some of the most dangerous streets in the world. And so I think when you lose sight of everybody who lives in the city. And I'm not saying everybody has to live in a palace, but there is that notion of, you know, city has to take care of all of its inhabitants. And I know that again that's kind of squishy. I love to talk to that person if they want to about some of the concrete things you can do housing, etc. Probably transportation. One argument says, keep your cities at a certain size, don't let them get above 300,000. That's easier said than done. So there's, and there's a huge literature on city planning and urban, urban governance, etc. But it's a great question. Again, not mine. But anyway, what are the implications for regional security organizations if a given regional commander has feral cities in his area of responsibility. That's a brilliant question, boss. The, but no, I think it's that's one of the things that was again interesting, right, and that there is a regional impact from a feral city. And so let's take something as it's relatively simple. It's not as pollution. It's a port. That port is going to pump toxins into regional waterways. It's going to affect fishing. It's going to affect health. It's going to affect ships that visit. And it's not just a, it's not a problem that the owning country can solve. Sometimes it's made worse by the owning country, because many nations don't want to admit they have a problem. And so it's like, Hey, that's our city. You keep your hands out. But this whole idea of disease pandemics don't stop at borders. migration, people who are looking for, and if you think about yourselves, what would it take to set you in motion, what would it take to take your children, and maybe a couple of suitcases full of stuff and get out of town to seek a new life in a different culture, different language. Traditionally, it's been things like the Cossacks are coming, or there's no room for us in the new Reich, or the crops have failed for three years running, we've got nothing. So these people are tend to move because they some may indeed be attracted to a better life, but they're leaving one that's no longer better. And I know that immigration is a hugely controversial. But as a father, the idea that I would tell my 14 year old kid to hop a train travel 1500 miles to a new country. I've got to be really worried about what's going to be happening to him or she or she or he stays. So this idea of the regional approach. And I think regional efforts are essential. The owning country has already been overwhelmed or close to it. And so without some kind of regional coordinated issue. These problems are going to get worse. In fact, if you want an example it's not a Pharaoh city, but when Chernobyl melted that radioactive cloud went all the way west and all the way north so the lapse in Finland we're worried about strontium 90 and their reindeer. So you have to have a larger, more comprehensive maybe get out of the simply it's a state problem. Attitude towards and I would I would even suggest that what we see on the northern border of Mexico and other southern border is one of those issues that it can't be solved by doesn't stop at the border you have to have some kind of cooperative. That's my soapbox and there are other points of view. You brought up the issue of COVID-19. I'm wondering we really haven't heard anything about the impact in Africa. And now South America has become a hot spot. Are we simply not hearing what's going on in Africa, or is there something unique about the situation that's prevented them from having problems. I just had this conversation the other day. I think it's several things. Tanzania, for example, has stopped reporting. It's just like, nope, we're not going to tell you what's going on. And that opens all kinds of that's open to some eyes as to why that would be certainly one of the issues are they don't want people to know that how bad it's hitting. There is apparently slow transmission on the continent and part of maybe because communication is difficult. And so once you've been to lock people out. You may have impeded the process of disease. I suspect a lot of it is just a lack of testing and accurate identification of what's going on. And there's a real hope about Africa and Sierra Leone and Liberia on the West Coast. And one of the countries that suffered most from Ebola, there evidently has been some positive news about how they're handling COVID-19. And that's because I think they had some of the processes mechanisms procedure maybe some of the equipment in place to do this and it was recent that there was perhaps less time wasted. But that's the one gleam of positive news. I think what's going to happen to get personal opinion. I think it's going to be a disaster. I think Africa is going to have numbers that are as bad as anybody else. And it's just going to take longer to kind of be accurate in assessing how how grim the cost was for the continent. But it's, it is an open question right now. Well, Rick, can you speak about the tensions between cities, feral cities and the rural areas when it comes to governance? That's awesome. Yeah, and great. Thanks. In my, when I started writing on this, cities, while they're wonderful, they're also hugely demanding resources. Legos eats close to 50% of Nigeria's energy. In India, 80% of its power goes to urban areas. So if I'm a rural farmer, if I'm a rural business person, I kind of feel left out. And if you look at the United States, it's not as extreme, but look at upper New York compared to the city. New York City dominates New York. And if I'm trying to get, you know, my programs, etc. There's a feeling in parts of New York that, yeah, there's the city and the rest of us. So the demand of the city is one thing. The other things are cities are really a luring. I mean, going back to the 20s and beyond. If you were, if you were the prom king of your local high school, and you read a lot of books about the movie at the new movie industry. Did you want to stay and work dad's farm that you want to take over the feed star. No, you're going to save your money you're going to hop a freight and you're going to go to Hollywood, and you were going to be a star. And it's not just that, but the idea that cities give you opportunity and they give you the streets are paid with gold. There's a, there's a pole to cities as well as a push. And of course, when you get there you find that the streets are paid with stone, and that you are considered, maybe none of the higher class because you're a ruby and you don't have a lot of money you gravitate toward those areas of the city where people like you live. And the motion of people in the cities is well documented. I mean, if you look at the Irish coming to Boston, you know, suddenly, the police was open to them. And there are a lot of Irish families in Boston, I included is a very interesting family of Cajuns and Irish. But yeah, there's a lot of cops in my family because that was available to them when they came here. And so you there is a there is a tension with the rural elements saying we're not getting our fair share and they really aren't. And the city going, what are you worried what we have to have this, by the way, grow more greats. So that that's a very real tension, I think, particularly in Faro cities, where warlords and other controls may have an impact outside the city boundaries. So great question. And Rick, the notion if I was someone from somewhere else in the world and watching the evening news in the United States, what I determined that there were Faro cities in America. I'd like to say, you would say no. But if we go back to this. Sorry about that. And you look at the situation going on today. You would go, what's going on. And I would say, well, what you're seeing first off is this idea that civil society has got some tensions that not everybody feels the security elements is equally fair to them. And we've had indicators. In fact, if I can, I'm not to brag on the Navy or even less Navy air since I'm a surface warfare guy, but an airplane crash in the Navy is a tragedy, and it's investigated. And, you know, there are several types of investigations. And we look for an answer. If you have three crashes in 10 days, even if they're different parts of the world, if they're the same airframe, you get a safety standout. You get real attention being paid to an effort and made an effort made to determine if there's something causal or systemic. That's causing this adverse result. I suggest, if you look at a variety of social indicators that there have been lots of red flags and say, you know, maybe our justice system, maybe our security systems need some looking at I'm not making a judgment but there's been enough indicators to say, we should have looked at this before maybe done something. If you have violence and you have, you have frustration, anger, etc. Now you begin to wonder about is the other services right, the governance effective. This continues. I think an outside observer would say yeah, you may have been green at one point but you are trending in the wrong direction. So, it doesn't mean that the US has feral cities. In fact, well before the current unrest and violence and the issues of police brutality whether or not exist. I remember I was at a conference and a woman in the audience said, you're talking about East LA East LA is a feral city. And I thought I said no, because the mayor of Los Angeles has sufficient resources not just force to really make an effort to improve East LA. The mayor doesn't have it, the governor of the state does and with the governor didn't think about the United States does. So there is this issue of, do you have the political will to make a positive intervention. And again, I'm not just talking security, I'm talking about new causes, etc. But I think that if the political will is lacking, then eventually the political ability begins to lack as well. I shouldn't ignore a sweep under the rug. But it's something that's concerned. And if I may one more anecdote means an anecdote. I used to teach as a civilian for a little while and put it in a national university and I taught a security class. And we were talking about disruptions caused by natural events. And in this case it was and hurricane and there was a transplant a young woman from New Jersey. And when the when I was describing how in response to the devastation of the hurricane, the 18th Airborne Corps came in National Guard. There was a, we use soldiers as security personnel. And she had the opinion that this was terrible should never use military folks as cops. It's a bad idea. And this fiery young woman in the classroom. Judy leaves up and says, you weren't here. It was a terrifying scary time we had no power. We had no cooling. My dad sat out all night in the chair with a shotgun because they were terrifying people in the neighborhood. And then one morning I woke up, and there was a man on the corner. He had three stripes on his arm and machine gun. Here comes the kicker. And I felt safe. And there are very few countries in the world where an armed military person on your corner would make you feel safe. And so I think there's a reason why the United States military has the confidence in American people is because we don't take it for granted we keep that confidence. I wonder perhaps if that's that attitude needs to be more widespread and other elements of security in the United States, but it's once lost it is very hard to regain. So that would be my quick answer. I think we've got time for one more question Rick and that is, if you're a feral city now will you always be a feral city. Are there any examples of cities that have kind of pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and join the international community. I think the answer that is yes, I would point to Mogadishu because it's better there than it was in the worst of times. Joe Burry while it is still on a knife's edge and security is a big issue is better. If you want to look at a, it's not quite analogous but there was a time when Ronald Reagan running for president negotiated to deal with gang leaders in the Bronx he can make an address from the burned out center that was that neighborhood. It's a thriving community, for those of us familiar with Washington DC, and a cost you to be worth your life to travel unprotected in a cost today and a cost is a, it's been gentrified, and it's not an enclave of white elitism, etc. It's a thriving local community. So yeah, these things can change, but it takes will determination and sometimes help. But it is not ordained that once you reach a certain level you'll never come back again. Anyway, and if that's the last question I've got to say thank you very much for letting me especially it's a pleasure to see all of you. And it's a real honor to do this and a pleasure to work here and john I'll turn it back to you. Thank you very much dr Norton we appreciate that terrific for performance and presentations.