Techtopia with Chitra Ragavan

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been on the forefront of some of the biggest technological innovations in history. At the same time, the so-called, defense industrial complex — that is, DoD, in cahoots with the big legacy defense contractors or the so-called “Beltway Bandits” —  have also built  some of the most expensive, bloated, and bungled technologies known to man.

But now, increasingly, the Department of Defense is turning to lean, agile, and innovative software companies to build out its pipeline with dual-use technologies,  acting very much like venture capitalists to find and nurture the best of the best in startup technology.

Here to talk about how the military is on the cusp of a new wave of technological innovation are three great guests:

Daniel Borkhus is the Co-Founder and CEO of Holos, A virtual reality content management system. Borkhus is a former college football player, Facebook Hackathon Winner, and participant in Techstars Space 2020.

Jeremy Neilson is a U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant. He serves as the Acting Base, and F-35, Training Manager, at  Edwards Air Force Base, California. Sgt. Neilson is the primary advisor to Edwards Air Force Base, on bringing advanced technologies into the military pipeline through AFWERX, the innovation efforts related to Air Force Instructional Systems Design.

And James Boyd, is a former special forces soldier, Palantir engineer, and now CEO and co-founder of Adyton. That’s a veteran-owned, venture-backed software company bringing mobile technology to the Department of Defense. Last year, Adyton launched Mustr, a mobile personnel accountability system which has been used to keep more than 8000 DoD personnel safe throughout the pandemic.

As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, the frenetic U..S. pullout of Afghanistan under dangerous conditions has reopened the wounds of those strikes and once again raises the specter of al Qaeda and ISIS taking root in Afghan soil —  posing new global threats to American security and those of our allies for decades to come.

Joining me now to talk about the deepening crisis of the Afghanistan crisis and its ramifications is my dear friend, Michael Hurley who served for 25 years as a CIA operations officer, serving 15 of those in foreign countries. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Hurley deployed for 18 months to Afghanistan where he led Agency personnel and U.S. Special Forces in Operation Anaconda, the biggest campaign of the Afghan conflict to find and destroy the last refuge of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In that role, Mike was a leader in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. He also served as a Senior Counsel and Team Leader on the 9/11 Commission, directing its counterterrorism policy investigation and co-authoring its best-selling final report. Hurley remains deeply immersed in the national security and policy implications in the aftermath of the attacks and speaks and advises widely on those critical issues.  He currently is a strategic advisor to some of the most innovative technology companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

In this riveting episode, the suburban Minnesota native looks back on those early days of being dropped into Afghanistan’s cold, unforgiving mountainous terrain and having to land on his feet without knowledge of language, culture, food, or people and ability to distinguish friend from foe. Without any kind of blueprint, he immediately had to begin gaining the trust of friendly Afghan militia and citizens and working with the most elite teams in the U.S. and allied military to capture or kill members of al Qaeda and the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. Hurley also shares his views on the messy U.S. pull out of Afghanistan in recent weeks and the implications for resurgence of al Qaeda and other terror cells and the possibility of future terrorist attacks against the U.S. And he looks at how the U.S. mishandled the evacuation plans for potentially half a million Afghans and their families who helped the War in Afghanistan over two decades, the majority of whom have been left behind and remain in peril at the hands of the Taliban.

As the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates with shocking speed, tens of thousands of Americans and Afghan citizens — who’ve worked closely with Americans over the past two decades, are confronting perilous conditions as they try to reach the Kabul airport and leave the country.

Major news organizations are trying to extract both U.S. and fellow Afghan journalists even as these reporters put their lives on the line and continue to report from the field for as long as they can under dangerous conditions.  Meanwhile, human rights activists are increasingly concerned about the plight of women under the new Taliban regime.

Joining me now to talk about the situation in Afghanistan is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning photojournalist and war photographer Lynsey Addario. She has traveled in and out of Afghanistan, shooting groundbreaking photographs including of women under the Taliban before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And she has continued her reporting in the two decades since the US invasion of Afghanistan — a period in which millions of women were able to get educated, join the workforce, and come into their own. Addario wrote an August 16th article in the Atlantic titled, The Taliban’s Return is Catastrophic for Women.

She is the author of a book of war photographs, titled,  Of Love and War and the New York Times best-selling memoir It’s What I Do, in which she writes about the incredible risks she has taken photographing every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of her generation, played out against the backdrop of the post-9/11 War on Terror.

This is my second conversation with the fearless Addario. To hear her personal story of how she became a photojournalist, how she covers major conflicts, how she survived a violent kidnapping in Libya, and why she does the work she does, do check out my previous interview with Addario on my leadership podcast, When It Mattered, Episode 35. It’s an incredible story.

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Chitra Ragavan:

The world’s wireless systems are going through a major technology transformation through 5th-generation cellular networks, known as 5G for short. In addition to lightening-speed downloads for your smartphones and faster speeds for your favorite streaming videos, 5G is expected to help the growth and adoption of other cutting-edge technologies like connected cars, drones, industrial robots, AR, VR, medicine, and next-gen supply chains. Indeed, the power and potential of 5G and its role in giving the United States a competitive edge is such that it is a national security asset, one that the US government is aggressively moving to protect from security vulnerabilities and cyber attacks, especially from 5G rival and geopolitical nemesis, China, while pushing our allies to do the same.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hello, everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan and this is Techtopia. Here to talk about what the US government is doing to protect global 5G technology is Rob Strayer. He’s a former US State Department Ambassador and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Strayer is now a technology executive at the Information Technology Industry Council representing 80 of the most innovative tech companies and markets around the globe. While at the State Department, he led the development of US foreign policy on a wide range of technology policy issues, including privacy, data protection, artificial intelligence, technical standards, cybersecurity, and 5G supply chain security. He also led the negotiations with foreign governments about these issues. Rob, welcome to Techtopia.

Rob Strayer:

Pleasure to be with you.

Chitra Ragavan:

For those of us who are not entirely familiar with the power and potential of 5G, what are these 5G networks and why are they so transformative?

Rob Strayer:

5G is the natural evolution from what had been earlier generations of 2G, 3G, and 4G, each of which had expanded capabilities for wireless telecommunications. With 5G, we’re seeing, as you said in the opening, increased amount of throughput of data in the network but also something called ultra liability and low latency, that is, the time it takes for a device to connect to the network and then receive information back from the network. So we all think of that typically on our desktops as the time it takes to receive information from an internet website. A huge transformation in 5G will be that, whereas in 4G and earlier generations, we thought of it as the ability to text on our phones, or in 4G, the killer app was the ability to download internet webpages onto our smartphone devices. With 5G, it will be much more about the ability for machines and other devices to connect directly with each other without coming to our personal 5G wireless device. There’ll be all kinds of other internet of things devices being connected on these 5G networks.

Chitra Ragavan:

And it’s fascinating. I was reading that these technical ground rules that define how cellular networks work and how computer chips and radio signals handle and exchange data, I guess a lot of these telecom companies come together and agree on these rules every 10 years. So it is a pretty big deal, isn’t it?

Rob Strayer:

Yeah, it almost occurred on a regular basis every 10 years. There’s a massive amount of effort that goes into setting these standards. There’s something called the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, which the 3rd Generation name was actually set up for 3G, but that same consortium of standards bodies that are representing both governments and private sector entities ranging from telecom operators, think about the carriers, but also the equipment makers for all parts of the network are all involved in the establishment of these standards. So we now have standards for 5G, and eventually we’ll have in probably less than a decade, standards for 6G.

Chitra Ragavan:

And the US government auctioned off the wireless spectrum to make this happen. It’s auctioned it off to companies like Verizon and AT&T and other telecom companies to make this happen. So where are we in the proliferation of 5G in the US to date, and what has been the impact?

Rob Strayer:

Just focusing first on the importance of spectrum. Spectrum really does enable telecommunications devices and additional devices to be on networks, more data to be transmitted. Even as it becomes more efficient through devices and standards to transmit that data, you do need the spectrum, which is a scarce asset, that is, it can only be used for one purpose at one time. So the United States and other countries as well have been auctioning off spectrum. Many folks think of spectrum in roughly three general categories, one being low-band, mid-band and high-band spectrum, which is the frequency category for that different spectrum.

Rob Strayer:

In 5G especially, the US has focused on putting millimeter wave or that high-frequency spectrum into the hands of operators. That high-frequency spectrum can carry the most amount of data. It’s also been very important to see more of this mid-band spectrum that you put out for the operators. That mid-band sits at the sweet spot of having wide penetration, that is, the distance that it can travel, as well as being able to carry a good amount of data in each frequency band, but maybe not as much as they would in the millimeter wave bands.

Rob Strayer:

As far as their deployments, the major telecom operators in the United States are in the process of deploying. They’ve all hit dozens of cities with 5G-ready baseband units, that is, the towers and the infrastructure that’s on them, to transmit 5G frequency to wireless devices, including our handheld devices that in many cases now are able to receive that millimeter wave or special frequency bands that are associated with 5G.

Rob Strayer:

So the rollout is continuing in the US, and it’s going to continue for several years more. But as I said earlier, it’s going to be important not just for handheld and consumer devices that we traditionally think of as part of wireless telecommunications, but for those communications through 5G to reach other purposes, for example, robotic manufacturing or autonomous vehicles to be reached directly through these networks.

Chitra Ragavan:

And you mentioned other countries. It’s amazing. This is not just a US phenomenon, right? This is a global technology transformation with all these countries rolling out this technology. It’s fascinating. And you’ve been in the forefront of watching that evolve. Tell us what that’s been like.

Rob Strayer:

Yeah. I had a remarkable opportunity while I was at the State Department to be part of discussions with other countries about the promise of 5G, its great transformative potential. As they all seek to gain economically, there’ll be tremendous amounts of economic growth based on 5G because 5G is not just about empowering telecommunications companies and that particular sector, but all sorts of other companies in different sectors ranging from healthcare to transportation to education will be enabled, and we’ll be able to do more and therefore produce more economic growth based on having and integrating 5G technology into their current technology suites of applications that they’re using in their particular sectors.

Rob Strayer:

So it was real great to be able to talk to leaders and officials in countries as well as private sector leaders around the world about the promise of 5G and to collaborate and bring together them in many cases with people from our Federal Communications Commission or with our National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA, that’s at the Commerce Department to collaborate and plan together on these policies that will enable a rapid rollout of 5G and one that’s also secure.

Chitra Ragavan:

And you were until recently the US government’s top cyber diplomat. What do you see as the big threats to our 5G infrastructure and national security in terms of the top issues that kept you up at night?

Rob Strayer:

Yeah. Well, most fundamentally, because 5G will empower so many new uses in various sectors of the economy, it really makes it a foundational part of our critical infrastructure. So if you’re having healthcare rely on 5G, the provision of electricity live on 5G or empowering what are known as smart cities that have everything from energy to various applications in homes are rolling out 5G, if one could disrupt that or cause that not to work in the way that it appears to be working, that could have a very damaging effect on our society and disrupt it. So in the more technical sense is what we refer to as having the availability, confidentiality, and consistency of these networks.

Chitra Ragavan:

And why is China viewed as such a threat to US 5G security and competitiveness in particular?

Rob Strayer:

Well, the fundamental issue for the US government with Chinese technology in this area that’s empowering critical infrastructure is its national security law and other legal mechanisms within China that are not susceptible to transparency and due process through an independent judiciary. And that allows the authoritarian government in China to make commands on what are nominally private sector entities to pick actions that are not going to be in the interests of the public or nations outside of China, again, without transparency or due process. That could mean there could be compromises to software. So much of 5G is not just about hardware but the software that it runs on, the code which needs to be frequently updated to patch even nominally innocent security issues with the software could be manipulated or there could be intentional additions of flaws in that software over time. So it’s really important to have trustworthy companies in a trustworthy relationship with a government that’s involved in 5G technology.

Chitra Ragavan:

So the Trump administration had embarked on a really big campaign to improve security communication standards, and a large part of that campaign on the home front and globally involved banning Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, and of course, ZTE corporation and other Chinese companies from its 5G platforms. What were some of those measures, and have they worked?

Rob Strayer:

So the US government did undertake a campaign domestically to protect its telecommunications infrastructure. That was largely led by the Federal Communications Commission. It initially prohibited the use of what is called a universal service fund. That is public money that’s set up to help subsidize the rollout of telecommunications to rural or underserved areas. It prohibited that to be used for untrustworthy telecom vendors for 5G. It’s subsequently now undertaken a proceeding to look at whether any telecommunications provisioning of any type of equipment used by the public in the United States should be able to include untrustworthy vendors.

Chitra Ragavan:

And on the international front too, the US government has been convincing our allies not to use equipment from Huawei or ZTE. And there were mixed results at first, right? What were some of the obstacles to that persuasion campaign?

Rob Strayer:

Yeah. That was what I was fundamentally involved in while I was at the State Department. We started a campaign in 2018 to start educating our partners about the fundamental importance of 5G and that it needed to be secure in ways that they may have had not considered previously. At first, there were issues with our concerns in some cases raised about the low price coming from some of the Chinese vendors that had been considered to be lower than the equipment coming from the two dominant Nordic vendors, which are Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia. We’ve also recently seen that Samsung has emerged on the market as a major 5G player, providing us aggregated network for the radio portion of 5G. So many countries and operators were reluctant to go what they perceived to be with something that was more expensive than the very low cost that they could get from the Chinese vendors.

Rob Strayer:

In addition to the actual price of the equipment, there was the financing issue. In many cases, there were very low-interest loans provided to help facilitate the sales of the telecom equipment. Often, the equipment is a major capital expenditure for telecom operators. Therefore, if you’ve can prolong even the beginning of payments on a loan or achieve very low-interest-rate loans on that equipment, it can provide a major advantage to a vendor that has access to way below market financing.

Chitra Ragavan:

But last June, I guess, Britain said it would bar Huawei and ZTE from its 5G wireless networks. And it seems to be part of this gradual but steady global push away from Chinese equipment. And it was considered a pretty big loss for China. What were some of the factors that went into Britain’s decision and what did that mean for the US in terms of its campaign to convince other countries to listen to its advice not to go with the Chinese companies.

Rob Strayer:

So through our diplomatic efforts that begun, as I mentioned earlier, in around 2018 and accelerated into 2019, the United States undertook a campaign to educate partners about the security risks about the true cost of ownership, about the availability of other finance mechanisms to help equal and level the playing field for using trusted vendors or technology. An important development occurred. It really was a combination of many efforts, but the capstone of it was in January of 2020 when the European Union, after almost a year of review, when coming up with its own assessment tools for 5G, came up with something called the European Union’s 5G Toolbox. And within that review process, it established that there of course needs to be very technical measures for protecting 5G technology, but also something known as non-technical or strategic measures to protect the technology and the availability for both businesses and consumers to trusted communications.

Rob Strayer:

And as a subset of that non-technical analysis, European Union said there’s something known as high-risk vendors, and these high-risk vendors should not have access to sensitive or provide the sensitive parts of 5G networks. And they had a further way to define what are high-risk vendors, including vendors that have non-transparent ownership mechanisms, that have a history of unethical practices, and importantly, vendors that might be under the undue influence of a third party, a third nation where there are not democratic checks and balances on that government’s authority over that vendor. And of course, that would apply in the circumstances of China and Chinese vendors.

Rob Strayer:

So that important development in January, 2020 and its implementation through the member states in the subsequent months. And then as you mentioned, while they United Kingdom was leaving the European Union, it adopted, I think, a largely similar understanding of having to pay attention to the non-technical risk factors led to its decision in the summer of 2022 to ban Huawei equipment from its networks that are previously banned ZTE.

Chitra Ragavan:

And it’s not just the UK, I guess. The five I’s, the most influential intelligence community, our allies, Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand now, all of them have excluded Chinese companies from their 5G networks. That seems to be a pretty big diplomatic win for the United States and could possibly affect how other countries are implementing their 5G technologies, right? The rest of Europe?

Rob Strayer:

Absolutely. I think there are, if you will, de jure, that is, legal statement by some governments about the steps they’re taking to prohibit certain technology, but other ones have a more of a defacto approach because they apply very rigorous standards. In some cases, applying those European Union 5G Toolbox standards to its telecom operators through various regulations, causing there to be a defacto prohibition on untrusted vendors. So there is, I think, a groundswell of change that’s occurred in the last two years, awareness of the risk and actions by government, but also a lot of the telecom operators themselves independently deciding that they need to take steps to secure their networks in ways that they had not before.

Chitra Ragavan:

But if you take all of these countries, right, that still represents half the global market, right? So China is so dominant and controls almost half the market. So how does that figure in terms of the math of it and being able to secure these critical infrastructures?

Rob Strayer:

That’s a very good point. It is the countries that we’ve been talking about that are moving most quickly to deploy 5G in their domestic markets. The rest of the world is looking at improving their 3G and 4G networks, and then eventually having 5G networks. That will be an important area of focus, policy focus, and diplomatic focus for the United States and other countries in the coming years.

Rob Strayer:

In those markets in particular, price will be a very influential factor in the telecom operators’ decisions, in part because price is so much more important to the ability of consumers to even have a wireless device in many of those developing markets. For that reason, the financing is going to be really important. The United States has made steps to make its financing available, in partnership sometimes with other countries through what is called the Export-Import Bank or the Development Finance Corporation, which is two financing institutions that are funded by the US government in order to help allow US exports to have an advantage or at least a fair playing field in various developing world markets.

Chitra Ragavan:

I’ve read this fascinating story in may about this US-backed consortium that beat China in this multibillion-dollar telecom auction in Ethiopia to build its 5G network. And this consortium and this US government had actually set up a whole, I guess, financing agency to help finance some of these Ethiopia to actually be able to pay for the more expensive technology, non-Chinese technology. And it just seemed like a really interesting look at how this is all playing out. Tell us a little bit about that story and what the consortium was, what this financing agency was that was set up and how it all worked out.

Rob Strayer:

Each of these cases in developing world markets might be a little different, but in this one in particular, in Ethiopia, there was a tender, that is, an offer by the government for a particular segment of spectrum and the ability for the winning bidder to then deploy a network using that spectrum. The US, along with other countries and private sector entities, put a bid together. The US financing agency here was the Development Finance Corporation, which is used to fund projects in the developing world that help expand infrastructure and can be used for other purposes as well. They worked with the United Kingdom-headquartered company Vodafone to put a bid together and as well as number of other entities that were also part of the proposal because they [inaudible 00:21:51] equipment to it. But that is the Development Finance Corporation. And putting forward the ability to borrow $500 million for this consortium to establish the equipment and develop the deployment of a network.

Rob Strayer:

So it was a first of its kind exercise of such a large amount of money by a US taxpayer-funded financial institution to help win one of these contracts or tender offers in a developing world country. There’s been other work to establish limited parts of networks or to provide some information technology in the past, but this was a major undertaking for the United States to work with these partners. And it’s worth mentioning too that in any one of these networks, although Vodafone is United Kingdom-headquartered and is the operator, the equipment that goes into a 5G or 4G or even 3G network is dominated largely by US-based technology, from the routing of provided by companies like Juniper or Cisco to the companies that provide the semi-conductors to a wide variety of other companies that are involved in the design of the software that goes into these systems.

Chitra Ragavan:

It was interesting that in this case in Ethiopia, that the loser was a South African bidder MTN Group, which was backed by a Chinese investor. So you see this geopolitical drama unfolding around this whole 5G infrastructure story. It’s really interesting.

Rob Strayer:

Yeah. It certainly is. It certainly is a global play because in technology, you need scale. So the companies that come together to provide these tender offers to build networks can’t do it just for one country. It can’t just be an indigenously created for that one market. They need the scale of having hundreds of millions, if not billions, potentially of users to help pay for the costs of the research and development and manufacturing of the most cutting-edge of equipment. So that necessarily means that when you look at even one country like Ethiopia, you’re going to have a consortium of equipment players, of finance companies, of operators that are global in nature.

Chitra Ragavan:

I mean, The US is going to have to continue to be nimble in this area, right? I mean, I think this whole 5G story on its own is incredibly important, but even symbolically, you’ve seen on your own as a diplomat, and I’ve been reading, and others have been reading about how China and Russia and even Middle Eastern countries are moving into offering all these low-interest loans. And all this money is being poured into Africa and Latin America in order to build that new layer of influence in these regions. And so I guess the US is going to have to be really alert to more of these types of deals that may be taking place that could shift that geopolitical influence, right?

Rob Strayer:

Absolutely. And if you look at helping provide financing versus providing direct grants, the financing will be repaid at some point and at a sometimes slightly concessionary interest rate. But at the end of the day, if it’s repaid and it’s at an interest rate that’s at least equal to what the US government is paying on its debt on its treasuries, then the US taxpayers are held harmless at zero cost, whereas large grants to buy infrastructure would be expended and not repaid to the taxpayer. So the US can be nimble on how it looks in the world and try to find these deals, work with private sector entities, and help provide trusted, secure technology to countries around the world.

Chitra Ragavan:

In all of your travels, as you were doing all of these negotiations and having these conversations with all these countries, other than this Ethiopian story, are there any other stories that come to mind for you that for you represents both the challenges and the opportunities here?

Rob Strayer:

Well, I would just say that in the couple of years that we had discussions with countries, it took some time for telecom operators in some cases to fully understand the risk that they might be bringing into their networks from having untrusted vendors. So that iterative dialogue between the United States and the other governments, and then their governments and their private sector, played out over many months, if not years. And that I think is still continuing, especially in the developing world. So it’s a long-term process. I don’t have a great example of something culminating in the kind of decision that happened in Ethiopia, but I anticipate there’ll be more of those on a smaller scale basis where there might be upgrades to networks that are not as sweeping as the availability of a whole spectrum band for an entirely new network.

Chitra Ragavan:

Other than 5G, 5G is just an example of this incredible global technology revolution that’s taking place. You’ve seen it as a former ambassador. I see it in my day-to-day work in the technology space. How is the US government and State Department, other agencies, how are they gearing up for this technology revolution in terms of staffing and education and resources? Because as you know, things are changing virtually every day in the realm of technology and particularly cybersecurity. It seems like it’s going to require this massive transformation in the US government in terms of personnel and expertise and focus. I mean, how’s the government doing?

Rob Strayer:

That’s a tremendous insight. Absolutely. They need the folks that have those skills that can understand technology policy, especially as you look at the geopolitics behind this. The data that’s created from any type of technology, not just 5G, is going to be something that’s more and more important for the national interest of the United States and for the national interests of other countries. It’s going to be present in discussions about national security. It’s going to be just present in discussions about economic success. And it will be very important to discussions about trade and trade agreements. There’s been recently in just the last few weeks more discussion that even if the United States doesn’t join something like the Comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership, that you could still do an agreement that’s broad with the number of Asian countries about digital partnership and digital cooperations and setting rules about free flows of data, about the deployment of technology across borders, and about artificial intelligence.

Rob Strayer:

So that will be an area that you need skilled diplomats, skilled technical people, people who will understand incentive structures, the need for scale, the way that technology is designed, developed, and manufactured across borders. That’s just going to be a really important part to the government, helping the private sector in the partnership arrangement achieve success. So I completely agree with that insight that the United States needs to continue to move that direction. I will say that’s something that’s begun. I know that the State Department is looking at creating a cyber and emerging technologies bureau that is the functional level that have these bureaus that work on policy. Other parts of the government are looking at building more robust entities to look at things like semiconductor and providing semiconductor grants. So it will be really a growth area for the government to be able to partner with the private sector on these important international issues.

Chitra Ragavan:

A lot of the energy will have to come from younger engineers, younger generation of talent coming into the US government. I mean, technology is moving at lightning speed, and all governments move incredibly slowly. And there’s such a demand for talented engineers in Silicon valley that it’s… How do you compete with the kinds of salaries and perks and all of these things that the tech sector can offer talented engineers? I mean, how do you attract top talent to the US government to help it keep up with and combat these incredible threats that we’re confronting daily?

Rob Strayer:

Yeah. That’s a great point. It is a tremendous challenge there’s no easy answer to. I think the first level is just thinking about the supply of, as you said, engineers, and those that are conversant in technology. That is how does the government and the private sector can work together on the education side, everywhere from the K-12, on STEM education, and then into universities about producing more talented individuals in the sector, because that will benefit the private sector, of course, but also the additional of individuals that are skilled in this area will make them available for the government. Government will probably never be able to pay the same amount as the private sector or provide the same level of overall compensation, but there is the mission of working for the United States that hopefully appeals to young people in the future. And as we increase the pool of people that are in this space, that hopefully there’s a certain percentage that will want to still go and work in the government on this, at least for some period of time in their careers.

Chitra Ragavan:

Going back to the 5G issue, where is the Biden administration and its stance on 5G and its negotiations with countries compared to the Trump administration both in the level of importance it’s attaching to this issue and the way in which it’s conducting those conversations?

Rob Strayer:

It appears that the Biden administration is carrying forward in a similar manner as the Trump administration had on 5G policy. It’s made it an important part of the summit, for example, with Japan and with South Korea in recent months. There were outcomes of working together on 5G in both the statements that culminated at the conclusion of both the Moon summits and the Abe summits. So I think there’s a strong indication that it’s at the highest levels of the National Security Council, National Economic Council in the Biden administration to focus on 5G and technology policy. So I think there’s a great degree of continuity.

Chitra Ragavan:

Do you have any closing thoughts on where you see 5G heading in terms of adoption and speed and global cooperation on some of these big, big security issues in coming months and years?

Rob Strayer:

Yeah. I think that we’re going to see the continued deployment of these networks, which initially will be things that we see showing up on our phones is the ability to have the level of 5G transmissions and the bandwidth and low latency. But the real challenge of the next few years will be for countries to work together to partner together with the best of their technology, produce the amazing use cases for 5G. Again, talking about how it can be used for remote healthcare, how it can use for autonomous transportation, whether in the form of individual vehicles or moving people through seaports and airports, or the ability to use the technology for all kinds of logistical controls and ways that will make all forms of the economy more efficient and more productive.

Rob Strayer:

So those applications are the next stage of focus for 5G. It’s really the things that will be enabled when they talk about the internet of things environment. The transition from say a 4G network might’ve meant that there were thousands of devices connected per square mile. With 5G, it will be millions of devices that could be connected per square mile. That means there could be sensors on all kinds of things and on people as well. So the future is very bright for the potential to see 5G empowering so many more applications than we’ve even dreamed about today.

Chitra Ragavan:

That’s amazing. Rob, thank you so much for joining me on Techtopia and for this fascinating conversation.

Rob Strayer:

It’s been a great pleasure to be with you. Thanks again for having me.

Chitra Ragavan:

Rob Strayer is a former US State Department Ambassador and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. He is now a technology executive at the Information Technology Industry Council, representing 80 of the most innovative tech companies and markets around the globe. While at the State Department, Strayer led the development of US foreign policy on a wide range of technology policy issues, including privacy, data protection, artificial intelligence, technical standards, cybersecurity, and 5G supply chain security. He also led the negotiations with foreign governments about these issues. This is Techtopia. I’m Chitra Ragavan.

Ever since the disease was recognized more than 100 years ago, patients with Alzheimer’s, and their families and caregivers, have longed for an effective drug for this brutal and tragic disease.

But last month, when the Food and Drug Administration finally approved a drug named Aduhelm for use as the first Alzheimer’s drug in 18 years, there was little rejoicing. Instead — a big uproar from critics both outside and inside the FDA who say that there’s no clear evidence that Aduhelm has any benefits. And, that it could actually have serious side effects including brain bleeding. And at $56,000 a year per patient and counting, they say it not only will break patients and their families but also stress Medicare — federal health care for the elderly and disabled — to the utmost.

Today, I have invited two wonderful guests to help us understand what just happened at the FDA, the implications, the fallout, and what happens next.

Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of the nation’s largest medical group, Kaiser Permanente. A Forbes Health Contributor, Dr. Pearl’s latest book is titled, “Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients,” the proceeds of which go to Doctors without Borders.

Dr. Pearl also co-hosts the popular podcasts Fixing Healthcare and Coronavirus: The Truth.

Also joining me is my very dear friend and former NPR colleague, the award-winning health and science writer, Joanne Silberner.  She’s currently a freelance journalist living in Seattle. Silberner has covered the FDA for decades while at US News & World Report and at NPR — where she worked for 18 years. Joanne has written a piece on how Aduhelm came to be approved — published last week in the online media outlet STAT+ — and it’s a fascinating look at how the FDA responds to pressure from drug companies and patient groups, very relevant for this story.

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Chitra Ragavan:

Ever since the disease was recognized more than 100 years ago, patients with Alzheimer’s, and their families and caregivers have longed for an effective drug for this brutal, and tragic disease. But last month when the FDA finally approved a drug named Aduhelm, for use as the first Alzheimer’s drug in 18 years, there was little rejoicing.

Chitra Ragavan:

Instead, a big uproar from critics both outside and inside the FDA, who say that there’s no clear evidence that the drug has any benefits, and that it could actually have serious side effects, including brain bleeding. And at $56,000 a year per patient and counting, they say, “It not only will break patients and their families, but stress Medicare to the brink.” That’s the federal health care for the elderly and disabled.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hello, everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan, and this is Techtopia. Today I’ve invited two wonderful guests to help us understand what just happened at the FDA, the implications, the fallout, and what happens next. Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of the nation’s largest Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente.

Chitra Ragavan:

His latest book is called, Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patient, the proceeds of the book go to Doctors Without Borders. Dr. Pearl also co-hosts with Jeremy Corr, who happens to be my wonderful executive producer, the popular podcasts, Fixing Healthcare and Coronavirus, The truth.

Chitra Ragavan:

Also joining me is my very dear friend and former colleague, the award winning health and science writer, Joanne Silberner, she is currently a freelance journalist living in Seattle. Silberner has covered the FDA for decades while at the US News and World Report, and an NPR where she worked for 18 years.

Chitra Ragavan:

Joanne has written a piece on how Aduhelm came to be approved, published today in the online media outlet, STAT+, and it’s a fascinating look at how the FDA responds to pressure from drug companies and patient groups, very relevant for this story. Dr. Pearl and Joanne, welcome to Techtopia.

Joanne Silberner:

Thank you.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

It’s a pleasure to be here, thank you for hosting.

Chitra Ragavan:

Dr. Pearl, this disease, what makes it so terrible, and why has there been no drug for 18 years?

Dr. Robert Pearl:

This is a terrible problem, it accounts for 60% of dementia cases, currently affects over 6 million Americans, and likely to increase in the future with the aging of the population. Once diagnosed, it has about a three to nine year life expectancy, which is a significant decrease, and in all depends upon at what age you develop the symptoms.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

What you see is progressive memory loss, it begins short term, and often is hard to differentiate from the type of memory difficulties older people can have, but it then progresses to the point where the individual becomes unable to even remember events from long in the past, or take care of themselves.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And I think the real terribleness of this disease, why people are so afraid of it is that you lose complete control. I mean, the fact that as your memory goes away, you don’t realize it’s going away, it puts you totally dependent upon others, inflicts hardships on families, inflicts problems on the society overall.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

So this is a terrible problem needing an answer, the challenges scientists still don’t fully understand its origin. What we do know is that in a large number of patients, there’s a protein called amyloid beta that accumulates, and it’s felt that this may interfere with the brain functioning.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

The challenge, of course, is that there are some people who develop Alzheimer’s disease without having these brain plaques, and there are other people who have brain plaques that can be identified, on various radiologic studies that don’t have Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

So no drugs are there because we haven’t figured out exactly what causes it, and all the drugs that might be available, we have no evidence that they are significantly efficacious, although there are a couple on the marketplace that do seem to slow the disease ever, ever so slightly.

Chitra Ragavan:

Joanne, you’ve covered drug approvals and the FDA for decades, but you also have a deeply personal lens into this Alzheimer’s drug because of your dad’s own struggle with Alzheimer’s, and I watched you go through that over several years.

Chitra Ragavan:

And you’ve been through what millions of families are going through, in dealing with parents or siblings or relatives with Alzheimer’s. What did that teach you, and how does it inform your coverage of the story?

Joanne Silberner:

Well, I would say that it inspired me to really pay attention, because there’s such real world effects to the prospect of a drug, to a prospect or treatment. When you’re going through this with anyone you love, you’re just so desperate for something, or something that works, for something that will help.

Joanne Silberner:

And the idea that an agency like the FDA would come out and say, “Here you go.” With something that doesn’t [inaudible 00:05:29], here you go. I mean, when you watch someone you love deeply lose their intellect, their memory, their sense of who they are, I think Dr. Pearl talked about that, and you see their pain, and confusion as they kind of recognize their loss, they know something’s going on, they’re frustrated.

Joanne Silberner:

And then when they finally die, you don’t know whether to mourn their death, or to celebrate that they’re not suffering anymore. And if you do mourn their death, you have to remember that you’re actually mourning someone who died several years ago.

Chitra Ragavan:

And so when you look at what happened with this drug, and how it was approved, and you probably had to deal with other drugs that you were able to give your dad, what do you make of what happened here?

Joanne Silberner:

Well, we gave him, Memantine or Namenda, actually it was called when it came out the brand name drug, the day it came out, we knew it was coming out. I had followed things closely enough, and I’d read the data, and I knew that it wasn’t a cure, and that it might slow things down a little bit, which is what it turned out to do.

Joanne Silberner:

I think, more than slowing things down, it elevated his mood a little bit, and sort of made him except where he was, and that was a big difference. I mean, it didn’t reverse the disease, but it made all of our lives a little easier. But the approval on that one, everybody kind of knew this isn’t that great, didn’t cost all that much money.

Joanne Silberner:

It did at the time, I mean, it seems to me, I can’t remember the price because this was 2003. It was certainly not $56,000 a year, that’s for sure. And the committee had discussed it that it was clear, to me at least that the FDA had listened to the committee, in this case, on a committee of 11, 10 voted the drug down, the 11th didn’t vote.

Joanne Silberner:

Now, when you cover the FDA for a while, the end of every story, when you cover a committee hearing is always, the FDA usually but does not always follow the advice of its committees, but I’ve never seen anything like this, I never saw anything where the FDA just said, “Oh, okay, you don’t like it, that doesn’t make a difference to us.” Three committee members have quit since then saying, “If you’re not going to listen to us, why are we here?”

Chitra Ragavan:

So let’s talk about this drug from Biogen, its efficacy, its side effects, what we know to date, and also what’s not known about potential side effects, and what’s known about potential side effects, and whether this drug actually works, Dr. Pearl?

Dr. Robert Pearl:

The short answer is we don’t know, which is why the whole conversation is being had about the FDA approval, because the FDA’s job is not to approve drugs that don’t work, whether we don’t know whether they work, is to approve ones that actually do work that have minimal, or no consequences, in addition to the efficacy they provide.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

So let’s look back at what happened in 2017, Biogen started [inaudible 00:08:35], it was called phase three trials, these are large numbers of individuals being looked at, they were specifically selected to be early in the Alzheimer’s process, and the endpoint, and researchers when they do a scientific study before they begin, they’re required by good scientific protocol to define what success looks like, and they defined it as a slowing of the memory loss.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Two years later, now we’re in March of 2019, they find that in one trial has absolutely no benefit at all, and the other trial does the smallest amount of potential positive impact. And when that happens, most researchers assume that the slightly positive study, is just how chance happens in a new research design, and the company stops pursuing the possibility of getting FDA approval.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Lo and behold October of 2019, the company announces that they’ve done a new analysis, and they’ve found that at the high dose level of patients, that it had a somewhat positive response, although still in the other study, there is no major improvement, this kind of post hoc analysis is almost always used to then do another clinical trial, when you now have a different hypothesis, a different study group, and you look at that.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

The challenge [inaudible 00:10:21] is that there are side effects, brain swelling, and even brain bleeding, and it’s particularly likely to happen in people in high doses, which is exactly the group that they’re finding is the one who might be responding.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

It’s still very, very vague, but the company now announces in the fall on October 2019, that they’re going to be submitting a request for approval, based upon this small subgroup from one of their studies, that’s finally submitted in July of 2020.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

The advisory group, as Joanna mentioned, meets in November of 2020, it in no way supports the moving forward, and then finally, in June of 2021, the company announces, sorry, the FDA announces that it’s going to give it this accelerated approval for the medication, much to the shock of the scientific community, and certainly the members of the advisory group.

Joanne Silberner:

And I’d like to add something in the side effects from the family point of view, which is that, patients need to get this every four weeks from the doctor’s office or hospital, and then just before, and then I think after the seventh dose and the 12th dose, they have to get an MRI.

Joanne Silberner:

And if you’ve ever dealt with somebody who has Alzheimer’s, at least everyone I know who’s had, it’s moving them about, moving them into a medical situation, it can be really terrifying for them, it’s very, very stressful for them. If you happen to live in the northeast where my dad was, you’ve got the winter to contend with, to getting people back and forth on the roads.

Joanne Silberner:

And then my father had been a physician, so he got very confused when he was in a medical situation, like he thought he was supposed to be working. But I think for anybody, it’s very stressful to go into an MRI machine, and for people with Alzheimer’s especially. So it’s not actually a side effect, but it is something that you have to contend with.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah, even my dad, as you know he didn’t have Alzheimer’s, but he had really bad dementia towards the end as you know Joanne, and getting him out of the house to a doctor was proving impossible.

Chitra Ragavan:

I mean, I don’t know what these people who have approved this are thinking, that you’re going to be able to get these patients in and out of their homes, for this regular monitoring, they have no idea what do you have to go through as the as a family member, getting your dad, or mom, or a sibling out of the house, to actually get that that kind of preventive surveillance.

Joanne Silberner:

Well, and the treatment itself, the treatment itself is an infusion, and stop me if I’m wrong Dr. Pearl, but I think it needs to be done in a pretty sophisticated doctor’s office, or in a hospital.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Usually it’s going to be given in a diffusion center, which could be a standalone or associated with a hospital, and you’re right, it takes about one hour to administer the medication safely. The administration safely, the consequences is a different question.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah, so Joanna, you’ve done a lot of reporting on this whole accelerated approval process, and the use of whatever proxy biomarkers and surrogate endpoints, and all these fancy hoops that the FDA can, and has jumped through to get this drug, and some other drugs through the pipeline.

Chitra Ragavan:

And you have a new story in STAT+, that looks at this from the early days of HIV and the AIDS epidemic, when activists were fairly, I mean, literally in at the FDA is doorstep if not in it, pushing hard to get access to experimental drugs.

Chitra Ragavan:

And tell us what you kind of found in the course of that reporting, especially, how this expedited drug approval process works, and how it’s kind of gone so wrong?

Joanne Silberner:

Yeah, because it’s one of those things, on paper it’s a great solution to problems of difficult diseases, like HIV and AIDS, HIV when there was no treatment for it, and Alzheimer’s now, muscular dystrophy has had some drugs that have gone along with it, that have come in under accelerated approval.

Joanne Silberner:

Cancer, you want accelerated approval, because people are dying now, but the difference with cancer actually is you can usually tell pretty quickly if the drug is working, when you go and do the subsequent studies. But let me take you back to the beginning, which was in 1988, where there was this enormous demonstration on the doorstep of the FDA, that it come on top of other incidents people were throwing fake blood at government officials, saying, “We want experimental drugs now.”

Joanne Silberner:

And they were faced with something that was decimating some communities, and there was nothing to do, but there were all these chemical entities out there who theoretically might work. So in 1988, the FDA started with giving expedited approval to drugs, where there wasn’t really enough information, but saying, “Okay, go ahead.”

Joanne Silberner:

They started using markers like CD-4 counts, which turned out not to be great, but eventually they looked at viral load, which actually, how much virus is in the blood, that was a better marker. But it got too fast too quick, even for some of the AIDS activists, there was a split in the HIV community, when the accelerated approval came in, in ’92.

Joanne Silberner:

Where you had some of the activists who had trained themselves in statistics, and actually were very good, coming in like [inaudible 00:15:52] my story, saying, “Whoa, if we approve all this when we don’t know if it works, we’re never going to find out if it works, we’ve got to find ways to collect the data.”

Joanne Silberner:

And all the years since, with accelerated approval getting more and more of a foothold, I think something like 13% of drugs are approved this way, that hasn’t happened for a number of reasons. One is, you’ve really got to pick the right surrogate marker.

Joanne Silberner:

And this is… So for cancer, a lot of times it’s been tumor progression, and that’s actually turns out not to be a great marker, because when you look at mortality overall, when you have the time to let things run out long enough, until people either die or survive, with tumor growth for some cancers, you may be able to arrest the growth, but you’re not extending people’s lives, just because that’s the way cancer works, and they’ve had that trouble with those drugs.

Chitra Ragavan:

Let me interrupt for a minute for people who don’t understand, why are they using so called surrogate markers, what’s the alternative, and why are they going with those surrogate markers, in the case of expedited approval?

Joanne Silberner:

Great question. Because it’s fast, like with Alzheimer’s, if you have to wait, the disease progresses fairly slowly, and if you have to wait, by the time, you can see an improvement, it might be three or four years down the line. So if you can find a mark or something that happens early on in the disease, with an antibiotic, can you find the bacteria, or virus or whatever it is in the blood anymore?

Joanne Silberner:

And even that’s not a great surrogate marker, actually, in my story, I quote Jerry [inaudible 00:17:36], a physician at Harvard, who has written widely about drugs, and he was up in arms about a tuberculosis drug that was tested, that it did, it slowed the growth of the tuberculosis microbe in blood, when you tried to grow it out of serum.

Joanne Silberner:

The people who got the drug, yeah, it slowed the growth, or actually stopped it in some cases, so isn’t that great, you got to figure that’s going to help. Well, that was great, until you actually looked at the data for survival, and survival was lower, and the people who had gotten the drug. Either because of the drug side effects or some other reason, but the drug didn’t help with survival.

Joanne Silberner:

But you had to wait a little bit, it’s much faster to just go and say, “Can you culture this microbe out of the blood?” And in many cases, that is a fair enough marker, but not in all cases. So you’d say, “Okay, fine, the idea is approve the drug, based on the surrogate marker, and require as accelerated approval does require, that the company do subsequent testing.

Joanne Silberner:

But the problem is that the FDA hasn’t turned around and said, “Okay, make it timely, and make it now.” For Adulhum, they’ve got nine years, which is an enormous amount of time, and I just saw something today in the pink sheet, which is an industry newsletter, that the Adulhum time is longer than a lot of other drugs have been.

Joanne Silberner:

There’s the muscular dystrophy drug that I talked about in the story, the drug was approved in 2016, 2015, they have until 2026 now, because the FDA approved because it increased very slightly the amount of protein in the blood, of kids with muscular dystrophy who are lacking a certain protein. But they didn’t wait to see, does it keep them walking longer than a group who didn’t get the drug?

Joanne Silberner:

Now they’ve gone ahead and approved it, and this drug is actually $300,000 a year, and these trials won’t be done till 2026. Now, I’ve been talking to the company all day to day, because they were upset that I was criticizing them for that long approval.

Joanne Silberner:

It turns out that they actually were due to have the results from a longer study that looked at kids ability to walk by 2021, but the FDA wanted them to do some safety studies, they wanted them to increase the dosage. So they’re sort of saying, “It’s the FDA is fault that it’s taking us this long.”

Joanne Silberner:

But really, these studies should have been started as soon as they tested the drug. In fact, with almost all these drugs, the plan for the subsequent trial is within the application for approval. The only reason it wasn’t in, not the only reason, it wasn’t in Biogen application is because they didn’t apply for accelerated approval.

Joanne Silberner:

They applied for regular approval where you have to show effectiveness, the FDA switched him over to accelerated approval, and for some reason, and I can’t tell you, I don’t know why, their plan for subsequent testing, Biogen plan for subsequent testing, didn’t get into the original approval.

Joanne Silberner:

All that got into the original approval was the FDA saying, “Okay, you’ve got nine years to tell us if this works.” Which is nine years of millions of people facing this difficult choice with not enough information.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

So there are really two sets of issues, in terms of the listeners. The first one is the question of this whole accelerated approval process, and Joanne’s absolutely right, that in the 1980s and 90s, we’re approving about 10 drugs a year, overall through the FDA, and now it’s 40 to 50 drugs a year.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

So the requirements to move through the process, seem to have dropped significantly, in terms of the rigor that’s been required. But there’s a second question that to me is fascinating about this particular approval, which is that this science upon which it was approved, is so challenging and problematic.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

First of all, because these amyloid beta plaques are not yet proven to correlate with the disease, to cause the disease and reversing them, or impacting them, isn’t necessarily going to be positive. But I found it fascinating over the past month to compare the requests by Pfizer, that wanted approval for a third booster for COVID, against this particular approval.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Now, we may be getting a little bit off track, but the Pfizer data says that antibody levels in the blood clearly dropped, we know that antibodies are effective at attacking viruses, and so the data that might otherwise drive the process, and certainly the risk of death in the short term, is such that you’re not going to wait to see in a very long time period.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

What happens is so much stronger, and yet the FDA steps forward, and says, “Absolutely not, we’re not going to approve this.” Even before any kind of full analysis is done, and in contrast, when it comes to this drug for Alzheimer, they say, yes, despite as Joanne said, the essentially unanimous opposition to doing so, I think the interesting question is, why did the FDA in one case, approve a drug with almost no scientific basis showing that it is efficacious, and another one chose to say, “No, I think we’re not going to look deeper under the covers, at what’s going on inside the organization.”

Chitra Ragavan:

So I mean, that’s absolutely irrelevant in this case, I was thinking about the same thing, you look at COVID, and the clear life saving benefits of Pfizer’s drug, and Moderna’s drug, and Johnson & Johnson, and then you look in this case, and the FDA is delay on the Pfizer one is fascinating.

Chitra Ragavan:

But looking deeper under the hood, Dr. Pearl, what do you make of that? I mean, what does it say about the culture of the FDA, or the way this, these types of drugs are approved, I mean, the people are scratching their heads about this?

Dr. Robert Pearl:

As you said, the book that I recently wrote, Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients. I wrote a piece on Forbes this week actually, about this decision, and pointed out that the FDA’s esteem, cultures about respect and esteem and value, it really came out of the 1960s.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

When it chose not to approve a drug called thalidomide, when the European regulators said, yes, and the consequences were horrific amongst children born without arms and without legs, as a consequence of this thalidomide drug. And its reputation was based upon the fact that, its number one priority was minimizing danger and risk to patients.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And I think what we’re seeing now is a change in how the FDA gets its respect, and esteem, and rather than being the protector of the patient against the horrific consequence, it now is being judged by how fast they can move drugs forward, regardless of the science that might have been required in the past.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

As Joanne said, regardless of the cost that’s involved, even looking sideways around the issue of the risks, they’re obviously not going to prove something with proven absolute risks, but the shift in this culture, and I think that that’s what we’re seeing, of course, they’re going to be political forces there, they’re going to be lobbying forces there, they’re going to be a lot of backstories, but to me, they fall into this cultural realm.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And I think the FDA has now moved beyond where it should be, with a good balance point is going to be an approval is now, what it needs to do the gold standard for its success, which wasn’t its original creation reason. And we’re now seeing this, which in retrospect, I think almost everyone would agree was a bad decision, with the exception of the families of patients who have Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And understanding how motivated they are for anything that might work, because this disease is progressive, and they want anything that can happen. And at some point, the science has to say, “The data is saying your chances are so small, that it’s not worth it.” And then the economics has to ask, what are the other consequences that happen as a result?

Dr. Robert Pearl:

This money can be used to support families, and helping to take care of the individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, it could be used for prevention, for saving lives for a variety of ways that those dollars could have a major positive impact on those specific families, as well as on others.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And all of that is getting lost, and we can talk about the price tag, which experts looking at the question of what is the proven value against the cost, have said that this drug should cost between 3,000 and $11,000. And, as is true for the entire pharmaceutical industry in the United States, which is equally problematic, or even more so, what we see is that the price tag is arbitrarily set by the company.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

With the FDA approval, at least in the past, Medicare and Medicaid have had great difficulty saying no to providing the payments for it, and it becomes a guaranteed cash cow for the company. And I’ll add one last piece which Joanne said earlier, yes, there are phase four trials, yes, they take at least nine years.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

But more importantly, they’re not going to prove anything. Because the FDA did not say doctors can’t administer this drug to people who do not meet the requirements, doctors can still give drugs for ‘off label’ approval, and if you’re someone with someone in your family who has Alzheimer, are you going to go into a drug trial, where half of the people get placebo, or are you going to find a physician who will administer the drug? I think the latter is most likely what’s going to happen. And we’ll never know what this drug does any good or not.

Joanne Silberner:

Where they found that with the HIV drugs as well, that you can’t get people to go into a trial, if you’re going to trial, it’s because you think the drug has some chance of working. And with a desperate disease like Alzheimer’s, and there is a drug, you’re going to try to get that.

Joanne Silberner:

But I want to bring one other price factor that I didn’t consider in my story, and that is an important part of the equation, and that is that since 1992, drug companies have paid for their own reviews at the FDA, an act went into effect, the Prescription drug user fee act.

Joanne Silberner:

And what had happened was the FDA was just getting pounded by Congress, for not approving drugs more quickly, for not getting to the root of food outbreaks, food disease outbreaks more quickly, they were just getting pounded and pounded and pounded. And they didn’t have the money to do it, they didn’t have the staff to do it. And they weren’t allowed, I can tell you I know how the Department of Health and Human Services works with its employees.

Joanne Silberner:

If they’re called before Congress to testify about something, they are not allowed to complain and to say, “We’re not getting the money, we need more staff.” They’re not allowed to say that. But it was true, and somebody finally recognized it, but the response instead of giving them more taxpayers dollars, they said, “Well, why don’t we let the drug companies pay for this?”

Joanne Silberner:

The drug companies can pay for their own reviews, which is true, but a lot of the consumer groups were saying, “Wait a minute, that’s going to create a problem.” And I think it really has. And I don’t know that I can put numbers to this, but subtly or not, the upper level folks at the FDA know that the money to run the agency is coming from the drug companies, which gives the drug companies a tremendous voice with Congress as well, where they can go in and say, “We’re paying for these reviews, and they should be done in a certain way.” And it puts a pressure on the system, that I don’t think should be there, and I don’t think it’s good for consumers or patients.

Chitra Ragavan:

There’s so many layers of conflicts of interest, and potential conflicts of interest in how these things are structured, it’s just mind blowing. I mean, first of all, Joanne, from what you said, going back to the AIDS epidemic, and all of the activism around it, the FDA as you pointed out, is just not good at responding to pressure from consumer advocacy groups, from patients, patients families.

Chitra Ragavan:

And then you’ve got from all the reporting that’s out there, by the Washington Post and The Journal, and yourself and the New York Times, this really cozy relationship between the FDA and Biogen in the months before the approval. And is that unusual?

Chitra Ragavan:

I mean, and how has the FDA fared in other similar situations, if there has been these kinds of cozy relationships, in terms of joint studies or joint presentations, and those kinds of things, which again, create another layer of conflict of interest?

Joanne Silberner:

I think that the level of cooperation is unique to Adulhum, there has been a cooperation that has made sense over time, where the companies can go to the FDA, and ask them, what kind of proof do you think will be necessary, especially with the more conventionally approved drugs, but even with the accelerated approval drugs, they can say, “What are you going to need for you to say that this works?”

Joanne Silberner:

And I think that’s fair enough, and the FDA can say to them, “Well, we’re going to want to see this, if we’re going to want to see this, we’re going to want to see that. Fair enough. But the level with Adulhum, I have never before heard of what STAT has reported, with the company doing the joint presentations, with FDA people, I’ve never heard of that. And that just the level of cooperation does seem to be out of hand.

Joanne Silberner:

But one thing I want to say is the biggest critics I’ve talked to, were all just really sad, I mean, they’ve seen this with other drugs with smaller populations, I mean, the muscular dystrophy drug for example, but that’s a population of 10s of 1000s, very active patient groups, but a smaller population.

Joanne Silberner:

And the cancer drugs as well, when you divide it out that the groups are smaller, so this is a big, big group, but they all say, “This could work.” If we had a system, where the companies weren’t involved in paying for their own studies, where the surrogate markers were clearly agreed upon by the medical community, and the medical community doesn’t really believe as a whole, that these proteins that clog up the brain, if they disappear, that Alzheimer’s will go away.

Joanne Silberner:

So it’s not good surrogate marker, they feel like if there were real rigor on the surrogate markers, and if they were real requirements, for example, if you were allowed to market your drug under an accelerated approval, Joe Ross at Yale was saying, give them a year, give them two years for the confirmatory trials, and if they’re not done at the end of two years, boom, you drug is out until you have those trials.

Joanne Silberner:

Give them nine years. And when you do give them nine years, there are a lot of examples of the FDA not demanding that they meet their deadlines. In fact, I’m not even sure I could tell you how often they do mete out any kind of punishment.

Joanne Silberner:

They’ve done it actually with a couple of cancer drugs, they’ve pressured the companies lately, a few of them have pulled drugs for certain indications, although the drugs are still on the market for other purposes. But the point is that it could be done well, and it’s not, and there’s a legitimate reason to do it, but it’s in the execution that it’s not working.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

All right, as you say Joanne, and I wrote about in the Forbes piece, so this week, we could have a maximum time period, particularly when the FDA goes against the advisory groups, whether it’s two years or three years, I think there should be a requirement to involve external people like the NIH, in overseeing the scientific rigor, because this is not a company just doing research on its own planning to submit a request for approval to the FDA, they’ve already received it, but on a temporary type basis.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And that’s where I think the FDA could be saying, if you want this approval, you’ve got to repeat your studies, you’ve got to document that everyone who receives the drug falls into the criteria set up by the FDA, which in this case would be only very early people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And you’ve got to work with independent scientists from the NIH, under strong conflict of interest, non disclosure agreements. And then after two to three years, we will have rigorous science, and if that happened, I think most people would be very sympathetic to giving this type of, I’ll say less than scientific approval, but as it stands right now, as you said, it’s nine years, who knows if the science is going to be any good, by that time, people will have forgotten it.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And unless there are terrible consequences, which we will regret, significantly, the chances of reversal are so small, and the consequences of the cost, this drug is projected potentially to cost as much as all of the other drugs provided through Medicare. And as we know, Medicare is likely to run out of money sometime in 2024, and this could speed that up by a full year, if not done well.

Chitra Ragavan:

That is just absolutely astonishing. And the fact that the agency’s own Acting Commissioner, Dr. Janet Woodcock, at least from what I’ve read, says or wasn’t involved in the approval process, is that normal?

Chitra Ragavan:

And now she’s asked her internal watchdog, the FDA inspector general to investigate how this approval took place. I mean, that seems even more bizarre, do you have any insights into that?

Joanne Silberner:

I wish I did. And I would STAT, and the New York Times they’ve both been doing terrific coverage, but it doesn’t seem to make sense. It would be unusual, but I think Time will tell.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Yeah, no, to me it’s not believable, that a decision of this magnitude, these dollars going against the unanimous thought to not approve this drug by the advisory group, would not require at least a conversation with the acting director.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I just can’t believe that somehow this decision was made at a much lower level, it would never happen in any agency, any company, when you have this type of very visible, public, inevitable conversation and criticism, that decision always involves the most senior person, which in this case is the acting director.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I don’t know why she says that she’s not involved at all, it’s just not even imaginable to me, whether it would be in an agency of the government, or in a business and corporation.

Joanne Silberner:

I imagine the Freedom of Information Act requests are flying.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. And why is there no full time commissioner in place yet? And would that have made a difference? I mean, do we know who that might be?

Joanne Silberner:

The two leading contenders are Dr. Woodcock and Dr. Josh Sharfstein, who was Baltimore City Health Commissioner for a while, he was at the FDA for a while, and he is known as a reformer, very consumer positive, and the drug companies don’t like him. And they’ve made no secret about that, it’s been discussed… Actually, it’s not a secret, they may not be talking about it, but it’s widely known that the drug companies do not like Josh Sharfstein, they do like Janet Woodcock.

Joanne Silberner:

It’s fascinating to me, this is the longest I remember of the incoming president not having ahead of the FDA names, this is a very long time with a lot of key issues in front of the agency, moving from emergency use approval for the vaccines for COVID, this drug, a bunch of other issues going on, it’s a little scary to me that we don’t have a full time commissioner, who is a permanent full time Commissioner.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I think it speaks to this internal politics, and once again, I think it speaks to this culture, a culture now that is valuing the ability to move drugs forward, and other people who think that that’s not the right role for the FDA, that it should have a lot more caution.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And it should behave a lot more like the European FDA equivalents, that are going to be looking at the true efficacy, and tying that in with the price, and leading around to some of the negotiations that are happening now in Congress, around the role of the government being able to figure out the right price to pay for a drug, based upon its likelihood of doing good.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And all of that is now caught in this political turmoil, and I think that that’s why we don’t have a full time commissioner right now, because that’s getting sorted out at even a higher level than the acting commissioner.

Chitra Ragavan:

So how do you see the FDA as a doctor, and drugs that might be approved by this agency after this particular debacle, Dr. Pearl?

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I, as I said, believes that we need more science, and I think we’ve drifted away from science, when it comes to the entire pharmaceutical process to say nothing about the FDA approval, we saw with hydroxychloroquine, during the early phases of COVID-19. There are there is science that should be applied, and there needs to be a lot of transparency, and right now we don’t have either.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

One could justify a lot of decisions, if they have an associated, I’ll say, braking mechanism to stop them or to move them, we have very clearly defined approaches to being able to test new drugs, to price new drugs, to require as an example, that we understand how much better they are than the alternatives that otherwise exist in the marketplace today.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I think there’s a lot of action right now in Congress, that both of you are aware of, looking at the anti competitive actions of the drug companies, the Biden administration has looked at that, particularly companies that are able to pay generic drug manufacturers for delaying bringing products onto the marketplace.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

This entire industry is now tilted against, what’s my view, the benefit of the nation and the patients, and I, as a physician, just would say, we need more science, and if anything, we have less science now than we’ve had in the past.

Joanne Silberner:

[inaudible 00:42:17] this agency used to be the gold standard, it was the world standard. And I’ve been living in England for the last few years, and it’s not looked… At least from Europe, it is not looked on the way it was, maybe 20 or 30 years ago. I think people over there think we’ve gone nuts.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Well, there was a lot of pressure, the [inaudible 00:42:37] decision, I still believe was the moment of truth. And the commissioner at the time, came under tremendous attack from the drug companies at the time, saying this was a great medication, it should be approved rapidly, you’re very unsympathetic to pregnant women for whom it was administered.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And the director said, “No, we need to make sure the science works, and protect patients against it.” And it turned out to be correct, as I said, as against Europe, which is why I think the Europeans still look at this as being the golden moment for the agency. That day is long passed, unfortunately, and we’ve gotten a lot of politics, and a lot less science.

Joanne Silberner:

I’m waiting for the payers to come in, we’ve seen it really now for the first time, in a big way with Adulhum, with Medicare saying, “Whoa, we need to take a step back.” And the insurers are evidently doing that too. Because the insurers, the health insurers are the payers, it used to just be a [inaudible 00:43:38] drug prices went up, they just raised the rates for that insurance, they just passed the rates on.

Joanne Silberner:

But with this, people aren’t going to be able to afford insurance that covers drugs anymore, given their costs. And I think it’ll be interesting to watch in the next few weeks or months, whether the insurance and the payer start to play a bigger role in some way.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Everyone is stuck in a unsolvable problem, when the FDA makes a decision like this, as you said, almost always Medicare and Medicaid follow exactly in the process that’s been recommended by the FDA, and then the insurers fall back behind the government. Everyone goes lockstep, and the cost of care just rises as a consequence.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

But almost always, there is an offsetting economic benefit, and the challenge in this particular situation is a drug that you’re going to take for the rest of your life, and one for which the benefit is not yet determined, that’s very different than as an example, when there was the hepatitis drug that was very expensive, probably also much higher price than it should have been.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

But at least it was a one time, or a set of one time administration, and it avoided future costs. None of that applies in this situation. It was a block buster type medication as the hepatitis one was, that actually solves the problem, everyone would be saying, “Whatever the cost, it’s worth it, thank you very much.”

Dr. Robert Pearl:

But to have a drug that even on the pharmaceutical companies testing, show that one of the arms had zero improvements, and the other one, a small, minimal one, and another price tag of 56,000, there’s something absolutely absurd about this whole process.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

And I think it’s coming to roost right now, and again, I keep going back to Congress, because Congress is debating this, they’ll be interesting, some of the senators, and representatives coming from very pharmaceutically positive communities are going to have to decide, are they going to continue the processes of the past, of pushing the agendas of the drug companies, or this time, are they going to stand up and be counted?

Chitra Ragavan:

So we can’t end the story without asking, where’s the Alzheimer’s Association? And all of this? Where I mean, what’s their role? And are they protecting patients interests, or not?

Joanne Silberner:

Well, they pushed really, really hard for this, they showed up at the FDA committee hearings, they’ve been talking about the sell off, they’ve been talking to legislators, they’ve been making their views known to the FDA, they pushed very hard for this drug. And the little bit of backtracking they’ve done, they have come out and said, “Well, gee, we don’t think it should be so expensive.”

Joanne Silberner:

But they really wanted this drug. Is that serving their population, or is it fulfilling a goal that the association had, that maybe have lost its meaning when the drug didn’t test out so well, I think it’s the latter.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

There’s also the fact that the drug company is a major contributor to many of the patient led groups, that they’ll become part of the national organization, and stopping that donation certainly has economic consequences.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I teach in the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and we study financial incentives, again it’s hard to imagine that that is not weighing in on the process, when a significant amount of your funding is coming from the same organization, that’s pushing for an FDA approval, that’s potentially going to benefit your people, and your doubts tend to become less powerful, less visible than they might otherwise be, if you could have a purely objective viewpoint.

Chitra Ragavan:

I wonder in the financial planning space, you have to show fiduciary, you have to show, are you a fiduciary as a financial planner, and people can go to those planners who have an exercise, their fiduciary right to put the client’s interests before their own, in terms of making commission’s on recommendations of what financial products they should buy.

Chitra Ragavan:

And in the case of trade associations, there are a number of instances where this kind of funding from the groups that, like the drug companies, or other groups, can really sort of color their decision making, and it seems almost like there has to be a fiduciary responsibility in all of these Washington trade groups that they should follow. And I don’t know if that exists or needs to exist, but I’m seeing more and more of that gray area when it comes to trade associations.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

When there’s a lack of transparency, your first thought is something’s being hidden, and I think that that’s what’s going on right now, when you look at the dollars that are being given, acknowledge what they are, you should be proud of taking the dollars, and using it well on behalf of people who are at risk of health consequence.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Why not make it easily publicly available, and again, we could go in a broad conversation, whether we’re looking at the hospitals right now, or some of the insurance company issues, or in this case at the pharmaceutical world.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Medicine today is a very closed environment, there’s this blue wall of silence that people talk about, no one wants to disclose this information. We’re now in 2021, the time has come to make it easily available to everyone who wants to look at it. If you’re embarrassed, you probably shouldn’t be doing it, you should be willing to show the information with pride, because you should believe it is the right thing to do.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I don’t know exactly where we are, whether it’s 80-20 or 20-80, but we’re certainly as far away from what should happen from a moral, ethical, scientific, economic, you can go down a list of terms, perspective.

Chitra Ragavan:

So in closing, who would you say are the big winners and losers in this fight over Aduhelm?

Joanne Silberner:

Well, Biogen is the winner, and I think everybody else is the loser.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I would agree this is a company that’s going to make a lot of money. I think the only way that… It had a totally losing hand, when it stopped it’s phase three trials in 2019. This is an attempt to raise the sphinx from the ashes, to be able to now be able to generate a massive amount of dollars, literally, for at least nine years, administering this drug to six million people, although theoretically, a smaller number at the front piece.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I think the only question is really going to be, how does this finish playing through, maybe the game’s over, and it’s all done, I just can’t believe with the amount of negative press that’s happening, and the progressive exposure of some of the ways in which corners were cut, potentially inappropriately.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I think we still have more chapters to go, and I’m hoping that that’s going to be the consequence, we need more scientific study. If this drug works, that is terrific, we should make it available, how we price it as a different question. And if this drug doesn’t work, don’t give false hope to families, let them face the truth, and use the same dollars who would have spent, in ways to give them the support that they need, taking care of their loved ones for whom this terrible disease is exacting a major, major pain and problem.

Joanne Silberner:

And the real losers are the patients and families.

Chitra Ragavan:

And do you think they should pull the drug back? Do you think the FDA can, and should pull back Aduhelm, till more more work is done on it?

Joanne Silberner:

Well, they pulled back slightly in that they’ve limited, instead of saying for anyone with Alzheimer’s, which was not what the company has asked for, they’ve gone back to do it on who the company tested it on, which is mild to moderate. Will they pull it back completely? Should they pull it back completely?

Joanne Silberner:

From my viewpoint not as a journalist, but as somebody who had this in their family, yes, I don’t think the option should be there for families, it’s too terrible position to put them in it.

Joanne Silberner:

When they’re faced with an already difficult situation to put them in the position of saying, “We want to experiment on your dad, and you’re going to have to pay a lot of money, and you’re going to have to put them through all these tests. And we can’t really say that there’s a good reason to do that right now, except on an experimental basis.” I just don’t think that’s a good place to be for families.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Well, I’ll go back to what I said before, that even though that’s what the FDA [inaudible 00:52:57] gave its approval for, doctors could administer to anyone that they choose, so called off label administration of medication, often promoted, by the way by drug companies for different expensive medications that are out there right now.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

I think what we need is more science, and that to me becomes the resting place. As I said, I’d like to see this have a specific timeframe, that’s far shorter than nine years, I’d like the NIH, or some other independent agency to get involved in doing it with the drug company, I’d like the data to be presented to be very, very clear.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Because if I were a family, with a member with Alzheimer, I wouldn’t like to just know this might work or not work. I’d like to have the data, the information, I think to be able to make this decision, yes, science is difficult sometimes, at the most detailed level, reading a case report out of a journal, but we can translate it.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Journalists like Joanne and yourself, are experts of being able to take complex sets of information, and make it understandable by patients, I think we can promise people that we’re going to start with the individuals who are most likely to benefit, we’re going to make sure that they are the right ones chosen in line with the FDA’s new approval.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

We’re going to have a scientific study with data and great transparency, and we will have a definitive answer for families in a short amount of time, whether it’s two years or three years, I think that’s the best resting place. We’re not going to go all the way back to say this drug doesn’t work, and at the same time, I think it’s a big mistake, to give this type of carte blanche for next nine years.

Chitra Ragavan:

But leave it on the market till that study is done?

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Make the market be the study. So what I’m saying is shrink the number of people, for whom is going to be administered to the group most likely to get better, administer to them as part of a scientific study, not just as available to them anyone who wants it, and promise people that we’ll have the definitive answer, by the way, exactly what we did with COVID vaccines.

Chitra Ragavan:

Great. Well, Dr. Pearl, Joanne, thank you so much for joining me on Techtopia, and for this fascinating conversation.

Dr. Robert Pearl:

Thank you so much for hosting it, and hopefully it will be educational, both of the families that are facing this tragic disease, and for the rest of the nation.

Joanne Silberner:

I second that.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hey, Joanne, it’s great to finally get you on my podcast.

Joanne Silberner:

Great to be here.

Chitra Ragavan:

Dr. Pearl is the former CEO of the nation’s largest Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente, and the author of a new book called, Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients, the proceeds of which go to Doctors Without Borders. Dr. Pearl also co hosts with Jeremy Corr, who also happens to be my wonderful executive producer, the popular podcasts Fixing Healthcare and Coronavirus, The truth.

Chitra Ragavan:

Joanne Silberner is an award winning health and science freelance journalist living in Seattle, and my friend, and former colleague at NPR. Silberner has covered the FDA for decades while at US News and World Report, and at NPR where she worked for 18 years. And for eight years Joanne taught young journalist at the University of Washington.

Chitra Ragavan:

Joanne has won multiple awards including the Keck Communication Award, from the US National Academy of Sciences, and the best cancer reporting award from the European School of oncology.

Chitra Ragavan:

She has written a piece on how as you Adulhum came to be approved, published last week in the online media outlet, STAT+, and it’s a fascinating look at how the FDA responds to pressure from drug companies and patient groups, very relevant for this story. This is Techtopia, I’m Chitra Ragavan.

For decades, like in many other sports, track and field athletes and coaches have been stymied by their inability to easily use analytics to help athletes reach their highest potential, with their performance data trapped largely in paper silos.

In the lead-up to the Tokyo Summer Olympics, Seattle-based startup Zelos has integrated roughly 20 million track and field records dating back 50 years, into its data analytics platform to generate powerful, predictive insights into the world’s oldest and most popular sport.

COVID-19 has changed all aspects of life, work, and careers, especially for athletes who haven’t been able to travel, train, and perform at their peak. The impact of the crisis will be acutely felt at the Olympics this week (rescheduled from last Summer because of COVID) as these athletes learn whether their can-do attitudes and flexible, often improvised training over the past year due to the pandemic, will affect their performance as they take their places among their peers to compete for those hard-fought medals.

The pandemic also has forced sports startups to adapt along with these athletes and to become nimble in challenging times as the pandemic shut down sporting events around the globe.

I’m joined by Chris Williams, founder, and CEO of Zelos to talk about his journey building Zelos through the pandemic and how it’s made him and his startup more resilient and adaptive.

Williams is a former pole vaulter and hurdler at the University of Washington. And he frequently writes and speaks about his experience as a former NCAA athlete and a data engineer. I should add by of disclosure that I’m on Zelos’s advisory board.

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Chitra Ragavan:

COVID-19 has changed all aspects of life, work, and careers, especially for athletes who haven’t been able to travel, train and perform at their peak. The impact of the crisis will be acutely felt at the Tokyo Summer Olympics this week, rescheduled from last summer because of COVID. As these athletes learn what their can-do attitudes and flexible, often improvised training over the past year due to the pandemic will affect their performance as they take their places among their peers to compete for those hard-fought medals. Hello, everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan and this is Techtopia. The pandemic also has forced sports startups to adapt along with these athletes to become nimble in challenging times as the pandemic shut down sporting events around the globe. I’m joined now by Chris Williams, founder and CEO of the Seattle-based sports data analytics startup, Zelos, which is taking track and field analytics to a whole new level for athletes, coaches, and fans.

Chitra Ragavan:

Williams is a formal pole vaulter and hurdler at the University of Washington. And he frequently writes and speaks about his experience as a former NCAA athlete and a data engineer. And I should add by way of disclosure that I’m on Zelos’ advisory board. Chris, welcome to Techtopia.

Chris Williams:

Thank you Chitra. It’s great to be here.

Chitra Ragavan:

So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became a pole vaulter and hurdler, and what drew you to the sport.

Chris Williams:

Yeah, so to know me is, you’re relative to know my family and I come from a track and field family. So my sister ran track and field. My father was a hurdler as well. Both of my cousins, plenty of aunts and uncles competed in the sport. I would go to their meets, they would come to my own, and growing up, my biggest sports idol was my sister. And so I would go to all of her track meets and I’d follow not just her, but all of her competitors too. And from the hours I spent at these track meets, I grew an affinity to it. And one day my dad said, okay son, know you played a few sports, but now’s the time to really think of something to stick with and you want to do throughout your high school career.

Chris Williams:

So for me, that was a pole vault. Something about the pole vault just captured my imagination and my dad, a little surprised to hear that that was the sport I chose was all aboard. And we clearly remember driving to Home Depot to get my first pole vaulting poles. And my first pole vaulting pole was actually a wooden dowel. We wrapped it with red tape and I used that for a couple of years while learning the sport. And since then, the sports afforded me a scholarship at the University of Washington. I’ve been able to travel and compete around the world. And looking back at my career, the sport in general, the opportunities it provides, and the skills you learn within it, really every day is what keeps me going and excited to build applications for the track community and then other athletes.

Chitra Ragavan:

So, and I have to add just hearing some of your stories that your entire family is still crazy competitive even today with the exercise and fitness and it’s pretty crazy, isn’t it?

Chris Williams:

Yeah. So I come from an incredibly competitive family and my sister just gave birth a few weeks ago actually, just over two weeks ago and, but several months ago she was seven, eight months pregnant every day, looking at our apple watch, trying to compete with me, my dad on, on the Peloton bike two or three times a day. My dad, as well is extremely competitive, loves to hike, track his performance and his apple watch. And that undoubtedly has rubbed off on me and is also a huge driver of the value I see in pretty transparency and accessible ways to find competitors and open up avenues for your own goal setting.

Chitra Ragavan:

So how did you pivot from athletics to data analytics? What happened?

Chris Williams:

There’s few moments in one’s life where they can look back and future is totally dependent on that one moment. And for me, one of those moments was when I visited, just sat in on a lecture my freshman year in college, I was recruited by the University of Washington to compete as a pole vaulter. And it was just a kind of walking around campus, exploring some of the buildings and knew that there was this lecture coming up. And to my surprise, the lecture was about collective intelligence. I had no clue what that really meant and not really an idea of the lecture but the professor Batia Friedman totally, in an hour and a half captured my imagination and describes something so profound that I still look back at all of her own research and where the fields could go, but collective intelligence is essentially how humans or any sort of organism can make decisions better together than alone.

Chris Williams:

And that, as someone that was passionate about teamwork and progress, that was really exciting for me. And I thought that that information itself, she described in a way there was a physicality to it. You think about our genome, something that’s been around for millennia, it all comes, it’s a program, it’s all information. And those same traits and characteristics of information still apply to us as an organism, as a unit in sociobiology. And so the way that she described it at that time had me thinking extremely large and maybe want to pursue a career somewhere in the field of information science.

Chitra Ragavan:

And then what happened next?

Chris Williams:

I started taking classes and computer science and informatics, and took also a few business courses and was lucky enough to get an internship at a venture capital firm that really focused on early stage startups and enterprise software. And so that was an incredibly new experience for me as well, and tasks to scan through thousands and thousands of companies on the bleeding edge who were thinking 10, 15 years down the road and really kind of got my feet wet in entrepreneurship and startups from the investing side of the table and learning about all of these companies, I started to see these higher level patterns that really came down to breaking down data silos and leveraging your data to make better decisions, to be more compliant, to be more connected with your team.

Chris Williams:

And I thought, wow, what if track and field, how much stronger of a sport would track and field be if we had a single source of truth for our competitions or a way for athletes to accurately track their training and in how that correlates with game day or meet day. And that was kind of another defining moment, which was the kind of genesis of Zelos.

Chitra Ragavan:

That’s amazing. So before we kind of dive into the power of Zelos and platforms like that and how it’s transforming the world of sports, give our listeners a sense, this is something that blew me away when we first started talking the size and scale and passion around track and field around the world. It’s pretty extraordinary. The numbers of runners, both casual runners and really amazing, incredibly accomplished athletes.

Chris Williams:

Definitely. Whereas as many successful business opportunities start, it’s an overlooked or an undervalued market that the product or the service serves. And the track and field is very, very, in my opinion, a very overlooked sport. It’s the largest participatory sport in American high schools. There’s over a million athletes running. That’s more than football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and it’s also the fastest growing sport out of those. So that was actually something that years ago, when I learned that it’s still largest and fastest growing, I thought that was totally was contrary to what people believe and what people think of a sport and in terms of the numbers. It’s also not just in the states, it’s the marathon itself is the largest sport in China. There’s millions of athletes running 30 million athletes around the world will cross the finish line in a road race every year. And it’s extremely big. And you see companies like Strava and other very runner, endurance, focused applications or sports that have really exploded over the past five years and at post COVID are growing even faster.

Chitra Ragavan:

What do you think are the reasons that drive this global passion for running?

Chris Williams:

Yeah. And so with track and field in particular, I mean, there’s great gender parody. And so you have just as many women participating as men. And so compared to other sports where there’s a difference in participation rates, that’s a huge reason why it’s a larger market. Also, it has such low barriers to entry. Barefoot running, it was a really a successful popular theory for years where you didn’t need shoes. Running is so ingrained in us as humans. It doesn’t take any additional courts. So it’s extremely inclusive. It’s extremely diverse. And I think those are the two key reasons why it’s larger and has more potential than other team sports or big air quotes, revenue generating sports that you typically see on ESPN.

Chitra Ragavan:

And globally, what are the numbers like?

Chris Williams:

In China, there’s just sport. So tens of millions of athletes that are competing in China and track and field. Japan also, has a huge affinity for marathon racing and in the states, there’s a 20 million athletes that will compete. And that deals with from the 100 meter dash to the marathon and different field events in between, whether that’s the steeple chase or the race walk or the shot-put.

Chitra Ragavan:

Track and field athletes. I mean, all athletes of course are consumed by data, right. That their performance data. But I was fascinated by the stories you were telling me about track and field athletes. When you ever since from the time you were little and you’re getting more and more advanced in the sport, how the data actually drives you, the kind of note-taking athletes do. Talk a little bit about that.

Chris Williams:

At Zelos, we talk to professional athletes every day, learning more about their stories, what drives them, their habits. As an athlete myself, I know that I relied on note taking. This was before apple watch and Fitbit. And I had a notebook and a pen and every day, I would track how many push-ups I did, how many sit-ups I did, what bungee I cleared, how many miles I might’ve run. And then try to see it. It was rough, but look back on the journal and try to figure out how that aligns and how to set myself up for success in a race. Today there’s no excuse why an athlete shouldn’t be tracking themselves for their own health and to just improve their performance. And that’s something that’s been consistent across all of the athletes we’ve talked to, whether it’s taking notes themselves or wearing a garment or all sorts of different devices. Personal tracking is critical for success these days.

Chris Williams:

And in a data-rich sport, like track and field, where in the one hundred meter dash, a 100th of a second, it’s not that small. I mean, it’s close, but races are determined by a hundredth of a second weekly. It’s common.

Chitra Ragavan:

And yet, until recently technology hasn’t really kept up with it. And even coaches and athletes, and of course fans are very, very paper-driven, right. I mean, there’s large volumes of paper, and it’s just very hard to collate across the board and be able to find patterns of performance and patterns that they can use to get better. It’s just extraordinary how paper-driven the sport is.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. Agreed. And you mentioned that in, I think back of a conversation that I had a few months ago with a coach of mine where a coach that works with, and I asked him if he could send us anything that any materials that would help us as a software company to understand the decisions that he needs to make and how we can leverage software and in our data to empower their team. And so the coach told me, oh man, you should have asked us a few weeks ago. I just threw away a hundred pounds of paper results. And that just, yeah, I just think about all the time. So when an athlete says, Hey, coach, do you remember what I ran three weeks ago at this meet, he will point them to that stack in his office and they’ll have to go through that.

Chitra Ragavan:

How do you even figure it out?

Chris Williams:

How do you figure it out? I mean, every meet, there’s thousands of athletes and it’s data rich, but with that, the sport is very antiquated and there’s a huge opportunity cost to not being able to generate insights quickly. And you have to sifting through papers, whether it’s meet results or training plans, nutrition plans.

Chitra Ragavan:

So tell us a little bit then about Zelos. So we’ve kind of talked about how this paper-driven culture because we didn’t have technology like we do today has forced athletes to rely on scraps of paper, to try to figure out what their patterns of performance are. So you created Zelos. Tell us how Zelos works and what the difference is in terms of the analytic and predictive power of platforms like yours.

Chris Williams:

Yep. What we’re doing really is we’re building the first consumer analytics platform, the sport of track and field. Data on performance results have never really been centralized on a global basis, which makes it, as we discussed, really tough to track progress, evaluate potential, identify competitive advantages. And so what we do is we build out, we have a dashboard in which it gives you powerful search, analytics and data visualizations to see career histories and to compare your performance in different environments. So far we’ve integrated about 20 million performances. And from that we’ve generated about 300 environmental factors and descriptive statistics. And this all goes back 50 years. So it’s a very old sport and there’s a lot of data and that’s really what we’ve focused on. More and more, we see the opportunity for creative media, opportunities to create data-driven media that gives more insights to users wherever they’re at, whatever they consume, whether it’s a blog or social media and that’s another way to create more interest engagement and insight in the community.

Chitra Ragavan:

So you’ve been able to integrate 50 years of track and field data into the platform?

Chris Williams:

Yes. And a lot of that was paper.

Chitra Ragavan:

How did you go about doing that?

Chris Williams:

You have to understand the sport in a schematic, how can all of these different sorts of results actually come together? So whether that’s, and that’s for any sort of initiative, integrating data with, if it’s what you’re eating and know how much you’re sleeping, how much Apple watch is tracking, but then also understand the sport and the rules of the sport. You have to kind of build a universe that supports that and can align different types of information. So that’s where we started. And then from there, you figure out today with tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence, we use that to be able to bring in disparate sources together.

Chitra Ragavan:

That’s crazy. So in terms of the volume of data, how much is in the Zelos platform?

Chris Williams:

Yep. So we have about 20 million performances for over 4 million athletes and that ranges from different skill levels and ability levels.

Chitra Ragavan:

So you were going to launch Zelos last summer during the summer Olympics, right? It was a campaign planned and then COVID hit and everything shut down. So what was that like to, I’m sure other sport startups felt the same sense of gloom and doom and panic almost because the world of sports was shutting down and people weren’t really performing and the Olympics was shutting down. What was that like to have a sport startup and have the world of sports shut down?

Chris Williams:

Yeah, man. Wow. What a year 2020 was, and still 2021. And looking back, at that time, getting a sense that sports might be canceled and then learning that the Olympics were going to be postponed after spending a lot of time and effort planning for what that would look like as well as building tools that were to help coaches plan their seasons and get the most out of the resources and help their athletes live up to their potential. And so that at the time devastating, I have to say. There was a lot of uncertainty, but at the end of the day, when I look back on it, I feel incredibly fortunate for the team we have on board and the resilience of the sport track and field and people still being interested in following or whether that was historical results when meets weren’t happening or whether it was speculative about what’s going to happen in the next seasons.

Chris Williams:

So COVID really became a forcing function for us to build, to leverage our data in new creative ways and to learn how to get by with less. And today, I’m almost thankful for that experience. It’s pushed our product forward. Now we have a tool more relevant in a platform that’s more usable by more types of individuals. And we’re much stronger as a company. What else could you throw at us? We’re also in a totally new world and with change there’s opportunity. So today, I feel fortunate that we’ve survived, that we have teammates that believed in what we were doing, that we had some luck and we had a couple of good ideas that really kept us top of mind for some people.

Chitra Ragavan:

So you had been planning to do a whole bunch of analytics around the Olympics last year, and you decided to go ahead anyway, and to do more of a simulation pretending as if the Olympics were going to happen. And then you also attached a fundraising campaign to help track and field athletes who traditionally, I didn’t know this until we started talking that track and field athletes don’t have the kind of sponsorship and fancy shoe companies and garment companies and all these things like a lot of other sports do. And tell me how you pivoted to deal with it and the kinds of analytics you did during the simulation and what were the results of that for, in terms of your predictive abilities and how true they were?

Chris Williams:

Yep. So a little bit of background, but our tool now I would call it a platform, it’s so much more rich in features and functionality, but we started as a way for coaches to streamline their processes and make better decisions faster rather than spending 20 hours planning a schedule for a lineup, essentially for your team, we could help them do that in less than an hour. And so that is what we had been building. But we did have data and that we felt maybe it could be relevant to some other people. And so we sat down kind of with that in mind, saying, how else can we leverage what we built? And with COVID primarily, we felt for the athletes, as many of us were former athletes, people training a decade to get to where they are, and many were totally capable of making the Olympics.

Chris Williams:

And that’s just something that’s off the table for another year. That was really tough. And on top of that, knowing that athletes many track and field professional track and field athletes are barely getting by. The average track and field athlete makes $20,000 a year. To actually go to the games it takes $40,000. The travel and training and coaching and healthcare. And so we kind of started with how can we help the sport in this tough time? Because without track and field as our bread and butter, it’s how we started. And so we thought how can we help? And then while we were brainstorming, another idea came up. That was, well, what if the Olympics did happen? So from there, we ended up actually building out a simulation using historical performances from the 1700 athletes that were most likely to qualify.

Chris Williams:

And in that simulation, we generated the results down to every place for every race, prelims, semi-finals, finals and published according to the 10 day schedule. So through that programming or our hypothetical results, we ended up being able to partner with USATF that really helped us get, build more funds and grow our reach so that we could get more money to athletes.

Chitra Ragavan:

And USATF is for people who don’t know.

Chris Williams:

Yep. Yep. So that’s USA track and field. So that’s the governing body, the FIFA essentially of, or I should say that the U.S. Soccer of track and field. And so that was especially as American athletes, unfortunately are often, we struggle the most, having them on board, bring attention to the issue was really valuable. And then when it comes to the data that there was a lot of interesting results as well.

Chris Williams:

One, as a pole vaulter myself, I love and is excited that we were able to have this level of specificity is that we predicted Mondo Duplantis winning the Olympics with a jump of six meters and seven centimeters. So we use the performance histories of these athletes and other contextual information up to that moment. And 10 days later, Mondo jumped 6’07” so down to the centimeter in Switzerland to break the diamond league world record. So that was just kind of a cherry on top of being able to provide for more athletes is generating some fun and inaccurate insights for the sport.

Chitra Ragavan:

And so some of the scholarships you handed out to athletes resulted in some really good news, right? So last year, summer Olympics actually are this year’s summer Olympics that we’re in the middle of, and what was the good news you found out recently?

Chris Williams:

Yes, man, I am so excited. We chose six athletes that were Olympic hopefuls, but unsponsored and valued by the community that were deserving of a grant that we fundraised for the games and that was to help them make it to the next Olympics and follow their goals or follow their dreams. And out of those six athletes, all of them were able to have a healthy season, an outdoor season this past year, all of them have made it to an Olympic trials final, which is incredible. Many were not actually projected to make it that far. And we just found out that another, so this is our third, but Curtis Thompson, a javelin thrower for Team USA actually won the trials when the U.S. trials unsponsored, unattached, and he’s going to the Olympics. He has a shot at doing really well on the world stage. And so being a part of his story and his journey is so exciting and it gets us excited for other athletes we can identify, with potential, as well as support

Chitra Ragavan:

Given the popularity of the sport, we’ve talked about that. Why is it that these athletes aren’t as appreciated in the sense of sponsorships and scholarships and what is the cause of that given that these millions and millions of athletes that are winning these incredible medals and breaking unbelievable records?

Chris Williams:

Yes. So there’s a quite a bit behind that. And I have my own theories, but I feel a lot of the difference of you have baseball players, NBA players, making millions who are at the top of their sport, but the best athlete in the world might not be making even a million, might barely be making a hundred thousand, that would be really great. And in my opinion, it’s a lag. I think we’re trailing behind a lot of other sports and we’re held back by this idea, which in theory, I think it’s productive and constructive, but in practice, it’s devastating and that’s amateurism. And so, the Olympic spirit and as many people that are familiar with Olympics and the philosophy of the Corinthian spirit is the passion of doing something, not for money, but just for the love of it.

Chris Williams:

And the love of the action of exercise, which I think does it sends a great message and definitely applies to so many athletes who are not in it for the money, but they just love what they do and they love and prove themselves. But the one thing that’s kind of lost in that is that track and field is actually a very, very lucrative sport. It’s incredibly lucrative and the money’s just not going to the athletes. And that’s because athletes don’t have any ownership of the franchise that is, USA track and field or world athletics and companies but also leagues and in franchises like the NBA very early on or earlier on, decades ago and franchised the athletes to be a part of the system. And that in itself blew up the sport that blew up these sports such as basketball, and also the amount of money that the athletes can make.

Chris Williams:

And so track and field just recently, our international governing body just changed its name from the International Amateur Athletics Federation to just World Athletics. And so there is a shift in the professionalism of track and field, but for so long, I think it’s been held back by this idea that athletes shouldn’t be paid because it detracts from the sport and that money should just be going to the organizers. I definitely think that’s changing. And especially as people are looking at the numbers of participants in the sport and the social media and streaming platforms, that opportunity content in the sport comes a lot more valuable. And whereas for a long time, people have thought of sports in terms of TV time, hours, getting a spot on Monday night football.

Chitra Ragavan:

It must be so aggravating and confounding to see athletes in every other walk of life, walk away with these lucrative scholarships and sponsorships and all kinds of things. I mean, athletes are incredibly rich, but to not have a similar level of wealth associated with track and field, I’m sure that you experienced that as an athlete yourself. And then you see it for all these other athletes who are working so hard and training so hard, but they just don’t get that kind of compensation that other athletes do.

Chris Williams:

Definitely. And so part of it’s amateurism, and then another part is just politics in this sport.

Chitra Ragavan:

So looking back at this year and a half and the incredible impact of COVID on sports around the world, what do you think the long-term effects of the pandemic will be on track and field and sports in general? What are the trends that you see emerging, or you believe will emerge?

Chris Williams:

Yeah, so trends that are emerging and we’ve seen that people don’t actually need to be in a stadium for an exciting game to happen. And I think viewership in different events will certainly more digital and people will be more, I think eventually stadiums will be packed once again. And that would take some time. And in the meantime, streaming is a huge platform and an opportunity to distribute media, the games, results, sport shows. So that’s an emerging trend. In terms of personal health and fitness, we’ve seen that explode in COVID. People have found running to be a great way to be outside. It’s safe. You’re not in a gym where there’s a lot of equipment that’s being used by who knows who, and I think that passion and the growth of distance running and personal fitness is going to continue. People are going to continue to value that Peloton you see that they’ve had massive acquisitions and massive growth, Apple watch, fitbit, things like that.

Chitra Ragavan:

Definitely.

Chitra Ragavan:

Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining me today on Techtopia and for the insightful conversation.

Chris Williams:

Thank you so much, Chitra, for having me on it was so much fun talking with you. Appreciate the questions.

Chitra Ragavan:

Chris Williams is the founder and CEO of the Seattle based sports data analytics startup Zelos, we’re just taking track and field data analytics to a whole new level for athletes, coaches, and fans. Williams is a formal pole vaulter and hurdler at the University of Washington. And he frequently writes and speaks about his experience as a former NCAA athlete and a data engineer. This is Techtopia, I’m Chitra Ragavan.

Over the past seven months, non-fungible tokens or NFTs have captured the world’s imagination and hype cycle, especially after the digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT, which is a blockchain-verified proof of transfer of ownership, for one of his prints, for a record $69 million.

Since then, demand for these types of collectible digital art has exploded. Artists, writers, and entire industries are trying to tap into this lucrative new art form and create all kinds of NFTs for movies, albums, photographs, even a single tweet.

At the forefront of the NFT effort in the digital newsroom is the business publication, Quartz, which sold the first news article converted into a non-fungible token or NFT. Since then, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other news outlets have followed suit with their own NFT offerings.

Joining me to talk about NFTs and the media landscape is Zach Seward. He’s co-founder and CEO of Quartz. Seward is widely recognized as a leader in digital journalism, cited in publications, such as Forbes, Crain’s New York Business, Digiday, and FOLIO.

Prior to joining Quartz, Seward was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, covering education and health, and then served as the newspaper’s first social media editor. Before the Wall Street Journal, Seward was an assistant editor at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, covering the media industry.

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Chitra Ragavan:

Over the past seven months, non-fungible tokens or NFTs have captured the world’s imagination and hype cycle, especially after the digital artists known as Beeple sold an NFT, which is a blockchain-verified proof of transfer of ownership for one of his prints for a record $69 million. Since then, demand for these types of collectible digital art has exploded. Artists, writers, and entire industries are trying to tap into this lucrative new art form and create all kinds of NFTs for movies, albums, photographs, even a single tweet.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hello, everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan, and this is Techtopia. At the forefront of the NFT effort in the digital newsroom is the business publication, Quartz, which sold the first news article converted into a non-fungible token or NFT. Since then, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other news outlets have followed suit with their own NFT offerings. Joining me now to talk about NFTs and the media landscape is Zach Seward. He’s co-founder and CEO of Quartz. Seward is widely recognized as a leader in digital journalism, cited in publications, such as Forbes, Crain’s New York Business, Digiday and FOLIO. Prior to joining Quartz, Seward was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, covering education and health, and then served as the newspaper’s first social media editor. Before the Wall Street Journal, he was an assistant editor at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab covering the media industry. Zach, welcome to Techtopia.

Zach Seward:

Thank you so much for having me.

Chitra Ragavan:

Well, tell me how you made the journey from journalism to digital journalism and over to Quartz and why you got it started.

Zach Seward:

Yeah. I helped start Quartz back in 2012. Before that, as you were just saying, I was at the Wall Street Journal. My boss there was this guy Kevin Delaney, who was the managing editor of WSJ.com. He gets hired away by Atlantic Media in the very beginning of 2012 to launch a new business news site for Atlantic Media. That company then published the Atlantic Magazine, a few other titles. They had this theory, which proved correct, that there was some white space for a digital-only global business news publication that would go after advertising that was largely locked up with the Financial Times and the Economist, which by dint of that, not being a very competitive market. It gotten complacent and certainly had the burden of having to focus on print.

Zach Seward:

And so, we came in, digital-only, totally free, focused on what a business news organization could be if it was not U.S.-centric and focused on its readers on their mobile phones, a few other tenants that we can get into. We’re able to grow really quickly, largely on the back of both social media and email at the beginning. We ultimately were sold by Atlantic Media in 2018 to a Japanese media company, Uzabase. We were under their ownership for the last two years until the very end of last year, 2020, which made a whole lot of turbulence in the whole media industry. Uzabase put us up for sale, and in a twist that I’m also happy to talk at greater length about, I and Katherine Bell, our editor in chief, ended up buying the company from Uzabase in a management buyout. Quartz is now a completely independent media company, about a hundred people in the company, newsroom of 50 people all over the world covering global business news and trying to chart on a path now as a totally independent media company.

Chitra Ragavan:

Well, congratulations. I think that’s really good news.

Zach Seward:

Thank you. Yeah, it’s been fun.

Chitra Ragavan:

How does your approach differ from your competitors when you take on business areas that you want to do explanatory journalism on?

Zach Seward:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, there’s a few differences, but the most important, I think, and one that’s been core to Quartz editorial approach from the beginning is how we organize our newsroom and our coverage for readers, whereas in most newsrooms, the coverage is divided up into beats, the telecom reporter, the commodities reporter, the education reporter. We divide our coverage up into what we call obsessions. So with obsessions, we’re not trying to identify or take the entirety of the global economy and divided up into small chunks so that we can comprehensively cover everything. We’re instead saying what are the most important macro trends in the global economy that we’re paying attention to and think our readers ought to be paying attention to.

Zach Seward:

And so, in years past, that has included the shift of television from the linear television to digital IP distribution or a disruption of the oil market with the growth of shale oil and electric power. Now, more recently, we’re intensely focused on the climate economy, clean energy, and solutions to climate change and a variety of other obsessions. When we cover these topics, we try to do so in a way that is less myopic than it tends to happen, I think, in traditional newsrooms with these very focused beats and instead takes a more interdisciplinary approach. So, I’ll give an example from my own writing days at Quartz. I mentioned an obsession of ours for many years was about digital television. It was called Glass. The thesis being it’s all just glass, whether you’re watching on a television, your phone, iPad or something in between.

Zach Seward:

In any event, the shift, everything, the disruption happening in television, the fascinating story, and it’s getting covered elsewhere by the culture desk of the arts reporter and by the business writer covering the big companies competing in the streaming service, streaming wars, as well as maybe the telecom angle and so on and so forth, but it’s separate reporters covering from separate angles. Our conviction is as a result, probably not getting the whole of the story. What’s happening to television is as much a cultural story that changing the way people consume media and even how it’s created in the first place as it is a business story. What are the tactics needed to win over consumers? Is it a winner-take-all market? So on, so forth, and covering it as both of those things. The once we found works better, provides a richer type of journalism for our readers. I think it’s the most distinguishing thing about Quartz’s approach.

Chitra Ragavan:

How much emphasis do you put on covering blockchain technology, cryptocurrency and digital assets in terms of a potential obsession, I guess?

Zach Seward:

Yeah, it’s something we’ve covered from day one. Day one for us was 2012, so those were very, very early days for crypto and blockchain. Our coverage has tended to be way less focused on cryptocurrency markets and the markets generally, the get-rich-quick aspects of crypto. Much of that, of course, is a big reason why people pay attention to blockchain tech. It’s usually not what’s actually endurably interesting about what’s going on here. And so, when Bitcoin was first exploding in those early years, 2013, 2014, our conviction was, sure, it’s a fascinating market and we want to understand the market dynamics, but we also want to make sure, and most importantly, that our readers get what’s going on in a more fundamental way. What’s the truly durable bit of knowledge here? In that case, we thought it was really important to understand how Bitcoin mining works. I think it’s one of those things that when that clicks for you, you start to understand what’s different and revolutionary about the concept of blockchain more generally.

Chitra Ragavan:

How do you explain that? How did you do that?

Zach Seward:

To do that, we published a story, the headline of which was By Reading This Article, You’re Mining Bitcoin. It was literally true. We wrote just a bit of JavaScript that would run on your browser as you’re reading the article to actually do a bit of the cryptography necessary to mine Bitcoin, not quite as powerful as Bitcoin farms in China so it wasn’t making much money, but it was a really concrete example that as I was reading this explanation, you can think about it and better understand. Of course, it’s also just a meta and more enjoyable to readers as a result. We found it a really great way to explain a pretty then obscure or difficult to understand topic for our readers. That got us interested in other ways we could better explain what’s really interesting and underlying blockchain tech.

Chitra Ragavan:

Perhaps you could explain it lay terms for our audience what a non-fungible token or NFT is and how it differs from fungible tokens, and then we can talk about what you did to explain the NFT to people.

Zach Seward:

Yes, sure. So I think the biggest, most important trend in crypto over the last several years that people should know about is if you’re just still focused on crypto as Bitcoin and you’ve missed the explosion of other coins in the meantime, and in particular, the explosion of Ethereum, which I’m going to oversimplify this and I should qualify as well, I’m no crypto expert, but one big underlying concept behind Ethereum was to allow the creation of unlimited number of coins and tokens that on the same blockchain using the same shared infrastructure, which has led to that explosion. These tokens can come in one of two flavors.

Zach Seward:

When you’re talking about a Bitcoin that’s traded like a currency, one Bitcoin just like $1 bill is just the same as any other Bitcoin or any other dollar bill. They’re totally exchangeable or fungible. They’re not unique. But with non-fungible tokens, it’s exactly the opposite. Each token is unique. They might all have the same rights or contractual obligations underlying them, but my non-fungible token is uniquely mine because I have the keys to it and can verify that it belongs to me and nobody else, such as NFT is yours alone as well. This is a pretty basic concept, but once you get that basic concept down, it opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. I think one of the best explanations I read was on Citi Ventures website of all things. Basically, it described how these non-fungible tokens can represent anything, a piece of art, a song, a odor, a piece of real estate. It’s like the article said, like a digital property deed, so that can provide a verifiable way to transfer ownership of anything you can imagine. In the case of the crazy Beeple sale, a piece of art for $69 million. Go figure, right? So how did you then take this idea and communicate it with your audience to show how an NFT works?

Zach Seward:

Well, we wanted to accomplish the seemingly simple, but as this is the last few minutes of our conversation make clear and not actually that simple goal of explaining what a NFT is. And so, we try the same meta approach as we had in the past by minting that very article as its own NFT. So, the article itself was an explanation of that whole process that we went through in order to mint the NFT, and then put it up for auction on open sea. And then, actually, that’s where the story ends because of course, then the auction commence and we found out if there was anyone actually interested in buying this thing.

Zach Seward:

But what you were literally buying, in our case, as with Beeple piece of art and with most every NFT is just an indication on the blockchain that references the URL of our article, or actually a JPEG of the article and says you own it, but you don’t control that article. You can’t go in and edit it. We, in most actual respects, still own the article. It’s a weird concept to get your head around. I’m not saying it’s bullshit. It’s a real concept. But if you start to scratch your head like, “Why would anyone think that these things are actually valuable?” you’re asking a good question. I think it’s highly debatable where the real value is in NFTs.

Chitra Ragavan:

So, when somebody paid the $69 million for that Beeple’s work of art, Everydays – The First 5000 Days, I think it was called. What were they actually buying?

Zach Seward:

Right. They were buying, in my mind, a URL that… They were buying the right to be listed as the owner on a publicly accessible and verifiable blockchain in a way that typically has their name or however they want to represent their ownership, their private key, and a reference, a URL referring to the digital piece of art. The file itself is obviously a digital file. It’s infinitely replicable. NFTs are fascinating way to try to square the fact that digital files are infinitely replicable with the fact that creators of them want to be paid for their work. There is value in art, even if it’s entirely in pixels. That’s why it’s a fascinating concept, but again, it isn’t really analogous with the sale of physical goods in any way.

Chitra Ragavan:

When you actually think about that, it just seems amazing, right? Why would somebody pay money for that? I mean, why? Why is there so much speculation around this, would you say, at least at the moment?

Zach Seward:

The simple cynical answer is anywhere people smell a get-rich-quick opportunity, there’s going to be a lot of attention all of a sudden. I do think that that explains a decent amount of the excitement around NFTs, but there really is quite a lot going on here that I think is important and likely to matter long after this initial hype cycle wears off. So, one of the projects, I forget the author’s name off the top of my head, I apologize, but there’s a project recently using NFTs to fund media that I find really fascinating, and I think is a easier to understand example of how NFTs might be used.

Zach Seward:

A fiction writer posted on Mirror, which is quickly becoming a popular Web3 writing platform. She write, “This is the concept for my next novel that I want to write. I need to raise this much money in order to be able to focus full time on writing the novel, so I’m going to sell NFTs of the book to a certain number of early backers to help make this happen.” She’s got a big enough of a fan base that she was able to sell those NFTs. In essence, that’s very much like other forms of funding that we’re more familiar with, like crowdfunding or patronage because in this case, the people buying the NFTs were buying this digital reference, just like in the Beeple example, so that’s kind of weird, but also manifesting, the book itself, making it possible for the book to exist.

Zach Seward:

In this case, the author wanted to make it freely available, the book, to anyone on the internet, so the backers of the project are also making it possible for the book to be free for everyone else, and to the extent they see value in that, which, of course, they do. They like the writer. They want her work to spread far and wide. Why not buy the NFT? So, the thing that they’re buying is, again, a wonky, hard to get your mind around idea, but really they’re backing a creator that they like. That’s a simple example of why you’re seeing a lot of excitement about NFTs and related concepts in the creator economy, where it does seem like, I think, that’s a viable form of funding of lifestyle for independent writers, artists and so on.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. Especially after COVID-19, you saw so many artists and singers and performers at every level getting just absolutely decimated by the pandemic because people can’t congregate anymore. And so, I imagine that this is a very exciting way for them to monetize some of their creative skills and recoup some of the stuff that they’ve lost over the last year and a year, a year and a half.

Zach Seward:

Yeah, I think that’s right. It depends on what form of creator we’re talking about, a writer or otherwise, but there’s also new modes of how creators cooperate with each other, that crypto is more helpful to enable. It’s easier to create collectives of artists or writers. Recently, people are pushing the idea of what’s called a decentralized autonomous organization, where several creators go in essentially mint a token that represents that organization and raise money in a similar fashion to the way I was just talking about. But in the process, they’re also creating a governance structure for, I don’t even think you would call it a company, but sort of an alternative to a traditional corporate structure that this is so early days. I don’t think there are really great examples yet of DAOs, as they’re referred to, working at any scale, but that’s pretty interesting and that’s all, again, based on NFTs and a good example of where this might go that’s more durable and a little less flashy or a get-rich-quick.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. Before we talk about some of these crazy, eye-popping artworks and stuff that have been selling, I want to close the loop on your article. Were you able to auction it off, and did you make $69 million?

Zach Seward:

Yeah. Right. I wish, not quite. But yeah, we were able to sell it for one ETH, which at that time was worth about $1,800 USD. Actually, now, it’s exploded. I think it’s about $4,000 somehow. We had said ahead of time that any of the proceeds were generated from a sale, we would donate to charity, in a charity that’s near and dear to our heart. And so, that’s, of course, what we did. I didn’t think we were going to be able to sell it for quite that much. And so, that was awesome.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. I think the New York Times columnist who turned his into an NFT, I think they were able to raise a half a million dollars for charity-

Zach Seward:

Yeah, even more.

Chitra Ragavan:

… which is amazing.

Zach Seward:

Yeah.

Chitra Ragavan:

There are some great examples, right? There’s the first Oscar-nominated documentary turned into an NFT. Jack Dorsey’s first Twitter, a tweet, his the founder of Twitter, his first tweet sold for $2.2 million. The one that really interested me also was those NFT album, right? King of Leon’s, When You See Yourself. What they’re doing is they’ve got three types of tokens. It’s fascinating, right? People don’t realize this is basically programmable, right? So, they have three types of tokens. One would give you front row seats for life. The second one will give you special audio visual art. The third one will give you your own special album package. So I think it’s fascinating. People don’t realize you can customize these things as an artist and be able to really do some really creative ways of making money and getting your name out there and creating art. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Zach Seward:

Totally. I think that points to what I think might be the easiest way to understand, well, any token, whether non-fungible or otherwise, which is as a contract. In the case of Kings of Leon, it’s an essence this NFT is a contract that guarantees you rights to front row seats. There are startups experimenting with using non-fungible tokens as a mechanism for financing startups. So in that case, it’s a contract that entitles you to equity in the startup. That’s a cool concept. I mean, contracts are not new, but the idea that you could have a decentralized publicly verifiable contract is new and what the blockchain enables. I do think these are very early examples. You’re likely to see it applied in all sorts of cases, where you might otherwise have had a lot of lawyers involved. Well, there’s still lawyers involved, but I think it’s not clear enough.

Chitra Ragavan:

Potentially even more lawyers involved.

Zach Seward:

Yeah, exactly. A different type of lawyer, I’m sure.

Chitra Ragavan:

You covered the business world and artists aren’t the only ones experimenting with this, right? A lot of businesses are as well. Do you have some examples of that?

Zach Seward:

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think to be honest, the most of the experiments with NFTs to date have been exactly that experiments. To be clear, Quartz’s own venture into NFTs is very much a journalism project to try to help explain it to our readers, not intending to be a moneymaker or a suggestion that this is a future of media. I think I interpreted it as similar some things that the Atlantic and Time Magazine did, you referenced them earlier, in selling NFTs of old covers of both of those magazines, which was a cool idea. But again, if you’re questioning why would someone want to buy not the cover itself, but just, in some way, a reference to the cover, that’s a good question. I think it’s likely to turn out that those kinds of experiments, which are more what you’ve seen so far from businesses are not, though, the durable ones or it’s not likely where the value really is.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. I saw a couple of examples of Taco Bell and Charmin, the toilet paper company, auctioning of NFT themed art to raise funds for charity. My favorite was Charmin’s NFTP, non-fungible toilet paper.

Zach Seward:

Perfect. Well, it says it all, right? I mean, I don’t blame them at all. I could hardly write having been the news organization that sold the first NFT news article, but that’s all stunts, that you see that, of course, at the beginning of any big hype cycle and whenever it starts to get interesting. What parts of it are durable? Probably not the toilet paper aspect, but who knows? Crazier things have happened. I would have said the same thing about Dogecoin many years ago, so what do I know?

Chitra Ragavan:

So, in the landscape of digital media and digital journalism, where do you see this fitting in the long term?

Zach Seward:

Well, I think there’s likely a few practical examples who are likely to become if not mainstream certainly adopted by certain parts of a media industry. One is in licensing. So, I was saying a moment ago, one easy way to think about NFTs is as a contract, and in the term of crypto world, the smart contracts. If you’re trying to facilitate allowing a lot of different potential customers to publish a photograph or a piece of writing that you own the copyright to, it gets really complicated really fast as organizations, like the Associated Press or Reuters or Getty Images. No. There are some distinct advantages to doing all of that on the blockchain. Right now, it’s too obscure. It includes you to use to actually to imagine that Getty or AP, you’re going to distribute their photos on the blockchain today. But as that user experience gets better, I do think that there’s some huge advantages for the licensing business in media that the blockchain technology generally can enable, and that would definitely involve NFTs.

Chitra Ragavan:

And so, you see it having a lasting influence on journalism and on the world, or is it a passing fancy?

Zach Seward:

Yeah. No, well, it’s like in that sense, it’s a more boring prosaic influence, but that could be a very significant revenue line for a lot of publishers that have not been able to really make much of their syndication businesses. So in that sense, yeah, very much a lasting way. To be clear, I see even more exciting applications of NFTs in media. A lot of them, I think, are more likely to emerge from independent or smaller media companies, and journalists striking out on their own, who in trying to find like the right business model to support their kind of work are quickly turning to models that are either are based on the blockchain or are inspired by it to let their fans, in essence, invest in them in ways that these tokens start to enable.

Zach Seward:

We have concepts like rally coins that are coins based on Beeple, and that have taken off. They’re valued based on how the community of fans investing in that person or the token representing that person value their work. It’s fraught in all sorts of ways, but I do think that there’s definitely a real trend there and we’re likely to see a lot more of that in media, especially among the smaller outlets and indie journalists.

Chitra Ragavan:

Given how long you’ve covered a cryptocurrency, blockchain, digital assets, I want to pull it back out of NFTs for a minute. You’ve seen so much volatility in the industry over the last few weeks and months and talk of regulation. Congress is getting interested. There’s just a lot of volatility, a lot of movement. How do you explain that to your readers right now? What are you seeing compared to where we were and where we’re going?

Zach Seward:

Speaking about the crypto markets and trading in cryptocurrency specifically, it’s a hypercharged version of the more traditional markets. Quartz’s view of traditional stock trading, to be honest, has been a little dismissive. I don’t think it’s wise to day trade or follow the market movements on a hourly basis, definitely subscribe to index fund approach to investing. Anything else is either for fun, which gambling, it’s fun as long as it’s done responsibly, or essentially financial instruments designed to generate profits onto themselves, which is its own cottage industry that we don’t cover.

Zach Seward:

So, a lot of what’s going on in cryptocurrency, it’s just the same thing, but even greater levels of speculation. I mean, again, if people want to be risking it all on these coins, just like any big risk, that it may well pay off, but it’s not what I think is… Well, I wouldn’t advise that. They had been taking that risk certainly, and it’s not what I think is most interesting about cryptocurrencies. There’s this weird paradox because it’s definitely what gets people interested. I’m not trying to be so self-righteous. I found it fascinating and follow it more closely when Dogecoin is a quintupling in price overnight. That is crazy and fun and interesting to watch, but it’s probably not the real story there.

Chitra Ragavan:

So, what interests you the most, would you say, at this point?

Zach Seward:

I do believe that the decentralized nature of the blockchain, and I would bet on the Ethereum blockchain if I had to, is the best bet we have to achieve some of the early principles of the early web. That’s why people are thinking or talking about Web3 as a version of the web that is based on the blockchain and blockchain concepts. That means applications that are totally decentralized and, of course, finance that can run in a decentralized way. I do think that is fascinating and important and has some important advantages over traditional finance systems. What needs to happen is it needs to get easier to use and more accessible to a broader group of people as fast as possible. The last year, there’s been enormous acceleration on that, but it can’t happen fast enough because… So, what most interests me are ways people are basically obscuring the blockchain parts of the blockchain.

Zach Seward:

So, there’s a startup called Magic, that all they do is help sites generate magic links to help you log into a website. You’re seeing, “Put your email here and then email me a link to login.” So, they’re a provider of that kind of service, but it’s done on the blockchain, but you would have no idea that that’s the case. There’s some advantages to doing it on the blockchain, that I’ll let them make the case for it, but it just works. This whole crypto space needs a lot more applications that just work. There’s a lot of good reasons why that has. That’s been slow and it’s complicated, but the faster that happens, the faster we get to what’s really interesting here, I think.

Chitra Ragavan:

So that eventually people don’t even realize they’re on the blockchain. They’re just doing their thing, like we take the Web 2.0 for granted.

Zach Seward:

Exactly. I’m not thinking for a moment about AWS has something to do with the Zoom that we’re having right now, but of course, in the background, that’s exactly what’s happening. I just don’t have to think about it because Zoom took care of that.

Chitra Ragavan:

Great. Well, Zach, thank you so much for joining me on Techtopia and for this amazing conversation and for explaining NFTs in a simple way. I guess I can now try to go convert this podcast episode into an NFT.

Zach Seward:

We got to split the proceeds if we do that.

Chitra Ragavan:

Absolutely. You got that. Let’s do it.

Zach Seward:

All right. That’s the creator economy.

Chitra Ragavan:

I love it. Zach Seward is the co-founder and CEO of Quartz, a digital business publication specializing in the analysis of the global economy and helping readers discover new industries, new markets and new ways of doing business that is more sustainable, innovative and inclusive. Seward is widely recognized as a leader in digital journalism and publications like Forbes, Crain’s New York Business, Digiday and FOLIO, where he’s been cited prior to joining Quartz, Seward worked at the Wall Street Journal first as a reporter covering education and health, then as the newspaper’s first social media editor. Prior to that, he was an assistant editor at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab covering the media industry. This is Techtopia. I’m Chitra Ragavan.

After decades of secrecy, the US Government last week shared a new report about unidentified flying objects or UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence. The bottom line: more studies are needed, the report said, raising more questions than it answered.

Renowned astrophysicist Adam Frank says there’s little evidence to show a correlation between UFO sightings and extraterrestrial intelligence.

In May, Frank wrote a guest essay in the New York Times titled, “I’m a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. UFOs Don’t Impress Me.”

But he argues that the groundbreaking work done over the past thirty years in identifying exoplanets, combined with clues from astrobiology and technosignatures, could help us find signs of life if they exist outside our solar system.

A professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and a leading expert on the final stages of evolution for stars like the sun, Frank won a NASA Grant a year ago to fund his study of so-called “technosignatures.” Technosignatures are clues of past or present technology used on other planets. This is the first NASA non-radio technosignature grant ever awarded and represents an exciting new phase in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

A self-described “evangelist of science,” Frank is a frequent commentator on NPR. He also is the co-founder of NPR’s blog 13.8 Cosmos and Culture.  His most recent book is called, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and The Fate of the Earth.

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UFOs are back in the news. After decades of secrecy, the American public and especially UFO-believers are waiting for a report from the Defense Department to Congress this month. The report is expected to reveal what our military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies know, and don’t know, about unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs. That’s the government’s fancy new terminology for UFOs.

The upcoming report would have been a wish-come-true for Bryant and Helen Reeve. Between 1953 and 1955 — one of the most prolific periods in U.S. history for UFO sightings — the Detroit couple traveled 23,000 miles over that two-year period conducting a  detailed “oral history” of so-called “saucerers” — those who had witnessed flying saucers.

The Reeves documented their oral history in a fascinating book called “Flying Saucer Pilgrimage,” published in 1957, describing in great detail their interaction with these UFO “contactees.” I had the pleasure of talking to their grandson, my friend Bryan Cunningham about the prescience of some of their assertions in light of the upcoming report, and how their extraordinary UFO journey influenced his life and career in national security and intelligence.

Cunningham is executive director of the UC Irvine Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute. He’s an international expert on cybersecurity law and policy, a former White House lawyer and adviser, and a media commentator on cybersecurity, technology, and surveillance issues.

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Chitra Ragavan:

UFOs are back in the news. After decades of secrecy, the American public and especially UFO believers are waiting eagerly for a report from the defense department to Congress this month. The report is expected to reveal what our military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies know, and most importantly, don’t know about unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs. That’s the government’s fancy new terminology for UFOs. Hello, everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan, and this is Techtopia.

Chitra Ragavan:

The upcoming report would have been a wish come true for Bryant and Helen Reeve. Between 1953 and 1955, one of the most prolific periods in US history for UFO sightings, that Detroit Michigan couple traveled 23,000 miles over a two-year period, conducting a detailed oral history of so-called sorcerers. Those who had witnessed flying saucers. The Reeves documented their oral history in a fascinating book called Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, published in 1957. Here now to tell us more about Bryant and Helen Reeve and their extraordinary UFO journey is the grandson, my friend, Brian Cunningham. Cunningham is executive director of the Cybersecurity Policy and Research Institute at UC Irvine. He’s an international expert on cybersecurity law and policy, a former White House lawyer and advisor, and a media commentator on cybersecurity, technology and surveillance issues. Brian, welcome to Techtopia.

Bryan Cunningham:

Thank you, Chitra. It’s wonderful to be here. I don’t know if I’m the only person who’s appeared on both of your excellent podcasts, but I’m happy to be one of them. I really like the Techtopia approach. It’s been great so far. Hopefully I won’t ruin it today.

Chitra Ragavan:

Oh, it’s an honor and privilege, Brian. 67 years ago, on December 16th, 1954, your grandparents, Bryant and Helen Reeves, wrote a letter to president Dwight Eisenhower and they were not happy with him. What was their beef with the president and what was their advice to him?

Bryan Cunningham:

It’s fascinating for me to read this telex in the book as an intelligence officer. Just think about the fact for a second, that this was literally using the Telegraph. And as they say in the book, I think they were sending it from Mexico and they paid 52 pesos to send it, but what they were really doing and if they were alive today, what I’m sure they would have done is they were filing a freedom of information act request. There was no legal mechanism for them to do that in 1954. So in some ways we’ve come a long ways.

Bryan Cunningham:

What they essentially were saying to president Eisenhower was, “We deeply admire you, great war hero. You should overrule all of the Luddites in the Department of Defense that work for you and release everything the government knows about UFOs. We have a constitutional right to know,” they said. And furthermore, the air of secrecy that the US government, in their view, was putting around the subject matter was so different from what a lot of other countries were doing in terms of talking about it openly, that it actually made people much more fearful than they needed to be. I would say finally, this piece of mail has been answered with the new report.

Chitra Ragavan:

For you personally, it must be fascinating because you are in the national security space, you’re an expert on surveillance, but also on civil liberties and privacy. The fact that they were asking president Eisenhower, be transparent, be open, do your duty to your citizens, it must be really eerie almost to see that given where you are today.

Bryan Cunningham:

Well, I have multiple minds about this entire subject, which is perhaps appropriate given some of the metaphysical philosophies that my grandparents discussed in the book. As a trained intelligence officer, I’m supposed to focus on the facts, and just the facts as Joe Friday would have said on Dragnet. But part of what people don’t realize about intelligence analysis is that in most cases is much more art than science because by definition, if you are the president, you have to turn to your intelligence services to explain something to you. It means you don’t know everything about it. So we’re trained also to be very comfortable with putting ourselves out on a limb and interpreting uncertainty. So to me, the fact that my grandparents were pretty candid and repeated in saying, “We don’t know everything, we probably don’t know much of anything, but we’re trying to connect the dots with the information that we do have,” is very consistent with what I would do as an intelligence officer.

Bryan Cunningham:

Now, I’m not saying in any way, shape or form that I agree with or endorse everything that’s in this book, but the process that they went through, and my grandfather was a trained engineer, is not that different from what you would do if you were an intelligence analyst and you were faced with very little information. I’ll also know just as a strange historic echo, they might say, or frequency vibration, that one of my first jobs as a baby lawyer at the Central Intelligence Agency was processing Freedom of Information Act request. And one of the most common Freedom of Information Act request that we would get is tell us everything you know about the UFOs. This was in the mid nineties, and it was so common that we actually had a package that was pre-created. And when we got a letter, or I guess probably was before an email, we got a letter under the Freedom of Information Act, we would just send out this package of information. So it’s strange how these things echo through, at least my history.

Chitra Ragavan:

In that package, was it mostly denial? What was it, I’m curious to know, how did you approach it?

Bryan Cunningham:

Well, let me caveat that by saying that I’m operating now on what, 30-year-old memories plus. It was newspaper articles, but it was also as I recall, and I’m sure one of your listeners probably could find this somewhere on the internet, that it also included government documents that had been redacted. You’re familiar having read the book and become versed in this subject and read the New Yorker piece, about Project Blue Book. Well, Project Blue Book was a real thing that the air force conducted and they really did create actual reports. In fact, I can’t prove this, but I believe I remember my grandmother in the seventies actually having a document that purported to be a redacted version of Project Blue Book report. And now you can go on Amazon and get it. I haven’t done that for this podcast, but my guess is if you flip through that book, you would see a lot of the same redacted documents that were in the CIA Freedom of Information Act request.

Chitra Ragavan:

Former president Barack Obama recently made, I thought it was a stunning admission acknowledgement. He said to talk show host James cordon, that there are footage and records of objects in the sky that we don’t know how they move their trajectory, and that people take it seriously that they’re trying to investigate and figure out what that is. He also said that it was one of the first things he asked about upon taking office. You’re a former top CIA lawyer, former Justice Department prosecutor, cybersecurity, national security expert. What do you make of his admission?

Bryan Cunningham:

You have to believe that that is one of the first questions almost any president asks when they step into the Oval Office for the first time, especially given the famous scene in Independence Day, where the president tells a civilian, “Oh, that’s ridiculous. We don’t have anything in Roswell.” Then as CIA director says, “Excuse me, sir, but that’s not entirely accurate.” What is a huge sign of the changing times is that you actually now have a former president who is willing to say that in public. Former presidents are not free to say anything they want. As a sitting president, you can make a decision on the spot to declassify information. As a former president, you don’t have that authority. So my guess is that at some point since he’s left office, president Obama cleared that statement with whoever was the current president at the time. I don’t know if he did it under Trump or Biden, but it’s, I think, really, really important for a couple of reasons.

Bryan Cunningham:

One is, it shows our people, the American people and people around the world, that we’re willing to at least be somewhat transparent about these issues. The second thing, and I hadn’t really focused on this until I re-read Bryant and Helen’s book, is throughout at least modern history, most people who have had the nerve to publicly acknowledge and talk about unidentified flying objects have been ostracized and marginalized and attacked and insulted and they can’t do that anymore. Well, I suppose people who think president Obama lies in public about things like this can still do that, but very much harder to marginalize a journalist or a private researcher as my grandparents were once you have a president who has acknowledged the possibility.

Chitra Ragavan:

If they were here today, given their very specific advice to president Eisenhower, which eerily the seven recommendations that they had most of that is actually coming true today, including encouraging people in the military to report these sightings as you’ve actually seen happen in the last month or two. But if they were here today and given that president Obama’s comments, what would your grandparents’ reaction be, do you think?

Bryan Cunningham:

I think if they had lived till this day and had lived through the previous 70 years of no president doing that, they would be very angry that it took this long. I think they would be surprised at it took this long based on what they wrote in the book. I think they would be happy that it’s finally been done, but I think they would re-recommend a commission of unimpeachable outside experts to be given access to all the classified information and write a public report that was subject to minimal government control.

Bryan Cunningham:

I don’t think they would say, declassify everything if it’s a threat to our security, legitimate threat to our security, but don’t keep things secret just because we think people are going to be frightened or that it will cause too much controversy. I think they had a lot more faith, frankly, in the common sense and wisdom and rationality of American voters than a lot of our politicians do. I think they would say, bring it on. We can handle it.

Chitra Ragavan:

Tell us what you know and remember about your grandparents. How are you related to them and do you remember them talking to you about UFOs?

Bryan Cunningham:

Well, my actual middle name is Bryant with a T. We don’t like to talk about the H word, my first name. I dropped the T sometime in my twenties because no one could pronounce Bryant Cunningham, but I’m actually named after Austin Bryant Reeve, although I’m actually not related to him by blood. He was my father’s mother’s second or third, it’s a little bit left to the midst of history, husband. Helen Reeve is my blood grandfather, but Bryant Reeve is not a relation of mine. I went back and actually pulled his obituary in preparation for this. And he died earlier than I thought. He died in 1968. I was less than six years old, I was about six years old when he died. I have very few memories of my life at that age. I don’t remember much about Bryant Reeve, but I do remember that he was very formal, but also very warm and incredibly analytic.

Bryan Cunningham:

He’s a trained engineer and he chose his words very carefully and he didn’t tend to, as far as I could tell at that age, and I’ve also talked to my older brother who had a lot more contact with him, he didn’t tend to just fly off the handle and speculate. So to read everything that’s in the book, again, it’s not that I think it’s all real, but I think he would have been careful about at least being able to source most of the things he said to another person. My grandmother, Helen Reeve, I remember a lot more because she didn’t die until the mid eighties. It’s interesting if you look them up on Amazon, there’s a second book, it’s called The Advent of the Cosmic Viewpoint. I was unable to get a copy of it, but her name is not on that book.

Bryan Cunningham:

So it makes me wonder, did he start to be a little bit more out there in her view and she didn’t want her name on the second book? I don’t know, my brothers don’t know, my father and my mother are long gone. Helen Reeve at the end of her life, when I knew her best, was pretty beaten down by life. She’d been a single mom during the Depression and had had a lot of hardship in her life, not withstanding the fact that she got this great adventure in the fifties. I remember her as not all that pleasant to be around, but I’m reminded of a line from some movie that I can’t remember. We can go dab it in later if I find it. That the main character might’ve been filled of dreams, the main character at one point says, “I only knew my father when he was old and broken.” And to be able to meet, if he was filled of dreams, meet his father and see him as a young person, I think he was a very different person.

Bryan Cunningham:

I think a lot of what’s in the book that’s more colorful and descriptive and anecdotal is probably her because she was very open to all kinds of ideas. I think she was a little bit, by the time the seventies rolled around, of I don’t want to say a coop, but let me give you an example. My grandfather was dead by this point, she had a garage full of powdered food that had there been a nuclear Holocaust, presumably she would have lived on like a survivalist would do now. But of course, it makes no sense because if you survive a nuclear war, you’re never going to have time to eat the powdered food that’s in your garage, because if you don’t have a bunker, you’ll be gone. She was, I think followed all her life by the work that they did with the UFOs. I think they really believed that without the intervention of some higher power, we would blow ourselves up. Thank goodness they were wrong about that at least up until now.

Chitra Ragavan:

Did she speak to you about UFOs and to your parents and how did they feel about all this? I mean, your dad was a minister. So I would imagine he had some very definite thoughts on all of this.

Bryan Cunningham:

It’s really interesting to have read or re-read this book 20 years after my father’s death. I recall him being quite embarrassed at the entire topic of this book. He didn’t want to talk about it with my brothers. I think he probably would have preferred that we never read it. At the time when I was probably in my teens to thirties, is when we would have talked about this occasionally. I assumed that the reason he was so embarrassed about it or didn’t want to talk about it was that he just felt it was kooky and he didn’t like the fact that he came from the stock of people that would buy into this stuff. But then later, as I read the book, I thought a lot of what informed my father’s philosophy is in the book. Most importantly, he would tell me, and this is certainly not the Episcopal churches doctrine. He was an Episcopal minister.

Bryan Cunningham:

He would tell me, I’ve never forgot, that if there is a higher being or higher consciousness or God and they want it to universally inform humanity, it’s ridiculous to expect that they would reveal themselves, she would reveal herself, whatever, in the same way, in the same form, with the same words to societies all across human history and with all different cultures and languages. I remember him saying, “If you look at the fundamental tenets of the great religions and even most other religious beliefs, they’re really quite similar.” His theory was that this was not that there were a hundred different supreme beings. It was that whatever’s out there revealed itself to different cultures in different ways. If you read the book, pretty much what they say.

Chitra Ragavan:

How did it all get started with your grandparents and this UFO adventure? I think it started at a dinner party or something in their house.

Bryan Cunningham:

Yeah, based on my conversations with my brother, they were socialites to some extent, I don’t think they were extremely wealthy, but they must’ve had a fair amount of resources to be able to just drop everything and go on this 23,000 mile drive. But they would have salons in their apartment or their condo in Detroit. They would have friends over to talk about different ideas and different things that were happening. None of us, three brothers, have any recollection of it, I wasn’t alive, but it’s very consistent with the way my brother described them. That they would have at one of these salons, as they talk about it in the first chapter of the book, had an intellectually curious friend who said, “Hey, I just read this book by a guy who is researching flying saucers and wasn’t interesting.”

Bryan Cunningham:

Then they, according to the book, which is consistent with what my brother remembers about them, had enough means to be semi-retired and just go on this pilgrimage to try to record their understanding of what the people who claim to have had encounters with flying saucers believed. I think there’s clearly an evolution in the book. I think at the beginning, if you believe the narrator, my grandfather was very skeptical and not even particularly interested in it. Then it just, the ball got rolling and they met more and more and more people that whether they were credible or not, they found them to be credible. They just, some would say, went deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Others would say went deeper and deeper into the investigation. You can just tell that they were consumed by it. They read tons of stuff. Both of my brothers have this memory, by the way, I don’t. Both of my brothers have a memory many, many, many years later, of going to their home in Virginia Beach and having an entire office filled with books about UFOs with reel-to-reel tape recording of interviews with saucers.

Bryan Cunningham:

It scared my brothers, both of them at different times, they’re both little kids, scared them to the point where one of my brothers called his mother and insisted that he be sent home. And he was, he left. I don’t remember it that way at all. I remember the books being around and I remember my grandmother, I remember Bryant Reeve was gone by the time I had much contact with him. I remember her telling me stories about UFOs and I have a memory of going out in the backyard and having her point to the sky and there was a shooting star too and her saying that could be one of them. But I never was afraid by it. I don’t know if that’s just a difference in what was happening in the world when I got exposed to it, or maybe she somehow presented it in a less threatening way than my grandfather did for my older brother, but I was never afraid by it. I don’t think she was afraid by it. What she was more afraid of, as I said, is that the higher beings would fail to prevent humanity from destroying itself.

Chitra Ragavan:

Reading the book, it was interesting how some of these cast of characters were straight out of central casting. I mean, this stories were so implausible in some ways and yet there was something about it. Your grandparents, like you said, didn’t show a lot of skepticism. They were just doing what we talked about as an oral history. But a lot of the other people were either highly educated, like your grandpa who was MIT Yale trained engineer, or they were technical. They had technical skills, even if they had gotten just out of high school, mostly male. That added some element of credibility. The fact that they had technical skills, some of them worked at Lockheed with Howard Hughes. It was really an interesting mix of people.

Bryan Cunningham:

Yeah. There’s another thread to it that I picked up on, which is, some of them were, as you say, had some technical or mechanical abilities and background, but were in, I think my grandfather’s view who was a Yale MIT elite. He was really one of the elite. You get this feeling that he, in some ways, gave more credibility to the salt of the earth people that he talks about, particularly there’s a Mexican chauffer he talks about. He talks about their humbleness and their lack of grandiosity and their lack of self aggrandizement and their plainspokeness. It feels to a 21st century reader, a little bit elitist and condescending, and maybe it was, but I think what he’s trying to say is these people were really too honest and too plainspoken to be making it all up. That’s what I took away from that part of it.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah, definitely. And that was a recurring theme and there were other recurring themes as well. One was you mentioned your grandma having this garage full of powdered milk, but one of the main themes of was the nuclear war. The sense that maybe that had something to do with these flying saucers. That they were some kind of weapons vehicles or things like that. You see that throughout the book and they’re concerned about it and other people are concerned about it. So just put this in the context of history of where we were at that time period.

Bryan Cunningham:

Well, of course I wasn’t around, but I am a bit of a science fiction fan. They say that the science fiction of any particular era quite directly reflects the prevailing anxieties at the time. And if you look at science fiction that was produced, for example, in the 2000s after 9/11, it’s very allegorical to 9/11. I think what people in the fifties and sixties were reacting to was this overarching threat of nuclear destruction. I’m old enough to remember in middle school having to do the exercises where we got under our desk, that was going to protect us if there was a really a nuclear war, but having a lot of angst about that. I think that informs a lot of their writing.

Bryan Cunningham:

There’s also somewhat shocking to me, very direct references to what we would now call climate change. I haven’t been able to go back and do the research to determine whether a lot of these ideas that are in their book, fear of nuclear war, fear of climate change. This idea that there are higher beings out there that are here but they’re not scary because they’re protecting us. The ideas that eventually we’ll have a society where money doesn’t matter, where humans can pursue their learning and their higher selves, where there’s no need for governments or law enforcement or war. A lot of the stuff in the book, and I actually marked them with a special color post-its, are the animating ideas behind Star Trek. Like I said, I haven’t gone back to see if all these ideas were just floating around out there in the fifties and sixties, which I suspect, or Gene Roddenberry plagiarized from my grandparents. But if so, I want my damn royalties, Gene Roddenberry.

Chitra Ragavan:

And you would know because you’re a big Star Trek fan.

Bryan Cunningham:

It is quite remarkable, all kidding aside. Lots of these pages in the book could have been written by Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek. Again, I don’t know if this was what was out there and everyone was thinking it, or he did research and came across this book and others, but it’s pretty striking. It’s also, there’s a lot of things in there that if you read them in a certain way, and I suppose I’m biased to have a positive read of it, but if you read them a certain way, they’re quite prophetic.

Bryan Cunningham:

We talked about the telegram to president Eisenhower, the notion that we might have to face climate change one day. And there’s another thing. They talk a lot about the idea that humans view the universe as empty space, outer space as empty, except where we can see physical things like planets, like stars, like galaxies. And their argument is, I don’t know where they picked this up in their travels, but what their philosophy was, was that no, no, no. That makes no sense. The universe is probably actually full, outer space is probably full of objects and beings. But humans, in our current stage of development, don’t have the ability to understand that.

Bryan Cunningham:

Well, guess what just came out in the last couple of years? The proof of the existence of dark matter, which is, as I understand it, I’m no physicist, but is what scientists now believe occupies a lot of the space in which we can’t see anything. That it’s out there, the truth is out there, it’s out there, but we don’t yet have the ability to measure it and understand it and process it. So some of that stuff gives you a little bit of chills when you read it in the mid 21st century.

Chitra Ragavan:

The most prophetic chapter in the book is the one where you’re strolling along and they’re talking about all these people they’ve met. All of them have seen UFOs and these great descriptions and narratives, both in the US and then they go on to Mexico for their wrap or retired for their big Mexico adventure post retirement. They start saying that they themselves saw a UFO. And then there’s the chapter where they meet up with a person who they describe as a clairvoyant and a clairaudient, that’s the first time I heard that word, a medium or what they call a cosmic telephone, a man by the name of Mark Probert. Then they’re now talking to some inner circle of wise people, maybe aliens, maybe not. Talk about that chapter because that is a big in the narrative, then starts to talk about the universe as we know it.

Bryan Cunningham:

Yeah, to say the least. Yeah. When I would describe this book to people, I read it when I was a teenager and I hadn’t read it again until this week, when I describe this book to people, I would always say, “Okay, you’re going along for the first half of it. And it’s weird. They’re writing down some very weird stuff, but it’s always them reporting what someone else told them.” Initially without judgment, and then I think as the narrative goes on, they become a little more predisposed to just believe these people and give them credibility and then full stop, they’re conversing with the aliens.

Bryan Cunningham:

I always thought that’s probably where my dad got super embarrassed. He didn’t want us to think that we had blood flowing in us of people who felt like they talked to the aliens. The way I remembered it all these years was it just happened. All of a sudden, there’s just a transcript of their conversation with the aliens. It’s actually not that way. As you say, what they spent two whole chapters, I think, first of all, preparing the reader that they’re about to go off the rails and maybe you want to get off the train now, almost in those words. And then describing this person, Mark Probert and their conversations with him that led up to the Q&A with the aliens. And if you Google, which I’m sure you have some of the figures in the book, including Mark Probert, they’ll often take you to webpages of things like pseudo science or fake science or charlatans or kooks.

Bryan Cunningham:

I did some of that research because I wanted to see if my grandparents appeared in any of those, which I don’t think they do, but Probert does. They talk a lot about how he wasn’t, I guess, even primarily a saucer as my grandparents would say, he was a medium. They called him a sensitive, someone who claimed that they could speak to other intelligences and other beings. You think of a medium, you normally think of someone that says they can converse with your grandparents who are dead at a seance. So as you say, it’s not even so much that Probert claims to be getting replies to my grandparents questions from space people. It’s this wise council of elders, I would say, that’s my word, not theirs, from throughout human and alien history who are not necessarily the space people, but they’re relating what they think the space people are. And supposedly this council has something like perfect knowledge.

Bryan Cunningham:

I would love to know, and I don’t think there’s any way to find out now because my older brother doesn’t remember. The mechanics of how this happened was my grandfather sitting in a room with Probert who was typing. Because they talk about how sometimes he’ll just type things and he won’t know what he’s typing and sometimes it’s in other languages and all that. Because what’s striking about the whole episode, whether or not you believe there’s any truth to any of it, is somebody that was involved in that knew an awful lot about an awful lot of things that are accurate in terms of global history, in terms of religious tenets, in terms of ancient philosophies and societies.

Bryan Cunningham:

If it was any real time thing where my grandfather is sitting there with Probert and Probert’s typing, or more impressively yet reciting things that my grandfather is typing down, that’s pretty breathtaking. Because that means somebody, I’m assuming there’s no inner counsel and he wasn’t actually conversing with higher beings. But if he wasn’t, somebody, Bryant Reeve, Mark Probert or someone else knew an awful lot about an awful lot of things, which would be breathtaking. I think what’s more likely is they probably mailed him the questions and he sent them back answers. In which case, theoretically, he could have researched it all. But even then it’s pretty impressive, the breadth of what he talks about.

Chitra Ragavan:

And that’s where the book becomes almost an anthology of man’s struggle for enlightenment and preventing global warming and environmental and nuclear destruction. It just simply, it’s just a complete change in tone and feel of the book. It’s fascinating.

Bryan Cunningham:

Yeah. And I think they almost say that in so many words. It’s almost like they get to the point where they determine that the existence or nonexistence of flying saucers is not important. What’s important is the, they would probably say essential cosmic truths that sometimes get relayed to us in their worldview, by people from what we would think of as other planets or outer space, but sometimes not. Sometimes it comes to you in a dream. Sometimes it comes to Mark Probert in a dream. Sometimes you find it in ancient native American writing. Sometimes you’ll find it in Indian writings. It’s almost like Bryant Reeve got bored with whether or not flying saucers are real and shifted entirely into this really metaphysical, philosophical, religious discussion. Because he tries pretty hard also to tie these concepts that supposedly are being told to us by the space people, to Christian religion in the Bible. I would say it’s not entirely successful, but he makes a pretty good run at it.

Bryan Cunningham:

You really get the feeling that they closed, metaphorically closed the book on flying saucers and moved entirely into this philosophical realm. I would cite one other piece of evidence for that, as I mentioned, the other book that’s published under his name is called The Advent of the Cosmic Viewpoint. I could not find a copy of that book, but my older brother recalls that that second book has almost nothing to do with flying saucers. It’s entirely about mysticism and philosophy and whatever other ideas were floating around in the early sixties at that point.

Chitra Ragavan:

One of my favorite things in the book is where they say, “We’ve broken the sound barrier. Now it’s time for us to break the cosmic barrier.” Which I thought was really amazing.

Bryan Cunningham:

Yeah. Well, this is another thing. They go through this whole theory and they try to convince you that the right metaphor is a television, which is interesting because that would have just been brand new technology when they were writing. Where they go through this whole theory that the reason why humans at our stage of evolution don’t see these, most of us, don’t see these other planes of existence where these other beings are. Interestingly enough, my grandfather’s theory is there are beings on other planes of existence that are much more advanced than we are and much less advanced than we are. It’s not universally saying that every other type of being is more advanced than we are, but the analogy he uses is that the universe “vibrates at different frequencies.” And that if you were watching a television in the early fifties when he was writing, that you would only be able to receive and understand the world as it was transmitted on the frequencies that your television antenna was able to pick up.

Bryan Cunningham:

That if you could tune into different frequencies, you would see a whole other type of existence. Well, 2021, there’s a lot of physicists who believe that there are infinite numbers of parallel universes of existence, and we just can’t see them. In fact, Einstein’s theory, which would have been accessible to my grandfather at the time, so I certainly wouldn’t say my grandfather created this, but Einstein’s theory of space-time is basically that there’s a continuum of space and time. And if you can bend it, which Einstein predicted massive black holes, for example could do, you could immediately be transported between universes. They’re using different words, but they’re saying the same thing.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. They so much that is coming true today, or at least is relevant in our conversations today, especially climate change. And the fact that the department of defense is actually admitting that they do have an unidentified aerial phenomenon task force, something that would have been a welcomed development to your grandparents had they been here today, and to all those people who’ve been told that they’re really imagining things. We just don’t know what it is yet, but as your grandparents noted several times in their book, many other countries in Europe, nations such as Brazil have been open to the idea of UFOs going back decades. Now, you’ve been in many, many classified environments in intelligence and law enforcement positions, you provided legal advice to the president and the National Security advisor, the National Security Council. What is the secrecy and denial around UFOs say about our national security culture, if anything good and bad?

Bryan Cunningham:

Well, first of all, I think it’s just tremendous that these Navy and Air Force pilots are now being allowed to tell their stories and being backed up by the Pentagon releasing the videos. Again, one of the things my grandparents talked so much about is how anyone who spoke out about these things even 70 years ago, was subject to endless ridicule and dismissal. That’s what’s so important about what president Obama said and about the fact that they’re going to release this report. Although we can talk about it later, I suspect there’s going to be less than meets the eye there. But it gives credibility to these pilots who want to tell their story and they’re being allowed to tell their story. And I have to say, the radar images and the video that the Defense Department has released, coupled with the narrative of these pilots, again, is very, very consistent with the types or the shapes of these objects, the way they can move, the lack of any visible source of propulsion, the speeds they can attain, how they can blink in and out of the sensors.

Bryan Cunningham:

That’s all very consistent with lots of stuff that’s in the book. And also things like Winston Churchill, one of his senior air officers during World War II claimed that he had fought these things. By the way, little aside here, I don’t know if it fits anywhere in the final podcast, but they have this whole chapter on definitions. And one of their definitions talks about a type of saucer-like things flaming balls, they called them, that pilots in World War II on the allied side would see and assume were German secret weapons. And the German pilots would see and assume they were American secret weapons. And now putting on my musician hat for a second, those were called foo fighters, F-O-O fighters. So I looked this up and sure enough, that’s where the band, the foo fighters got their name.

Chitra Ragavan:

Fascinating.

Bryan Cunningham:

Yeah. But let me just say one other thing, which I think is really important. And others have said this too, but having been in senior intelligence, National Security positions, if the videos that the pilots have commented on have been released, if any of them are accurate, if there are non-natural phenomenon that can move the way those things move and have the technology that they have to have, I hope to God that that’s alien technology. Because if it’s the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranians or any other nation on earth, we are in deep, deep trouble because that technology, I’ve seen it described as thousands of years ahead of ours.

Chitra Ragavan:

Wow. And that is one of the concerns according to leaked information, in advance of this report being released, that the concern in the US government is if this were Russian or Chinese or Iranian technology, that they’re experimenting with hypersonic speed, that that would be a real concern. But won’t you be more worried if it were aliens who had that technology more than the Russians and the Chinese?

Bryan Cunningham:

No, because any civilization who had the ability to reach earth from what would have to be, unless you believe in the alternate planes of existence, light years to hundreds of light years beyond our solar system and to do the things it does, that society would undoubtedly be capable of destroying humanity if they wanted to. Particularly if they’ve really been here since at least the fifties. And as you know in the book, they quote a lot of other prior books that said they’ve been here forever. That there’s evidence in ancient native American writings and others for that. If they have that capability and they haven’t destroyed us yet, one, probably pretty good evidence they don’t want to. And two, if they decide they want to, there’s probably nothing we can do about it anyway. Whereas the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians, we really do have to be prepared to protect our security against them.

Chitra Ragavan:

One of my favorite sentences, speaking of native Americans, is that they had referred to these things that they had seen as flying tortillas. I thought that was really sweet.

Bryan Cunningham:

Yes, as you know, there’s a whole Mexican road trip in the book. And Mexico is one of those places that they quote as being, the government being much more open to allowing people to talk about this stuff. They made friends, according to them, with a newspaper editor at a pretty large, what sounded to me like a pretty large newspaper in Mexico city who was writing about this stuff week in, week out. Which gets a little bit the same point I wanted to make about the pilots. According to the reading I’ve done, and I think some of them have even said this in interviews, it wasn’t like they saw these things once every blue moon, they saw them every day for years when they’re out on their training missions in the early to mid, well, from like 2005 to 2017.

Bryan Cunningham:

Another hypothesis for what are referred to as UFOs could actually be, is top secret US government technology. The debunkers will say, “Well, of course the government is never going to let it be known that we have this sort of technology.” So they’re going to try to marginalize any talk about it by letting people think it’s UFOs. Well, I don’t doubt that that might’ve been true back in the forties and fifties. We know that we were testing the U2 spy plane, we know we were testing the SR71. We know now that that was happening in areas like Area 51 around that area. But today, I don’t think that explanation cuts it because if these were top secret US government technology development programs, you would think that the government would be smart enough to not order Navy and Air Force pilots with video cameras and radar to fly in the same area we were testing those devices day in day out for years, that would be pretty stupid.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. In fact, a recent New York Times report that had some of this advanced information on this upcoming report said that the officials that they spoke to said it was definitely not American technology, which is why they’re concerned about it. I’m curious, and you don’t have to say one way or the other, because at some point you probably want to get another National Security clearance, but how do you feel about UFOs and flying saucers and how did your grandparents belief in them influence your life for good or bad?

Bryan Cunningham:

Well, taking the second one first, I think in preparing for this podcast, I’ve realized that it probably had a lot more influence on me than I thought when, and I had completely forgotten about this until we started talking about doing the podcast. When I was eight years old, I starred in a little small town theater production of a play called Let’s Go to the Moon, a fantasy for children in three acts. And it’s about this little boy, it was written in the fifties, interestingly enough, but it was about this little boy who is ridiculed by his sisters and his friends because he doesn’t want to play with the normal stuff. He doesn’t want to hear about fairytales and [inaudible 00:47:29] and things like that. He wants to go to the moon and be an astronaut. He has a dream where he gets to go to the moon and it turns out all the fairytale characters are real and they live on the moon and he gets to meet them and then he comes back to his real life.

Bryan Cunningham:

It’s a little bit ripped off from The Wizard of Oz, but nonetheless, I had totally forgotten I was in that. And I have to believe that either in this small town, my grandmother actually somehow got them to produce this play because it was related to space travel, or at least strongly encouraged me to go do it. I don’t have a recollection of that, but I know I wasn’t a theater person at that point. After the play, when I was 11 years old, my grandmother, Helen Reeve, paid for a trip to Mexico with my father and I and she. I remember it extremely well because not only was it the first time I’d ever gotten on an airplane, it was the first time I’d ever gotten out of Ohio, and I was 11.

Bryan Cunningham:

I remember that we went to five or six different places. I don’t remember all of them, but they were not necessarily obvious places you would go visit if you’re going to be a tourist in Mexico in 1973 or something. I had forgotten most of the details of the trip, except I remember my grandmother was very insistent, sometimes making my dad very impatient and upset, that we visit certain places. Sometimes they were just open fields. What triggered this memory is in the book, they have a photograph of the Insurgentes or Insurgentes Theater in Mexico city. And I definitely remember her insisting that we fight through Mexico city traffic to go see that theater. I remember that facade of that theater, it’s in black and white and the book, but it’s super colorful native Mexican painting on it. As I was talking to both of my brothers getting ready for this podcast, my older brother said, when I mentioned this trip, he said, “Oh yeah, that’s known in the family as the UFO field trip.”

Bryan Cunningham:

I had forgotten this, but what she did is she dragged my dad and I to places in Mexico that she felt had significant UFO related events. And that theater is described in the book as the place where a very large, one of these UFO lectures took place in Mexico. But some of the places we went were just in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t have a specific memory of this, but filling in the blanks, I’m pretty sure she was taking us to places that she thought people had had encounters with saucers.

Chitra Ragavan:

That’s amazing.

Bryan Cunningham:

So there’s that. And then I’ve always had strong curiosity about anything having to do with time travel faster than light travel issues in space. I don’t have enough scientific or mathematical ability or background to really be an astrophysicist or anything like that, but I’ve always been really interested in that stuff. I suppose maybe there’s a small part of me that hoped subconsciously that if I got more and more and higher and higher security clearances, someday I would be sitting in a meeting and I would learn the truth that’s out there. Not that that’s what motivated me to be an intelligence officer, but I have to believe that was a little bit in the back of my mind.

Bryan Cunningham:

To answer your $64,000 question, I have never been briefed, classified or unclassified, with information that would answer the question, is the earth being visited by beings from another space or another dimension, or whether UFOs are real? I have, however, been briefed on a lot of things that at the time I learned of them, and some of them still now to this day, average people would find very difficult to believe, but I know that they’re true. So I keep a very open mind about it, is the first part of the answer.

Bryan Cunningham:

Second part of the answer is just math. I forget the analogies that are used, but there are probably billions or hundreds of billions or trillions of planets that astronomers and astrophysicists know about in the universe. And there’s probably many, many more than that that they don’t know about. And then within that, I believe astrophysics already identified dozens, if not hundreds of planets that theoretically based on their distance from their stars, could support human life. So for us to sit here and think that we’re the only intelligent life in the universe is not only arrogant, but also just inconsistent with math. And that math assumes that other intelligent life in the universe is like us. If it’s not like us, if it doesn’t need to breathe oxygen and nitrogen, if it’s not carbon-based, then the numbers are infinite. So I’m keeping an open mind.

Bryan Cunningham:

As an intelligence officer, I think we’ll see what’s in this report, but I think you have to believe that the balance of likelihood is tipping in favor of the fact that there are other civilizations capable of travel here. As has been pointed out in the New Yorker article and elsewhere, these are not Mexican chauffeurs, no offense to Mexican chauffeurs, that are filing these video reports. These are pilots in the United States military that we spend millions of dollars to train to be observers. They need to be able to determine in a split second if something that’s coming at them as a Russian MIG fighter jet or an American fighter jet, or a civilian airliner. The idea that this growing number of former pilots, and I’m sure there’s a lot more that will come out, backed up by video and radar, are all hallucinating or wrong, or seeing the same weather balloons or whatever the other explanations are. That’s getting highly unlikely in my view.

Chitra Ragavan:

So will this report raise more questions than it answers?

Bryan Cunningham:

I think it’s likely that it will, and I think it’ll be a Rorschach test too, a lot of these things. I think people who want to believe and are not threatened by believing that we’re being visited by unidentified aerial phenomenon, as they call them, will believe it and they’ll be happy about it. People that are in the business of debunking these things will probably find statements and citations in the report that they can use to debunk it. But if the leaks are true, I think the report will say that there are, I might get this number slightly wrong, but I feel like I read 120 incidents stated in the report that they cannot explain. That’s a lot because they’ve been at this, well, some believe the US government’s been at this for 70 years, but for sure, this Pentagon task force has been at it for 16 years.

Bryan Cunningham:

If this report went through the same process that a US government official intelligence analysis document, what we used to call an intelligence estimate, actually went through, it was subjected to very rigorous argument within the various agencies of the US intelligence community, and probably would contain a number of footnotes where one or more intelligence agencies dissented from a particular point. If that stuff is omitted, if we just see the stuff that’s in the project Blue Book report and not the debate among the intelligence services about the accuracy of various parts of the report, then I think it probably will raise more questions than answers. But what I’ll do for sure is put yet another president on the record as saying that there seems to be things out there that we can’t explain. And people who say that there are, are not crackpots, which in and of itself will be pretty important.

Chitra Ragavan:

I loved your grandparents’ dedication and the front of the book where they speak to all the saucers of the world as they call them, wherever they may be. They say that someday they will have an opportunity to tell the world, I told you so. Maybe do think the time is now?

Bryan Cunningham:

I would like to think so. As you can imagine, my two brothers and I over the years, have kidded my dad and kidded each other and laughed a lot about this whole situation. And when the woman pilot’s video came out and it was announced that this report was forthcoming, I texted my brothers and I said, “Finally vindication for the Reeves.”

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. In fact, we have the pilot, Alex Dietrich, on our other podcasts, When it Mattered, and she has some very amazing stories just like yours.

Bryan Cunningham:

I know, that’s amazing. I can’t wait to hear that. I’d love to know what she thinks of Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, but I wouldn’t impose on her to read it. But yeah, it’s just a very welcome development that we’re, as a government, apparently about to not call these people crazy. That would make my grandparents very happy.

Chitra Ragavan:

Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining me on Techtopia and for this absolutely amazing conversation about your grandparents and their sweet oral history on UFOs.

Bryan Cunningham:

My pleasure. Truth is out there.

Chitra Ragavan:

Brian Cunningham is executive director of the Cybersecurity Policy and Research Institute at UC Irvine. He has extensive experience in senior US government intelligence and law enforcement positions. He served as deputy legal advisor to the then National Security advisor, Condoleezza Rice. He also served six years in the Clinton administration as a senior CIA officer and federal prosecutor. Brian drafted significant portions of the Homeland Security Act and related legislation, helping to shepherd them through Congress. He was a principal contributor to the first National Security Strategy to secure cyberspace, worked closely with the 9/11 Commission and provided legal advice to the president, National Security advisor, the National Security Council and other senior government officials on intelligence, terrorism, cybersecurity, and other related matters. This is Techtopia, I’m Chitra Ragavan.

COVID-19 virtually overnight changed the tone, tenor, and texture of cities, bringing the global economy to a slow grind and forcing people to retreat into bubbles, silos, and pods, and remote work — connected mainly through social media and Zoom.

Now, as we slowly start to get a grip on the virus and think about reopening society, what will the long-term impact of the pandemic be on cities and on the evolution of Smart Cities?

My guest today has some of those answers. He’s Michael Proman, Managing Director at Scrum Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that has invested in more than 80 startups across a range of industries in the U.S. and Japan. Proman worked in global marketing and development at Coca-Cola and the National Basketball Association prior to starting (and ultimately exiting) his initial startup, OptionIt. He has helped lead multiple startups to acquisitions and continues to play an active role in mentoring and advising founders across multiple industries. Proman is a contributor to TechCrunch and his most recent piece is titled: Will COVID-19 spur a smart rebirth for cities?

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Chitra Ragavan:

COVID-19 virtually overnight changed the tone, tenor and texture of cities, bringing the global economy to a slow grind and forcing people to retreat into bubbles, silos, pods, and remote work connected mainly through social media and Zoom. Now, as we slowly start to get a grip on the virus and think about reopening society, what will the long-term impact of the pandemic be on cities and on the evolution of smart cities? Hello everyone, I’m Chitra Ragavan, and this is Techtopia. My guest today has some of those answers. He’s Michael Proman, Managing Director at Scrum Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that has invested in more than 80 startups across a range of industries in the U.S. and Japan.

Chitra Ragavan:

Proman worked in global marketing and development at Coca-Cola and the National Basketball Association, prior to starting and ultimately exiting his initial startup, OptionIt. He has helped lead multiple startups to acquisitions and continues to play an active role in mentoring and advising founders across multiple industries. Proman also is a contributor to TechCrunch. His most recent piece is titled, Will COVID-19 spur a smart rebirth for cities? Mike, welcome to Techtopia.

Michael Proman:

Chitra, thanks for having me.

Chitra Ragavan:

When COVID-19 hit, we saw this incredible change across major metropolitan cities, such as New York, reeling from the impact. Real estate values going down, and commerce grinding to a halt, people scrambling indoors. As someone who specializes in the future of cities and so-called Smart Cities, I’m sure you were watching with both interest and some concern about what the future would bring. What were your thoughts as you saw all of this unfold?

Michael Proman:

Well, I think like everybody, I think the immediate thought is, oh my goodness, right? The world is coming to a grinding halt. I’ve been working in a remote environment for 12 plus years, so the idea of transitioning my work into this virtual bubble of Zoom and Microsoft teams and all these other virtual channels, that didn’t really faze me personally. But of course, a lot of my colleagues who are based in the Bay Area, they’re in the epicenter of some of the transformation taking place in some of these urban communities. Having lived in places like New York previously and having friends still there, I can understand and certainly empathize with both local businesses that were facing arguably some of the darkest days that they’ve ever had. I think there was this collective sense of, yeah, this is going to be rough, but let’s figure this out. I think people just dug in, and it’s pretty amazing the progress that has been made here in the last 12 or 14 months.

Chitra Ragavan:

Over the past year and a half, what was the biggest change that surprised you perhaps, or even shocked you? What were you seeing that you didn’t expect?

Michael Proman:

Well, I think this was to me a unified effort, right, of public sector, private. You have innovators, whether it be in the pharmaceutical industry, of course, kind of getting us to where we need to be on vaccines. I think everybody just kind of grabbed an oar, so to speak, right. I think the thing that surprised me the most and through SmartCityX, which is a big initiative that I oversee within Scrum, we work with a lot of municipal leaders. I think everyone’s first reaction to government or public sector and municipalities is that, they’re slow, bureaucratic, and can’t get things done. I was, I wouldn’t say shocked, but I was I think just as surprised as a lot of folks that that wasn’t the case here. I think people really said, you know what, we’re going to reinvent and redefine how it is we do things.

Michael Proman:

We’re surrounded by a lot of the best municipal leaders within SmartCityX. Just getting that front row seat from them has been eye-opening for me to see how cities have really taken a much more proactive stance in getting us back to where we need to be.

Chitra Ragavan:

What is SmartCityX?

Michael Proman:

Great question. At Scrum, we work with startups, right? We invest in startups. SmartCityX is, I wouldn’t call it an accelerator per se, right? It is a community of what we would consider best in class, stage agnostic startups in the case of what we’re aiming at. We look at six core pillars within smart city, right? There’s consumer products and services, there’s mobility, there’s smart buildings and infrastructure, there’s energy resources and sustainability, connectivity. Then the last piece is what we call social innovation, right? Technologies that make cities more equitable, more diverse, more inclusive. In defining those six core categories, those buckets, we’re able to go out and curate startups from around the world that speak to the needs that cities have. What’s in it for the startups, right?

Michael Proman:

It’s not this blocking and tackling kind of association for like an accelerator would be, it’s about aligning and connecting them to top line growth opportunities, right? That’s what startups need. They need to be able to demonstrate the product market fit. They need to be able to sign POCs. In our case, the partners that we’re primarily looking to engage with are all a lot of Japanese corporates. That’s an interesting piece of our DNA at Scrum, right, is that we’re a venture capital firm. A lot of our LPs are large Japanese corporations. We know that we can do more than just help invest their money wisely. We can also support them on a day-to-day level. We can help them address opportunities or pain points in their business. When it comes to things like Smart Cities, there’s no shortages of great companies that we’re working with in Japan. Again, helping introduce them to breakthrough technologies from around the world, that’s really the aim of this program for us, right?

Michael Proman:

Unlike an accelerator, we’re not taking equity from these startups for participation. We are doing this because of two things. Number one, our Japanese corporate partners are very meaningful to us. We want to maintain strong relationships and bonds just based on our business model. Then secondly, and self-serving way, of course, our goal is always to help startups and get to know them. Because at the end of the day, we’re always out there from a recruitment and pipeline perspective looking for the best next thing to invest in. These programs like SmartCityX give us a really deep look under the hood at the types of innovation and technology taking place in this space, and in many cases, lead us to our next investments.

Chitra Ragavan:

We’re going to talk about those buckets that you mentioned, but I guess just for people who are curious, one, why Japan? I mean, is it because the serendipitous relationship that existed or is it because that Japan is leading the front in some way on smart cities or both?

Michael Proman:

Well, I think it’s not just smart city with Japan. When you asked that question, I would probably take a step back and say, at Scrum, our DNA is heavily Japanese. It’s that way because our general partner, our founder Tak Miyata, very well-established, very successful Japanese entrepreneur. It has those relationships in place, obviously within the corporate sector and beyond. That’s always been our first and primary approach from a beneficiary standpoint. That being said, we know that we’re not necessarily just looking to invest in Japanese startups. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. We’re probably taking a much more global and North American viewpoint. Then looking to engage not just on the cap table, but also be a strategic partner. Helping them break into what is probably a very relationship centric region and market.

Michael Proman:

If we can be that gateway for those startups, if we can provide value in ways that others can’t, that’s a nice competitive differentiator, right? Our ability to play a role and have some real purpose in the investment. Those are always, obviously at the top of mind when we think about our pipeline.

Chitra Ragavan:

Great. Going back to the impact of COVID-19 on cities, how cities are coming out from under the weight of the pandemic and reinventing themselves, you recently conducted a survey of industry experts to see where we are heading. Tell us a little bit about that survey and who took part and what you have found is happening on the ground.

Michael Proman:

Yeah, absolutely. What was interesting is we have this program, SmartCityX, and something I neglected to mention in the beginning here is that it’s not just about corporates and startups. In all of the work that we do, whether it’s smart city, whether it be food tech, whether it be sports tech and all these other verticals that we’ve worked in, we like to surround these programs with what we would consider as industry experts or thought leaders. Somewhat akin I would say to a mentor, right, in an accelerator. The difference here is that we’re not looking to engage these leadership circle members or you could refer to as mentors in this kind of one way street. We want to create an opportunity for them in many respects to find the next great opportunity just as much as our corporates are looking to engage, if that makes sense. Right?

Michael Proman:

In some cases, it’s two way. It’s very kind of, I would say, self-serving for everybody involved. We want to create some self-interest because I think when you have that, you have the best conversations. They’re much more authentic. They become more actionable. What’s great about this leadership circle, we have over 60 global thought leaders in the smart city space, is that we can also tap into them for insights and knowledge. Earlier this year, we conducted a survey, as you alluded to, to this group of individuals. We were able to really extract where their head was at as far as both the pandemic, the impact that it’s had on urban communities and beyond. What we found, again, not probably too earth-shattering here, you could say, is that there is a lot of vibrancy, right? There’s a lot of optimism.

Michael Proman:

When we look back and we say, okay, is it coming from the private sector exclusively? Is it municipalities? Is it academia? Is it even startups? It’s broad-based. We asked all different types of questions, right? What’s driving the change in cities? Will data make an impact? Again, the surveys all came back with a common theme. One of the kind of, I would say more or less a microcosm of this, a woman, a member of our leadership circle, Anna Sandquist, who’s a Merchant Director of the Connected Home and Connected Car group at Best Buy. She’s in the epicenter of this. The impact that it’s had on wifi connectivity, right, tech infrastructure, these are all at the top of the list, I would say. In terms of some of the trends that we’re seeing, people are thinking about their homes and places of high dense activity as these hubs. Right. It’s not just fitness and work, but how do we really build around that in innovative ways?

Chitra Ragavan:

What do you see happening? What do you see evolving? How will the home change as more and more people work from home? Will office buildings in big cities get filled up again? What’s the vision?

Michael Proman:

I mean, I think there’s always a play to have people come together and collaborate and people are just tribal beings, right. They need to be surrounded with people who share certain areas of interest and opportunity. I don’t think that goes away entirely, but I think we’re going to go much more into that omni-channel experience. You could say for work, where there is a heavy dose of digital, where face time doesn’t really qualify itself anymore. Then with respect to virtual work, I think for me personally, as I said, I’ve been doing this for 12 plus years before the pandemic. I think there were a lot of people who questioned, what does Mike actually do all day? Does he actually work? I think if there has been one silver lining in a very dark cloud here is that the pandemic has really kind of almost recentered people a little bit and understood that virtual work is work. People can get a lot accomplished as you have been able to do personally in this 12, 15 month span.

Michael Proman:

I don’t think it’s going away. In fact, I think it’s going to influence the way in which people choose to live, where they choose to live, how they want to surround themselves with technology. I mean, you talk to home builders, right? It’s interesting now the questions that home builders are getting asked, right. Can I get a nine foot ceiling so I can get a treadmill put in? Can I get an office instead of that nursery or third bedroom, right. That’s kind of the progression in terms of where we’re at. Commuting times. I think people used to really stress about the ability to, oh, I got to be commuting for 45, 50 minutes a day each way, two ways. Now if I can work from home two or three days a week, I don’t care about driving 40 miles into an office a few days of the week. I can live further away. Does that hurt cities? No, I don’t think it does because I think cities will always be vibrant. They’re not going away. They’re not dead. It’s very similar in some respects to the shopping mall. It’s not on its last life, it’s just evolving. I think the way in which cities are going to be forced to engage with people, you have to rethink that a little bit more.

Chitra Ragavan:

I mean, I’m very much like you. I’ve worked from home for the past dozen years. Literally, COVID changed very little for me. I have multiple office spaces all over the house.

Michael Proman:

Yeah, totally.

Chitra Ragavan:

But I think the future of the house as I see myself working in different enclaves of my house, and I have a studio space and I have an office space, I think the future of the house is going to change. I think because we were kind of an anomaly, right. We work in Silicon Valley and we work remote. I would imagine for the majority of the population that’s been going into work, the shape and design and imagination of the home is going to change. You’re probably seeing that already.

Michael Proman:

Very much so. Right. Having lived in a variety of environments, right. I mean, it’s all about the stage of life, of course. In my early mid 20s and I’m living in New York. At the time, I was in a 450 square foot alcove studio apartment, and that was fine, right. Because how much time do you actually spend in your place when you live in a city like that and when you’re at that age. The reality is I couldn’t even envisioned doing that for over a year, right, of just being more or less on house arrest in that type of an environment. There were people who did go through that. I’m very fortunate and lucky in so many ways that I had the space, that I’ve been able to adapt to this pandemic in ways that other people just haven’t been able to. That’s caused a lot of other issues as you know. Whether it be mental health, whether it be physical health or otherwise, I think people are ready to figure out kind of what that next chapter looks like and know that can evolve and change as things move forward.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yeah. I know you said the cities will always be vibrant, but I wonder, there’s all of this real estate that emptied out during COVID. Is that all going to fill back up? Or if remote is a big part of how companies rethink how they do business, what happens to all of that space? How do cities reimagine their work, their real estate space?

Michael Proman:

Well, it’s going to take time. I live in the Twin Cities here in Minneapolis, and one of the biggest employers in downtown is Target Corporation. Target said about a month ago, we’re going to give up a large chunk of our downtown real estate. The building in which they’re vacating, that’s going to suffer, right? Everyone’s going to suffer. It’s going to be the shops, the vendors, everybody over there. At the same time, that building, it may be the kick in the backside that they’ve needed for years to really reinvent and really think more about long-term what we want this space to embody and envision. Is this turn into potentially housing? Does it turn into retail? Does it turn into fitness or any type of other communal facility, right? Or is it office space? Instead of having numerous floors owned by one company, the ability to partition that off and break it up. Because at the end of the day, you’re right.

Michael Proman:

I mean, people are giving up office space. There’s no question about it. People are downsizing. What downsizing also incorporates is you can reconfigure spaces to accommodate those trends. The good news is people that are much smarter than me, which is quite a few people, will certainly figure this out. There’s too much at stake here. I think municipal leaders understand that if they aren’t trying to help solve this problem, it’s not going to just fall onto one audience because everyone’s going to suffer. I think everybody is united in solving these types of issues. I think, again, the vibrancy of these urban communities is what is it driven by? It’s driven by a lot of the socialization. That’s bars and restaurants, it’s sports venues and concert facilities. Right? Making sure those attractions are able to reopen and be the catalyst to bring people back. I think there’s no question that that’s a positive for urban communities.

Chitra Ragavan:

There was an article in the New York Times, and I know I saw you had commented on that too on LinkedIn on how some cities are on a fast track to recovery and others aren’t. Tell us which cities are on the fast track and what allows them to recover at a faster pace than other cities?

Michael Proman:

Yeah. I think the comment I posted was really kind of drawing the analogy to the stock market, right. When you have a recession, what are the types of companies that seem to bounce back faster? Those are traditionally small caps, right? It’s the Russell 2000, the Russell 5000, right? It’s the ones that are more nimble, the ones that are able to pivot and be more agile. I think that’s directly correlated here on the urban side too, right? The New Yorks, L.A., San Franciscos, Houstons of the world, it may take some time, right? I mean, these are legacy cities. Obviously, there’s no shortages of innovative personnel and companies and leaders. I’m not saying that they’re dinosaurs, but the cities that may not be as large. They aren’t as reliant on numerous stakeholders or audiences. Those are the ones who might be able to solve this a little bit faster.

Michael Proman:

Look at a Madison, Wisconsin, right, or a Kansas City, Missouri. Right? Even in Austin, Texas, not probably in that top tier but ones that tend to probably skew north on the innovation kind of equilibrium and at the same time, have accomplished leaders, solid corporations. That’s where I would put my money. Right? But it’s not a race. I mean, in some respect, you’re right, it is. But we want to get it right. Even if that requires taking time in kind of bigger, more potentially bureaucratic markets, that’s not a bad thing. At the end of the day, I think we’re all moving in the right direction. It’s just about who’s going to get there six or 12 months faster. But if you’re investing in the longterm, it’s negligible.

Chitra Ragavan:

I think when we talk about humans, people bouncing back from adversity, we talk about the importance of resilience. I wonder if cities also have to start to build more resilience into their fabric and maybe cities that are more resilient and maybe technology, cities that are more tech-friendly have more resilience. I don’t know the answer. Do you think that has something to do with it?

Michael Proman:

Yeah. Well, I think going back to the survey, I think the biggest impact in the coming year, people would talk about is smart data, right? Cities have access to this data and that you’re able to democratize the data and the data set. I think sadly, there are a lot of municipalities that were making decisions without data for way too long. Hopefully as budgets enable it, they’re able to make smarter decisions based on the data set that they have in front of them. I talk to a lot of municipal leaders. There’s one in particular, a gentleman by the name of Jordan Sun who’s phenomenal. He’s the Chief Innovation Officer of the city of San Jose. You talk about kind of a high pressure job, right?

Michael Proman:

I mean, when that’s your title in a market that produces probably some of the most innovative technologies in the world, you better be on your game. Jordan is beyond most people as it relates to technology and innovation. They definitely got the right person in charge. But again, it’s about digging deep. It’s about establishing a great dialogue between municipalities and corporations and figuring out how to best attack these things in a way that removes the silos. Again, we’re all fighting the same thing here, right. That’s the nice thing, maybe if anything, is that COVID has unified us in ways that we probably, we weren’t unified before in some respect. Right. Everyone can agree that cities can do more.

Michael Proman:

I know we talked about before the need for cities to become more equitable and use this opportunity to be able to deploy technologies to underserved or marginalized communities, areas that pre-pandemic were not probably seen as the primary beneficiary for technology. And saying, okay, again, if there are positives to come from this is how do we deploy technology to those communities, to those areas in a way that makes sense and that will not produce these generational inequities that we were essentially, we were on it. We were on a status quo, path towards. To me, that’s a good thing.

Chitra Ragavan:

I want to talk a little bit now about smart cities in particular. I mean, we talked generally about cities and bouncing back from COVID-19. I want to talk about whether it has also changed people’s vision of how smart cities evolve. Before we do that, for the lay person, what exactly is a smart city? I mean, we know about smart homes in general, but what’s the vision of a smart city and a definition?

Michael Proman:

That’s a great question, right. I think my belief is that the idea of calling something smart city technology, I mean, I feel like you’re asking somebody. It’s like watching an episode of The Jetsons too, with like flying cars or something like that. Somebody could give you that definition, of course. To me, that has nothing to do with the new and improved way in which we think about cities. To me, it’s about technologies that enable people to live healthy, more meaningful lives. Cities to be diverse and inclusive and equitable. That to me is the essence of a smart city and maybe the 2021 definition. Yeah, will that encompass things like flying taxis? Yeah. Maybe. But I think we want to take a much more practical definition and saying, okay, when we’re thinking about infrastructure, when we’re thinking about mobility, when we’re thinking about products and services or sustainability, what is the problem we’re trying to solve?

Michael Proman:

How can we best deploy this in a way that serves the greater good and does so in a way that doesn’t pick and choose winners? Because I think in the past smart city, so to speak, we’re able to deploy technology with sensors or IOT and connected devices. Right? But it wasn’t really broad. It was a very narrow scope of work. There were certainly, again, that barbell effect of winners and losers being attributed to that. To me, that’s the main kind of change that has occurred here as we think about smart cities as how do we define them moving forward. I think that holds true both here domestically in the U.S. as well as around the world, but probably more of a heightened emphasis today here in North America, just given some of the social challenges that have emerged in the last 12 months in parallel with the pandemic.

Chitra Ragavan:

Is it not technology-driven or is it getting technology access to people in underserved areas? I guess, what’s the difference?

Michael Proman:

Well, it’s a people-first approach I think is the number one thing, right. People come from all walks of life, but I think it’s probably a little bit more of the latter, of what you just mentioned, right? It’s about democratizing technology. It’s about giving people access to it in ways that they haven’t been able to be the beneficiary previously. It’s about putting public transportation into areas and investing in that transportation from a technology standpoint. It’s about rethinking building infrastructure. It could be low-income housing. It could be how we build infrastructure and where we build infrastructure, in some respect. I do think within urban communities in particular, the conversation is going to start more of the, not the what, but how are we going to do this and how are we going to do this in a way that impacts the most people and doesn’t kind of… Again, look at people by way of tax brackets, but looks at them as people and what they need.

Chitra Ragavan:

But if you look at low-income housing, for instance, what would make it a smart city low-income housing as opposed to regular low-income housing? Is it just that you’re bringing tech better materials, data-driven, IOT-driven?

Michael Proman:

It really goes with data, right. I mean, you can build, materials, I think are negligible when you start talking about low-income housing. I mean, it’s the same material that you could use in a high rise condo building, right. At the same time, I think to me, it’s about less of the hardware and more of the software and the capabilities that surround that infrastructure. Is it access to fresh and healthy foods? Is there a component there? What does that look like from a technology standpoint? What’s enabling that? Is there access to affordable mobility solutions, right? Whether it be things like light rail, clean energy and busing, those types of technologies as well. It’s a tough way to think about it, right. Urban leaders have been trying to think about this for decades. But I think now more than ever, we’re thinking about technology as let’s not just build the low-income housing unit but let’s make sure it’s going to be sustainable and successful. To do that, we need to plug in the latest and greatest as it relates to IOT, as it relates to data-driven capabilities and access to technologies that make people’s lives better on a day-to-day level.

Chitra Ragavan:

It’s really interesting. I’ve been talking to other people about the same thing is that you not only had COVID, but you had all of these social issues over the past year over race and gender and economics. Now it’s almost like when you build a smart city of the future, there’s that element of social conscience that’s being built into it. I see that in other areas as well.

Michael Proman:

Very much so. I mean, I think people are taking a hard look right now as they make decisions of asking the question, who is missing? I think it’s a question we all should be asking. Whether it’s at just a weekly meeting or we’re trying to make decisions on things. How do we ascertain a diverse perspective and viewpoint? That to me has been one of the biggest wins, right? Is that people are asking those questions now. I think now more than ever, whether it be board representation, whether it be the abundance or the growth in diversity and inclusion officers, right. Within not just corporations now, with startups, within VCs. Seeing hopefully a trend here in venture capital of investing in minority founders that had been underinvested, so to speak, for way too long.

Michael Proman:

These are all positive steps, but again, you hope that this is fixture not fad. I think the same holds true for urban development and smart city technology is that, is this just an artificial high and we’re going to go back to status quo when things hopefully get to a more normal level or what was presumed to be normal? We need to ensure that our leaders continue to hold us to high standards. Everybody is accountable. When it comes to tech and technology being deployed, again, I hope we’re continuing to ask those same questions that we have in the last few months.

Chitra Ragavan:

You’ve talked about the importance of infrastructure and infrastructure funds, and the role of critical infrastructure and smart infrastructure that’s going to help cities recover from the pandemic. Is the Biden administration and its huge stimulus package and infrastructure package focusing enough on this notion of smart cities and how to use infrastructure to build smart cities in a way that represents the future?

Michael Proman:

Yeah, I think infrastructure, right. I mean, you can talk about building materials that are probably more eco-friendly. It’s very hard. You can talk about, again, more of the technology or the software components that go into these projects or venues, or in some cases, residential units. A lot was made of the infrastructure bill that was recently passed. I think it’s always going to be a partisan debate], everything these days is. Nobody can agree on anything. My one kind of takeaway here is just give it time, right. I mean, we’re a country and a culture I feel of like everyone wants instant gratification, right. Unfortunately, that’s just not the way these things work.

Michael Proman:

I mean, you invest long-term, but long-term politically is the political cycle is every, it seems like every three months we’re talking about the next election cycle. Everybody’s trying to position themselves for that versus think more holistically on a long-term basis. Hopefully, that’s where there’s a balancing act between the public and private sector of our politicians may change every two or four years, but I’m pretty confident that some of the biggest players in infrastructure development are going to be generational and beyond. My hope is that we can take our lead in certain situations from the private sector that are reacting, of course, to the legislation that’s being passed. But still have their heads down and understand what their five, 10 and beyond year plans look like because that’s really going to get us to where we want to be.

Chitra Ragavan:

Great. Thanks, Mike. Do you have any other closing thoughts on your vision for the smart city and smart society of the future? Any example of anyone who is doing it better than anybody else that could be seen as a model for the future?

Michael Proman:

Yeah, well, it’s interesting. I love to travel. Unfortunately, like everyone, that hasn’t really occurred here recently. I think part of the travel I like to do is on a global level and for that exact same purpose, right? It’s about discovery, fact-finding. I’m excited when it’s safe and accessible to go on a global road trip and have that exact same conversation. Because it would be, I think, irresponsible of me to just say, they’re doing it well, they’re doing it best because so much has changed and I haven’t personally been able to go out and see some of the best practices in motion. There are regions within Europe, there are certainly areas within Asia and beyond, and even in developing countries that have figured out how to solve challenges in ways that sadly one of the wealthiest countries in the world still struggles at.

Michael Proman:

That to me is the essence of what we’re trying to build here with SmartCityX and beyond is this is a diverse, very global approach. While we’re certainly skewed and biased based on our North American base, it doesn’t preclude us from surrounding the program with great leaders and people from other geographies that we can learn from. Again, when the coast is clear, I’m excited to get back out there and really rediscover that exact question is who’s doing the best. Hopefully, we can chat a little bit more about this in the coming weeks and months.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yes, definitely would love to have you back on as you start to get back on the road and see some of these things.

Michael Proman:

Yeah, no, it’d be lovely. Well, thank you again.

Chitra Ragavan:

Yes. Thank you for joining us today and for the great conversation.

Michael Proman:

My pleasure.

Chitra Ragavan:

Michael Proman is Managing Director at Scrum Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that has invested in more than 80 startups across a range of industries in the U.S. and Japan. Proman worked in global marketing and development at Coca-Cola and the National Basketball Association prior to starting and ultimately exiting his initial startup, OptionIt. He has helped lead multiple startups to acquisitions and continues to play an active role in mentoring and advising founders across multiple industries. Proman is a contributor to TechCrunch. His most recent piece is titled, Will COVID-19 spur a smart rebirth for societies? Check it out. This is Techtopia. I’m Chitra Ragavan.