 Aloha, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to Figments, The Power of Imagination. I'm really excited about today's episode, but I'm always excited. This one in particular, because we have an interesting story and a very important topic and the blend of both is going to be good. I'll remind you that we are here to both entertain and inspire on Figments, The Power of Imagination. That's the idea. And today we're going to inspire you about imagining a safer world and playing defense on a global scale. You'll get the defense football, it is playoff season, national championship season tonight. And you'll get that inference in a bit. First, I want to give you a little look back if you missed my show last week on Figments and tell you something that we're going to do here. 35 episodes in our inaugural year, about as many viewers as half a cat video, but they're available on Spotify, iTunes, and also of course on YouTube and Think Tech Hawaii. And I hope if you find something you like, like today's episode, you'll share it. So today I have a guy that I don't really know, but he's becoming a friend. And in my mind, I hope he agrees. And I'm interested in him because his story is unique and remarkable, but what he does now is highly important and that interests me even more. So I'd like to welcome from Alexandria, Virginia, Ricky Ellison, Ricky Aloha, brother. Aloha. Aloha, thank you. And thanks for being on. It's evening there and you're at work in your office with a great background. We're going to talk more about that later. But what interested me first is your immigrant story, great and important to the U.S. always because we're a nation of immigrants. You're a New Zealander slash American and you came to America with your family in when you were, what, eight or 10? Eight. In 19... What do you remember of that transition? Well, my first port of entry was Honolulu. So that was back then it was open air. Yeah. 1907 and then I moved to, we went to South Pasina, LA. So it's quite a shock of culture for me as a child going to a private school in Christchurch, New Zealand and some schooling all on par Malaysia to come into the big America. And it was America was at its prime, I think back then. And so you came here, you come from a family of distinction, both in sports. You already talked to all black rugby. Tell the audience a little bit about the sports history and then the personal accomplishments of your family which feed into what you do now and your obligation to live up to the lineage, if you will. Well, my grandfather and my grandfather's brother, Thomas Ellison was the first all black captain of the New Zealand all blacks back in the 1880s. I wasn't even born here. Very prominent first rugby tour. He wrote the book on rugby. It was one of the heroes of the early game. His father, my great grandfather was also a very famous New Zealander. He found the most gold in the history of New Zealand at the Shotover River and the Gold Rush. Wow. He was able to finance my grandfather into the bus Maori school in New Zealand, Tanute. The great, great grandfather was the chief of the Nahi Tahu tribe, which is the tribe of the South Island. And was in its ability to protect and defend it from the Northern tribes in the Maori Wars back. And those days, if you're beaten you're beaten. So we certainly weren't eaten. And yeah, both are bad. Beating is bad, eating is worse. And isn't that Thai from, because I gave you a little grief about wearing a tie, we don't do much of that. Oh, I, from that Tanute. Yeah, I've got it, Tanato College in North Island. It was founded in the 1800s, late 1800s. And my grandparents and my grandparent brother went to school there. The Marae, the village that we come from is in Dunedin, Otakao in the South Island. I was part of the whaling community in the early 1800s. In fact, late 1700s. And back then, my great, great grandfather married into the Australian, or, excuse me, the English whalers, create that synergy of technology between the two civilizations. And they weren't just athletes. They weren't just captain of the all blacks. I think you have a long history of accomplishment in your family beyond sports. Certainly. It's my breath. Excuse me, my grandfather was one of the first Marae doctors. And he ended up for the King of England, serving as a South Pacific doctor during the 30s and 20s. He received the knighthood, the Order of the British Empire for his service and what he did there. So he's pretty strong. My uncle, his firstborn son, Ricky, also known as Named After, was the chief of the South Island as well. So there's a lot of us in here. Don't screw up, you have to just say in. So, I like you. I want to America to get away from it, yeah. Yeah, well, but that follows you, family follows you. And I kind of got chicken skin with the, as we say in Hawaii, with the island connection, the Polynesian connection to this island as part of America, but part of Polynesia. It's a powerful thing. The story says that we all came from Hawaii, all the Polynesian people. We were the smaller tribe of the group and we kept on getting pushed off the main island and we ended up all the way over in Kauai. And then we apparently ate the king's dog one time and he passed from the island. So we got, I can see why they, that would happen. And by the way, the New Zealand Maori, that we all have to belong to one of seven canoes that have come from Hawaii. And those carvings aren't on our rise. So you have to trace back your lineage to one of the seven canoes coming from Hawaii. And that's, that bush hook, you know, that you have on your chest. That is your, your monosign because that's what your survival tool was to get through that journey. So we are tied to Hawaii, no question. I've got a carving of one of those fish hooks down in downstairs in the, what we call the Rincon Chilena, the chili corner, but it's also got some Polynesia there where our dog lives, our brand new puppy. So the eating the king's dog thing is, I'm a little triggered, but I'll be fine with it. Why am I talking about sports folks? I'm talking about sports because Ricky Ellison who came here as an immigrant went to high school then went to college, he's a little bit of a football player. Ricky excelled, I imagine in high school to get to USC and then play nine years in the NFL for the 49ers and Raiders, which there you are in the 49ers. I gotta ask you, is that a face mask or not, lag or not? That's an object between me and the ball carrier. I played middle linebacker. The wolves told me they're all faceless nameless object between you and the ball carrier. That is, Zicky Woods, that is in one of the Super Bowls I played in. I obviously won that game. Obviously, obviously, and this had to be right weekend because you played for the 49ers, then the Raiders, they both won in overtime to get in. And I noticed your Facebook posts match what you told me about my Green Bay Packers. When we spoke earlier, you said, I don't think I ever lost to the Green Bay Packers. And in your Facebook post said, I don't think I ever lost to the Rams or to the Chargers. On the Dallas Cowboys and many teams when we play. Yeah, as far as I can tell, you never lost, which is a good thing, because beating is eating. Those were great memories. Those are great games that were played yesterday against great rivals. Those are the rivals, right? Yeah, absolutely. In San Francisco, and we dominated that series. The same with the Raiders and the Chargers, we dominated that series. But it's also just the grit, you know, and this is playoff season. So it brought back some great memories of playing for both those clubs and just being part of something that's a cultural generational about winning. Yeah, and for the Packers, it's the Bears, most, for most, even though the game has been evolved. Again, this somebody played the game a different way. Bill Walsh played the game a completely different way. So the game has completely evolved. I think you do have a good shot. I'll give you a good shot. You have home field of advantage as we have some of those first three balls, because it's so cold. So I think that's there. But the sophistication of the game, I think Bill Walsh is probably the leader if you look at the history of our game on innovation of this game. And you've seen a lot of it still today. And I could, I'd like to reserve you to my daughter and her family live in Alexandria. So someday over a beverage when I'm visiting, I'd love to talk football for about 23, 24 hours, if we're good. If you look at the next picture, you were reasonably successful as a football player. Can you tell me I'm missing two rings in this picture? This there's a national championship, two rose balls, three Super Bowls, that's a pretty good career. I'm just saying. I've been very fortunate to have been on championship teams all my life. I started in Arizona in a very small school, played Indian reservations, played in the state of Arizona, won the state championship there with one of the winningest coaches ever in the history of the state of Arizona and got recruited and went to USC and won there with one of the greatest football teams I've ever played on with four NFL Hall of Famers and four of us going in the NFL. And then got the opportunity to play for Bill Walls and Eddie Barlow and Samson Kefor and Iher. So it's been a treat to see different ways to win, basically different cultures to win different types of ways of winning but winning no matter what. And those are representations of the teams that I was on that made this very special full of diversity, full of trust, full of invincibility that we've conquered whoever we faced, whatever the weather was, whatever the calls were, whatever anything was, we were gonna win. Just, and Vince Lombardi, of course, since I grew up outside of Green Bay in his era was a great champion of mine because he had winning football teams but also his view on diversity influenced me greatly and that's another topic that he brought a lot of African American. Go ahead. But I think as you start in America, you come from a neighborhood. So the diversity in your own neighborhood and I came from a Mexican American kind of neighborhood where it was Mexican and white that was brought down Tucson. And then you go to college and now you have the diversity of an entire state and that was phenomenal. Then you go to the NFL, then you have the diversity of the entire country. So it is guys that have got college degrees and lawyers like Steve Young all the way down and guys don't have eighth grade education in one room. So to be able to bring the trust from each of those different types of backgrounds to put forward in a unique environment. That's what a great head coach does. That's what a great CEO does. The best in the world do that to be able to draw that out of each of them, to be able to play for your other teammates and give it full go of your own individual talent that you only have. So that those are the really powerful ways to see this game and see people perform ridiculously that are remarkable. I mean, Joe Montana's a remarkable player that can rise to occasions. And again, it's about decision making, right? It's about making the right decision at the right time under extreme pressure for the right and how many people can do that? Well, and we're going to talk about an area where that decision making is probably more complex and time constrained than any other in a second. Boy, I wish I had hours and hours to talk to you Ricky because you've got not just a story but a perspective that I think is very valuable. So I have to ask you what your best football moment was you only get one, only one. Well, I think it was the 1984 Super Bowl. Ronald Reagan made the point toss. We were playing in Palo Alto in our home stadium. Apple came out as the product for the first time. We played against Miami Dan Marino. It was foggy, the game was over before it started. That was the most powerful experience to be on that field and feel the invincibility that we knew as a unit, as a team that was unbelievable. So it didn't matter and we knew it. And it was just a remarkable accumulation to win it right there in San Francisco at the peak in San Francisco was struggling as a city as you might know, rejuvenating the whole Silicon Valley. The whole thing was behind us. It was a special moment. Oh, again, I wish we'd gone, but we can't. So let me take a breath here and talk about my next figments of our imagination. Everybody's favorite show. And next week, or in two weeks, I'm gonna have Dr. Oriana Schuyler-Mastrow who I met at a conference when she was just a PhD candidate at Princeton. She is the best China expert in America. I believe this. She's also an Air Force Reserve major and she has a remarkable story about her journey to become a key influencer on matters regarding China. All right, gosh darn it. Where do I start now? Cause that football, pro football was nine years of your life, Ricky. And you've had more than that than they can Google and find out your age. But one of the things that you care most about is the Youth Impact Program, and I'm gonna read this. It's for disadvantaged and at-risk adolescent boys in US inner cities. And rather than having you tell me more about what they do, people look it up, donate. That's not your background. You had a pretty solid foundation underneath you. What made you want to give to at-risk youth? Because it's the American dream. I've lived a dream. I'm gonna give the dream. It is, you can do anything in the world in America. And the people that can do the best dreaming and make it happen are the disadvantaged, are minorities, or are the hard grit, or grits as you see rise to be able, so to be able to give that opportunity. And I've been around it when locker rooms. I've been around it, but to bring that dream, and I think that age group between sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, year olds, that is the time print to associate them with winners, to provide them access into major universities and be able to dream big and be big and see it and fall in love with it. So fall in love with one of the many schools in college, the athletics and make your dreams happen and believe in it. And we create two weeks of mentorship that creates trust with diversity. And we're all about social change. We have made social change. I've been in 39 inner cities of this country with our major universities, including West Point, Michigan, Stanford, USC, Hawaii, Utah. We've been there, right? And we've done this before it was a hot topic. We've been in this since 2006, and I started it in LA, South Central LA to break it out. And yes, it's important to me. I believe in it and we've had great success with it. We've increased grade point averages, we've seen career path change, we've seen direction change from that age group and those circumstances to go out. So I'm with you, man, as you probably know, if you know my background and I know you do, because social change is not anti-American. It's very patriotic, making our country better. How about it's American? It's American and getting people invested in our country instead of attending our country, if you will, is so important. My steps on an immigrant from Chile started at the University of Hawaii today. Awesome. Finally, with all the COVID stuff, but it's been very interesting over the year he's lived in the US watching him and I don't want to speak for him because he'll kick my butt if I do, but watching him internalize the American dream and in the nature of our country. And again, I don't want to speak for him, but I've watched him get it. And I think he's got it. Now he heads off to university and he'll succeed, but we need everybody of every color to have the sense that based on what they do, they can succeed. So, yeah, it's awesome. I was going to ask you, okay, I'm going to scratch through my next question because you are a bit of a legend in New Zealand, maybe a lot of a legend with your status as the first New Zealander ever to play in the NFL and all your rings and stuff. And I was going to ask you, why do you care so much about the defense, the United States of America, but I think you've already said it. You've lived the American dream. I've lived the American dream. I grew up on a cowboy ranch with Sherman Tank Commander for General Patton and 22nd recon. So that was my guide era. I've grown up with artillery soldiers that fought in NAM. I've been around military leaders. I know the dream. I'm aware of the dream. So there's no question how important it is to be able to preserve our status quo, to be able to preserve our freedoms, to be able to preserve our democracies and be able to have the strength through peace to do that. And the avenue you chose, and I don't even think we're going to talk about your early, have time to talk about your early connections to missile defense because right before you graduated from USC, President Reagan gave his STI speech. If I got that right, if I got the sequence. Well, I was at USC with President Reagan's National Security Advisor and the critical thinking with Dan Teller, Edward Teller, that created the concept of having a defense instead of having mutual assured offense that we live by mutual assured destruction. So that was part of that. Keyword destruction. Reagan went to Shyamantan and asked where that was. That was 1980. I was in that group and that I fell in love with the concept that we have to defend ourselves from the world's greatest, powerful, most destructive weapons. And why would we not have capability against that for accidental, for as we see today, it proliferating into countries like North Korea, Iran, and so forth. And we're seeing that now evolve into hypersonic strike in China and Russia. And we're seeing it as the weapon of choice with Iran into US bases in Iraq. We've seen that. We saw this last week with different types of missiles, UAVs, rockets. It is the poor man's air force. It is prolific. And we have to beat the cost curve on it. And we have to be able to defend ourselves else we do not have any deterrent. We have to have integrated deterrent, which means offense and defense, not all offense. Like we were growing up in the 50s and 60s. That day is over. And we are now evolving into a combination of integrated deterrent to do everything we can to defend ourselves. And you get maneuvering forces both across our whole joint force that don't have defenses. You cannot get into the rings of China or Russia without having to defend those maneuvering forces. Also, those forces don't mean anything. So let me take the devil's advocacy alliance perspective, if you will, and say, well, this Cold War thinking, we're never really going to go to war with China or Russia. Come on, man. What do you say to that? Well, it's just the possibility of a big conflict. Well, let's just start even go with a big conflict. Let's start with a little conflict. Iran's been striking our bases. Iran's been striking Israel with missiles. We've been doing our own bases in aspect of it. And they're doing it because we don't have the defenses up there to do that. We are seeing a change of world status power. You're seeing China tell you right in from the president right up to the top that they are changing the status quo of this world by 2050. They are over matching in the Pacific, in the first island chain, in the second island chain, with ballistic missile capability and hypersonic capability by the numbers. They are ahead of us in hypersonic. Yeah. So you're either going to have to pull by them or you're going to be Hong Kong. You're going to have to be able to defend that capability with an offense to create a deterrent that we don't have right now as they move through the South China Sea and do what they're doing, not listing international law or order. So we have an issue. This is not the Middle East. This is not the fight. This is the bigger fight for our country and for our nation and for the world. So I'm going to dissect two parts of that. One is this is not the Middle East. It's a much more sophisticated threat, a much more difficult problem in a much bigger space. And I fought a war in a big country or in a small country and a war in a bigger country because of Serbia and Iraq. The scale matters and the technology matters. And China's technology is very significant. And the second thing is the notion that I put forward that this wasn't going to happen is absolutely ridiculous because it could happen because wars do happen. And if you look at what's been said by both Russia and China and what's been done by both Russia and China, the possibility is there to acknowledge that it's really there doesn't mean we're looking for a fight, but we're going to increase the odds of a conflict by being ill prepared to deter it. That's my view. Now, when I look at what MDA does, and I'll be frank that a lot of the organizations inside and around the Washington Beltway don't get much of my attention, but MDA, the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance seeks to do it with their mission statement. And they're by J. Fidel, as I said, the head of ThinkDex going to scold me for so many words, the ones in yellow matter. First of all, MDA isn't just about America. It's about making the world safer, right? Absolutely. This is something that we've put forward since 9-11. When 9-11 happened, that was a cruise missile attack on our country. We moved forward. The President moved forward on Act 43. We deployed ground-based interceptors within three years in 2006. We had them up and deployed in operational to defend our country. We had not done that. We had took it all down in 74. This is about that. That's when we started to move on this thing. We have to have weapons. We don't have defense at Guam. We don't have it. We barely have it in Hawaii. So 80 years ago, this is the same scenario that we were in with Japan and Hawaii with this. So part of the notion of dismissing the potential for an attack from a large country like China are the economic ties. We had big economic ties with Japan at the start of World War II. They stopped mattering because of the everything that developed in the late 30s. And as you can tell, Ricky, I'm getting a little pressed for time. I wish we had more. Maybe we can do this again. And certainly I'll see in Alexandria. But the other part of the mission statement that struck me reminded me of my time as the Director of Operational Requirements for the Air Force, three and a half fun-filled years in Pentagon. But the great thing about that job was how is the operational conscience for the Air Force? The acquisition folks and the strategy folks, they all had agendas. My agenda was what does warfighter need? It was a beautiful thing. And I could be obnoxious because of it. I'm not saying you're obnoxious, but I am saying that when I look at the bottom part and what else was there in yellow is that you don't advocate stuff. You advocate winning. And I admire that a lot. Absolutely. We don't have the capacity out there. We are the Department of Offense. We only spend 2.5% of our budget on defense, which is ridiculous. So that is an issue that we have to overcome. We have threats that are proliferating all over the world with ballistic missile technology, hypersonic technology and anti-satellite capability that's being put up by the Chinese and the Russians. It is a problem. You cannot win this war with an offensive capability. It's not a war. It is the deterrent to prevent war. And what we're getting now is escalation of accidents that could happen that lead into war. Anything going on in the Taiwan straits, one aircraft dropping close or making an accident happens. This thing goes off and you better be able to defend your forward operating basis to be able to create that stability of the deterrent. That's where we're at. We are not stable from my perspective in the fact that we don't have defense and our maneuvering force or defense and our power bases forward that we can't protect that force structure. I agree. And if you can't do that, if, because accidents do happen and that's how wars generally start, accidents, misinterpretations, et cetera. And if you can't stop, if you don't have a credible defense at that first instance of conflict, then it's bound to escalate. That's the void that nature pours and the vacuum and it will fill it with the feet, frankly. I think if we don't do it, you're gonna have Japan and Australia become nuclear. So you've got a choice here because they're not, if they don't see assured deterrence from us to be able to defend those first island chains, they're gonna have to go in a nuclear capability. So now you're gonna have a nuclear arms race. And I can't see anything worse than that. You know, there, somebody, a politician, once commented that be fine if Japan developed their own nuclear capability. The worst thing for the world is nuclear proliferation. And we're barely keeping a cup on it. North Korea is right there on top of that. So yes. And that's why Ricky, we can't accept a nuclear North Korea, even though the notion that they'll give up their nicks is. But think the bigger problem is China. There's no way North Korea could develop nuclear capability or the hypersonic China without China. China is that that is their puppet in there. And I, you know, we've got to deal with China. We've got China is to do it with alliances and partnerships and bringing India and bringing the Quad in, bringing everybody in to counter that both economically, both, you know, with our State Department and with our defensive capabilities to put them in check. Well, I'd like to take a break and come back for about an hour or more, but Eric, I mean, we can talk about foot. Well, I know you've got a game to watch anyway. It's a former national team. Rick, this is inspiring stuff to me. Folks, I'm going to ask Ricky to give you a 30-second sound by why you, whether you've never thought about missile defense before or not, or you have, why should our viewers care in a paragraph? Because we have a major power that's trying to change the status quo of the way we live. And to prevent that is not to go to war. To prevent that is to deter their action and to deter their action. We have to have defensive capability that can take out the first strike or reduce an accidental strike or reduce their ability to coerce and bully us with overmatch. So this is important. This is in the constitution of our country that our government is to defend ourselves. And this is the most pressing, offensive, threatening capability to our nation. It is growing out of control and they are advancing on hypersonic strike, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. So that needs to be in check. We just need to be in check of that to combine that. It is about being peaceful and this is about being peaceful. And I will add to that, Ricky, from my perspective, having worked with leaders of every country in the Asia Pacific region except North Korea, the world wants us to do that. I know, I've been there, I've talked to them. They know the threat to the world order and they want the U.S. not to fight but deter. And we can't do that with credible defense against missile, but space, very important, as you know, therefore space command drones, all of it. We have to have an effective defensive deterrent. So Ricky, thanks so much, man. I could, we could go on and on. Absolutely, but I go back to decision-making. We have to be able to have the decision-making of the command and control across the entire domain to give our decision-makers the quickest information possible and have the sensing to be 24% persistent around the globe to get that and then have effectors to go with that. And that requires artificial intelligence. That requires machine and machine learning and it takes the human out of loop. We can't have the human in the loop anymore to be able to fight this kind of fight and to be able to deter this kind of fight. So you just left another genie out of a bottle. Thanks a lot. I think that Missile Defense Command and Control, having written a short book about command and control and lived it at the operational level is the most difficult military challenge existing because it's so time and strain. It crosses different domains, different countries, different everything, the breadth of geography. It's very hard and I agree. And maybe you'll come back and talk to me again. As I said, I'll certainly meet you. And if the packers and 49ers meet and if the raiders and packers meet, guess who I'm pulling for, brother? Yeah, I think you got a little bit of advantage right there in Green Bay. As long as they keep it in Green Bay, you have an advantage. Well, here's hoping. Thanks not just for being in fragments of the Department of Management and Nation, Ricky, but thanks for your service to our country which is unique and important. And I'm so glad that I had the chance to get to know her. Thank you, Faker. I enjoyed the discussion today. Thank you very much. Mahalo.