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The Current Transcript for May 27, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: When I was younger I had lots of plans of becoming different things. Everything from an actor to a scientist, but then my teachers in school told me about climate change. That was sort of an eye opener to me.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg credits her teachers for her activism on climate change and her parents in turn credit her for theirs. As Greta's actions inspire youth protest around the planet, schools, teachers, parents and politicians are looking at how our own curricula addresses or does not address climate change. Are kids learning enough about changes affecting our planet and their future or are as some argued being politicized or brainwashed? In half an hour, we're asking a panel of teachers to weigh in and then we're going to hear from a man who has looked into an era when some of the biggest brains in the U.S. were brought together to find new ways to fight enemies in battle or through spycraft. One of them involved using cats.

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VOICE: What if we can turn an average everyday housecat into a covert listening device. Surgically implanting the power pack inside the abdomen of the cat, they ran the microphone up into the ear canal as a filtering device and then the antenna was ran down through the tail.

AMT: It is a cautionary tale of how fears, real and imagined were addressed with often crazy ideas that could have had devastating consequences. The author of Nuking the Moon joins me in an hour. And.

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VOICE: On the issue of Huawei the decision will not be a political one. It will be it one that we take based on facts and data and the best advice of our intelligence and security professionals.

AMT: The PM is expected to face more pressure on the China Huawei file this week with a visit from the US vice president and the growing American action against Huawei's involvement in 5G. We're starting there. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Is Huawei a security threat to Canada? Risks could be closer to home, says columnist

Guests: Elsa Kania, Christopher Parsons, David Olive

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VOICE: Huawei is something that's very dangerous. You look at what they've done from a security standpoint, from a military standpoint, it's very dangerous.

AMT: Well that is the U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month saying what's been obvious for some time, the U.S. does not trust Huawei. President Trump barred U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms that pose "a risk to national security." He did not name. He didn't have to. At the same time the U.S. Commerce Department did name names adding Huawei to a list of firms that U.S. companies need permission with which to work. The fear in Washington is that the Chinese telecommunications giant is an agent of the Chinese government. A Trojan horse China can use to infiltrate communication networks around the world. Huawei is the world's largest manufacturer of telecoms equipment. It holds several patents crucial to developing 5G mobile networks. For its part, it says the fears are unfounded.

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VOICE: The principal concern that the Americans have is that Huawei is somehow connected to the Chinese government, which it is not. Huawei is a private company and we've repeatedly explained this many many times over.

AMT: That is Tim Watkins, Huawei's vice president for Western Europe, speaking to the BBC. We'll debate whether Canada should get on or off the Huawei train in a moment, but first a closer look at the cause and consequences of President Trump's hard line. Elsa Kania is an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security. That is a national security thinktank based in Washington D.C. And we have reached out to Kenya in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Hello.

ELSA KANIA: Thank you. Good morning. I'm glad to be on the show.

AMT: Well many of the concerns of Huawei revolve around its involvement in developing 5G. Briefly remind us what 5G is and how we will advance our current mobile capacities.

EK: Sure so while a lot of the conversation about 5G is centered on security concerns. I think it's also important to remember the 5G is also quite exciting as the new generation of telecommunications that will dramatically increase speed while also having a low latency high bandwidth and the ability to really transform our economies and societies ways that may have far reaching implications and applications from smart cities to self-driving vehicles to new applications and healthcare and agriculture manufacturing and the like. So there are very real reasons to be excited about 5G but also to make sure that security is my start. Given this could really become new critical infrastructure at the core of 21st century economy.

AMT: Why is Huawei so well-positioned to develop 5G networks?

EK: So Huawei has claimed that it is the leader in 5G and certainly it has some rather unique strengths including the fact that it commands a quite significant 30 percent by some estimates share of the existing telecommunications market and they are they they're quite a major player across all elements of 5 g from the hardware to the radio and and other assorted software elements. And they certainly have had economies of scale that has enabled them to undercut competitors in price. And Huawei loves the fact that they command by some accounts the largest share of patents and have made a major contribution to fight to 5G standard. However, I think there are also reason to question whether Huawei is as clear a leader as they may claim to be. So for instance when we start to look at the quality of their patents, it's clear that they are not at the forefront of the various the various dimensions of 5G technologies as they're taking shape there. Their patents are definitely quantity does not necessarily apply quality here, if you look at citations and the value of those pack plus they've acquired some proportion of them from a number of other companies in the States. And then if you look at their contributions to standards, it's clear that Huawei has been very active in trying to shape the future of 5G as this technology continues to take shape through the process, but they've been active, but that does not mean that they have the best technology.

AMT: OK. So let me just interrupt you there because I want to move through a few other things then. With that in mind, Donald Trump says Huawei is dangerous. How fair is that assessment?

EK: I think it's a fair assessment in so far as Huawei is a Chinese company that is operating within a system where that is lacking true rule of law where they could be subject to extra judicial requirements from the government, not to mention the apparent legal requirements pursuant to China's national intelligence law that they support intelligence work and the company has disputed those claims. But I think it's clear if you look at their ownership structure where the potential influence of the Chinese Communist Party upon Huawei there are reasons for concern. So there are the typical vulnerabilities that you could see in any company that may be there regardless of intent. But then there also are incidents where while Wei has been directly linked to espionage as in the case of the breach at the African Union headquarters as well as cases where they apparently served as a front organization for Chinese intelligence operatives as was the case of Poland. So I think there are major reasons for concern in the case of Huawei and it's unfortunate that some of these concerns have become entangled with politics in some cases, but I think the underlying reasons are for those concerns are very real.

AMT: While they have also been entangled with trade, let me play you another clip of President Trump. Listen to him here.

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VOICE: It's possible that Huawei he even would be included in some kind of a trade deal. If we made a deal, I could imagine Huawei being possibly included in some part of a trade deal.

AMT: That statement has led to some to speculate that Washington is just trying to gain leverage in U.S.-China trade talks. Elsa Kania, what do you think?

EK: I think it would be very unfortunate if Huawei were to be used as merely a tactic or bargaining chip in these negotiations which seemed to be off the rails right now, but the timing of some of these measures does suggest that may have been a factor behind the recent decision. I do hope that the real concerns and real reasons to be wary of Huawei will override some of these short term incentives to perhaps be able to have treatable deliverables or victories on to entrees that I think the I think across the U.S. government there are there is a real focus on 5G security and a ways to work with allies and partners on ensuring a better and healthier future for 5G. So I hope that the long term concern with managing and mitigating security risks will end up proving more enduring than some of the then some of the tweets and other statements we've seen that I think do undercut elements of the administration's own approach on this.

AMT: Okay. Well thank you very much for your perspective on all of this.

EK: Thank you and have a great day.

AMT: You as well. That is Elsa Kania. She is an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a North American Security. That's a national security think tank based in Washington D.C. She's in Peterborough, New Hampshire. We did ask the Chinese embassy in Ottawa and Huawei Canada for comment. We did not hear back from either. The U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will be visiting Ottawa Thursday. He is expected to bring up Huawei while he's here. Of course the U.S. wants Canada to keep Huawei out of the 5G network development. For its part, the Trudeau government says it will make that calculation based solely on Canada's own security interests, but politics and money will almost certainly be a major consideration arriving at that ultimate desk decision, which now seems unlikely to be made before the fall election. My next guests can help us understand what is at stake for Canada. Christopher Parsons is a senior research associate at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. He studies privacy and telecommunications. He's with me in our Toronto studio. David Olive is a business columnist with The Toronto Star. He is on the line. Hello gentlemen. Welcome.

CHRISTOPHER PARSONS: Thank you for having us.

DAVID OLIVE: Good morning.

AMT: David Olive, let's start with you. Given the concerns of the intelligence community about Huawei, why should Canada's still be considering allowing the company to be part of the new 5G network here?

DO: The United States has repeatedly accused Huawei of being a threat to U.S. national security. We have the United States itself has presented no evidence of that. And indeed we have no evidence in the 32 year long history of Huawei of it having spied on any country. So this is very much a political issue and you really have to ask yourself I think if if Huawei is so dangerous then why is Donald Trump using it as a bargaining chip. Apparently it's fine to have a building the US to a communications network provided that China stopped dumping steel in the United States and Canada and that's got nothing to do with national security. That's politics and that's politics, despite Justin Trudeau saying that he's going to try to keep politics out of this decision. There's no way of keeping politics out of this decision.

AMT: Christopher Parsons, hypothetically speaking how could Huawei 5G technology be used for malignant malicious purposes?

CP: Well there's a few different concerns that have been raised. So to begin telecommunication systems just like computers that you have in front of your desk or your mobile phone or something like that can have firmware updates pushed to them and those firmware updates may have vulnerabilities or back doors or other things that can be exploited by foreign attackers. In this case the concern is obviously the Chinese government. There's also offering system updates. Those could also have the same sorts of vulnerabilities or backdoor. So on the one hand there's a concern that backdoors could be inserted. The other concern is that they're like all pieces of technology, Huawei equipment, iPhones, go through any piece of technology, it all has vulnerabilities. So we get patches on a regular basis. So there's a concern that a vulnerability might be identified, perhaps by Huawei itself or by the Chinese government. And then it's simply not patched. And so there you have an instance where there might be a series of vulnerabilities could be exploited and they were deliberately inserted. Why is this a concern because this is a networking technology that once we deploy it. Getting rid of it is going to be almost impossible. I'm not talking about replacing your home right were talking about replacing you know billions of dollars of routing equipment that it could be used for all sorts of different purposes everything from espionage to modifying data to blocking certain kinds of data at certain points. And just to be fair some of the reasons we know about many of the vulnerabilities are problems in the way that Huawei security culture is around the development of the products is because of our allies in the UK who evaluate Huawei equipment before it's released into the UK market and what those reports have found is that there are chronic problems in the way that Huawei is engaged in securing their products. And on the one hand it's problematic. But we also haven't had the same sort of valuation of Eric said and Nokia others. And so to some extent there may be a situation where we're looking really closely at Huawei is some of the concerns that are present in terms of the quality of their equipment are paralleled by their competitors.

AMT: Has the UK banned Huawei 5G?

CP: They have not. So the way that the UK has generally approached things is sort of a catch and release system. So the UK in partnership with Huawei engages in security audits of Huawei equipment and then following that they certify its appropriateness for use in UK networks. Now there are some UK telecommunications companies regardless of this that have stated that they're going to be stepping away from using Huawei equipment for a while. Probably less due to these security concerns, to be entirely honest, and far more because of the politics that are associated with working with the company right now.

AMT: And so the security concerns have to do with the fact that it would be running eventually 5G technology will be integral to the running of smart cities to driverless cars and what that China could take over North American infrastructure?

CP: The concern is that it would have a privileged position in that infrastructure. So similar to their concerns in China about Cisco running a lot of their networks, we would have similar sorts of concerns that foreign adversary could take advantage of that equipment to our misfortune.

AMT: And David Olive has pointed out that there's no actual evidence that Huawei has been spying or doing this other stuff. Do we need to be concerned in the abstract or?

DO: Yeah I mean national secuirty.

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AMT: Oh sorry. There you go. You're, sorry we're losing. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm sorry we're losing you on the microphone for some reason. Can you hear? Go ahead Christopher. Go ahead.

DO: So national security officials are not just tasked with what's happening today or what happened yesterday, but what might happen 10 to 20 years from now. So this is infrastructure that once it's put in place isn't going anywhere and part of the reason whereas concern as we are is we know that the NSA, the CSC, our version of the NSA in Canada and the other Five Eyes agencies are all involved in these sorts of surveillance activities. So what we're in part doing is we're shadowboxing against ourselves and imagining that we will be doing certain things with technology and we assume that the Chinese government could do the same.

AMT: Okay I'm going to get David Olive just to respond to a clip I've got right here now. Huawei Canada has been pushing back against the allegations from Donald Trump and others that the company is dangerous. This is their chief security officer speaking to CBC in April.

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VOICE: Huawei is Chinese company. Huawei Canada is Canadian company. My role and responsibility to work openly and transparently with Canadian government and to make sure they comply with all the rules and regulations in Canada. When we deliver the equipment to Canadian carriers, they have the keys to their equipment. We actually don't have any control over that.

AMT: David Olive, what do you think of that? What are you hearing from major telecom companies in Canada? Do they want Huawei building our 5G network?

DO: Well Bell Canada and Telus, which are two of the giants of course, already use Huawei equipment extensively and in the case of Telus, Telus has come out to say that if you rip it out, the Huaweiequipment, this would be highly disruptive to Telus' entire national network. I expect that Bell probably feels the same way, but for political reasons doesn't want to say so. In fact Bell has said practically nothing on this issue. But both of these companies are highly reliant already on Huawei equipment. I would point out in regard to what Christopher just said that he talked about how Huawei it would be in a position to push certain technologies into that Canadian telecommunications network. Microsoft already pushes programming and all kinds of changes in my protocols into my own personal computer. I have no control over what that American company does by way in invading my privacy. For that matter, you know companies like Amazon and Google and the Royal Bank of Canada, if you bank electronically, they already know far more about us than Beijing will ever know or care to know. So I think we need to have a serious discussion about just who's spying on who and intellectual property theft, which is the other big issue with this company, is widespread in high tech. It's widespread in business generally and the record with Huawei is actually better than that of most major high tech companies worldwide.

AMT: Christopher?

CP: I think that again from a national security standpoint the worry is exactly, I mean are there concerns about Microsoft? There are. There are also an awful lot of people that are able to analyze assess within Microsoft itself. We know what their security culture is and it is very robust. So I think that what we've seen from external audits of Huawei is you know to some extent perhaps there there might be an insider threat the push on a malicious update but equally possible is just a problematic security culture with that. And so we know that the way that the NSA and other security agencies work is they find vulnerabilities. They may not report them and they exploit them. And so having that strong culture is as important as anything else. And that's an area where the UK at least has raised very serious international concerns about the quality of their equipment.

AMT: David Olive, what do you think we're risking if Canada doesn't let Huawei build a 5G network?

DO: There is a race underway worldwide to build the first truly national 5G network and whoever does that is going to have competitive advantage in all the advanced technologies that were discussed by your first guest. Some of those involve artificial intelligence, which itself is a gateway to just a tremendous number of improvements in quality of life, especially in the medical field. Whoever doesn't have those 5G networks and then there's there's sort of not that good 5G networks and then there's top tier 5G networks and only. How how it has the ability to build up the highest quality 5G networks. Whoever doesn't have those is going to keep falling behind. Canada already has tremendous strength in artificial intelligence and in many driverless vehicles and many of these other advances. What would 5G does is it speeds all that up that makes it much more capable and we I think we really want to be in the forefront of that. And we begin with how while we're having worked with Canada for more than 10 years. I think we have the potential here with this partnership to put Canada sort of at the top of the map in technology.

AMT: Christopher Parsons, are there restrictions or controls that you'd like to see if Canada goes forward?

CP: I think that at the absolute bare minimum something similar to what the U.K. has adopted, which is a catch and release is required. I do think that one of the concerns with Huawei is broader than just Huawei. They are potentially going to be building a great deal of infrastructure in this country, but it's true that a lot of other countries are as well. And historically in the late 90s early 2000s, in Canada the U.S. the security agencies had a real history and a real background in a talent for doing what's called Information Assurance so they would look at key critical infrastructures assess it evaluate it and then explain that this should or shouldn't be used and so we're talking about Huawei right now, which makes a lot of sense. But I actually think that speaks to a broader concern initially was we adopt more and more technology at our critical infrastructure. Our security agencies need be very public and very clear in explaining what are the risks, what are not, so that businesses and consumers can make better decisions.

AMT: And then I guess our politicians have to give them that direction.

CP: That would be true.

AMT: Okay. Thank you gentlemen we have to leave it there.

CP: Thank you very much.

DO: Thank you.

AMT: That's Christopher Parsons, senior research associate at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. He studies privacy and telecommunications and he was with me in our Toronto studio. David Olive is a business columnist with The Toronto Star. He was on the line. Stay with us, the news is next and then getting the lesson plan right on climate change. I'll speak with teachers about how and how much to teach about the climate crisis. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Is an activist rally a field trip? Teachers split on how to properly teach climate change

Guests: Mathieu Morin, April Soni, Michael Zwaagstra

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come.

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Clip from Wile E. Coyote and Roadruner show

AMT: Who's got more zany schemes than Wile E. Coyote? Well the CIA would be one place to start. Historian Vince Houghton who curates the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. joins me to talk about some of the most harebrained ideas in the history of spycraft. We'll get there, but first the climate curriculum.

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VOICE: When I was younger I had lots of plans of becoming different things. Everything from an actor to a scientist, but then my teachers in school told me about climate change. It was sort of an eye opener to me. So I sat myself down on the ground outside the Swedish Parliament and I decided that I wasn't going to go to school.

AMT: That is Swedish student activist Greta Thunberg in a BBC documentary called, Climate Change - The Facts. She has sparked an international movement with kids around the world staging climate strikes of their own. And as you heard she says it all began with her teachers. So how much are Canadian kids learning about climate change in class? Frances Claude is a Grade 11 studentl.

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VOICE: How much did I learn about climate change in school? It wasn't that much. I mean like in the science class we saw where do the CO2 came from, but that's it. There is many things that we need to know that we don't. I think we should have at least one class per week to talk about the environment and all those stuff. I don't know what to do. I mean I want to help the environment. I know that i can recycle and I know that I can have compost in my yard, but I mean it's not enough.

AMT: How much is enough is an open question today with some arguing that schools should be teaching more about the reality of climate change and not solely in science and geography classes. Others worry there's a danger of creating a cohort of anxious students fearful of the future. We've assembled a panel of teachers to share their thoughts on how to teach climate change and whether it includes encouraging useful activism. Mathieu Morin teaches environmental studies and chemistry at Ecole secondaire Ronald-Marion in Pickering, Ontario. He's in our Toronto studio. April Soni is a grade 7/8 teacher who also leads the EcoTeam at Goulburn Middle School in Stittsville, Ontario. She's in our Ottawa studio. And Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher just outside of Steinbach, Manitoba. He's the co-author of a book called What's Wrong With Our Schools and How We Can Fix Them. He's also deputy mayor in Steinbech and that's where we've reached him today. Hello and welcome to all of you.

April Soni: Thank you.

Mathieu Morin: Thanks for having me.

Michael Zaagstra: Good morning.

AMT: Mathieu Morin, I want to start with you. How do you see your role as a teacher when it comes to teaching kids about climate change and the consequences of climate change?

Mathieu Morin: I think it's really very similar to what the students that we just heard were saying I think my role is to prepare students for their future whatever that future might be. And it very much seems like climate change is going to be a part of their future reality. So it would be an injustice to them to not prepare them for their future.

AMT: April Soni How do you see your responsibility?

April Soni: I see my responsibility is profound. I believe that we are activating students to be critical thinkers and to be a part of, you know, solutions. So I am deeply engrossed in the curriculum in science and geography and not only that but looking to promote stewardship for environmental sustainability in my students.

AMT: Michael Zwaagstra, what do you think?

Michael Zwaagstra: Well I think it's important to provide students with facts and information and building up their knowledge base. And because content knowledge knowing about your subject is key but this is in all areas that this is important. I do have concerns about making students into activists. I mean if students on their own decide to become passionate about a particular topic that's great. But I don't believe in focusing on a form of activism. I think it is more important to focus on building building up students' knowledge and skills and let them make their own decisions about what areas they want to become passionate about.

AMT: So Mathieu Morin, how much do students generally learn about climate change right now?

Mathieu Morinm: So to my knowledge in Ontario, in the grade 10 science course there is a unit devoted to climate change. About a quarter of the Grade 10 science course is devoted to climate change. In Grade 9 geography, they would be discussing it.although I don't know that there's a specific unit that's focused on it. It would definitely have to come up as a part of the course. Beyond those two courses to my knowledge there is no curriculum between Grade 9 with 12 that explicitly no mandatory course that explicitly discusses climate change. There are other courses especially in Grade 11/12 optional geography credits in science research and Earth and Space Science course there are optional credits that will discuss that as well. But the only two mandatory courses are grade 10 science and grade 9 geography.

AMT: Do you think it's enough?

Mathieu Morin: No, I think that climate change should and can be integrated into every subject. Just as much as any other subject can. But I think that like like Greta Thunberg says that this is their reality and they have to be prepared for it. And as much as you can integrate any sort of justice topic or or frankly any topic at all. I don't see it as an issue that integrate climate change into the education system in every subject. I personally teach an integrated program for credit full day program where we integrate English with chemistry with geography with leadership around a focused topic of environment studies, and it works really well. And I think that I mean the elementary teachers do it really well because they don't teach subject in silos. They for the most part do integrate subjects, and I think the problem when we get the high school and we do start teaching all these subjects in silos is they can get really easy to just drill down into the contents of a particular topic that students may or may not use in their future and they're not looking at things in a bigger picture. They're not able to apply their knowledge to the real world. They're not able to take what they're learning in one class and apply it even to another class in their own semester.

AMT: Well what do you hear from your students about what they want to know when it comes to climate change?

Mathieu Morin: The majority my students when they when they learn about things for the first time or ask me why they haven't learned about this earlier. Very much the same way that the student that we heard at the beginning of the broadcast was talking about. last year I read my students an excerpt of Rachel Carson's spring spring which was written in 1960s. Ididn't tell them what I was reading them. I just read them excerpts and I asked them what they thought whether they thought when they thought this might be published and most of them said they felt it was properly published in last five or 10 years and were shocked to find out that it's been published over 50 years ago. They're wondering why they're not learning about this earlier given that it is their reality.

AMT: Do they want to know what to do?

Mathieu Morin: Yes.

AMT: Do they are there look for guidance from you on how to actually address it and does that mean with activism?

Mathieu Morin: They're definitely looking to know what to do. Whenever I take my students two to an external presentation about environmental issues, conferences at UofT or anywhere. The question that always comes up from the students themselves is is what do we do. They're not asking me this through asking professionals in the field about this because they do want them to do and I don't I don't see myself as pushing them to activism. I think they're naturally going there themselves. I had students for example who independently went to the climate justice rally here in Toronto a few weeks ago without my pushing them to go there and they do not bring them there myself. They on their own skipped class to go.

AMT: Michael Zwaagstra, what are your students asking you?

Michael Zaagstra: Well it depends on a student. I mean I don't, all students are not the same. I mean there are some that that are interested in this issue and others that are less interested. I mean the topic does come up in different classes and I know in Manitoba for example the great 10 geography course, this is certainly covered in that and that is a mandatory course for all students. But again I want to push back a little bit and just say that I think that I support having defined subjects at the high school level and frankly even at ages earlier because you do need to drill down into idifferent subjects. In order for students to become truly knowledgeable, you have to develop some level of expertise and it's much harder to do that if you don't have that that defined focus if you're not drilling down into the history of our country. If not drilling down into you know different scientific areas such as chemistry and physics and such. I mean if you're if you're pursuing that those streams, and so you need to develop expertise and it's very hard to do that if you're if you're always focusing on a social justice aspect and as opposed to you know looking at what do the facts actually say, how do I build up my knowledge, and so that's my area focus.

AMT: And so do you think students are learning enough about climate change, Michael?

Michael Zaagstra: I don't think they are. I think many of them are not learning enough about subject areas in general. I mean I think there should be a more content heavy curriculum starting at grade 1 and because content knowledge is important for understanding any issue including the issue of climate change, the different perspectives on that. If you don't if you don't know enough about anything you're not able to think critically about it. Critical thinking is not an abstract skill that you teach as a transferable thing from one area to another. It's heavily dependent upon content knowledge, and so I get concerned when I see particularly young students all going to these rallies and I question how much do they actually know about this topic or is it more because they were influenced by by the adults that are around them.

AMT: April Soni,talked to me a little bit about how you devote time to climate change in your classroom this year.

April Soni: I am very happy. Do I think I'm preparing students for the content knowledge I think that Michael is speaking about. My program is heavily inquiry-based 50 percent of my science program is based on inquiry and 75 percent of my geography program is based on inquiry. Right from the beginning of our studies., we learn to formulate really meaningful authentic questions. And our philosophy is that identifying issues is a superficial, very shallow understanding. And so we're looking at the hows and whys of how things come to be as they are. Some of this content that I'm seeing from my students as is is beyond impactful and in a great amount of depth. Some of the topics that we have been studying are land reclamation project projects, land use conflics, the importance of educating girls, changes to water systems. We're looking at air quality recently. We've just visited Environment Canada. We've been to a state of the art air quality monitoring station. You know I think that the curriculum as it states now in grades 7 and 8 level are rich with entry points to be able to study. It's like all roads lead to the climate breakdown.

AMT: And I understand you and your students were out of the classroom last Friday. Where were you?

April Soni: We were out of the classroom on Friday. The students, you know early before these global strikes came to be, my students came to me and were wondering why there wasn't kind of a presence supporting climate action here in North America that we were seeing, and they wanted to start organizing something themselves. As it turned out to be the March 15th first global climate strike came, and they independently, student-driven fundraised to be able to attend the strike on Friday.

AMT: And you were with them?

April Soni: I was with them. Two other classes joined us and yep we went down to the Hill and we made our presence visible. And it was a very successful, very meaningful participation from our students at Goulbourn.

AMT: Michael, do you have a problem with that?

Michael Zaagstra: Yes I do. I find it peculiar that every single student in a grade seven and eight class would have the identical position on a controversial issue where there are many different perspectives you know such as do we focus more on adaptation or do we focus more on on preventing? You know there's debate around amongst some of the interpretation of some of the data. There's debate about the effectiveness of some of the different things that are proposed, such as is a carbon tax a good idea or not? And when you're taking your students to a rally, a political activist rally, there's a position that's being advocated by rallies. And so I just I would be very concerned about taking my students to any rally on this assumption that every single student in the class just happens to have exactly the same opinion on the issue. Yes I do find that concerning.

AMT: Mathieu?

Mathieu Morin: But I don't necessarily think that we need to look at it as taking students to a rally because we're telling them this is what you should believe in, we want you to fight for this. You can look at taking them to a rally as an educational opportunity to show them what political activism looks like, to show them what the Democratic process looks like. I personally didn't take my students to the rally but I could have in the guise of showing them if we wanted to fight climate change how this looked like, what, analyzing the points of view of the people that are there, talking to the points to the people that are there to find out why they're there. It doesn't necessarily have. I agree that not every students can have the exact same opinion on climate change and and but taking them there can be seen as an opportunity to educate them about a lot of different things and not as an opportunity to indoctrinate them into a certain belief the teacher has.

AMT: Michael you talk about other perspectives when it comes to science, the science is pretty well settled.

Michael Zaagstra: You know I just want to say that there are, I mean there's certainly a majority view which is widely held. There is also a minority view. I frankly I'm not even interested in getting into that part of the debate because there's so many other areas where it's worth exploring as far as different ideas and different perspectives. You know the different perspectives isn't just on the issue of the majority vs. minority view within science. There's also different views on is it is it effective for Canada to be desperately trying to reduce emissions when you have other major emission emitters that are not. Is that is that a good. Is that is is that the most effective approach? Is that the most effective approach to put a carbon tax in everyone. I have my views on that. I know that many students will have their views on one side or another. So these are the types of things that. You only able to get into if you know a lot about the topic both in terms of not just the things around the science but also around the some of the different political angles and economics. These are all things you need to know a lot about. And so when you're taking your students to a rally particularly younger students I question how much they really know about these things to make an informed decision. And I get Matthew's point about you could take your students to a rally to inform them about this is what a rally looks like. I suppose if that's what you're doing that's but that doesn't that doesn't sound like what's happening at these rallies that the student teachers are just taking them to show them what a rally looks like. I mean if a teacher took their students to a let's say a pro-life rally on abortion I suspect they'd be some pushback even if the teacher said, Well you know I'm just taking them to a rally to show that what activism looks like. There'd be an immediate reaction going, you're indoctrinating students into a particular perspective. And I think as teachers we need to be careful about making sure that our role is to help provide information to help students learn how to think not teaching them what to think and not pushing something that we may be passionate about upon them.

AMT: April Soni, do you ever worry about crossing a line?

April Soni: I think that the decisions that we're making are based on the learners in the program. I believe that you know they're they're going into great amount of depth. I mean it's a complex problem that affects all of us. I think though restorative and rejuvenative qualities of nature is something that we need to treasure. The students I believe we front-loaded it. We didn't put the cart before the horse here. We had the content knowledge, we had the desire to impact change. We had you know all of my all of my learning and the students complete their inquiries when they're presenting to the class with a call to action. I mean I think that it would be. It would be wrong, I think to learn so much to to want our students to be stewards for environmental sustainability and to you know you know build students who are problem solvers and critical thinkers and then to not give them the experience of of being a part of the solution.

AMT: Mathieu?

Mathieu Morin: Yeah and I think that this is a different issue than something like like a pro-life rally. Abortion is a controversial topic. There are two sides to the argument that that have their own beliefs. Climate change is a scientifically proven fact. We teach students at a very young age for example that smoking causes cancer. They don't need to understand at a young age the biology of why smoking causes cancer or everything that's happening in the human body when that goes on. But we can teach them at a young age because that's the societal value that we want to hold. And our governments have decided that that's a value that we want our education system to push forward. I don't see climate change and environmental education as being any different. Students. I agree that content is important and there's content that is age appropriate that that gets taught at different levels in the system. But I think even at a young age students can understand why climate change is an issue and what the impacts of that are and what has caused it.

AMT: Michael?

Michael Zaagstra: Well again I would just say that it is a controversial issue. I mean let's take a look at the political realities right now where we have a federal election coming up where major political parties are taking different positions on this issue and this could be one of the key issues in the campaign and to say that there is really only one side on this, that there's only one perspective, ignores the fact that if you look at the Canadian public, there are widely different views on this and widely different impacts.

AMT: Well Michael let me just ask you. There are widely different views on maybe taxing for climate change, but there's not a widely different view on the degradation of the environment, on the effect of climate change overall on the planet. That is not, there are not widely different views.

Michael Zaagstra: Well there certainly are wildly different views in regards to should Alberta be able to build its pipeline.

AMT: But then now you're talking politics.

Michael Zaagstra: Sure.

AMT: You see you're bringing politics into it and they're teaching what it's doing to the planet so the kids can decide if there is a pipeline.

Michael Zaagstra: Ok but you know at these climate rallies they have no more pipelines. They have signs up against building the pipeline. Of course there's politics at these rallies. These are not you know information, scientific information rallies where students are just being shown some information and some general knowledge. These are activist things. These are protesting pipelines. These are protesting you know and particular policies. They're pro carbon tax and so I'm just saying those are all issues which are very current in the political debate right now and we should not assume that students are all going to come to the same position on these issues and taking students to these rallies is certainly promoting a particular viewpoint.

AMT: I have another piece of tape for you to listen to Maria Vamvalis is a Grade 7-8 teacher who is currently researching climate change curriculum at the University of Toronto. We asked her about the emotional toll it can take on students when they learn about the severity of climate change. Listen to what she says.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: What can actually exacerbate mental health challenges is the cognitive dissonance of pretending that everything is OK. I think that it's important to recognize that we often don't create the space for grief and that grief is a necessary response you know. an often really healthy response to the kind of loss that we are facing and that many communities are already facing. And I think it's better that we create the space to support them through that than to deny you know what it is that they're being asked to deal with.

AMT: April Soni, how do you deal with emotions that come up when you're teaching the subject?

April Soni: Well first I think that that clip was exquisite. I think that the cognitive dissonance that I personally felt with kind of this some of the systems that have been in place. I've been dealing with that for some time, and I think that the emotional toll can be quite great. And it has been a burden for us in the fall, like, we started feeling it. there's a burden there. You're looking at biodiversity loss with every species that goes extinct on this planet. I mean we should be mourning that, and we should be preserving the beautiful planet that we have. It really is a beautiful place and we need to care for this planet. You know we came back in January and we kind of flipped it and we kind of started, we had to. we had to look for the hope and we had to look for the planet warriors and the environmental heroes. and thank goodness for Greta Thernburg Brad for stepping forward and and if somebody would've told her, no. Greta you know don't don't take action and don't be an activist. I mean where would we all be now? I mean look at where she's taken us. I think that we need to involve our students in hope. You know I don't think there's anything more important than that and it would be too much for them I think emotionally to learn all of this and not to take appropriate action. We need to all as a planet take appropriate action now.

Michael Zaagstra: Michael Zwaagstra?

Michael Zaagstra: Well again I guess my concern just going back to the this idea that you know that students should be that there's this there's this natural fear that we shouldn't you know that student should be worried and everyone should be taking action. It's important for us to remember that that we need to. We need to be teachers who provide facts, information and yes if students choose to become passionate about something that is great. But I just I don't believe that students should be living in fear. I think that we should be celebrating the fact that Canada has some of the best environmental standards in the world. When you compare you know in terms of some of the rules and regulations that we have in this country to that of many other countries for example for the extraction of natural resources, we have much better standards than than most other countries do. And so there are things that we can celebrate there we think the author there is cleanup that is happening in the community in which I live in Steinbeck the churches throughout the city every single year there is a day called pick up and walk or we pick up about 10 tons of garbage people come out voluntarily on a Saturday morning including students on their own time and we clean up our city. That's real action and that's not pushing anything on anyone and it makes a real difference and we're not promoting fear. We're promoting it's good to clean up our city, we love our city and we can do that.

AMT: Okay I'm going to let.

Michael Zaagstra: I think it's good to see.

AMT: We're almost out of time. Mathieu Morin, you get the last word.

Mathieu Morin: I don't entirely disagree. I think that that we do have to focus on solutions with students, and I think that's why so many schools are doing these kinds of action products because we don't want to dwell on the fear necessarily. I mean I think Greta has a point that we do need to be fearful. We do need to be worried but we need to work on solutions. I think that is that is the ultimate goal here is to is as a society means to come up with a solution. Our our society in the future will be judged on how we react to climate change. Climate change will be the defining issue of the 21st century. And and students want to do something. That is the overwhelming thing that I hear in schools: students want to do something, and I think that's why schools are doing something.

AMT: We have to leave it there. Thank you everyone for weighing in on this.

April Soni: Thank you so much.

Mathieu Morin: Thank you.

Michael Zaagstra: Thank you.

AMT: That is Mathieu Morin. He teaches environmental studies and chemistry at Ecole secondaire Ronald-Marion in Pickering, Ontario. He's in our Toronto studio. April Soni is a Grade 7/8 teacher who leads the EcoTeam at Goulburn Middle School in Stittsville, Ontario. She's in our Ottawa studio. Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher just outside of Steinbach, Manitoba. We reached him in Steinbach, Manitoba. Let us know what you think. Tweet us. We are @TheCurrentCBC. Send us an email, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. Are your kids learning enough? Are you worried about activism or do you encourage it? This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

How fear of the Soviets inspired a U.S. scheme to bomb the moon

Guest: Vince Houghton

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Marine experts got suspicious when this beluga whale was found off Norway wearing a strange camera harness which was labeled equipment of St. Petersburg. That is the finest covert spycraft since James Bond labelled all of his shirts "Property of James Bond, a spy. Please return to MI-6." Russia has long been known to have a military program in which in addition to belugas, dolphins and seals were trained to carry out tasks, but the Belugas did not have the same high professionalism of seals. You know it's a bad day at the office when you cannot match the professionalism of [imitation of seal].

AMT: A little bit of Stephen Colbert there. Whether the mysterious Beluga whale that surfaced in Norway earlier this spring was really working for the Kremlin, we may never know, but if it was, it would hardly be the first animal recruited as a spy or put into military service. Nor would it be the kookieist idea that spymasters or generals have dreamed up. Historian Vince Houghton, who curates the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C., has been collecting some of the most outlandish ideas in the history of spycraft. He's packed them into a new book called, Nuking the Moon: And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board. Vince Houghton is with us from our Washington D.C. studio. Hello.

VINCE HOUGHTON: Good morning.

AMT: What did you think when you heard about the Beluga whale who may or may not have been a spy for Russia?

VH: Well my immediate thought was this is going to help me sell books, but after that it's a long tradition of using everything we possibly can. I think that's one of the important things to think about when it comes to intelligence and top secret military operations is that there's nothing off limits. There's nothing off the table. We'll think of and do anything that we possibly can to try to benefit our national security.

AMT: So you do study the ways countries spy on each other. So do you think that whale was a spy?

VH: Who knows. I mean maybe that's like a really kind of a double psychological thing where it's like they'll never expect it to be a spy if it has made in St. Petersburg on the side of it if it is is a terrible one. Was it immediately defected to the west. And that's not really great for your spies if they're going right over the border as fast as they possibly can.

AMT: It's a whale of a story, but I'm going to stop now too. So Vince Houghton, animals do appear in your book. Cats seem especially interesting to war planners and spy agencies. So tell us about Acoustic Kitty.

VH: Yeah that was the official title, which I love. I love the CIA in the 60s had a little bit of a sense of humour in naming their programs, but project Acoustic Kitty was an attempt to make up for the shortfalls of acoustic technology in the 1960s that bug devices weren't quite as advanced as they are today. The problem was it picked up everything you put it on the bottom of a park bench would pick up the wind blowing and dogs barking and birds chirping and people walking by and idle conversation from 100 yards away it would be very difficult to take the important information like the two people talking on the bench and pull that out so you can get the intelligence from it. So the CIA decided it would try something different. And what we think and there's no like paper trail for this is what we think the idea came from American spies in Istanbul Turkey who watched cats go in and out of the Soviet Embassy with impunity. They would just walk into the courtyard sometimes even walk inside the building. In fact sometimes they would jump up on the laps of military personnel or spies and they just plop down and get scratched behind the years by these Soviet generals. And so some months I said well what if we can turn an average everyday housecat into a covert listening device. And that didn't mean just kind of putting a collar on it with a bug inside the collar. That means surgically implanting a eavesdropping device inside the cat. And they went and did this and implanted the power pack inside the abdomen of the cat. They ran the microphone up into the ear canal so the ears itself could work as a filtering device. And then the antenna was ran down through the tail. So you essentially had a robo Kitty that could be a covert bug for the CIA.

AMT: Okay this is the 60s, so we weren't talking microchips. This was like cumbersome stuff in that little kitty.

VH: Big honkin 1960s era audio technology. So.

AMT: Yeah. Ok keep going.

VH: Yeah and this is where you know anyone who's been around cats for 10 seconds will start to laugh when I say that that's when the CIA decided try to train the cat because this cat actually had to do what we wanted it to to go listen to these conversations and you can't train cats. We've been trying for thousands of years and the most they'll do is kind of humor us a little bit and then wander off and do whatever they want to do. And that's most likely would doom this program is the inability to train cats. There is one version of the story where it's even more a kind of Frankenstein ish where they went back into the cat after it seems like it didn't want to do it we wanted to and they rewired its brain. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but there is a version of the story where they're actually able to train the cat to do exactly what they wanted it to, but that's only one version.

AMT: There's a running theme when it comes to animals involved in spycraft. Is animal welfare a high priority?

VH: So it's not great the laugh at that because I'm an animal lover like a lot of people. It wasn't a priority at all. The idea was that these are times of desperation and in times of desperation we prioritize things very differently than we might otherwise. Today we might prioritize animal welfare. We might actually say let's try to do this as ethically as we possibly can. But in the Cold War and in particularly in World War 2 when we're fighting for our survival against the Nazis or the Imperial Japanese or the Cold War when we're worried about the 65000 Soviet nuclear weapons that are pointed at us we weren't thinking all that much about what Peter might say or all that much about what we might be doing ethically when it comes to animals.

AMT: What happened to Acoustic Kitty in the end?

VH: It depends what story you follow. The more benign story is that the program ended because the inability to train the cat and the happy ending in that case is that they took the listening device out of the cat and they cat live the rest of its life. The other side is not quite as nice. This is the one where they actually went into the brain stimulation and got it to do what it wanted to. The story there is that they're going to do a field test. We actually to see if this thing would work and they brought it in Northwest Washington D.C. where a lot of the embassies are and they saw two men sitting on a park bench and like let's go listen to that conversation. They put Acoustic Kitty down and they hit their buttons and Acoustic Kitty took off directly for the park bench and did exactly what it was designed to do and at this point the CIA techs are pretty happy with themselves and in their celebration they weren't really paying attention to traffic patterns and halfway across the street poor Acoustic Kitty got run over by a taxicab.

AMT: Can't make it happen.

VH: No.

AMT: Cat were supposed to also help guide bombs. How was that supposed to work?

VH: So this was a kind of in passing idea. I'm not sure how far it got, but it certainly is documented within the second world war, history of the OSS. So the OSS for those who don't know is the precursor to the CIA. At the time the USSR was basically told you have a blank check do anything and everything you can to try to help win the war. And one of the ideas they had combined the concept that cats always land on their feet with a concert that cats hate water. And could we put these together and create a feline bomb that we could drop over German ships or Japanese ships. And as the cat is flying down through the air it would realize Hey I'm flying through the air one problem b I'm going to land and water. Problem number two certainly for a cat in sea, so let me find somewhere dry I can land in this case that dry land could be a German battleship could be a Japanese destroyer or a Japanese aircraft carrier. So somehow there's no real detail in the documents how this was going to happen. Somehow the cat would maneuver itself while it was flying through the air to make sure it landed on an enemy ship and once it landed then the bomb strapped on his back would detonate. The problem was I don't know why no one thought of this, there's a lot of why didn't they think of that in this book.

AMT: Including how does the camp maneuver itself in midair, but keep going.

VH: Sure. It was the idea that when they dropped the cat out of the pressurized cabin of an aircraft, not only would it be so scared that it's being dropped through thousands of feet of air, but the air up there was very thin. So the cat passed out about three seconds after it had been dropped out of the airplane. So we never really know if somehow cats have an innate ability to maneuver themselves in the air like flying squirrels. Maybe they do. Certainly it's not a test that was tried again.

AMT: I guess if you watched a cat in a tree you'd know it can't maneuver themselves.

VH: Right.

AMT: Here we are, but I digress. OK so it wasn't just by cats. There were bomb bats. Tell us about Project X-ray.

VH: So this is a program that might have actually worked. The idea behind this was from the very beginning of the war it was a dentist by the name of Lytle Adams out of Pennsylvania who was driving back from vacation in the Southwest United States when he heard on the radio, like so many others did, about the attack on Pearl Harbor. And Adams like a lot of patriotic Americans immediately started thinking about ways to get back at the Japanese to help win the war, but Lytle Adams is actually an inventor. He invented some really innovative technologies for helping mail be delivered faster from ship to shore. He'd also had a great idea for fried chicken vending machine, which to me that kind of genius doesn't come around every day. And Adams looked at this problem and said okay I know a couple things about Japan. I know Japan is full of wooden and even sometimes paper houses that are incredibly flammable. I know the western United States holds millions and millions of bats and bats will try to find the cold, dry, dark place kind of roost until nighttime. So we combine bats with incendiary devices, napalm bombs that were on a timer and we drop them over Japan, their natural instinct would be to go to the attics and easements and nooks and crannies of these wooden and again sometimes paper houses. And then when the bomb went off, we could burn Japan to the ground. And this actually went through a full range of testing. They had to put the bats into hibernation. The only way to bring them from the caves where they captured them to the test site was to cool them down to a very low temperature, essentially artificially put them into hibernation, but then they miscalculated how long it was going to take the bats to come out of hibernation. The idea was you'd put them in a canister and you'd drop them out of an airplane and the bats would wake up on the way down, break out of the canister and then fly to wherever the test site was. But they miscalculated and none of the bats woke up and so the canister full of unconscious bats hit the ground at terminal velocity. I don't care if you've got wings, if you're unconscious, you're gonna hit the ground just as hard as you and I will.

AMT: A lot of little bats just died.

VH: A lot of little bats just died. So the scientists are scientists, right. So they learned from their mistakes. The problem is they learn too well. So the second major test they did they got a big group of bats. They cooled it down to put them in hibernation, but they made sure to start the warming up process earlier. Now while they were in hibernation is when they affix the napalm the incendiary devices to the bats.

AMT: And how big are these bombs?

VH: Very small. Like we're only talking about like 11 gram. So about the size of a AA battery.

AMT: And where are they attached on their bodies?

VH: Some photos some pictures have them attached to their legs. Some actually have them wrapped around the head of the midsection the torso of the body. But in this case they had set up a fake Japanese city, a test site in the desert in California that was going to be where the bats were going to fly when they woke up from their hibernation. So they had them in this truck and they opened the doors to the truck and they realized they had miscalculated again. This time the bats had all woken up before they expected them to and so hundreds of thousands of bats flew out and the good news is half of them flew directly to the Japanese town that they had set up and burned it to the ground. They did exactly what they were intended to do. The mission worked perfectly. The bad news is the other half of the bats flew to a working U.S. Army Airfield and its hangars and its air towers and its aircraft and its barracks and burned that to the ground. It's a good news bad news scenario. Sure, you burned a working U.S. Army Airfield to the ground, but the bat program worked again.

AMT: OK, we just need to absorb this.

VH: Yes.

AMT: I mean it's I want to say it's batshit crazy, but like what were they thinking?

v: Well that's what I want people to ask when they read every one of these chapters, but not necessarily with that kind of derision that all of us kind of want to have towards these stories with a knee jerk reaction to look at these like God, these guys were morons. What were they thinking? I want to ask that same question, what were they thinking, but in a different connotation. I want people to go what were they thinking? Like what was the rationale behind these programs? Because in a lot of them these are real distinguished scientists and inventors and engineers. These are people that would go on, would later on be the deputy director of the Apollo program. These are people who will go on to win Nobel prizes. These are people that were real scientists that would do these crazy programs. And I wanted to, the question I had is what in the world were they thinking at the time? The way we learn from history in this case is to put ourselves in the shoes of the people making these decisions and understand why they were so afraid and why they were willing to do things that today seem absolutely absurd.

AMT: OK. Well and before we go any further on them, I do want to talk about what we get to with the title of your book. So let's go back to October 2nd, 1957. This is a clip from an important event in the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: PBS television presents a special report on Sputnik 1, the Soviet space satellite. Douglas Edwards reporting. Until two days ago that sound had never been heard on this Earth. Suddenly it has become as much a part of 20th century life as the whir of your vacuum cleaner. It's a report from man's farthest frontier, the radio signal transmitted by the Soviet Sputnik, the first manmade satellite as it passed over New York earlier today.

AMT: Vince Houghton, how did Americans react when they learned Sputnik was flying over the US?

VH: Well I think this is a great example of needing to put ourselves in their shoes because we look at this now as this beach ball sized beeping object that had no real technology other than it made a beep beep noise. But 1957 Americans were terrified. The West was terrified at the thought that the Soviets had put a satellite into space for two reasons, one was a technological reason they launched Sputnik into space on top of a rocket that could easily be fitted with a intercontinental ballistic missile could drop nukes on the United States. The Western Hemisphere. We no longer had the luxury of being able to have hours of warning before a nuclear attack came from the Soviet Union. The second one was a kind of a broader view of who was on top in the world. Then all of a sudden the Soviets who we'd always consider to be backwards had beaten us at our own game. They had beaten us into space and for a lot of American policymakers and a lot of American citizens. This was terrifying and we had to do something very quickly to show the world that we were really the big kids on the block. The Soviets had just gotten lucky.

AMT: Which brings us to the fact that the US considers detonating hydrogen bombs on the moon.

VH: Yeah, right? It's just where the logic doesn't necessarily follow from a to b, but that was the decision that was made mainly by the US Air Force of the best way to have a show of force to show that we're boss was to have the greatest with spectacular demonstration of American might you could possibly have and that would be to detonate at least one perhaps multiple thermonuclear weapons on the moon. And this program wasn't something that was kind of thrown out there and then some junior scientists in the Pentagon basement said I'll do this. This was led by a man who had worked with Enrico Fermi, the University of Chicago, Fermi of the Manhattan Project scientists, would later become the deputy director of the Apollo program. This man Leonard Rifle who led the program invented the telestrator. You know the sports commentator kind of draws out the play on the screen. That again this is a polymath. Rifle brought with him a man named Gerard Kuiper who astronomy geeks may realize that the Kuiper Belt on the outskirts of the solar system is named after him and Kuiper had a young graduate student who was working for him that he brought along to this plan to do a lot of math and that guy's name was Carl Sagan. So these were not whack a doodle scientists.

AMT: These were big brains.

VH: These were big brains. These are people who revolutionized science, not just in the West, but in the world during this time and they bought into this idea. They said OK, this may be far fetched, this may not be science, but we can turn this into a scientific understanding. We can make good science out of this and so they took it on.

AMT: What would have happened had hydrogen bombs detonated on the moon's surface?

VH: Well that's where the Air Force was very disappointed to hear that you would not get a standard mushroom cloud. That's what the Air Force wanted, right?

AMT: They wanted shock and awe.

VH: They want to shock and awe and they wanted the stereotypical kind of icon of a thermonuclear weapon. But mushroom clouds only exist in atmospheres, in dense atmospheres, like here on Earth. They don't exist in well essentially the moon is a vacuum. So you're not going to get this kind of smushed down curled mushroom cloud in a vacuum, you're just going to get dust that's going to fly off in every direction. It still might be cool to look at, but it wouldn't be what the Air Force wanted was this kind of symbolic we're bigger and better than you are mushroom cloud on the moon. That's my argument for why the program got canceled.

AMT: And is it clear why it got canceled or just didn't happen?

VH: No and that's what's fun about this story and that's why I even say that's my argument because every person who participated in this that talked about it later on once it was declassified had a different reason for why it was canceled. But there's no evidence in the archives about why the program was finally cancelled. Some argued it was canceled because no one wanted to kind of mess up the pristine environment of the moon. Others argue that it was a political decision that we wanted to focus on landing men on the moon and kind of not have our first action on the moon be to blow up a chunk of it. Some argue that it was an argument that there's no science to be done that you know the scientists basically revolted and said This is a waste of money but no one can agree on all the arguments and documents and archives you get words like seemingly this was the reason or apparently this was the reason or we think this is a reason which I love as a historian. Those kind of mysteries are wonderful and you know because it's it gives us a chance to kind of get get inside their heads and try to understand what they were thinking without it being force fed to us.

AMT: Of all the schemes your research was there one that stands out for the potential disaster it could have caused?

VH: Yeah I'm a South Floridian. I'm from Miami originally, which meant I've lived through about 17 hurricanes in one form or another. Ironically about five of them since moving to Washington D.C. and there was a plan in the late 1960s under a program called Ploughshares which was an attempt to take nuclear weapons and use them for peaceful purposes. I know that sounds antithetical but this isn't a by scientists to realize the genie was out of the bottle we can't all invent nuclear weapons. But maybe we can find ways to have them benefit mankind instead of eliminate mankind. And one of the ideas was developed by M. Jack Reed and Reed was a meteorologist and he'd worked with some of the early Pacific Ocean testing of the hydrogen bombs and he was just all struck by the power of these nuclear weapons and so he had an idea of a way to potentially protect coastal cities against the dangers from hurricanes. And he said what if we detonate a multi megaton us or a big nuclear weapon in the eye of a hurricane. Could we potentially disrupt the rotation enough to weaken the hurricane to maybe even turn it to a tropical storm or a best case scenario to kind of break it up altogether. And failing that that was Plan A. Plan B was the one that maybe could have worked. What if we detonate a large nuclear weapon on the outside of a hurricane to try to disrupt the spin and disrupt the direction it's going. Most hurricanes go from east to west in the Atlantic and a lot of them when they hit land or cut up north. What if we could turn those hurricanes before they hit land and they would just very harmlessly got the Atlantic Ocean. The problem was the only way to test it would be to test it on a live hurricane.

AMT: In other words detonate a nuclear bomb on a live hurricane.

VH: Right. So that would be wonderful if it worked, but if his math was off, which it almost certainly was, you now would have had a very angry hurricane, but now the hurricane is swirling winds 150 miles an hour that are fully irradiated with the kind of vision and fusion byproducts of a nuclear weapon. So that was a non-starter.

AMT: My jaw is open. I'm hust saying.

VH: Yeah hurricanes are bad enough without glow in the dark hurricanes that are spewing radioactive rain all over south Florida and I'll take my chances with Hurricane shutters and putting my patio furniture inside the garage and just kind of ride the hurricane out.

AMT: So you make the point that once you get past the the what were they thinking and hey look at this, can you believe this, you're left with a list of really intelligent scientists thinkers, people who change the world on other fronts. So why would they get involved in such ideas?

VH: Well the first line of the book is This is a book about desperation and that's truly what I tried to get across. These are times where the cold war and during World War Two where we in the West had a true existential threat the Soviet nuclear arsenal was a threat to our existence and this is a time when existential threat leads us to do desperate things. And I joke in the book If necessity is the mother of invention. Desperation is a drunk uncle kind of forcing us to do things that just don't seem rational. At the time but because we're so afraid about our way of life in some cases our lives being extinguished by our enemies that we're willing to entertain thoughts that we would never think about and just laugh off in a normal circumstance.

AMT: So today we live in sensitive times, polarized times, fake news times, do you think scientists spy agencies and military strategists still see desperation? Do you think they still work on things that we would question and that certainly society years from now would question?

VH: I think whenever you're dealing with intelligence agencies particularly you're dealing with almost impossible to solve problems in a lot of the times these hard problems need creative thinking. And in most cases that leads to really interesting innovations whether it's something like G.P.S. or the Internet you know new and innovative technologies allow us to do our jobs more effectively in the intelligence business every so often those lead to programs like in the book. My hope is that we are still being incredibly innovative. I'm hoping we're not going outside the envelope completely. I'm hopeful that I can remain less cynical than I could be otherwise that there are well-meaning people out there that will do something to stop these kinds of crazy plans from happening but even in those desperate moments even during the height of the Cold War in the Kennedy administration. There was a program that got all the way up to his desk and he said no we're not going to do this. He stepped in and stop this from happening. If that can happen in 1962 that should be able to happen in 2019.

AMT: Fascinating stuff. Makes you laugh, then it makes you cry. Vince Houghton, thank you for telling us all this. Thank you for looking it all up.

VH: No problem. Was happy to be here.

AMT: Vince Houghton, author of Nuking the Moon and also the curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Comedian and TV personality Chelsea Handler is on the program to talk about her new memoir Life Will Be the Death of Me and You Too. Finally the Toronto Raptors made history Saturday night and for the first time will be playing in the NBA Finals. For one superfan, Nav Bhatia, it is more than a dream come true. So we're going to leave you with a little bit of Nav Bhatia. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

NAV BHATIA: I'm in a daze I know that it happened. I was there. I was a witness and along with another 20,000 people in the arena. But I think mentally it's taking a little time for me. Yes you dream of, but when it's happens, you're in awe. When I bought my first two tickets on the first day of the Raptors game, I didn't know my journey is going to be here. For 24 years I have never been late for the game, I've never left a game early and I have never missed a minute of the game, but I have missed my wife's birthday so many days. I have missed my wife's wedding anniversary so many times. There were times when I was not well and I asked the surgeon to post one of my surgeries for six seven months in order to not miss my games because in my life for the last 24 years I have always put everything around Raptors schedule. I hope that God gives me the power and the health in order to continue my journey with the Raptors to bring the world together through the game of basketball. I think I will start seeing on the next series another uphill battle for us, but one which we can conquer. And let's go Raptors.

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May 27, 2019 episode transcript

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