 Are we working here? You're right. Greetings, first two quick announcements. First, we have conferred with our medical advisory team and given the distance and the vaccination status of both myself and our guests tonight in the interest of your audibility and your understanding of what's going on, we have clearance not to be masked during the show. I hope that seems acceptable to everyone. And secondly, just to mention for the undergraduate students in the office, tonight's event is the second actually event that qualifies if you, on your path to a civics certificate during your years here, this will qualify. And you can register that in a way that will soon be made public to you. The first event was the Senator Sanders event downtown, which some of you may have attended. So either of those qualifies. And we hope some of you will take advantage or are here to take advantage of that. I hope you were given, as you were to be given, biographies on the man that you're about to meet. He's led multiple lives, any one of which would have qualified him to come here and spend time with us. The greatest chess player, perhaps of all time, certainly of his time, then a leader in the short lived movement for true democracy and freedom in his home country of Russia, which perished rather quickly. And then a bold and risk-taking, really courageous dissident in the emerging dictatorship, which continues to rule in that country. And now, to the really great advantage of us all in the world, a leader in the global campaign for human rights and democracy. So those four lives, which may be only the first of four great ones that this man leads, make us so grateful to have tonight with us. And I ask you to welcome now for his opening remarks, Gary Kasparov. Good afternoon. Thank you. And my thanks to President Daniels and you all for having me here today to talk about such an important topic. Last night, I asked what is a boiler maker. And I said I should wait until after my talk tonight to find out. So I'm looking forward to it, whatever it is. The title of tonight's conversation might sound a little hysterical. Freedom can mean many things. But for most of modern human history, all of those things were positive and desirable. The United States was founded for freedom. Slavery was abolished in the civilized world. World wars were fought to defeat tyranny, the opposite of freedom. Then the Cold War was fought and won. And here we arrive to my area of special interest. I'm a little afraid that in 2021 today, the Cold War might feel as distant to students as the Battle of Waterloo or the Peloponnesian Wars. Wow, he's a real Cold War veteran. Yes, was still alive. I'm 58 years old. And I've lived under two distinct dictatorships. First, the communist totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991. In 1990, on January 17, my family and I, like many in Azerbaijan of Armenian heritage, were forced to flee violent ethnic pogroms that erupted there. As one of the first prominent Soviets to openly criticize the communist system and demand freedom and reforms, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, and finally, the USSR itself, were all called personal freedom, not discarding those principles when this guy or that party is in the office. The problem, of course, is that every side, every politician says that they're on the side of freedom and they're trying their best because the other side is trying to take it away. Don't treat politics like you're rooting for a sports team. Passionate cheering for your boilermaker is great. Blindly supporting a political party or politician is a very dangerous path. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but compromises and principles are the streetlights. Like so many of my compatriots in the unfree world on the other side of the Iron Curtain, I greatly admired and envied the United States and what it stood for. I was fortunate to be able to travel for my chess career if always escorted by KGB agents, just like the Soviet players in the Queens Gambit. By the way, it was my advice to Scott Frank to incorporate KGB guys that were not in the original book. Sometimes your experience helps. I peered around the Iron Curtain and saw the American Republic as a proverbial shining city on the hill. I admit that my view of the West and the US was more than a little rose-colored. I was young and a little naive. But even today, even today, I would like Americans to appreciate what they have. The true beauty of American democracy is that it recognizes it is not perfect. It adapts. The people have a voice in their own system as unhappy as they might be with it at any moment, especially when the other party is in power. Real elections are a privilege. When I organized the other Russia coalition in 2005, my fellow democracy advocates and I organized party primaries because we wanted the Russian people to have a chance at participating in free and fair elections, unknown in the Putin era. Today, some would be American authoritarians or passing laws to suppress voting, gerrymine the elections, and allow partisan functionaries to overrule the vote. America's freedom of speech is a privilege. Even as a young world chess champion, I had to guard my actions, my words, even my thoughts in the USSR. Everyone in the Soviet Union, from children to grandmasters, had to censor themselves. In Putin's Russia, even the smallest amount of protest, even just a tweet, just a tweet or retweet, can land you in jail. As the saying goes, we do have freedom of speech in Russia, but in America, you also have freedom after speech. Now that I live in America, I thought I'd never again have to look over my shoulder when speaking in my mind. But today, far too many people want to constrain public discourse toward a socially acceptable at the moment. This isn't a heavy hand of the state, but any chilling effect is a threat to democratic discourse. Democracy may or may not die in darkness, but it certainly dies in silence. Extremists on both political sides are pushing the same dangerous message. American democracy is broken. Well, the other guys are doing it, so we have to do it too. It is a downward spiral. You cannot fight illiberalism with more illiberalism. Partly due to this internal warfare on democratic values at home, America is pulling back from the world stage with catastrophic results. This is also a cycle that feeds on itself. If authoritarianism is more acceptable in China, in Russia, in Saudi Arabia, in Afghanistan, why not here? The thousands, many thousands of Afghan refugees who have touched down on American soil know the value of freedom because they have seen its absence. For those who believe that the American system is inherently oppressive and irredeemable, just ask any refugee about the alternative. Again, this isn't to say that the US is perfect. But to paraphrase Churchill, it's better than anything else, that everything else, that have been tried. Every American should appreciate the difference between improving the system, using the system, and attacking the system. Police brutality, for example, is the system in Russia or in Iran or in China. And I have a few cars, personal cars, to prove it. Russian police aren't arrested and jailed for attacking protesters or even killing them. They are given medals for good service. Discrimination against minorities is the system in places like Afghanistan by gender, race, and religion. And these victims cannot go to court to defend their rights. Even income inequality, a great crisis of our time, is the system in many places. Some people in these places have the right to riches, while others are permanently excluded from any opportunities at all. Criticize American democracy. It's your right and your duty. But please, do not lose faith in it. Do not say the system is broken every time you lose. Do not press the violation of democratic norms as soon as you win. Once freedom is surrendered, they are never returned without a battle. Freedom has real enemies. They use bombs, and they use propaganda. They use social media technology developed in the free world to spread division and misinformation, to hack and steal. But the greatest threat to our democracy is from within. Freedom has a future if we stop taking it for granted. Freedom has a future if we stop letting the extremes dominate the political landscape. Freedom has a future, I believe it. But we have to fight for it. So let's fight. Thank you. Once again, we are so grateful to have you with us. And thank you for spending this hour. And the audience should know a full day with our students and faculty and elsewhere on the campus. Very generous of you. A predecessor in this series of programs, the author and scholar Francis Spookiyama wrote a book just 20 years ago, or so, 25? 28. 28? Who counts? Never argue with a grandmaster. In any event, he proclaimed the end of history, the final triumph of individual freedom, of values, of free exchange. And yet, here in a historical blink later, we see a very different pattern, not just in your home country, but in so many other places. Freedom House, for the 15th straight year, just found a decline in freedom. Fewer than 20% of the world's population now. They say, living in free societies. What happened? Going back to 1992, 1993, when the book was written and released, I have to say that we all shared this sentiment. I remember celebrating the collapse of the Soviet Union and before that, the collapse of the Berlin Wall. So it's the country after country abolished communism. And we all thought it would be the end of history. It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, now saying, oh, you had to look at this and that. And there were already some seeds of future failure. But I think what we missed, and this is the hard lesson for us to learn, the evil doesn't die. It can be buried temporarily under the rubbles of Berlin Wall. But the moment we lose our vigilance, the moment we turn to be complacent, it sprouts out. In Russia, it took nine years. But it's not that Putin came out of a blue. We already saw many moments, now we know turning points that prepared Putin's appearance, even before we even knew his name. He just, he was the, I wouldn't call the right man in the right place the right time. Because it's exactly the opposite. But it was the right time to set up the dictatorship because the seeds of the dictatorship have been planted by many actions that we supported. Yeah, Yeltsin confronted the Russian parliament. I said, oh, Yeltsin is the right guy. He said, indeed, they're the wrong guys. Yeah, and he used tanks to destroy it. Fine. I was rooting behind Yeltsin. I supported him in 1996. We believe that democracy had been protected because we were afraid of return of communism. What we didn't understand is that democracy is a process, not a result. The moment you go against the process, the moment you accept that your guy who is best intentions in this world can violate the rules, can rig the result a little bit tweak. It started with a little tweaks here and there. That's it. And also, it's another problem was on the side of the free world. Because, ironically, at the end of the Cold War, America lost its vision of the future. From 1946 to 1991, it was easy. Soviet Union was there. Communism, America had to stay as a force for good, defending the free world against communism and against all sorts of dictators. And in 1991, what's next? So it's not surprising that Bill Clinton was elected because the country also wanted the end of history. So instead of having a fairly successful Republican president, Bush 41, so they went for a young optimistic guy from Arkansas who just talked about it's economy stupid. So let's celebrate. Let's get rich. So this is first bubbles, real estate bubbles. It's 97, 98. And then the dotcom bubble. So people got really excited. And it's not an accident that at the time where Bill Clinton took over in 1993, America was all powerful. And nobody could even dare to challenge the United States. At the time when he left the office and Bush 43 moved in, Al Qaeda was ready to strike. So it all comes to strategy. So the free world is still struggling with the idea. So what's next? Because the difference between dictatorships and democracies, if I use chess language or some of my experience about decision making, it's about strategy versus tactics. Democracies could benefit from long-term strategies because they have continuity. That's the strengths. So you can have one administration, one government, building up a program, sort of setting up institutions as Harry Truman administration did in 1946, 1947, basically creating a whole infrastructure to fight this Cold War against Soviet Union. And then you had president after president, Republican and Democrat following this path with some, you know, fluctuations, but within the range. Continuity. Dictators, they cannot rely on continuous programs because it's all about him surviving today. So it's the, but the moment you move from strategy to tactics, dictator has an advantage because he doesn't care about free press, parliament, debates, consensus, boom, decision made. And I think that's in the last 20 years, we're seeing, you know, this time and again as the free world keeps, kept failing to come up with a plan, with a vision. And that gave an opportunity for all sorts of facts, dictators and terrorists around the world because they have an upper hand. You know, you cannot outperform them if you don't have a long plan that will be carried through by your successors. And at a time where, you know, American foreign and domestic policy depends exclusively on who is in the White House. And instead of being, you know, steady, just a little bit, you know, just that's, you know, of more of a steady line, it's not more of a pendulum. Because one side to another. And it's not only hurts America domestically, but also it hurts America internationally because people don't know what to expect. Granted, the importance of strategy and everything you just said, this reversal has been so sweeping across the world in societies of all kinds. I want to ask you about culture as a prerequisite for democracy and freedom in a very idealistic way. The president who followed Bill Clinton, for example, proclaimed that freedom is a universal impulse of the human heart. Once given the opportunity, peoples of all kinds would migrate to free institutions. Others have said that was naive, and maybe recent events suggest it was. That there are societies that aren't prepared to understand. Did Russia understand what genuine freedom of both economic and political was? And did other countries that have gone the other way? That's a very dangerous proposition that some of the nations, some of the groups genetically not built to... Well, not genetically, historically. It's genetically, by the way. So that's this, yeah. Historically, that's, you know, it's an easy bridge. So that's this. Yeah. So let's go to the room because that's how we're done. Yeah, it's historically, but well, historically. So that's that, yeah. But the good news is that the history of the 20th century refuted, convincingly refuted this argument. Because it's not, I say you say, they say, somebody says, it's no longer theoretical dispute. We had situations of divided nations that have been divided in half. Korea in 1950s Street was divided by half. They had the same starting conditions. You look at the North, North Korea is one of the most oppressive regimes ever. And looking at the North, you say, oh, Koreans, they don't know how to enjoy democracy. They just, they're born to be slaves because they had their dear leader, one and then another one. And now this is the grandson and it goes forever. And you'll be right. You look south. You'll find out one of the most vibrant market economy and liberal democracies in the world. Yeah, it's just, it's quite successful. And like many other developed countries, they didn't manage to know to impeach president and put the head of the largest corporation in jail for corruption. Yes. Same Koreans. If you point out a China saying, oh, wow, look at these Chinese people, they succeeded. They took millions, hundreds of millions out of poverty thanks to Communist Party. Yes, but look at the other side of the street at the tiny rocky island called Taiwan. The same Chinese people had conditions that are much, much, much, much better, one of the most developed democracies and market economies in the world. So, and I don't even mention two Germans. And by the way, it's speaking about Russia because you mentioned Russia. I know there's definitely some people that's with Ukrainian roots here in the audience. Yeah, I already could see this, you're nodding your heads. I met some of you this morning. You know what, the Soviet Union is just one state. So the borders between republics were nominal. So when you look at the border between what was proper Russia, Russian Federation and Ukraine, so the border was almost non-existing. You had people living on one side or another side. You had people living in Belgorod or Kursk, for instance, that's Russian geography, or Kharkov on the other side on the Ukrainian border. They all spoke Russian, predominantly Russian, so the Ukrainian side spoke very little Ukrainian. It was Russian dominated area. They read the same newspapers. They watched the same movies. But Putin failed to march triumphantly across eastern Ukraine. All he got is this truncated part of Donbas because many Ukrainians who he believed would be supportive of his aggression, they didn't want to live in Putin's Russia. They spoke Russian, but they were not comfortable of becoming part of Putin's Russia. Let me ask you that. And what was the difference? You know, this is about conditions. In 1994, I believe that Russia and Ukraine saw the part of their ways because in Russia, we thought preserving Yeltsin is everything. In 1994, Ukraine had a historic event. The president, Kravchuk, lost elections and walked away. That was a peaceful transition of power, and that's made a great difference. And Ukrainians always responded to any attempts of facts like Yanukovych to take over and just to turn Ukraine into something like Russia. So again, there's no genetic predetermination. So though I have to say that it's much easier to build democracy in the countries that had some traditions. Again, it takes less time and efforts, so that's why in many Eastern European countries, so we saw it as quite a very quick transition. Though you look at country like Hungary, it's just the liberalism could also find roots, even in a country with such a long and fertile history of democratic traditions. Tell us, teach us a few things about your man, Putin. My man. Yeah. I thought I could get your rise out of you. Okay. How do you assess his motives? It can't be money. He's now one of the wealthiest people on the planet. What is it, one? Is, sorry? You said one of the wealthiest. Okay, maybe. Number one, is it revanchism? Is he want to recreate himself as Tsar? Is it revenge for what happened to his beloved Soviet Union? What is his game? What are his aims? No, I think right now, his only aim is to stay in power. Now, what were his motivations from the very beginning? It's hard to say. We can just look at some of his interviews and one book that was a long interview that he did before officially elected President of Russia being already yells and successful. So, and following what he said, again, when he was still open for journalists, not for the propaganda functionnaires. So, his original motivation was money. He wanted to be an oligarch. He wants, so. But at the same time, he had this KGB dreams about restoring the great Soviet power. So, you just following what he said and which we can try to compose in some kind of psychological portrait. In 1999, being the prime minister and Yeltsin's already designated successor, he spoke to his former colleagues at Lubyanka. That's the KGB headquarter. And he made it very clear. Before he started his talk, that he was on his special mission in the government, representing his alma mater. And he said, quote, unquote, in Russian. There are no former KGB officers. One KGB is always KGB, quote, unquote. That's the, now, he also said, as this newly sworn president of Russia, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. Quote, unquote. His first of one of the first acts as president was to restore Soviet anthem. For me, that was enough to get worried. I knew, you know, we would be landing in Russia because I knew that I would be arrested, or worse. Okay, let's say arrested first. Yeah. They started investigation of our rallies. And by the way, I have to say, probably that in all demonstrations that we had in Russia, the rallies from 2005 to 2012, when I was there, we did not have a single act of violence from our side. We did not have a single broken window. Don't ever mention girl cars. The only violence in the streets of Russia came from Putin's riot police and Putin's intelligence officers. We were always, you know, just we preached non-violence and we managed to stick to that. It didn't, you know, they were afraid of this massive demonstration. So they, in 2013, they opened investigations. And many of my friends and allies ended in jail or killed. So, and thanks God, most of us are in exile now. But there's no room for opposition. So this Alexei Navalny was, you know, well-known. Yeah, this when he was nearly poisoned, I mean, nearly poisoned. And transferred to Germany and his life was saved. You know, Angela Merkel visited him. And he thought, oh, maybe I'm just, you know, I'm so well-known. They would not touch me. He came back. They don't care. And the reason they don't care, because Putin knows that nobody cares. Because he knows that the words of condemnations that he hears from American or European politicians, they're just mere words. And he knows that nobody cares. And the European politicians, they're just mere words. At the end of the day, it's all about money. Who cares about German sanctions, quote-unquote, on Russian companies after Crimean annexation, if Germany doubled, at least doubled, the amount of Russian gas it's buying since 2014? Money talks. And Putin knows that he's in business. And moreover, he proved that he could buy top-tier Western politicians. You know, it's this cage-beliftenant Colonel now has at his disposal, at his working volume, former Chancellor of Germany, former Prime Minister of France, and it's a long list I can go on. We saw some very large, more recent demonstrations, which also came to naught in Hong Kong. Were you surprised and... Dictators learn from each other. Yeah. Who cares? Oh, condemnation, big deal. So China is still, you know, it's the born and welcome. So should we start counting U.S. companies that are just, you know, are not just doing business, increasing their business in China? A European Union that doesn't care about America, strong words from the White House, whether they come from Trump or Biden, about China? So at the end of the day, you know, China is in business and they know that America and Europe are politically too weak and indecisive to take a stand, to take a stand for the values. So that's why it's an open genocide in Xinjiang. I don't hear anyone, you know, demanding the... Okay, some people demand the boycott of Beijing Olympics. You want to bet on that? I wouldn't bet my bottom dollar on this outcome. So and as long as there are no consequences, dictators used to just ignore the words. So it's the, yeah, big deal. And Putin learned, you know, that the West was weak and politically indecisive to take a stand. By the way, you know, it's always, you know, it's always, you know, there's also a moment where you can actually do something at a cost and you think the cost is too high. The problem is next day the cost goes higher. I remember that this is in 2000. It was long, I think it was, I'm not sure, probably yes. I'm not sure what it was after the cessation of Crimea or, yeah, maybe, and I had an interview just, it's maybe even before, with a Canadian journalist. And I talked about, you know, this is about Russia and Nazi Germany and she got so angry, said, how else you can compare Putin to Hitler? I said, what's wrong with that? No, Hitler was an ultimate evil, I said, wait a second. Hitler was ultimate evil eventually. But in 1933, 1934, 1935, in 1936, read your newspapers. Read your Canadian newspapers, New York Times, Le Monde, London Times. They treated him with respect. Yeah, this is some problems with Jews, who doesn't have them. Yeah, yeah, some problems with, you know, with political opposition, but the man helped Germany to revive. It's not me, them. Up to 1939, they were looking for ways of cooperating. And by the way, in this country, Hollywood, since 1934, agreed for German general council in Los Angeles to censor American movies before they enter European market. And this happy cooperation continued until 1940. You can check the facts. So business, by the way, most of these studios were run by Jews. Big deal. So dictators never ask why. They ask why not. And Putin is the same. So he looked around. He tried. He was not immediately attacking Ukraine. His first attack was against Estonia. Cyber attack in 2007. Nothing happened. Then he made a speech in Munich. I think the speech was even before. He made a speech in Munich at the conference, security conference in Europe. And he talked about spheres of influence. And others, they just, ah, big deal. It's for domestic consumption. Then it was attack on Georgia, Republic of Georgia, in 2008. And I wrote an article saying, next would be Ukraine. People asked me, how did it go? I said, I looked at the map. I said, I don't have the rocket science. I just looked at the map. And I said, next would be Ukraine. But Ukraine was not, you know, just immediately following what the West would say and do nothing. Syria. 2013. Assad used chemical weapons. And there was a red line. Obama wasn't sure. Europeans were, ah, don't do that. America stopped short from, you know, punishing Assad for using chemical weapons and Putin knew that's it. So nobody would lift a finger to help Ukrainians. And now we have already a certain, certain administration. That is, ah, paying, to my view, lip service. Perhaps the other great trend of the last two, three decades has been the onrush of information technology constantly evolving and being enhanced. Much of that was born at this university. A high percentage of our students are studying it. Will be its leaders tomorrow. Is the, are the tools we have created many, at the beginning, heralded them as tools of liberation. They would empower individuals in small groups and allow them to connect in new ways. And yet others have said, no, no, no, 1984 it'll be the tools of, these will be the tools of domination and social control. Which beauty you hold? There is no answer. Both. Technology can be used for good or evil. But we should not worry about technology, or terminators ruining our lives. Humans still have monopoly for evil. AI, whatever it is is not a magic wand but it's not the terminator. It's not a harbinger of utopia or dystopia. It's a tool. It's not a safe road to heaven but it doesn't open the gates of hell. It's how we use it. And on one side it helps dictators. By the way, it's any technology that we designed in the past. First use was always destructive. Because it's easier. It's easier to destroy than to build. It's easier to build nuclear bond than nuclear reactor. It's just those are the rules. And of course now, dictators, they were happy because they had these tools. But at the same time, these tools empower us. It's just each of us carries in pocket or in purse device which is 10,000 times more powerful than the entire computing power of NASA 9 and 6 to 9 when Americans land on the moon. You can hardly imagine how these people could do that. So probably the reason they did it was because they couldn't calculate the risk. Because any computer would tell you that the risk was 25% or 30% or so and no US President would authorize the mission. So we have this great opportunities. Again, it's a never ending battle. Sword and shield. We just have to make sure that it works for us because it will be always trade off. It's what in balance. When people say, oh look, the AI kills so many good jobs, white-collar jobs. By the way, technology always destroys jobs. You go back to, you know, to 18th century in this agriculture. What are these agriculture jobs? They've gone. What about manufacturing jobs? They've gone. So many blue-collar jobs have been destroyed over 20th century because of technology. So now the difference is that the technology is threatening jobs, white-collar jobs of people with college degrees and Twitter accounts. So all of a sudden, you know, we are really concerned about it. But, you know, it is, again, there will be all these trade-offs. You have jobs lost in, let's say, radiology because, you know, AI does a better job. But the flip side is that it reduces the cost of the procedure which makes it more available for other people, not only in this country but in the world. So again, as humanity will always win though it's not, you know, it's not win-win. We are always losers, but I don't sound callous you know, at the end of the day. I was the first man, first professional who had his job threatened by a machine. So I just, you know, I didn't take it lightly but I realized that it was not a curse but a blessing because I understood that instead of fighting back, we have to find a way to collaborate. One of our faculty wrote me today to remind me that his calculation is that the big blue was given a million times more energy than the human brain had. He said if Kasparov had had a million times more, he'd have beat him in eight moves. But this is the look. By the way, just to go for the record, so I won the first match. I remember. But it's, you hear time and again that the match in 1997 was this sort of dawn of AI, artificial intelligence. Look, I mean, the blue was not intelligent. It was as intelligent as your alarm clock. A very expensive one, $10 million piece. But it was not intelligent. It did not have to be intelligent. You know, we should not be mistaken by our demands for machines to be perfect. It's not about perfection. It's about making fewer mistakes. So we just recognize that, you know, machines will never reach perfection. It doesn't exist in this universe. But machines will help us to minimize our failures. So deep blue was good enough to capitalize on my mistakes. Now, if you have a chess engine and spoke to this chess enthusiast today, so I suggest that you look at the games we played in 1997. Deep Blue versus World Champion. And you put these games on your chess engine, like stock fish on your laptop. Every 30 seconds, you will be hearing machine laughing. And by the way, if you have a chess app on your mobile device, it's for as good as Deep Blue, if not better. I want to ask you one more question and we're going to go to some students for a lightning round of questions that they brought to wrap up. But your project, one of your projects, the Renew Democracy for All, it's fascinating to read about the various programs you have there. I was especially interested though that two of them actually had to do with artists and the role of art in Descent and the role of art in, I gather, promoting freedom. Could you just say a word about that because I think it's an underappreciated... Yeah, it's more like a global, you know, human rights project run by Human Rights Foundation and we have a special award called Batswap Havel Prize for Creative Descent because he was the first chairman of the organization and I think it's quite important, you know, just to encourage people to use art. What's the creativity protesting against dictatorship? Because dictatorships by definition, they hate creative people. It means you're looking for something new, something that was not tested before and dictators hated, instinctively. They understand that any attempt to bring something new threatens, you know, their total control of the society, of every aspect of our life. And we had every year we had so many applications. We gave three awards and they just went to people from Africa, Asia, Latin America, former Soviet Union. Because the principle of our organization is just simple. We look at the human rights abuses and we try to be helpful no matter what happens, whether it's being conducted by American friends or foes. So we don't see any political you know, we are politically blind. But it's not all about human rights. It's about people that are trying to find a way to express their protest. Because you know, protesting, doing some kind of caricatures in America it's business. If you're successful, you will be well paid. If you're successful in caricatures in Turkey, you may end up in jail. There's a classical joke actually, it's the latest Turkish version but this is in many other countries, when is the someone in prison, just one of the prisoners asking for the book in the library and the director says, sorry, we don't have the book, but we have the author. No. So thank you to some students who have joined us tonight and to the faculty who recruited them. And your questions please, Josh, please first. So with how polarized our politics are today, especially in America, how do we break through that partisanship with a pro-democracy message? Look, as I said, it's about protecting the process. I think that something that is now is in great danger. Because you can lose, you can win. The free and federal elections, whatever happens. But the problem is now that it's not looking for win-win, but it's more like, you know, my way or highway. And I'm really worried that you see on one side people saying, oh, this is, we lost election rigged. On other side, you say, oh, we won. So we have to rig the system just to make sure we win next time. So I think it's, again, it's very important that you find common ground. You don't have to agree on some explosive issues or taxes or Second Amendment. But you have to protect the framework that allows you to debate these issues. I think that's right now this framework is in great danger. Because it's these both sides trying to win, even with a minimal majority, but just to make sure to bend the system that it will work in their favor. And I think that these debates these days, they are just, they are not about means, but they're about common purpose. You look at the old debates, you know, starting with Nixon, Kennedy in 1960. These debates were about means how to reach common goals. Even if the debaters were quite polarized by their political beliefs, but they were Americans. And they didn't argue about America, America's democracy. Right now, there's no common ground, even in just talking about some most fundamental things that made America what it is today. I want to say made America great, but then just decided that would be, it would be misinterpreted. I'm delighted that one of our student questioners that comes to us from Strasbourg, France, Alicia. Okay, so my question is relating to the Human Rights Foundation and also to COVID-19 in general, and it goes as follows. In what ways has the Human Rights Foundation been affected by or has had effect on different governmental legislations caused or affected by COVID-19? COVID-19 has changed our lives. So many of us lost our loved ones, and obviously we all had to pay the price by staying in lockdown for many months. So I stayed just 10 consecutive months in Croatia in our summer house, but we had to stay there. Just was much better than New York. And in our first three months of lockdown, New York, and then we relocated to Croatia so with my wife and kids. And I just figured out that I never stayed 10 months in the same place without flying since 1975. So that was a new experience. Though I enjoyed very much, this is the sense of family. So I could spend a lot of time with my kids and just it's never had this opportunity before. Now, but the virus caused a lot of political called challenges, both in the free countries and unfree countries. But let's not forget that this, if Chinese government would be open with the problems that they had to deal with, and I don't think in December, there's more and more evidence that the real problem started is September, October, 2019. And of course it came out of the lab. I'm not forgetting about the wet markets. So if they didn't try to hide it, we could probably have saved millions and millions and millions of lives and prevent pandemics. And actually to work on antidote much sooner. It's, you may call it ironic or tragic, but on January 23rd, the day that China closed Wuhan at the press conference of WHO World Health Organization at Davos World Economic Forum, they didn't talk about COVID, insane. So dictators of course used it, but it's a double-edged sword. Yes, you know, they want to impose more restrictions, but COVID might be a deadly virus for Putin's regime because it proved that Russian healthcare system has been broken. So sometimes crisis, you know, create, I wouldn't call it opportunities, but you know, it's an opener. And while Russia has been greatly suffering from COVID and the numbers of excessive deaths is just, you know, it's yet to be counted. So I lost my mother and few other relatives who stayed in Moscow and the regime proved to be, you know, incapable to come up with a comprehensive strategy. They had a vaccine, which I don't think it's a proper vaccine, but they forced people to get, to be vaccinated. But two days ago, Putin now announcing that he would go, you had a current in again. So after, you know, everybody being very vaccinated. So I think it's, you know, overall, it's in balance. It's important to remember that, you know, while virus came from China, the antidote came from America. So it's here in the free world where the vaccine had been developed. But it's yet for us to understand all the consequences. So what I think it's important is to remember that we will be dealing with many crises like this in the future, and it's very important for us not to sort of mitigate the risk. So this is because for so many years, for decades, you know, the big pharma companies, they stopped or just cut short the funds to support the research of vaccine antibiotics because it was too risky. Because the chance of a failure, it was way, way above the numbers allowed by FDA and the crisis, the COVID crisis forced these companies to actually to increase the risk territory from 0.1% to 20% and we saw the outcome. So, and by the way, also it tells us that if we had less time spent on debating the value of AI and robots and driver's cars, how many lives could be saved as well? So it's a message for the free world. So we have to move forward. And again, while I have my own personal wounds of the past related to COVID, I still think it's an important wake-up call for humanity that we cannot stop. So we should continue our exploration. Maybe it's quite symbolic that during COVID years, we had one of the greatest breakthrough in the space exploration. Maybe it tells us that things should move forward. And by the way, one of the alumnus here was this new alum, Olivia. Hi. So my question for you is relating to the Renewed Democracy Initiative. My question really is what drew you in America because you do hail from another country and you do have ties in other countries. What made you realize our democracy needed that renewed initiative that you've worked so hard on? As I said in my remarks, so I never expected me just lecturing or even sharing my experience. But what I saw in America is just I was quite frightening because if you grew up in a free country, so you take many things for granted, your name is there because it's there. So it's just for decades. It was there with my mother and with my father and my grandfather and parents. So it's the, yeah, America had problems, but we always knew that we had elections. Every four years, we'd be elected president. Now, what I saw and I wrote about it in 2015 and 2016 that so many things that Americans took for granted, they were based on the spirit of the law, not on the letter of the law. And that means that if you had someone arrogant and resolute enough to challenge it by saying, sue me, yeah, I don't want to release my taxes. Oh, everybody else did. So what? Oh, nobody did, big deal, sue me. So I think now we recognize that there's so many things in American political system had to be codified because we have new challenges. The problem is, you know, with this polarization, it's very difficult to find a compromise. And that's why I'm so worried because you need to make sure that, you know, this is the American elections will not be always about choosing the lesser evil. It will build some sort of fortress against illiberalism, whether it comes from one side or another. And right now, I think it's the overall climate is not welcoming. This, this, is this plan, the reform plan because while the foundational values are there, and I believe they just, you know, they are solid and the political system, you know, that has been designed 200, nearly 250 years ago, 240 years ago, is, you know, offered the best algorithm known in the world. Again, it's not the perfect one, but it's the best that we ever saw built on this planet. It still has, it always needs to be refreshed because you have new challenges. We've lived in the 21st century. So I'm, you know, I'm not, you know, arguing about certain amendments in the Bill of Rights, but technology makes certain corrections. So we just have to recognize that we just have to, you know, compromise because in 1787, you know, you could kill one person, you know, from your Kentucky rifle and then it would take, you know, a minute to reload. Today, you can kill probably 500 people in one minute. So I'm, I'm for Second Amendment, but I just believe that, you know, you have to recognize there's certain limitations there that you have to impose. And by the way, it's just a long, it's a long list. It's a long list of things that require, you know, to be asked to rethink because it's 2021 for God's sake. With all due respect to founding fathers, they didn't know about the internet. So we just, you know, we have to deal with these challenges and find a way not, but not to throw away the values, but actually how to modernize them, how to make them, you know, more, you know, to adjust. I refrained from asking a chess question not because I wasn't curious because I wasn't competent to, but happily we have someone who is eight years old. Oh yeah, you have plenty of them. Yeah, I saw them. There are dozens and dozens of them. There's so many of them, you couldn't find one audience to fill them all. I just want to say I very much enjoyed watching you play chess 960 last week. I wanted to ask, it seems like standard classical chess is disappearing more and more and being replaced by either rapid and blitz or chess 960, are there variants to reduce draws? You think that that's called for and how do you think the right way to proceed with formats and top of the chess is? Look, it's the, it's, I don't think the classical chess, you know, the way we used to play it, you know, was in this opening position. I don't know, what's the number, you know, in 960 chess, it's 518, or just, you know, there's the one that we play. So it's not going to disappear, but it's more like, you know, do you like, you know, in music, it's a classical opera. What it represents what one or 2% of the music plays around the world, but it's still there. And you know that those are the highest standards. So, and as for 960, it's entertaining, but you know, you look at Norway chess, the results today, there were three games, all the size of games, this is this. I think that again, the rumors about the death of classical chess, they're just exaggerated. So I still think that there's a lot of, a lot the game can offer. And at the end of the day, it's not about perfect game, it's about who won or lost. And I still enjoy watching it. And, you know, it's, people are, well humans, we all make mistakes. So that's why it's, even if you have all the, you know, all the moves, you know, prepared in the opening, you know, checked with a computer, you still have to make a few moves on your own. Our final questioner, fittingly enough, Sasha Marcon. So my question relates to what you briefly covered earlier. So currently my grandparents live in Kyiv, Ukraine and my great-grandpa lives in Dumbos. Life for him is hard, he's 95 years old, and they rarely see each other and have rarely seen each other at all since the start of the war. My grandpa, he's scared to travel east because of a fear of not returning. But it seems like in Western news, you don't really hear about this, ever since 2014 it's been silent. So what can be done to highlight the situation in the east and to put enough pressure on Putin to abandon his goal of keeping and increasing his territorial gains? So you're talking about Putin and Ukraine? Yes. As I said, every dictator doesn't ask why it's about why not. And it's about the cost that he will have to pay for further aggression against Ukraine. He does not want to stop because every dictator needs enemies and you always have to offset your domestic failures by so-called geopolitical triumphs. So domestically he doesn't expect any improvements. Things are getting worse. Which if we trust history knowledge, always made dictators more hungry, hungrier for foreign adventures. Ukraine naturally is the first target because the Baltic states, there's still no members of NATO, crossing the Eastern border, which by the way I don't think it's out of question. Creating some sort of collision in the Russian speaking eastern part of Estonia or Nara, possible. Just checking the NATO resolve. But of course Ukraine remains obsession because that's a very important part of Putin's vision of the Russian world. I don't think that right now we are, we can say that he would never cross the border. I would say it's, I don't want to give you 50, 50, 60, 40, but it's definitely not slim to none. He still has his eye on Ukraine and I think it's very dangerous because the free world showed very little desire no political will to defend Ukraine or to make Putin pay for that. Recently, a couple of weeks ago, President Zelensky visited the United States and met President Biden. So it was amazing that just before Zelensky's trip to America, Angela Merkel went to Moscow and then to Kiev. So I don't know if she's looking for a job now in Gazprom because that's, you know, just as a messenger, you know, for Putin, just that's, you never know. So I always say, I would like to see her stasi dossier just to understand some of her latest moves, you know, that played so much in the Putin hands. But even Zelensky's conversation with Biden, despite all the declaration from Biden and Blinken and Secretary Austin about America being fully behind Ukraine, you look at the amount of help that America offered to Ukraine. It's better than nothing, but it's not going to help Ukraine if Putin moves in. Now, I had a very sad joke on Twitter that if America now offered Ukraine the same amount of weapons they left for Taliban, Putin would run for cover. Well, our, thank you very much to our student questioners for a great set of questions. Thank you, of course, for your generosity of time and wisdom with us. We are at the end of our hour, but I move to ask you one last question. Another of your predecessors visiting us here, Madeleine Albright, once described, and that evening described the United States as the indispensable nation. Are we still? I don't vote here, but I want to believe it is. But people like me, we want you to be indispensable nation, but it's up for you to decide. So you have many elections in the last 15 years that move the country in the opposite direction. Whether it's Democrat or Republican you vote for, so it seems that the message was that America was tired of its global role. And what you can learn and what we saw in Afghanistan as the latest demonstration, that there was no and there is no vacuum. The moment you leave, somebody else gets in. And we know who gets in. Putin, Chinese communists, Taliban, thugs, dictators, terrorists. I know Americans are tired of America being the world policeman. Fired to live in the city without the policeman on the bit. So that's, yeah, the world is getting smaller. It's globalization. But globalization means that, you know, you are no longer protected by two oceans. You should remember that 20 years ago on the tragic day of September 11, 19 terrorists killed more Americans than the entire Japanese fleet at the Pearl Harbor. 20 years ago. Now, of course, they have even more means of doing harm. So thinking that, you know, we walk away and we say, we are, it's a never ending conflict. That's a history of our civilization. And America still has power, both economically and militarily, but it's lacking political will to lead the world and to offer the vision for the future. I grew up, you know, with my mother telling me, and it was just, you know, it's like a billboard on top of my bed, if not you, who else? If it's not America, no one is going to lead the world. So you decide. Gary Kasparov, you've led multiple lives of greatness and you've graced us with your presence and you're sharing your time. And as I said, your wisdom and knowledge with us today. Thank you for all those lives and for a great day here at Purdue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.