Loading summary
Transcript73 lines
- [00:00]
Kachava Announcer
This message comes from Kachava. It can be tough to stick to your wellness routine, especially when you're on the go. Cachava's new travel packs make it easier. Just one packet provides nutrition, ready for wherever life takes you with protein, fiber, greens, probiotics, electrolytes and more. Take your daily ritual with you. Go to cachava.com and use code NPR. New customers get 15% off their first order. That's K A C H-A V A.com KACH code NPR.
- [00:34]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
We're going to see more unmanned, more hypersonic movement. Lasers will be a big part of this. That's real.
- [00:42]
Elliot Ackerman
The only thing you can really bet on is change. Change in innovation of weapons, change in the way the planet is going to look, and also change in geopolitical alliances.
- [00:54]
NPR Narrator
The year is 2084. The US and China are close allies along with Florida because Florid has seceded from the Union and is now an independent republic. Meanwhile, mass migration driven by climate change is redefining nation states the world over. A cautionary tale written by a Marine Corps veteran and a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. This is Sources and Methods from npr.
- [01:25]
Mary Louise Kelly
I'm Mary Louise Kelly.
- [01:26]
NPR Narrator
That vision of the future you just heard is fiction, the plot of 2084, a new novel. The authors, former Marine Elliot Ackerman, who did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Jim Stavridis, retired four star admiral and commander of NATO. They compare their work to Cold War fiction like Dr. Strangelove, stories that envision disasters specifically so society would work to avoid them. Their past books include 2034 and 2054, set in those years. The first sees the US at war with China. The second focuses on AI and civilization unrest in the United States. Their latest, 2084, wraps up a trilogy. Elliot Ackerman and Jim Stavridis are here
- [02:13]
Mary Louise Kelly
to talk about it.
- [02:14]
NPR Narrator
Hey, you two, welcome to Sources and Methods.
- [02:16]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
Thanks, Mary Louise.
- [02:17]
Elliot Ackerman
Yeah, thank you.
- [02:18]
Mary Louise Kelly
So again, your first book was 2034. Then you skipped ahead 20 years to 2054. So my first question, I'll steer this to you, Admiral. What happened to 2074? Why skip ahead by 30?
- [02:29]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
Well, what happened is we wanted a little bit of an homage to 1984 because the novel 1984 was a work of cautionary fiction. All three of these books are designed to alert the reader to real dangers unfolding in the 21st century so we can avoid them. So we wanted to pick up that echo of 1984.
- [02:54]
Mary Louise Kelly
Okay, so here we are, 2084. Eliot, what is this one alerting and
- [02:59]
Elliot Ackerman
warning about in 2084. This is really our endeavor to project out what are going to be the great geopolitical challenges that face us as the globe changes. As there are evolutions in defense. You know, many of these evolutions that we're talking about right now with AI distributed operations, gray zone operations, you know, we've seen recently in Congress the deliberations around the defense appropriation bills. Those are investments we're making now that project well out into the future. So, you know, this is a story that imagines what that future is going to look like. But I'd also be remiss if I didn't add these are character based novels. So through lines of these characters, the ones you meet in 2034, some of them are, and certainly their progeny as well, are present in 2084. So those are really the key points of the book.
- [03:49]
Mary Louise Kelly
Yeah, you're also imagining that climate change has gone to the extreme end of awfulness, that the future you imagine in 2084 involves so many storms that authorities have stopped naming them, they're numbering them instead. You write that a traditional hurricane season by 2084 had become a quaint notion. Why, Elliot? Because it's always hurricane season, basically.
- [04:12]
Elliot Ackerman
Because it's always hurricane season. And then as we look at the challenges that are gonna face us in the year 2084, it includes changing geography and the importance of that changing geography and the political tensions that will arise as the equatorial zones in the world become less and less inevitable. So not only are we imagining the future of war, but we're also imagining the future of geopolitics and how geography
- [04:37]
Mary Louise Kelly
is going to relate to some things haven't changed in your imagination. The U.S. is still the U.S. washington D.C. is still the capital. You do imagine things though, like the un. The United nations headquarters is now in Greenland, in New Greenland.
- [04:53]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
Indeed, the headquarters is in Greenland. And I think people will be happy to hear it's not part of the United States at this point. But here's a really interesting geopolitical angle picking up on Elliot's point. By 2084, it's entirely possible, and the book theorizes that the US and China have become allies and they are facing a consortium of reparationist powers from the mid latitudes who want those reparations for all the damage that climate has inflicted on them. That's the centerpiece of the conflict in the book. And yes, I don't think it's impossible to imagine Greenland as a very attractive piece of real estate by 2084. Let's hope it is internationalized, as we theorize in the book, to follow on a couple things.
- [05:48]
Mary Louise Kelly
One, you said people may be relieved to hear that Greenland is not part of the United States. I was relieved to think that there would still be a United nations that would require being headquartered somewhere more than 50 years from now. I mean, we're laughing, but it's not
- [06:02]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
a given, not in the least. And I think that's something that worries us all in the present moment. For a century, we've been pulling slowly, slowly, with a lot of pain, but drawing closer in international organizations across the spectrum of Human Endeavor, World Health Organization, imf, World bank, the un, as you mentioned. All of those, I think, are at risk in this present moment. And I, for one, would bet on them to come through it. But we're still gonna see the kind of tensions that we unpackage, certainly by the year 2084.
- [06:39]
Mary Louise Kelly
Elliot, go back to the alliance that Admiral Stavridis mentioned. It seems unlikely sitting here in 2026, but the US and China are tight. This is a three pronged alliance, though. It's China, it's the US and, well, we see that.
- [06:54]
Elliot Ackerman
It's, you know, it's mainly. I mean, it's mainly driving. This is China and the United States, and we frame them as basically a cons. And that includes India and really the main industrialized powers. And the main political tension in the book is against the reparationists. And these reparationist nations are equatorial. They're ones that have really felt the pain of climate change. And a key theme in this book is migration. The reparationist nations are claiming land reparations against the consortium. And that really frames the military conflict that is at the centerpiece of 2084.
- [07:37]
Mary Louise Kelly
Well, and I was.
- [07:39]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
Well, Mary Louise, I would be remiss as a native Floridian, not to mention that a third actor in this drama is the Free Republic of Florida, which is diminished geographically by rising sea levels. So, yeah, there are new alignments and even new nations by the time we get to 2084.
- [07:59]
Mary Louise Kelly
It's interesting because you're imagining this independent Republic of Florida separate from the United States, which your second book in this trilogy was all about Americans turning on each other and the possibility that our worst threat to national security may come from within. You really teased that out, that 30 years on, it may well be where we land.
- [08:20]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
I think that's absolutely right. And the tensions pulling at the United States today are pulling us in different directions. They're pulling us apart. And I think it is not impossible to imagine California and Oregon become some kind of different entity. Florida is on its own. Perhaps the larger center holds together. We just don't know. But again, all of this is a cautionary tale about where these tensions might lead us.
- [08:53]
Mary Louise Kelly
Where are we putting Texas in here, Admiral?
- [08:56]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
I think Texas very likely will be standing alone as well by that time.
- [09:03]
Mary Louise Kelly
Elliot, did you want to jump back in?
- [09:04]
Elliot Ackerman
Well, I would just make the point to caveat off. What Jim said is that, you know, one of the things we also, you know, no spoilers here, but that the book imagines and takes the reader through is how alliances shift and how geopolitical events affect these actors. And, you know, the reason that Florida has split off from the United States. So, you know, we're doing that work because that imaginary work, because I think we've recognized in writing these books and our study of history that the only thing you can really bet on is change. And that's change in innovation of weapons, change in the way the planet is going to look, and also change in geopolitical alliances.
- [09:45]
Mary Louise Kelly
You are reminding me, Elliot, of something you told me when we were speaking about the earlier books, which is you find it really cathartic imagining all these catastrophes that you are inventing. And again, this is all fiction. But I remember you saying that maybe if we imagine the worst case scenarios, we may be able to avoid them.
- [10:06]
NPR Narrator
That feels tough when it comes to climate change.
- [10:09]
Mary Louise Kelly
It feels like the worst case scenario is in real life coming at us fast.
- [10:13]
Elliot Ackerman
Well, I think it's, you know, we have approached this trilogy of books in the spirit of not trying to predict the future, but trying to speculate what worst case outcomes would be if we're not awake and aware of the challenges that exist. Whether that's in 2034, which imagined conflict with a peer level adversary. 2054, that imagines artificial intelligence and the effect it's having on our democracy. And now 2084, that imagines, you know, really the future of war, the different ways we're going to fight, but also the way the planet could be changing and how that will affect the very nature of nation states and the way our world works. And we're seeing that right now. We're seeing the importance of geography in a place like the Strait of Hormuzz. So each of these books has been imbued with that spirit.
- [10:58]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
Yeah. Let me add to that if I can, Mary Louise, that the book ends back in some ways where it began, on Greenland with the planting of vineyards. So These are not books about the end of the world, but they are indeed warning flags to us about what we need to do to avoid the disasters that could befall us.
- [11:22]
Mary Louise Kelly
Stay with that idea of the books as warning flags. I read this one as a wake up world to the danger that climate change presents right now. Why do you think that warning doesn't seem to land? Climate is not at the top of the agenda of urgency that world leaders are tackling right now.
- [11:43]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
I think climate is one of these problems from hell that you can solve it by taking pain in the present and it will resolve in the more distant future. But if you don't take the pain in the present, you can't fix it when you get to, for example, 2084. So a big part of writing this book is indeed to shine a light on those issues and final thought. Mary Louise, we took a page from Cold War fiction. If you think back to Dr. Strangelove novels like on the Beach, the Third World War, Red Storm Rising, none of those things happened. We didn't destroy the world in a spasm of Cold war turning into hot war between the US and ussr. Our hope is that in all three of these books we can hit those warning bells still in time. And I think we still have time on climate.
- [12:47]
NPR Narrator
Let's take a break. When we come back, some of the very specific ways Stavridis and Ackerman believe war will change in the future and why they argue more than anything else, climate change will tip the scales. You're listening to sources and Methods. We'll be right back.
- [13:05]
Kachava Announcer
This message comes from Cachava. It can be tough to stick to your wellness routine, especially when you're on the go. Cachava's new travel packs make it easier. Just one packet provides nutrition ready for wherever life takes you with protein, fiber, greens, probiotics, electrolytes and more. Take your daily ritual with you. Go to cachava.com and use code NPR. New customers get 15% off their first order. That's K A C H A V A dot com code NPR.
- [13:36]
Podcast Promo Announcer
For a growing number of women, single motherhood feels like the right choice.
- [13:41]
Mary Louise Kelly
She locked eyes with me and that was the moment that I knew we were about to have one hell of a life together.
- [13:45]
Podcast Promo Announcer
On the Sunday story, how these single mothers are making it work. Listen now to the Sunday story from the up first podcast on the NPR app. This message comes from Jerry. Many people are overpaying on car insurance. Why? Switching providers can be a pain. Jerry helps make the process painless. Jerry is the Only app that compares rates from over 50 insurers in minutes and helps you switch fast with no spam calls or hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Before you renew your car insurance policy, download the Jerry app or head to Jerry AI npr.
- [14:27]
Mary Louise Kelly
A thread that runs through all these books is the idea of asymmetric warfare that the only way you're going to defeat advancing technology isn't more technology, but the example of cyber hackers can't hack a ship that is navigating by compass or paper maps. To use an example from your World of the Navy, Admiral, I update that idea to this latest book and that conflicts you're imagining playing out.
- [14:55]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
We are thinking through what we're seeing today on the battlefields of Ukraine and Iran, which is more unmanned, more hypersonic movement. Lasers will be a big part of this that have not yet evolved. All of those aspects of war are changing in front of us. But it's equally important, Mary Louise, to recall that war itself, this fundamental brutality itself is not changing. The idea of using violence to solve problems will continue to fail. So you have to hold both those thoughts in your mind. And as you contemplate the future of war, you need to think about the future of humanity, the future of international organizations. All of those represent potential. And again, that's why at the end of the novel, there's this, I think, powerful scene of planting of to echo Voltaire and Candide of tending the garden.
- [15:59]
Mary Louise Kelly
You just caught my ear with something you said, Admiral, which is lasers that we're going to hear a lot more. I haven't heard that much about that in these current conflicts. We hear a lot about drones and cyber. Say more about lasers.
- [16:09]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
Think of Iron Dome and instead Iron Beam, like a beam of light, a laser that's real. That system is just now coming out into use and we're going to see more of that. The idea of a golden dome over the United States sounds quite fanciful. But if you use laser which can move at the speed of light, obviously you have a chance of intercepting many, many, many more targets than you can using a kinetic surface to air missile. So lasers are an immensely important part that have not received, if you'll permit the pun, a lot of light so far. But that is coming and we illuminate and talk about that. There's another bad pun in the book.
- [16:59]
Mary Louise Kelly
Elliot, how about you? You mentioned the strait of hormones. What lessons are you taking about where war may be going, the future of warfare? What lessons are you Taking from the
- [17:10]
Elliot Ackerman
conflict in Iran, I think one of the lessons that we see is that geography in war is an immovable force and often a great determiner of victory or defeat. And that as we project outward as to what are going to be the challenges in future conflicts, I think we also have to look at the ways that the globe could potentially change and how climate and geography, which are tied together, will factor into that. But also immigration and how climate and geography can affect the definition of, you know, who are the haves and who are the have nots based upon where they live and the types of political resentments that that can create and that we will have to deal with not only as Americans, but through all humanity.
- [17:57]
Mary Louise Kelly
That's interesting. You're making me think in the context of this conversation about climate change and rising sea levels, the Strait of Hormuz could look really different a few decades from now.
- [18:09]
Elliot Ackerman
Absolutely.
- [18:10]
Mary Louise Kelly
Like a lot wider.
- [18:11]
Elliot Ackerman
And this idea, Mary Louise, that, you know, we know when we look at history that for nations, you know, geography is destiny. You know, why did Britain, this little island, become a massive naval power and, you know, an empire upon which the sun never set? Well, it's geography. You know, if we look at the, you know, Russia's identity, the nation that stopped Napoleon and Hitler, you know, why do they have that identity? Well, it's their geography. But climate change causes that geography to change. And when that geography changes, it also changes the definition of nations and the people in those nations. And how does that factor into conflict as we project outwards toward the end of the century?
- [18:51]
Mary Louise Kelly
What about Ukraine? This is a jump ball for either of you. What lessons are you taking from the war playing out there about where warfare may be headed?
- [19:01]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
I'll grab that one. I'll start with another novel, which is Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. In many ways, this conflict in Ukraine is starting to look like that. Very advanced. Millions of drones flying overhead, artificial intelligence knitting them together. But here's my point, Mary Louise. You could take a German soldier from 1916 and drop him into a trench in Ukraine today. And yeah, he would look up at the sky and see things buzzing around up there, but he would recognize trenches and tanks and artillery and hand to hand combat and mud and blood and guts. That face of war is not changing. To end on another novel, it would be all Quiet on the Western Front by Rem Marche. Ukraine is both of those things, at once highly advanced warfare, but still that brutal face of war. You need to not lose sight of the latter as you think about where the war is going technologically.
- [20:09]
Elliot Ackerman
And if I could hop on Mary Louise, too, I would also just add in this entire trilogy, and particularly by the end, as we push out to years that are at the boundaries of what is almost science fiction, we've always wanted to stay very firmly anchored in the unchangeability of war. And that is one lesson that, at the end of the day, as the admiral said, war is using violence to force people to do what you want them to do politically.
- [20:38]
Mary Louise Kelly
And that doesn't change just to push all on this. And that picture you just painted, Admiral of Ukraine, and that a soldier from past wars could drop into that battlefield and what they saw on the ground would be very recognizable. I'm thinking we've discussed on this podcast recently. President Zelensky put out this slick video recently where he talked about Ukrainian robots capturing a Russian army position. No actual troops involved. He was billing this as the first
- [21:06]
NPR Narrator
time in the history of war this has happened.
- [21:08]
Mary Louise Kelly
An enemy position taken exclusively by unmanned platforms. That sounds like something quite different.
- [21:15]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
It is. And there is also video of Russian soldiers surrendering. Not even to a robot, which is kind of recognizable. They're surrendering to a drone. This is the changing nature of the technology of war. But I can assure you, those Russian conscripts on that front line face the brutality and the reality of what they're experiencing every day. And it's in that sense, not Starship Troopers. It's more still all quiet on the Western front.
- [21:53]
Mary Louise Kelly
You know, as someone who has tried my hand at writing novels myself, I have struggled for a while with cooking up plot twists wilder than some of what we are living through in real life. As y' all surveyed today's national security headlines, are there any that leap out where you think, oh, my God, that's so much crazier than anything we could have dreamt up. Like, if we pitch that to our editor, they would say, no, boys, that's way too unrealistic.
- [22:21]
Elliot Ackerman
I think some of the imagery that I've seen, particularly around the, you know, the war in Iran and the President speaking about the war next to the Easter Bunny, I think that was certainly surreal for me. And I don't know if that would have made it past our beloved editor Jamified, but that with you and any
- [22:38]
Mary Louise Kelly
of the books, the Easter Bunny was quite something. I kept thinking about the exploding pagers in Lebanon.
- [22:44]
Elliot Ackerman
Yes.
- [22:45]
Mary Louise Kelly
Which is so surreal. And it really happened.
- [22:49]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
Indeed.
- [22:50]
Mary Louise Kelly
So do y' all finish this trilogy more optimistic about America than when you began? Admiral, you first.
- [22:57]
Admiral Jim Stavridis
I do. And again, I'M an optimist. I'm Greek American, so I'm required to be optimistic. It's a nature of our DNA. And in all of these novels, there are certainly potential dark outcomes and some worrying things happening and some tragedy happens. But the through line are really the people and the spirit of the people. And I go back to the last scene where the vineyards are planted. I'll do a little spoiler alert. Those are vineyards cuttings from the island of Santorini in Greece. And that symbolizes my view that we will get through these moments. I firmly believe that.
- [23:43]
Mary Louise Kelly
And that ancient roots and vines will be bearing fruit well toward the end of this century. Elliot, how about you?
- [23:49]
Elliot Ackerman
I do. I remain optimistic. And I think that we as Americans and humanity, we've always figured a way through. We are a tenacious species. And, you know, I think anyone who would pick up the books would see as much as we're talking about, you know, sort of larger geopolitical themes, those themes are carried on the shoulders of characters and an intergenerational tale. And I think when you read this story through the eyes of the characters that are in it, you can see the optimism that the admiral and I have brought to this entire endeavor.
- [24:28]
NPR Narrator
Elliot Ackerman and Admiral Jim Stavridis. The latest and last book in their fiction trilogy is titled 2084. A quick note before we go. If you're enjoying the show, do us a favor, leave a rating or review on the podcast platform where you listen or all this month we are shouting out listeners who have done that, listeners like Apple listener Jim Pod, who wrote news is overwhelming, government is opaque. These accomplished national security journalists provide much needed context, context for an incomprehensible world. Well, Jim, glad to be of help. And just to underscore these ratings really do help new listeners find us, which keeps our show growing.
- [25:11]
Mary Louise Kelly
So thank you. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.
- [25:13]
NPR Narrator
We are back with our regular episode on Thursday. Until then, thanks for listening to sources and methods from npr.
- [25:28]
Kachava Announcer
This message comes from Kachava. It can be tough to stick to your wellness routine, especially when you're on the go. Kachava's new travel packs make it easier. Just one packet provides nutrition ready for wherever life takes you with protein, fiber, greens, probiotics, electrolytes and more. Take your daily ritual with you. Go to kachava.com and use code NPR. New customers get 15% off their first order. That's K A C H A V A COM code NPR.