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The Current Transcript for November 1, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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We don't fact check political ads, and we don't do this to help politicians because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.

LAURA LYNCH: Free speech versus falsehoods in political advertising. As Facebook Mark Zuckerberg tells it, it's only right to allow this information on its social media site. That's his response to Twitter's move to ban all paid political messages. Critics say Facebook is failing its followers. That discussion in half an hour. After that:

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Is there literally nothing that can change you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin, just creeps you out a little bit?

LL: Samantha Power, self-described idealist attacking a Russian diplomat as an adviser to former U.S. President Barack Obama and ultimately his U.N. ambassador. Power says in a new book she got the education of her life, exchanging righteous criticism of U.S. foreign policy for compromise. First up today, though, we hit the streets, whereas SUV are kings of the road, but also apparently villains contributing to the climate crisis. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

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Driver safety 'arms race' fuelling boom in gas-guzzling SUVs, says journalist

Guests: Jil MacIntosh, Henry Garbar

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Do you want to be in the best of the best? This vehicle leads in its own category, so you can't go wrong. Even if you didn't like it in two years, this is a vehicle that will retain the most value. So it's hard to compete with this. And that's why love it. It sells itself.

LL: Spoken like the veteran salesman he is, that's Jenan Culic at a Toronto, downtown Toronto Toyota dealership. He's standing in front of the ramp for an SUV that's become the bread and butter of his business.

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We'll sell basically, 50 percent of all the vehicles sold these days is SUV. And this vehicle is going to be close to 50 percent of what's being sold. About 55000 in Canada [unintelligible]. And the reasons for that is obviously this base, four wheel drive, the engines are not- They're much more efficient than they used to be. And visibility is, a nd today, everybody surrounding you is in a higher vehicle, so, you don't want to compete from down below. Dogs in the back. Look at this base. You put the bikes, hockey equipment. You can do all of that. You've got all the things you need and nothing you don't. So you have so many check boxes checking basically for the SUV.

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LL: And it's not just Canadians snapping up those shiny new SUVs. According to research by the International Energy Agency. SUVs and crossovers account for about 40 percent of global car sales. There are now 200 million of them on the road, up from 35 million in 2010. But the cost to the environment is staggering. According to the IEA latest report, SUV growth has become the second largest contributor to increasing CO2 emissions over the past 10 years more than aviation or trucking. The emissions from all of those SUV cars are on par with a G7 country, totally erasing any reductions achieved by the introduction of hybrid and electric cars. Now you may be listening behind the wheel of your own SUV right now. And if so, you're not alone. There's clearly something really alluring about joining SUV nation. I'm joined now by two guests to talk about why, for all their problems, they are so hard to quit. Jil MacIntosh is a freelance automotive writer with a variety of national publications and also the Web site WomanOnWheels.ca. She's in Oshawa, Ontario. And Henry Grabar is a journalist focussing on transportation and the environment. He writes for Slate.com. He is in Chicago. Hello to you both.

JIL MACINTOSH: Good morning.

HENRY GARBAR: Hi.

LL: Jil, let's put our car. Let's put our cards on the table. How do you feel about SUVs?

JIL MACINTOSH: Personally, I like cars. I like station wagons, but I'm seeing where the trend goes. And I'm an auto reviewer. So I get into a brand new car every Monday morning. And a surprising number of them now are SUV. They have the good points. They have the bad points, but I can see why consumers buy them.

LL: Okay. Henry, what about you? Are you part of SUV Nation?

HENRY GARBAR: I'm not. As a pedestrian, as a cyclist and as a driver of regular sized cars, I find their presence on the road to be kind of menacing. And I think the statistics bear that out, that they are not associated with safety benefits. To the contrary, in fact, for. For everyone else on the road.

LL: All right. We'll get into all of that. Jil, I just want to come back to you. How surprising is it that last year over 40 percent of all the new vehicles sold in Canada were SUV cars or crossovers?

JIL MACINTOSH: I'm actually not surprised. As we have a population that is aging, an SUV is are, or at least the smaller ones, are easier to get in and out. People like them for the visibility. As mentioned, they like the fact that they can see down the road, although that really is a moot point now because everybody is in exactly the same sized vehicle. And we tend to over think what we need. Every pickup truck has to be able to pull 35000 pounds even though we never trailer anything. It's got to take the four by eight sheet of plywood, even though we've never purchased one of those. Same with SUV as well. You know, I might want to put people in back in that third row. I might want to put everything in the back and put stuff on the top. And I need this, even though in reality they never will.

LL: Okay. And Henry, how does that compare compared to the demand for SUV in the U.S.?

HENRY GARBAR: SUV is now I'd sell cars at two to one margin in the United States. They make up about SUV and light truck, I should say pickup trucks as well, make up about 65 percent of new vehicle sales. I think that that is apparent to everyone on the road and it's also apparent to everybody who works in automobile manufacturing because we've seen a number of factories making sort of regular sized cars closed down. Ford and GM basically do not make cars in the United States anymore.

LL: So what is behind that rapid growth?

HENRY GARBAR: The number of things. I think you got to start with the fact that we're on a basically 10 year economic boom. And so people are willing to spend more money on their cars, SUV and pickup trucks are more expensive. But that seems like less of a concern now than it did 10 years ago when some publications were declaring the death of the SUV. Gas prices have been relatively low for several years now. So that's part of it. And then the third thing I think is that there is a kind of SUV arms race underway wherein if you're not in an SUV and you're on the road, the consequences of low visibility become more and more apparent as everyone else adopts an SUV. And in fact, that is borne out by the collision records. You are going to be safer in a collision with an SUV if you are also in an SUV. But suppose that is also a motivating factor to buy a larger car.

LL: But do you think that it's the manufacturer responding to consumer demand or consumers responding to manufacturers sales pitches?

HENRY GARBAR: Well, the other thing, right, is that the auto companies make much more money selling SUVs and trucks than they did selling cars, so they certainly have an incentive to switch their production lines in this direction. But, you know, I think we would be- You know, it is. It is also evident that consumers have shown a preference for these cars for years and to some extent managing the externalities of these cars, both their safety record with respect to people around them and their emissions record with respect to climate change, that should be the responsibility of the government. And the government really hasn't shown any interest in regulating them. I think it's up to individual consumers to maybe make that decision themselves.

LL: Jil, it is the same situation in Canada where manufacturers just are not making as many cars anymore that they really are switching over to SUVs, trucks?

JIL MACINTOSH: Well, I actually looked up some numbers here I have in front of me. And year to date in Canada to the end of September, Canadians have bought 1.5 million vehicles. And out of that 1.1 million are light trucks and 391000 are cars. So it is an overwhelming thing here. And as Henry said, the government mandates would go a long way towards that because we do have a free market. Years ago, I was in a panel discussion with Bob Lutz, who at one time was the president of General Motors. And this was a time when we were starting to see the move towards SUV. And people were complaining, you know, why doesn't General Motors build a small car? And Bob Lutz said, am I supposed to go into the shareholder meeting and say to them, well, you know, that the small cars that we can't give away, we're going to build those. And the SUV is that we can't keep in stock. We're going to get rid of them. And and it made perfect sense from an automaker's point of view. They do have a social responsibility. But at the same time, they are companies that will not survive if they do not sell enough vehicles. And if this is what consumers are clamouring for, well, that's what they're going to build.

LL: But what do people got against small cars?

JIL MACINTOSH: You know, I've never really figured that one out. I mean, I love station wagons. To me, a station wagon is a perfect vehicle. In many cases, it has the same size, interior size as a small SUV, but people don't like to sit low in them. And another thing we have to remember is people are getting bigger as overall, you know, we're seeing more people who are overweight or obese. They just don't fit into small cars. And a lot of people will get into these big vehicles and say, oh, yes, you know, I fit into this when I can. I can see everywhere around, you know, I've got enough room with the wheel and that sort of thing. And they want the vehicle in which they feel comfortable.

LL: But I'm wondering, Jil, and then I'll go to Henry after this, one of the top reasons people say they want an SUV is safety. Is it safer in an SUV?

JIL MACINTOSH: To a certain degree. You can't override the laws of physics. A large vehicle is going to protect you better than a small vehicle in a crash. But at the same time, we have atrocious drivers. We really don't whatever people get a licence here, they're just learning enough to get the licence. And then after that, they're done. They don't take extra driving courses. Our rules for allowing someone to get a licence are just they're pitiful. And so a lot of people buy these vehicles to make up for the fact that they can't drive very well. The they run stop signs, they're distracted and they're there. The possibility of crashing is higher. They don't know how to handle winter driving. They don't know how to avoid collisions. They're not looking out for pedestrians. And this thing is it's the equivalent of driving down the road in a tank. I am invincible. And the fact that I can't drive very well, this is going to make up for it.

LL: And Henry, there you are getting around on a bicycle. What's your view on that from being out on the streets and seeing these SUV come down the road?

HENRY GARBAR: Sure. My big picture take is that when you decide to drive an SUV in the morning, you are making the worst decision safety wise for everyone around you. For pedestrians or bicyclists, for the drivers who will be driving around you. And then obviously the worst decision for the polar ice caps. I think it's obvious if you're walking around on street that some of these drivers are so high off the ground that they are not going to be able to see, say, a child walking in front of the car at a stoplight or something like that. And sure enough, this is borne out in the data since we've seen the rise of SUV in the United States. We've seen pedestrian collision, pedestrian fatalities rise by 50 percent in 10 years, which The Detroit Free Press in an investigation concluded was associated with the rise of SUV. So we know that. For example, if you're driving in an SUV and you get in a collision with a pedestrian and pedestrian is a two to three times more likely to die than if they had been struck by a passenger car. Children are four times more likely to die in a collision with an SUV or a light truck. And even the drivers around you are four times more likely to die in a collision with an SUV. So the safety record of SUV is atrocious for everyone who is not in an SUV. And I think obviously that's one of the reasons driving the pickup, is that I do think there is a bit of an arms race if you're driving a regular car or on a bike. It can sometimes feel like you're a kid sitting at the grownups table. You just can't really see what's happening around you.

LL: So have you ever had yourself a close call or a collision with an SUV?

HENRY GARBAR: I have not, thank God. You know, I think it forces you into a kind of heightened level of awareness. Anybody who walks around a city with a child will be familiar with the experience of seeing an SUV approaching a yield sign or something like that and recognizing that they may not have while they can maybe see a longer distance, the distance. They may not be able to see so well what's happening Whether it's a question of right in front of the car. And I think that that's something that I'm aware of every time I'm on the road. And I'm sure that many parents would agree.

LL: All right. Let's switch the focus here to the environmental impact. Jil, we mentioned that study looking at the rise in global emissions linked to SUV. And you look at the ads for SUV and they show these people driving through forests and mountain ranges. And I'm wondering what you think of the way manufacturers sell us these things.

JIL MACINTOSH: Well, that they're selling you the sizzle. There's no doubt about that. The big thing is that people talk about saving the environment and changing what it takes to save the environment. They don't want to change their environment. So you have people that. Well, yes, small cars and fuel efficient cars. Let other people buy those. I want, you know, the big vehicle that I can fit in my family. But yeah, you are right. Manufacturers do tend to advertise these in a way that 90 percent of people aren't going to use them. Most people who buy vehicles with four wheel drive never go off, you know, their idea of off roading is they miss the driveway and they go across the edge of the lawn. People want to believe that they can do that. They want to believe that their truck or their SUV can pull an apartment building or that they can get them to the top of the mountain. I don't I don't know if that is what motivates people. It gets them into the showrooms. I don't know if that's exactly what gets them into that particular vehicle, but it's like all advertising. They're selling you more than you actually need.

LL: All right. And Henry, how much do you think then consumers are thinking about the environmental impact of their choices in vehicles? I mean, especially with the rise of electric vehicles.

HENRY GARBAR: Well, in the United States, we see a lot of self-proclaimed environmentalists who nevertheless will drive an SUV and they'll say, oh, well, you know, I'd donate to the Sierra Club or whatever. And I understand the impetus to think that you are not responsible in your personal choices for counteracting the negligence of the U.S. government with respect to carbon emissions. That makes sense to me. That said, the fact that so many Americans have gone and bought SUVs, which have you know, basically the fuel performance is so much worse that we've basically erased all the gains from hybrid vehicles. As you were saying, that's going to make it harder for us to adapt. So if we want to put a carbon tax and if we want to raise the gasoline tax. If we're looking at it now, as it was 10 years ago, there's a whole group of people out there who now have a really strong incentive to keep gas prices low because they are, you know, on the hook for a five year lease for a car that gets 22 miles to the gallon. So I think to some extent, people's personal choices, they have voted so loud with their feet in favour of SUVs that we are going to face kind of hurdles adapting in a way that we wouldn't have 10 years ago when people were buying lower emission cars.

LL: Jil, speaking of voting, we just have an election here in Canada and the environment and climate change were top issues, but people are buying SUV at just this incredible rate. What does that tell you?

JIL MACINTOSH: Well, one thing I would like to talk about is the fact that not all SUV are created equal. And when we think of the climate busting SUV, we're thinking of things like, you know, Suburbans and navigators and sequoias, the really big, ridiculous ones. But in some cases, one thing we have to look at is that some of the smaller vehicles, the ones that they call crossovers or, you know, smaller vehicles like, let's say a Honda HRV or CRV, or one of those manufacturers aren't just putting big engines into these. They are looking at a lot of ways to make them more fuel efficient. So we're getting smaller displacement engines with turbo charging. We're getting auto stop, which shuts off the engine when you're at idle. We're getting hybrid vehicles in the SUV category and even electric ones. And in some cases, you're looking at vehicles that are actually getting relatively good fuel efficiency that isn't that far off of a car. So it's not that, you know, people are getting into SUV. You have to look at what type of SUV they're getting into.

LL: And yet the statistics say SUV, they're responsible for a huge amount of emissions that are dwarfing other efforts to change the emissions from cars.

JIL MACINTOSH: Well, that is true. But as time goes on and these smaller SUVs become popular and automakers do what they can to improve the emissions and improve the engines, we may see that drop a little if we get people into the smaller versions of these SUVs.

LL: Henry, what do you think of that? Is this a problem that needs fixing now or is it just something that we need to wait on to improve?

JIL MACINTOSH: Well, we always need to fix it right now. The problem is getting people into it. And we're back into that.

LL: Henry.

HENRY GARBAR: I think we should move as fast as possible in the United States, at least to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that we're producing every year. The problem is the car park that we have in the United States is sort of all the cars on the road have a really long lifespan. So if we're looking at the last 10 years of SUV and pickup purchases. Those are cars we're going to be with for the next 15 or 20 years. So these decisions don't just matter today. The way people buy cars right now is going to be the automotive fleet that we're dealing with for the next 10 years.

LL: All right. We will leave it there. I'll say to both of you, stay safe on the roads, whatever you're on a bike or an SUV or a car. Thank you.

JIL MACINTOSH: Thank you.

HENRY GARBAR: Thanks.

LL: Henry Garbar writes for Slate.com about technology and the environment. He joined us from Chicago. And Jil MacIntosh is an automotive writer. You can find her work, WomenOnWheels.ca, among other places. She was in Oshawa, Ontario.

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LL: The CBC News is next, then to social media. Giants are taking very different approaches to political ads.

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I don't think it's right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy.

LL: On Facebook, they'll run political ads even if they're full of lies. But is Twitter's ban on political ads really a better solution? We're asking that question. I'm Laura Lynch, and you were listening to The Current.

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Twitter ad ban

Guests: Alexandra Samuel, Dipayan Ghosh

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come, one of former U.S. President Barack Obama's top foreign policy advisers looks back at her legacy. But first, free speech versus paid political ads.

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LL: Twitter's CEO, Jack Dorsey, had a problem on Wednesday morning. Paid political advertising, he said, was getting so hard to police. Here's how he tweetsplained it.

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Internet political ads present an entirely new challenges to civic discourse, machine learning based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information and deep fakes.

LL: So what to do? By Wednesday afternoon, he had a solution. And where better to announce?

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We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.

LL: The responses came as swiftly as a chickadees chirp. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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This is the right thing to do for democracy in America and all over the world.

LL: Actor and me, too, activist Alyssa Milano.

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Super proud of you.

LL: And U.S. Democratic presidential candidate and Montana Governor Steve Bullock.

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Good. Your turn, Facebook.

LL: But remember, this is Twitter, so of course, not everyone was happy. Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale.

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Twitter bans political ads in yet another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives.

LL: But the objections and support go beyond simple partisanship. In a moment, I'll speak with a former public policy adviser at Facebook who would like to see his ex-employer do something similar. But first, I'm joined by Alexandra Samuel. She's the author of Work Smarter with Social Media, and she's a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal. She joins me from our Vancouver studio. Hello.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Good morning.

LL: What were your thoughts when you first heard of Twitter's decision to ban political ads?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, you know, I think like a lot of people, it came as initially an enormous relief. I've been so distressed at Facebook's reluctance to take any responsibility for fake ads on their platform. They've been quite explicit in welcoming political advertising, accurate or inaccurate. And so initially, seeing that Twitter was actually doing something, I was thrilled. But it also didn't sit great. And I found on reflection, some real concerns about this particular approach.

LL: Tell me what those concerns are.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, you know, I've been working in social media since it was called, well, before it was called social media. And in the early days back when I was young and innocent, we really thought that what was exciting about social media - when we were first working in the space with non-profits in the U.S. and Canada and overseas - was that finally we had the space where the issues that people care about most social issues, political issues, you know, are the future of our society, how to place where they could compete for attention and not be overwhelmed by corporate voices and mainstream advertising. What we learned sadly over the past decade is that, you know, once you bring in advertisers and advertising dollars, money talks. And actually it is easier to get attention when you have dollars behind you. And that's why, sadly, so much of the social media space has migrated from being a conversation about politics, about society, about our own relationships and lives, and become a space where Instagram influencers are paid to talk about the latest mascara. And when you take advertising out of the mix and out of the range of opportunities that advocacy groups have to earn attention for their issues, you are essentially placing social and political organizations at a disadvantage relative to big corporate advertisers and furthering this trajectory of social media away from being a space for social conversation and towards a space for corporate advertising.

LL: Right. Because you're saying caught up in this net of banning political advertising are advocacy groups. So let's do that. Can you break down for our listeners what exactly Twitter is planning on banning?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, you know, I think one of the things that's tricky about this announcement is that Twitter has, I believe, you know, hopefully with the best intentions expressed its desire to stop this phenomenon of political advertising, with zero accuracy spreading across its platform. But they haven't yet told us how they're going to do that. And as with so many things, the devil's in the details. So in a couple of weeks, they're going to roll out guidelines that are going to tell us what they mean by political ads. But they've already said that includes things like ads on climate change, any ads on, you know, issues of led legislative policy. And I think what they're going to find when they do that is the line between political and apolitical is a lot murkier than we might think. So let's say we're banning ads from candidates. Is the Trump Hotel Organization still going to be able to place ads? Because if so, that is an incredible opportunity for name recognition. If you can run Trump ads all over Facebook, I mean, Twitter, you know, similarly, I think about something like, you know, Uber or Lyft, which, you know, currently in Vancouver because we're about to get ridesharing for the first time. It's every time I log into Facebook, I'm seeing an ad to become a Lyft driver. Well, you know, if Lyft and Uber advertising on Twitter looking for drivers, arguably you wouldn't consider that a political ad. But there is still a policy conversation going on about ridesharing in B.C. So does that mean that those who are critical of Uber and Lyft are not allowed to advertise, but Uber and Lyft are allowed to advertise? And, you know, this is the kind of ambiguity that Twitter is going to have to wrestle with. I suspect it's going to be a lot harder for them to keep a clean line between political and apolitical advertising than perhaps they anticipate.

LL: Twitter's chief financial officer, Ned Segal, tweeted Wednesday that the company made less than three million dollars U.S. from political ads in the 2014 cycle. He said this decision is based on principle. Money. I'm wondering what you think of that.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, I mean, I think it's easier to make a decision like this when it's not a big source of funding. And actually when I saw the relative numbers come out, it made me a little less cynical about Facebook because it's hard to see that this is a financial decision for Facebook either. You know, political ads are not nearly as valuable as all of the ads for clothes and mascara and belly fat busters and everything else we see. And unfortunately, what that means is that it's hard to justify on financial grounds, taking what I think is ultimately a more valuable approach for all of us as a society, which is allow political ads on these platforms, but pay for some level of fact checking and moderation. And, you know, in traditional ad models, in print and broadcast, you do have advertising standards and you have some ability to review ads as they come in. The problem in the context of social media is that we have such tiny ad buys in such micro targeted ads that first of all, the ads are much more easily manipulative. When you're targeting an ad to one hundred thousand two hundred thousand half a million people, you have to kind of have a broad message. When you're targeting an ad to 20 people, and you literally can target an ad to 20 people on Facebook - in fact, Facebook had to set a standard that you had to target an ad to a minimum of 20 people because advertisers were at one point able to target individuals - when you're able to target and add to that level that's where a lot of the kind of fake advertising problem kicks in, because you're able to feed people a message that is targeted to their own narrow view of the universe.

LL: Well, then doesn't that strengthen Jack Dorsey's argument that he just can't police at all. And the best thing to do is just an outright ban.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: It's certainly the easiest thing to do. And I definitely think it's better than Facebook s approach. But, you know, I do think there are going to be some complexities to it. I think that we are essentially privileging corporate speech over advocacy organizations. I mean, how is it not political advertising if Zara is promoting its clothing merchandising, but organizations that are lobbying for policy to limit sweatshop production aren't able to criticize Zara on Twitter. I mean, you've just destructed the level playing field. And so I think that rather than trying to draw a line between political advertising and apolitical advertising, which is, you know, really a tricky line to draw, I actually would encourage these platforms to take a second look at micro-targeting and to consider setting a minimum ad buy that is a lot higher. I mean, if you've never tried to place an ad on Facebook or Twitter, I really encourage everybody out there to place a ten dollar ad and discover how finely you can target people. It's quite terrifying. And so if instead you were to say, you know what? We're only going to accept ads at a larger scale. That gets rid of a lot of the problems that come from micro-targeting. And it also makes it feasible at a logistical and financial level for these companies to actually check the accuracy of all the advertising they receive, so that corporations and NGOs and governments can all be treated equally and given this very important tool for ensuring their message reaches the audiences who need to hear it.

LL: All right, Alexandra Samuel, I thank you for your views and we will leave it there.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Thank you.

LL: Alexandra Samuel is the author of Work Smarter with Social Media and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal. She was in our Vancouver studio. The buzz around Twitter's announcement hasn't just been about Twitter. Some say it's long overdue and they hope other social media companies follow suit. To discuss that now, I'm joined now by Dipayan Ghosh, he was a privacy and public policy adviser at Facebook from 2015 to 2017. Now he's the co-director of the Digital Platforms and Democracy Project and a Shorenstein fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. We have reached him in Dallas, Texas today. Hello.

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

LL: What were your first thoughts about Twitter's political ad ban?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Well, this is an incredibly difficult decision that Jack Dorsey has made, and it's the right one. It's absolutely the right one for protecting democratic interests. And my initial reaction was, wow, what a difficult decision to have made and what an incredible act of a private corporate actor to place democratic interests over the interests of profits.

LL: What makes it so right in your mind?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Jack Dorsey talked about it in his announcement and you just discussed it with Alexandra as well. It's this capacity over social media and the consumer Internet to splice and dice audience segments up across the population, target vulnerable communities and potentially spread political lies. That is the infrastructure that the Russian disinformation operators used in 2016, and that is exactly the same infrastructure that you could have potentially used on Twitter up until November 22nd and but no longer clearly. But it still exists on platforms like Facebook. It's that infrastructure to push lies and hate that has caused all the problems, that to an extent caused all the problems that we've seen.

LL: But what about what Alexandra Samuels was saying about the dangers of banning all political ads on Twitter?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: I do recognize that perhaps, again, we don't know the full contours of the announcement and which organizations will be affected, whether this will apply just to politicians or just politicians and campaigns or PACs as well, or also non-profit organizations that are in climate change. We don't know what the coverage will be. So that I should say up front. But I think when we have seen evidence of coordinated disinformation campaigns implementing this very infrastructure to the end of pushing the chances of one candidate and potentially pushing that candidate over the hump and getting them elected - And I'm talking about the 2016 elections in the United States - we have to take a step back and do exactly what Jack Dorsey has done, which is, again, to put democracy over money.

LL: But there's something else. The ban doesn't actually stop people from sharing fake political information on Twitter as long as they're not paying to promote it. So how much could this man actually do to prevent the spread of disinformation?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Well, that's absolutely true. But the difference between paid political advertising and sharing organic content is tremendous. The way that paid political advertising gets disseminated is that basically, for example, the Trump campaign can go into Facebook's advertising or Twitter's advertising manager, choose the particular audiences that they want to target and target them with ads. That's to say it's a very coordinated enterprise. The way that organic content, that's to say a tweet that you just generate and tweet out there or a Facebook post that you just put out there, the way that that gets disseminated is organically through other people seeing it, engaging with it and deciding to then we share it and engage with it. In other words, it's a decision on behalf of the citizen versus it's a citizen receiving something out of this commercial regime that Facebook or Twitter has set up for the corporate or for the campaign to push at the citizen or consumer.

LL: Well, let's talk about one of those high profile tweeters, and that's U.S. President Donald Trump. This policy would still allow him to spread disinformation on its platform. So how does that square with the new policy?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Well, what you mean is, just to be clear, that he could spread this information by tweeting.

LL: Yes.

DIPAYAN GHOSH: That that's absolutely true. This does not touch organic content in any way whatsoever.

LL: So how much pressure do you think Twitter's decision will put on Facebook to change its own policies, which at the moment is that it won't back track ads from politicians?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Well, you know, I think that this is going to really start a big conversation and we have to start somewhere, which is exactly what Jack Dorsey has done. Now, we could be cynical about it. We could also be hopeful about it, that's to say this announcement. But I choose to be hopeful about it in the sense that I think that his heart is in the right place. He is, I'm sure, very frustrated when he sees Facebook and its unwillingness to bend its trajectory toward profit. And he wants to put a stake down and in the interests of democratic process and governance. And I do think that this is the first step. There will be a lot of pressure on the industry to move, first on companies like Facebook to also ban political advertising, but then absolutely on Twitter and Facebook and others to continue to take steps to essentially make their platforms more fair.

LL: Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, was pretty definitive on Wednesday after the Twitter announcement. This is his quote, "I don't think it's right for private companies to censor politicians or the news". And as someone who used to work at Facebook, what do you think of Zuckerberg response?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Well, I choose to be very cynical there, and I think it's for good reason. Zuckerberg's statements are commercially convenient for Facebook. And I would challenge your earlier guest, Alexandra, and suggest that this this decision to allow political advertising, it's commercially convenient in the sense that it protects Facebook business model. It is in their corporate profit interest to do absolutely nothing to the extent that they can get away with it. It's not just about the direct revenue that they get from political advertising. Yes, that number is significant in absolute terms, but it's only.

LL: It's only 0.5 Percent of its revenue.

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Yes. Right. It's a small number in Facebook, overall revenue. But first of all, it doesn't want to put 0.5 Percent of its revenue, which is a huge number on the table. It wants that revenue. Second of all, it wants to enable campaigns to put political ads as a general matter onto its platform, because if it stops that, then political content, political engagement on Facebook will cease to a large extent. That's to say that a lot of engagement on Facebook as a general matter will shut down. They don't want to see that. They want Facebook to be a hub for all kinds of conversation, social, cultural, entertainment, friends and family and political. That's a big component of the platform. So I think that this is a commercially convenient expression for Facebook. To just do nothing about this is really a head scratcher. And it's only interests their profit.

LL: You worked at Facebook through the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. What kind of impact do you think that Facebook lack of policy on political ads had on that election?

DIPAYAN GHOSH: A tremendous one. I think what we have seen is that- what I would suggest is that ,in the context of the 2016 U.S. election, things were heading in a particular direction toward an individual you quoted earlier on this program: Hillary Clinton. And what we saw is that there were two things that happened in the months, in the weeks leading into November 8, 2016. First, the WikiLeaks scandal where these emails were leaked. And yet we of course, we found nothing in those e-mails that was a that was critical where we could be critical of the Democratic Party in almost any way. But nonetheless, they had a huge impact on discourse in the United States and around the world. And second, coordinated this information. And I think that combination may well have tipped the scale.

LL: All right. We will have to leave it there, we're running out of time. But I appreciate it. Thank you.

DIPAYAN GHOSH: Thank you, Laura.

LL: Dipayan Ghosh is the co-director of the Digital Platforms and Democracy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, and he is a former Facebook employee. He is in Dallas, Texas. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. Well, this weekend, most places in Canada will be falling back. Early Sunday morning, it's the annual switch from daylight saving time back to Standard Time, except for Saskatchewan and some parts of British Columbia. Anyway, that's the subject of debate. The extra hour of sleep versus kids that can't read clocks. But that debate may soon come to an end in B.C. Legislation was tabled yesterday that could put an end to this clock changing once and for all. Instead, the province would be on daylight saving time permanently. And while many people may like the idea of not having to switch around the sleep schedule and getting a little extra sunlight after work. Sleep expert Myriam Juda says Bush's plan has a big flaw. She's a research associate in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University.

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MYRIAM JUDA: We should be stopping the time change, but what we are saying is that we should have permanent standard time, not permanent daylight saving time. We have a circadian clock and a circadian clock synchronizes the light-dark cycle. And if we were to have daylight saving time over the winter, what that means is that now all our social schedules, our work schedule, most importantly, would be happening one hour earlier, physiologically speaking, or in relation to the light-dark cycle of the sun. That means that now we got less light exposure in the morning, but for a circadian clock, we need early morning light exposure. If we don't get enough morning light exposure, our circadian clock drifts. What that means is that we get tired later in the evening and also it is harder to wake up in the morning. With permanent daylight saving time. The sunrise would only be around 9 a.m., actually, 9:05 in December, end of December. That's really late. So children will be tired, their sleep will be cut, which we know is not good for development. Also for mental health. Also for school performance. It's the kind of jet lag. But as opposed to Jack Black, when we travel. When we travel, we adjust to the new time zone, to the new light-dark cycle of the sun. But in this case here, it will be permanent jet lag. I know that people find it very appealing to get evening light exposure and it might seem appealing at first, but when it comes to our physiology and our circadian clock, we know it's not a good idea. The combination of reduced light exposure in the morning, an increased light exposure in the evening will further delay the circadian clock. So it would decrease our sleep duration, it would increase our fatigue, likely increase car accident rate and also increase certain health problems.

LL: Yikes. Myriam Juda is a sleep expert and research associate in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. I, for one, am looking forward to an extra hour of sleep. Coming up in our next half hour, Samantha Power will join us. She was on former U.S. President Barack Obama's National Security Council and she served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.. She has a new memoir of her formative years and her time at the centre of U.S. foreign policy. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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Trump's withdrawal from Syria will mean 'long-term threats' to U.S. security: Obama's ambassador to UN

Guest: Samantha Power

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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Well, there has been a longstanding debate in the history of American foreign policy between the so-called realists who believe the states pursue their power and their self-interest. And then there's another camp who has long argued that people need to be at the centre of our foreign policy thinking, both because their people and they deserve respect and dignity, but also because that advances our national security.

LL: During Barack Obama's U.S. presidency, Samantha Power was a key adviser. She served on the National Security Council and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. When the U.S. was called on to respond to momentous events in Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond, she was an important voice at the table. Now she's written a memoir of her life from her childhood in Dublin to executing U.S. foreign policy on the floor of the U.N. and in countries around the world. It's called The Education of an Idealist. And Ambassador Power joins me now from Boston. Hello.

SAMANTHA POWER: Hi.

LL: You were born in Ireland. You moved to the United States as a child. I'm wondering how being an immigrant has informed your approach to public service over the years.

SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you, Laura. It's hard to know because you are who you are. But certainly. And coming from a not only abroad, but from a small country abroad, I think when I was at the U.N., I was very conscious of how America sometimes looked as though it was trampling over people and how important it was to take into account the dignity of nations and to think about how the big decisions affect smaller countries, all countries really. And one of the sayings that I heard a lot at the U.N. is when America sneezes, we catch a cold, something Canada might be familiar with.

LL: Very, very much so.

SAMANTHA POWER: So that's something I tried to take, take to heart. And , you know, never forget that we're America in the big sense and often the good sense, but also in the sense of bringing a history also to every discussion we have, a history that not every country has loved.

LL: In your 20s, you went to Bosnia as a war correspondent. And I'm wondering, how about experience shaped your ideas on what makes effective foreign policy?

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, that was an interesting time because it, very unlike today, it was a time when there was a lot of triumphalism about Western liberalism, about the ultimate hegemony of democracy, that it was going to sweep the world, including China and places like that. And Bosnia was a bit of a seemed like an anachronism, this kind of pesky, deadly conflict that was anachronistic in light of all of these positive trends. And in fact, if you look at some of the dynamics on the ground, you know, the use of state run media to demonize the other, the use the exploitation by pretty cynical political leaders to drum up nationalism and xenophobia. You know, it was actually a preview of some of what we see all these years later. But at the time, I learned how to be a journalist. Above all, I went as a complete novice. So I learned to tell stories and to try to bridge the distance between some pretty horrific suffering and killings with an American public that sometimes was tempted to tune out. And so to figure out, you know, what works. How do you translate? It was such a distinct set of circumstances, such a horrific set of circumstances into stories that people can relate to in their own lives. And I saw the U.N. up close. Canadian peacekeepers were there as well. It was a very difficult time for peacekeepers because they were put in the centre of a hot war and didn't really step up. So I came to see the credibility of the U.N. as something that isn't necessarily just imbued in the flag or in the nobility of purpose associated with the U.N. But it's also in people's minds on the ground, very much linked with performance.

LL: But is it also fair to say that it convinced you that the United States could and should do more?

SAMANTHA POWER: Yes. But, yes, I came out of the conflict. I actually went back to law school because I felt my journalism was it was ineffective at best. I mean, I really went to the region in the first place, hopeful that my journalism would make a difference. And ultimately, I actually think the press did put an awful lot of pressure on politicians to revisit pretty hands off approach. But I came back and when I went to law school, I began to explore mass atrocities and genocide more generally and looked at American responses from the Armenian genocide at the beginning of the 20th century through the Holocaust, the Bosnia war, Rwanda and others. And yes, I my view was that systematically pretty much if the issue didn't have a nexus with vital national interests, it was very rare that even rose within the U.S. government foreign policy machinery. And so that meant that diplomatic tools went untried, multilateral tools using the United Nations. For example, when Canadian General Romeo Dallaire was there in Rwanda begging for reinforcements, the U.S. position was, in fact, to yank the troops out from under him at a terrible cost to the people of Rwanda and terrible cost to him ultimately as well. And so, yes, I but my idea that grew out of that work and that research was, again, no one size fits all. All the [cutting] the face of genocide or mass atrocity. You must do this. It was simply elevate the issue, get high level people around the table so they can cut through the red tape and deploy a variety of tools, depending on which seem appropriate, when it matters. You know, not waiting too long. And so that the costs of doing, quote, "something" have gone up to the point where nobody wants to bear them.

LL: And then you get your chance to be at the table. As the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, you wrote that you felt exhilarated by the seeming ease with which you could elevate the profile of an egregious injustice. I'm wondering if there's one moment of success that solidified that feeling for you.

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, the probably it's hard to call it exhilarating because it was so devastating for people who were involved on the ground. But when I was U.N. ambassador, having the privilege of being tapped by President Obama to help him build his coalition to end the Ebola outbreak, I mean, that was, again, not a case of mass atrocity, of the kind that I had written about and worked on for so many years. But it is a case where we were seeing predictions that 1.4 million people were going to be infected within four months. This was in the fall of 2014. We were shown these charts and the politics were terrible in the United States. Republicans were joined actually by some very reasonable Democrats in wanting to effectively build a wall around the United States and keep even health workers from the United States who'd gone over to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone to prevent them from coming home. Such was the fear and the panic. And Obama said, you know, I'm sorry about the fear. It's out there. And I wish I could figure out how to crack the code to address that fear. But my priority is dealing with the issue at its source, because I know that, in fact, if we try to build a wall, if we prevent our health workers from coming home, that's going to mean it's more likely to come to our country and to other countries. And so when he tapped me and John Kerry and others to build this coalition on the heels of himself having announced that we would send 3000 troops and health workers into West Africa, it was really a reminder of how the international system can work at its best. It doesn't work that way, as you know, very often. But where the United States makes an announcement makes this substantial commitment and then we are empowered and others in the U.N. system as well to leverage that commitment to get China to build its Ebola treatment units, to get Malaysia to donate tens of thousands of rubber gloves, to go to Cuba, with which we were just having backchannel dialogue at that time and figure out how many of their vaunted Africa based doctors they were willing to send in this calamity that really could have erased whole communities in West Africa, above all because of the resilience and the and the bravery of the people on the ground. But backed by this international coalition, we were able to prevent those scenarios from coming to pass.

LL: And yet there were times when things didn't really work for you. We played some tape of that at the very beginning of the show today of you taking on the Russian ambassador at the U.N. about Crimea. Tell me what happened. You thought that you'd struck a moral victory, but then you had an encounter with your son.

SAMANTHA POWER: Oh, yes, my immortal son. So I did have the experience and tried to write in the book about the experience that so many have. Juggling being a parent with working too much and in my case, in a national security job. So I wasn't seen by my son, who at this time was about six as nearly as often as I wanted. But this night I square off against the Russian ambassador. I'm very nervous. I'm new to the job. I can't believe we're kind of going back in time. It feels like this is the Security Council, you know, and when Czechoslovakia is invaded in 1968 or Hungary in 1956 and here we are, Russia trying to lop off part of Ukraine. TV cameras rolling. I'm on the spot. It's live debate. I was never a big debater and, you know, in high school or growing up. And yet I feel drawing on my former journalistic experience. I'm able to kind of nail the argument, I thought. And so the Russian ambassador very experienced, very seasoned. He does his part. I go back against him. I expose the facts. I think to countries that were tempted to sit on the sideline, bring a few countries to to the side of the Ukrainian government and to our side. And I feel really good about myself and I come home and Rouse, my son, who's 6 at 10:00 at night, say, let's go get a cheeseburger. And so we go off to a nearby restaurant and I say, Mommy had a great day. This is what happened. The Russian ambassador said this and then mommy said this and then Russia said this. And then, by the way, here's what Putin's doing. And and it's terrible. You know, imagine if somebody came and took your toys. Well, that's what he's doing in Crimea. So my son's getting more and more worked up about the injustice at the heart of it all. And then I said and then mommy closed out by saying this. And there was silence. And he's holding a French fry kind of doused in Mayo. And he says, oh, okay. So did they leave? And I said, what do you mean leave? And he said, leave Crimea? Did they leave? I'm like uh, man. Details. Details.

LL: He's your reality check.

SAMANTHA POWER: Absolutely. And he was throughout. And it's really you do get- there is a risk in these jobs, you know, and especially with social media, you know, are you going? What you did in confronting Russia on Syria going viral? Who cares? Like, how's that? Unless it's actually translating into pressure on the Russian Federation to change its approach to Aleppo, which may be going viral, didn't in my opinion, anyway, have any effect on- it's not all that relevant. So it's always good to have people to keep you honest. That's for sure.

LL: President Obama aggressively expanded the use of drones as weapons of attack during your time in the administration. There's no mention of it in your book. I'm wondering what your position is on the use of drones in combat and counterterrorism operations.

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, I think the short answer is it really depends. And I think that what President Obama was trying to do is to avoid one of the features of U.S. foreign policy that has been pretty problematic over many, many years, which is, for example, with the invasion of Iraq, there triply problematic for other reasons because of the flawed intelligence, the fact that there was no terrorist threat to us that was posed in Iraq prior to the invasion. But of course, then one was produced in part by the invasion. But he was looking to avoid large scale troop deployments that end up trampling sometimes the rights of of people on the ground, certainly are of great cost also to the United States. And he put in place a legal framework, very transparent framework, that meant that he was not going to use drones, not going to take a strike unless he was sort of a beyond reasonable doubt kind of standard of certainty. So he really tried to- I think it's very hard when you present United States and you're seeing intelligence about how a U.S. embassy is at risk of being hit or U.S. journalists potentially being beheaded, as happened in Syria with ISIS. And to recognize that sending troops on the ground doesn't always make things better, it often makes things worse. So this was an effort to do deal with threats.

LL: Did you agree with it, though, because a lot there were a lot of civilians who were also hurt in drone strikes?

SAMANTHA POWER: There are a lot of civilians hurt by our ground troops and there a lot of civilians hurt by our use of airpower. It really depended to me on the intelligence, on the the extent to which, you know, we really felt that we had a degree of certainty about whether the threat. You know, again, rose to the level where it was worth taking that kind of risk. What I found very problematic about the program was and do still is that, you know, this is some of the drone strikes are taken in places where there isn't a public debate. And there you end up in a position where you wonder where the kind of accountability that you need comes from. And so you'd get Pentagon reports of how many people, how many civilians were killed that would look very small. And then you'd get NGO reports that's where sometimes you're talking about dozens of people killed and so forth. And they were in places in remote Pakistan, for example, or in Yemen, where you were never going to be present on the ground to be undertaking the kind of investigation that would give you satisfaction or confidence in your assessment. And so those dimensions of the program, I think, left it open. Then also to a great vulnerability when President Trump comes in, doesn't care about civilian casualties, is willing to bear much more risk. And now you see that program being expanded in ways that are very dangerous, I think. So that vulnerability was always there.

LL: Another thing that you don't write about in the book is the Saudi intervention in Yemen with drone warfare was part of that as well. You initially supported the Saudi intervention against the Huthi rebels. How do you reconcile that support with the impact it's having, the humanitarian crisis that's happening in Yemen now?

SAMANTHA POWER: The impact of the Saudi led intervention in Yemen is devastating. I think the initial just explain why the Obama station got involved in what now seems like something that shouldn't have touched with a ten foot pole. The sovereign government of Yemen was overrun by a bunch of militia who stormed the capital and didn't really care who they mowed over as they went. Saudi Arabia said we're going to try to restore the actually elected government, although, as you know, it was an election by Yemeni standards, but was the first one they'd had of that nature. And we offered to provide international humanitarian legal advice to actually send people who could help advise them on targeting because they didn't have a lot of experience to try to get them to avoid inflicting civilian casualties. We offered to provide them with intelligence as to where the Huthi were. Again, with an eye to avoiding collateral damage and other things. Bottom line is, I think the initial response to try to restore that government make some sense. But within a matter of just a couple months, it was very clear that the Saudis were not taking our advice. And it is really regrettable, I think, that the United States did not pull the plug. I'm not sure what difference it would have made. It may have meant that they were even more haphazard as to my book. And why didn't I include this or that. I mean, it is challenging just to- I write at length about Libya, about Syria, about other very controversial dimensions of American foreign policy. It's true that I don't manage to talk about absolutely everything that happened on our watch. And Yemen is a very important part of that story because it is one of the rare examples where we got involved, I think, in a manner where it was in the wake of the Iran deal. So there was some desire to kind of improve relations with the Saudi government, which was very unhappy with the Iran nuclear deal. But I really believe it's an example in American foreign policy where what starts sometimes for defensible reasons very quickly becomes deeply problematic. And the United States is very - and most governments are. But the United States puts itself in this position more than other governments arguably - is not so good at those moments at pulling back and just saying, okay, the original circumstances are no longer valid. We're out. Which is what should have happened.

LL: Let's turn to Syria, because you've differed with the president when it came to Syria. You wanted more intervention there. He backed off even after his red line was crossed. We know that some people have resigned. Ambassador Ford resigned over Syria. You didn't. You stayed. Why? What happened to the idealist?

SAMANTHA POWER: The idealist is was going strong. The idealist was trying to help people in the Central African Republic as well, trying to get Syrian political prisoners out of jail, trying to get the Paris treaty across the finish line in time so that it would do acquire the force of international law. So if somebody like Donald Trump got elected, he could maybe pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, but not unravel the agreement as a whole. There was so much you could do from the position that I was privileged to be in, including continue to lobby on on Syria for something like a no fly zone or protected zones so that civilians with at least have some place to go. I also lobbied in the end finally, belatedly, successfully, to get more Syrian refugees into the United States, because, as you know, Canada went a lot further proportionately than we did. But at least at the very end, to be able to take, you know, 10000, 15000 Syrians and so to push for things like that. I mean, my view in these jobs is that if you are sort of banging your head against the wall, if you're lucky enough to be in the cabinet of the president of United States, as I write about in the book, chances are there's some how you can use that position for good.

LL: I'm wondering what you think of what's happening in Syria right now, especially with President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops and what has come of that?

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, you know, it reminds me very much of one of the central themes of the book. In fact, it evokes the clip that you played that I just heard about values and interests and how they mix. I mean what President Trump has done in pulling out U.S. troops and effectively giving President Erdogan of Turkey a green light to roll over Kurdish troops is, of course, immoral in the sense that a set of commitments were made. The Kurdish troops did what they did going to areas like Raqqah, where they had no traditional presence in order to fight ISIS because they thought that that would buy them U.S. support in the long term. With Trump, there is no long term. He breaks America's commitments left and right, whether on climate or Iran or this. So in the sense there is a human dimension to it where families that relied on the United States are being deeply hurt by that reliance. But that also relates critically to our national security, because if the new way of dealing with the actual threats that exist out there gets to our discussion on drones, namely when you have terrorist movements, whether you know who control territory like ISIS or who are. Simply motivated by terrorist propaganda, they see from afar, that puts any head of state in a really tough position in figuring out what to do about it. And more and more, the view is with the United States now in its 18th year of conflict in Afghanistan, that we're going to need to have local partners on the ground to help us manage threats of that nature. And maybe better that than then drone strikes where you are judge, jury and executioner at once. Or maybe you don't have the intelligence that you need. But there are risks in that as well. Risks in backing actors on the ground that commit human rights abuses themselves. Risks, in this case, that you then end up on the hook for delivering things that you may not even be in your in your power to deliver. But in the case of trumped by both by betraying these individuals, these fighters, these people who took 11000 casualties in the interest of defeating a terrorist movement, that was a threat to us above all and Western democracies generally, what has happened is we have made it extremely unlikely that others are likely to volunteer to perform that role. And if we're going to be unable to outsource those kinds of efforts in the future. And so that's both an affront to our values in terms of breaking our word and it's going to produce long term threats to our security,.

LL: Affront to our values. I'm wondering, though, whether you think that President Trump in his actions reflects a widespread view in the United States, sort of a fatigue when it comes to humanitarian interventions and the idea that the United States always has to be the one in charge of fixing things?

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, the short answer is yes, there is a fatigue. But I'd unpack it a little bit. I mean, the fatigue is with U.S. forces being called upon to fight. And the fatigue stems from the never ending war in Afghanistan. The fact that when President Obama did deliver on our commitment to leave Iraq, of course, ISIS grew up in the wake of that, I think largely because Syria was a place where they could take refuge and build their caliphate. And that then spilled into Iraq and snowballed a little bit. But a sense that, you know, it never ends, that the obligations and the need to deal with certain threats that it keeps coming back to the United States. So on the left is, as you indicate, on the left and the right, I think there is that fatigue. However, if you talk to people and say, well, no, what about not actually being the world's policeman, nobody's for that. But what about recognizing that the international system has the possibility of creating coalitions that can manage issues like Ebola, which I mentioned, like the Iran, the expanding Iran nuclear program, which through a diplomatic coalition was brought to an end, even if it's now been terribly mishandled by the Trump administration. You know, what about that form of catalytic leadership where you get other countries to step up and their people are much more persuaded in that approach. And so I think, you know, that the challenge heading into the 2020 election for Democrats is no one even talking about foreign policy. It hardly comes up, which is a terrible shame, because that then perpetuates this idea that perhaps we can afford to look away. But, B, as you talk about foreign policy, to really make clear that when you talk about U.S. leadership in the world, it is about getting other countries to step up as well. It is not about bearing that burden alone. And it is about recognizing that if you don't, you will either have collective action problems of the kind we see around the world today were very little diplomacy is being done. Or as China grows and flexes its muscles, increasingly, you'll have a world order whose rules are increasingly shaped by a country whose values democracies don't share. And that's not a world that that Americans want either. So I think I think the fatigue with war is real. I don't think it's a fatigue with humanitarian intervention because it was the Iraq war and the Afghan wars. I think that that has produced most of that fatigue and that disillusionment with some form of U.S. foreign policy and a lack of faith, understandably, that using military force around the world is going to deal with the root causes of what ails these places. I think that's where the fatigue comes from. But there's something in your question that's deeply true, which is I think people do in certain quarters now conflate U.S. foreign policy with big wars, long wars, wars that don't work. And somebody needs to separate out.

LL: And rightly so, don't you think? As you've just discussed and. And wars that have devastating consequences for civilians.

SAMANTHA POWER: Yes. No. But I don't think that U.S. foreign policy can be reduced to making or should be reduced to making war. It shouldn't be. I mean, even if you think that in. Aiding Iraq was one of the worst ideas in the history of the world and certainly one of the worst ideas since the Second World War in American foreign policy. Even if you go back to Vietnam, even if you have want to challenge understandably again what's happened in Libya in the wake of NATO's intervention there. Would you wish to see the United States on the sidelines? Would you wish to see the U.S. as an isolationist force in the world, not taking aggressive measures to replace the Paris climate agreement with something more ambitious? Not trying to defang the Iran nuclear program through diplomatic negotiations? Standing back as the Ebola epidemic gobbles up, you know, huge parts of West Africa where we know a disease like that is going to spread? No, it's a question of not whether to lead or not to lead. It's a question of how to lead and whether the historic reliance on military force that the United States has practiced is sustainable, or if it's wise, it's neither.

LL: We only have about 30 seconds left. And I have to ask you, what's next for you? Are you looking to get back into politics?

SAMANTHA POWER: I'm looking to activate people to be politically engaged, which is why I wrote a memoir that kind of opens up my insides and my personal life and practices TMI. I think in too many places, perhaps. But because, you know, if I write a policy book or even the debate we're having here, if that's the direction I'm going in. I'm not going to bring anybody new into this conversation. And so people are turning away from U.S. leadership in the world, but they're also turning away from Washington and from politics. And so I want to bring them back as the biggest predictor of whether we can move away from the isolationism and the xenophobia of this president is whether we get more people engaged. So that's my focus.

LL: Ambassador Power, thank you for your time.

SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you, Laura. Appreciate it.

LL: Ambassador Samantha Powers, new memoir, The Education of an Idealist is out now. She was in Boston. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. That is coming up next. Remember, you can always take The Current with you to go. CBC Listen is the new free app that lets you discover the very best in Canadian audio. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current and have a good weekend.

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