Toomas Ilves -- Former President of Estonia, Old School Technologist, Pensioner

Episode four is with Toomas Ilves, the former President of Estonia. Toomas is a statesman, foreign policy expert, and a technologist long before the term existed. He brought the internet into Estonian elementary schools before the internet arrived to some U.S. cities. Toomas is like a visitor from a parallel universe where elected leaders are technocratic, effective, and wise.  During his time as an elected official, Toomas successfully followed through on his promise to get Estonia into both the EU and NATO, and he guided Estonia to becoming one of the world's most technically advanced countries. While the West has periodically suffered from a naive approach to Russia (i.e. Bush seeing Putin's soul, Obama's "reset," the entirety of Germany’s foreign policy, and Trump’s Helsinki summitt), Toomas has never suffered under such illusions and has been one of the clearest voices against imperialism in general, and Russia in particular, for years. 

Toomas on Twitter: @IlvesToomas
Toomas on Mastodon: @toomas_ilves@mastodon.social

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Transcript

Tomas Ives. Welcome to the Under Simplified Podcast. 

to be here 

Well, we're extremely excited to have you. This is our fourth episode, and we already have, , ahead of state. So this is, , a big deal for us.

 

the Former, 

former head of state, but I mean, we don't need to tell the audience that it's former . I I mean, the work that you're doing is, is more like you're, you're some somewhat still the current head of state in a couple of different places. So it's, it's really interesting. Before I actually take a shot at introducing you, I've heard you on a couple of other podcasts, and I, and I noticed that folks, after introducing you, , oftentimes you,  have other things you'd like to offer about your background.

So I might just turn it over to you , and ask you how do you like to introduce yourself? 

No. Pension or 

pensioner,



That's a busy one. 

unfortunately But yeah,  I live in Estonia.

I live on the family farm.



I teach and I go around.

when people invite me to give talks on

things ranging from

the Warren Ukraine to how you digitize, uh, public services



What I Where do you teach right now? 

, University of Tatu, which

is the national university,  the main university in

Estonia, established in 1631.  I teach on, ,

issues

relating democracy, governance,

 And the.

current technology,

,

trying to set up a new degree program  which would be an mda, which is not ecstasy

but rather a Masters in digital administration,

, pattern on the idea of a masters in business administration. But the

public services governance, , can be much, much better and needs to be much, much better, , than it is.

 I think that probably

the,

the only really highly developed country that  has I mean, nowhere digitally in, in terms of the public side is the United States.

 If Palo Alto and Stanford and Silicon Valley is the mecca of tech, which it is Then on the other hand, , when it comes to

Everything

outside of , entertainment and business,

 It's

kind of a disaster

 The world is way ahead of

At least lots of countries are way ahead of the United States. It's just paradoxical

that the United States, uh,

is digitally so slow in the realm of public

services. I mean,

In my country, for example,

there are

two things you cannot do digitally in relating to the government.

One is getting married and the other one is 

getting divorced. You have to show up one way or another 

whereas everything 

else I can do online.

And, um, we don't have that in the US or

I think we have the opposite We have two things you can do online digitally in the United States right now. Maximum. 

Yeah. Well, it's, it's, I mean,

and where you do where

things are, they're very rickety and insecure. is 

The 

problem

, and you have to sort of build these things up from the. Position of security

so that  you

don't get your your population in trouble. 

 You, , left out , the piece that, , will obviously hit in the intro for you, but you were president of Estonia from 2006 to 2016, 

and 

that was after having served in a number of government positions. , 

prior to that, would you be willing to, , just outline how you ended up, in those spots?

Cause you, you were, you were born there and you lived here 

for I was born in Sweden I'll 

Okay Yeah Do it Yeah Give us the 

It's Stalin called Thera course.

I mean, here it is. 

I was born in Sweden, the child of refugees. My parents moved

to the United States in,

in the 1950s and I grew up here. , basically  my linguistically formative period was 

spent in

Leonia, New Jersey,

across the

river from where I am, ,

right now.

And,

, I went to Columbia University of Pennsylvania studying experimental psychology kind of.

the science and more

Quantitative end of psychology. And, , eventually ended up

, because I was

writing,

on just out of pure interest on

Estonia, things, being

recruited by radio Free Europe

in 19 83, 84 to come work for them as an

analyst

for um, number of years.

And then, , at some point they made me head

of the

EST Australian service, which is,

I mean, That's kind

of like my Cold

War background.  During that time I was , young and kind of crazy and did all kinds of stuff there that, um,

now Radio Free Europe

does in

terms of going. Locally going

into country and so forth, hiring people from inside the country.

And

also in that process, I, , I got to get to know a lot of. the People who later on, who were there, anti regime,

um, I mean not all

dissidents, some of them were just uh, systemic opposition. I don't know what you would call them, but

in any

case, , I got to know a lot of them. And then when the Soviet Union collapsed

basically they

won the first Democratic elections in the country, 

and they asked me

to come work for the government

saying, you know, where tired of hearing

all this

criticism, what we're

doing in wrong or how to do things right,

 Quit your job and come

work for us?

And that it was kind of tough to

avoid and to

morally and ethically they were right. So I

did

in fact,

,

quit the job. Give up my US

citizenship. Went

as the first ambassador since World War II to

Washington. And then

While I was there, I dealt primarily with getting Russian troops out of,

Estonia but in the

process, I got into this whole digitization thing that came out of, , two fundamental problems.

One is that, er was extremely poor, but it

hadn't

always been that way.

, in

1938, last full year before World War II started. My country Estonia is slightly better, slightly richer than Finland

in terms of GDP

per capita. If you look at GDP per capita in

19, ,

92,

which was the

First full year, uh, Estonia was independent. again, the GDP per capita. Finland was $23,800. So $24,000.

US dollars nominal.

The GDP per capita of Estonia was $2,800.

So an eight fold difference. I mean, 

That's the 

glories of communism We were eight times poorer than

the country we were

ahead of in the past. , and so this is, this was a problem faced by all of Eastern Europe.

 I was trying to figure

out what are we gonna do? And there were all sorts of crazy ideas and all across

Eastern Europe on what to do.



And there were two moments, one was that, ,

in the summer of 93

 This thing

came out called Mosaic, which was the first web.

browser, which was, Unlike today, you just download a web browser, you had to go to Radio Shack and, I don't know, 29 95 . 

you 

a cardboard box. Yeah, I remember 

Yeah. 

And I get, I dunno, five or seven floppy discs. And you  load it up into your computer and then this thing appeared. And it was before the first browser, you had hdtp or the Hypertech transfer protocol, which

 Was invented in 1989 by Tim Burners Lee.

But

 It wasn't really easy to use.  But then

Now you

had a web browser and um, and I looked at this, I said, This is, this is

the one thing,

Or more or

less, one realm where my country is starting off on a level playing field

because on all other

issues it was, we

and a lot of other com former Kami countries were

basically had been

left out of.

development.

All the highways,

you know, the interstates in the us, the

outer bonds in

Germany,

all of the sort of modern

building

that had been going on

for 50 years while we were

still back in the past with our old rickety infrastructure.

But this is one place where

 We

could start off at,

the same level,

, in development of countries. You you have

the

XS paradox problem of

where Achilles is running after

the tortoise, but

he never catches up.

And that's the problem with development is that

yeah, well we can grow 10%

in a poor country,

say Estonia, and then compared to Finland. Well, we can grow 10%. It'll still be less growth than if they grow one and a half

percent. I 

mean, that's 

just the the nature of things. So you really want to get into something where you are or

playing on a

level playing field.

So that was, that was kind of

the main insight. And then the question was how you do it and how you

Do it. Uh, I had the experience with that as well, I thought

which was in my little town of Leonia, New Jersey in

1971. I

had a brilliant math

teacher

who was doing her PhD in math education at Teachers College Columbia. And she had this

wild

idea, let's see if we could teach kids to code.

So I was like

in 10th grade

or

11th grade, and she rented a

teletype, with a peripheral tape  She had a big telephone modem, and then she would stick the fixed line phone into this

huge box, which was connected

to a mainframe 30

miles away. 

And I didn't 

I knew this was possible at that time. 

it, 

it Well it 

have been plugged into a society that was 

was 

no this was this was completely off the wall I mean, she was just

she wanted to see if you could teach

programming. And So, I mean, you programmed on a tele

machine and you would

print out this Perfo tape,

and then later on, once

you'd done your program, you, it was like, it was like basically

sort of like

computer cards, but this, you would just feed this

Through And, uh, I learned how to program.

It was not no big deal,

in fact. But, , what that did give me was 25 years later. this belief that, Wow, well, You know, actually you can teach kids to program. , It's not something, I mean, what it gave me through most of my life was that I was never afraid of computers. It was just, even though I wasn't, I mean I was I guess a semi geek, right?

I was like dealt with

Soft stuff, humanist stuff, politics, . But I was not in any way intimidated by a computer and managed to ruin several by playing around.

with them.

 So that was the idea. I said, Okay, why don't we get the kids

online? So

then I made this proposal, Why don't we get all schools online and digitized?

And I

did that in 94,

95,

Unfortunately for a very brief time. We had a really smart 

minister of education. who said, That's a good idea. And he pushed it through the government. So we,

instituted

this program that all schools, , got computer labs and were online. And by so started in 96 and by 98 that was the case. All schools were online.

And that led to, again, a next step in which people saw how 

companies, banks saw that in fact.

digitization

allowed them to be much more efficient. And they started guiding on the act. We had so-called public private partnerships with NGOs getting, 

getting 

municipal governments digitized. And that's basically how it went.

And.

then just to sum it up, it

Became clear 

the

system that was used then and is used today in most places where you have simply 

an email address and one password is completely absurd and is insecure. And And every time I go buy a book on Amazon, I look at this and I go, Oh, that's horrible. But none of this. But that is the system used to this day almost.

everywhere.



So I did that when I was ambassador. And then uh, the other thing that happened was I was called back by the president to become a foreign minister in 1996.

And, because there there's some government problems and he wanted me to be the foreign

minister,

So aside from the digital thing, the other

thing I

was mostly involved in was, um, had become convinced in the United States reading, And looking what people were doing and saying that the primary aspiration of Estonia and the Baltic countries, which was completely understandable, uh, given our history, was We must join nato.

We must join nato. I mean, yeah, that's obviously, but the European Union at that time was looked upon by these countries, kind of of secondary importance. And I guess the attitude that most people had in the region was, Yeah, well, we'll eventually get around to that thing too. But the important thing is nato, I mean, security for a country that has, you know, has had mass deportations.

I mean, all the things that happened in Ukraine today was still, paramount

importance 

What's it like to live in a digital society like this? How, how would you describe the differences? How would you compare it? And. Are the people of Astonia or are they proud of it? Do they think of this as something that separates their country from others?  

Okay,

what is it like to live in a digital society? As I mentioned, there are two things

you can't do.

digitally. With regard to the government.  It means  that, ,

um, government continues to function when you have c I mean, that's

an

extreme case. I recall when I reading in the New York Times in 2020, how there were was a backlog of 3 million passports in the United States because of Covid. because government offices were closed Whereas it was like, Huh?

I 

up from a backlog of 1 million probably. But yeah,  

up from a backlog of probably 

But 

no, I get where you're going 

going The, so I don't

know.  Those things seem unheard of. , we have a government.

where,

I mean, rather not a government, It is administration. 

We think of

it as the bureaucracy, , that  become  so streamlined that basically it operates by itself.

And So you take

I mean, non-discretionary decisions

or to

be like

less fancy about

it decisions where you

tick off the boxes. Those don't need a person

To, to do them. So

if you're a certain age or you

live in a

certain place or whatever it

is that ha has to do with your circumstances. If you, if you tick off the boxes, then

there's no person in

between,  no

paper

form to file to be processed by other

human beings.

And where the real big difference comes in on all of this is that if you think of bureaucracy and administration, for, ever since bureaucracy

was created 5,000 years ago

when Some war Lord wanted to keep track of who's, how many 

bushels of wheat he's gotten to pay his warlord mercenaries or something is that bureau has always been a serial or sequential process.

You go into an office, hand in a paper, it goes from there to another office. It goes to another office.

and

it takes a while. And That's why it takes a while for bureaucracy to process things. But once you digitize, it 

becomes a

parallel process. And all things happen at once. And the example I can

give

is how

Sky Now, who was one of the designers of the system that

we have,

and , he

took a personal interest  in designing something after his first kid was born.

because his kid was born. , in the famous Sian winters, which are really awful and cold and wet and miserable and dark. I mean, he had to. go and get a birth certificate. Then he had

to go and

register the kid for in the population registry, and then he had to go and get  health insurance, I mean these are all steps that he had

to take

just like you were faxing

things, right?

And so he said never again. And so what happens?

So he, when we

built our big system, the little part about births goes like this, is that the hospital comes to the mother and says, What's the kid's name? It informs the population registry that this person was born at. This time the population registry assigns a number  

to the person, that will be there forever.

It's not quite a social security number. It's A little more

sophisticated,

informs at the same time,



Bureau of Vital Statistics. So you

it's, which sends out a

birth. certificate informs the health insurance company, which automatically starts a health policy for the kid because the parents blah, blah, blah. And then informs the local government or the sort of the town

that

the kid will live in, because the parents are live there, uh, because the fund, part of the funding of municipal governments is from the national government.

So they wanna, and it's based on how

many people live there and

all this stuff, just happens automatically without any human intervention. 

Uh, I, we can't content it. What epic loss of jobs that 

simplicity 

and efficiency would cause. 

Well,

well, uh,

uh,  , first of all I'd say that what?

people are 

proud of it 

and they

just cannot,

I mean, they

end up being much more proud of the country when they come and visit the US and say things

that, like you said, , well, what it has done, most importantly, it, it has eliminated something which, , basically impacts

on the

most of

the world except for the really rich countries, which

is petty corruption, which

, if you've been stationed abroad anywhere, you know

that they're all,

most

countries in the world, you get want something done.

You have to give something

to a

bureaucrat. You wanna. Whatever it is that in order

to get something done,

you have to grease the wheel. The

bureaucrat has to

get a little bit, you know,

something. We don't have that, We're one of the least corrupt countries in

the European Union these

days, even though we're a former com country, 

You have the first, or not the first, but we, you know, blockchain is all the rage to talk about right now, but, but distributed Ledger is old hat to, 

uh, yeah Well, 

it's a slightly different form, but basically , we have, since 2008, , we have had, something called keyless, , signature Infrastructure, which is a form of blockchain, to guarantee the integrity of data. That is, that no one has changed it.  If you have so much of

your data, your

laws, your regulations, your property records, all the critical databases are,

Are

on blockchain,

because,

, if you change people's data, right, Or change your healthcare,

data, suddenly someone changes

your blood type. I mean, that could be utterly fatal, right? I in any case,

 People are very proud of what Estonia has when they go elsewhere because then they discover what it's like elsewhere.

But most people think

it's absolutely

normal that you 

do things this way. and They 

don't really understand what, what, uh, what 

perspective 

what they have, right? But it's 

true. I mean, just as much as, uh, you know, an American will go elsewhere and find out

that maybe you

can't say, everything you want

to say in the,

in say, a totalitarian

country. Um,

but it has been, uh, it has taken a while to get there.

But again, as I was saying the positive side is you can, You can turn a country around and

do something, , and

become well off and. Happy and 

okay. 





Can I ask you at this point, , I'm gonna play the, the, the dumb American here, which is not a hard card for me to play. 

Um, 

I think, well actually, I'll let you tell me this. When you meet people on the street here in New York City or San Diego or, or even New Jersey, and they ask you where you're from 

and 

you say 

Estonia, what's generally their, their first, , response in America  

Well I 

mean the first is what's that? , a little more informed. They say, Oh, you're one of the Balkan countries.

Oh geez,

And then, uh, it just goes on from there. Donald Trump said to the visiting three presidents 

of my successor and the other one that, Oh, uh, don't all war start in the Balkans.

And it's,

So this is, yeah, it's, it's this 

Well I mean you know, I mean I've seen studies that show kind of like the geographic knowledge of Americans, of countries outside

or or, 

states, uh, I think, 

uh, sometimes 

is uh, challenging.

But when someone is truly interested in you, recognize that they're truly interested. How do you describe, , Estonia 

a 

very small country in the north of Europe, speaking a very funny language, which is related only to finish. Let me just so people

understand it 

understand it. 

And do you, do you point out that, it's one of only three NATO countries that actually border Russia, 

which is

actually there are 

more There is no there are? Yeah. Where 

I am 

playing the dumb American card then.

No, I mean there are currently five and will soon be, I hope, seven. But, uh, yes, we have Norway in the 

north. Mm-hmm. 

and then Estonia Lavia in Lithuania. Well, Sunday and left via border on,  our eastern border. Lithuania has a border with, ,

the cleaning grad region on its western border. And then Poland is on the other side of the cleaning garage, so that's currently five.  Of course we also should count in Belarus there because it's kind of a mere sacro of Russia is.

So

it was kind of a bad neighborhood, especially these days.

these I, uh, so I was just testing you there. I, I knew it was five, but, um, sae, that's a, that's a word.

I don't know that I know. How do we define, when you define Belarus as a centropy, what's, 

occupied country I 

guess, a colony A colony. Um well just, we're politically run

by,

some other country. I mean, it doesn't have to be colonized.

It can just be, you know, sort of

vishi. France was ae of Nazi Germany, for example. 

To understand nato, which I find that, uh, many people, , don't, , either this side of the US side of the Atlantic or on the other side. But I mean, NATO was ultimately, , created, , in 19 48, 19 49, first as the North Atlantic, merely as the North Atlantic Treaty, which was suggested by, , Ernest Bevin, the very left wing. I should note, very left wing foreign minister of the United Kingdom when a whole slew of, of social democratic governments, so left wing governments, but anti-communists in Poland, Earth, Wild Czechoslovakia, Hungary were all taken over by Soviet cos

de in 1948. Then this raised the alarm, first of all in through Western Europe that, my God, what's, what's happening?

The Russians or the Soviets are deposing governments left and right, or mainly left. And, but even those were Democratic left wing GOs. There was, and there was a civil war in Greece and they were worried about the Finland going. And so Ernest Beman wrote this, uh, letter to Harry Truman saying that we need to create a defensive, some kind of.

Defense treaty called in North Atlantic Treaty, which came out of that when Harry Truman said, Yeah, it's a good idea. And then they quickly realized that a treaty needs an organization. So putting the O in the NATO in 1949 created what we know is nato, which included in the beginning just six countries.

, Western Europe, uh, the US, Canada, um, Iceland, Norway, I guess they were born six 12 with the original right. Uh, Belgium, Netherlands, and Italy. And not West Germany. , it's important to note that, uh, given German opposition to enlargement of nato, it's like, well, you weren't in there either 

and 

you enlarged twice.

First we took in, or NATO took in Germany in 1956, and then in  1991 with the reunification of Germany. I mean, the eastern part also became part of nato. , so NATO was this, uh, was the Cold War body that was there to defend Western Europe. And the most important part of NATO was Article five, the three musketeer one for all, all for one clause that says an attack on one member of NATO with an attack on all of nato. And so when communism collapsed, uh, there was this, uh, there is a, there was this push by all of the countries that were became independent again, that were remotely democratic to also be part of nato because we were the countries that have been overrun by the Soy Union slash Russia and this initiative that persists to this day since you see leading academics and political figures, both on left and right saying, Well, NATO pushed, NATO offended Russia by enlarging into these, or expanding into these countries.

Which leaves the impression is NATO is this entity that has political power and is forcing itself on countries forgetting in fact that these countries, in order to even be a member of nato, you have to be a fully democratic country with, you know, rule of law and respect for human rights and democratic elections.

And So

when you hear someone such as Professor Mi Shimer saying, Well, the war in Ukraine started because of NATO enlargement. No. I mean, these countries all wanted to join nato. And in fact, the NATO didn't make it very easy for us to join. And there was a considerable opposition to, uh, two countries like mine joining

nato. And in fact, in the case of Ukraine today, uh, it let us recall that Ukraine was, had declared its neutrality and was not interested in joining nato, but only the European Union until it was invaded this February. So that makes a huge difference.  But the argument is still there, and you can get it from, you know, the far left to the middling left to Tucker Carlson, that this was all NATO's fault.

So

that's a nato. And this is what we wanted to join because it was a defensive alliance. Uh, and as I was saying, the, uh, the European Union was considered a secondary issue. I became convinced in my time in Washington and looking at what people were saying in Europe, that in and looking at the opposition to NATO enlargement, uh, to the Baltic countries, which was, uh, considerable in Italy, Germany, France, and the uk and probably Netherlands as well. Uh, that what we really need to do is join the European Union, , because if you join the European Union and or then your fellow EU members cannot veto your application to join nato, which is kind of 

It's a def political move 

right 

Well, 

I don't know how def but it was, I mean, to me it was fairly obvious.

It was not obvious to my,  To the people in Estonia necessarily, or in fact, much of the region.

And so I came in as foreign minister in

1996, and I pushed

that

for the next six years basically. And

we joined the European Union. When the decision was

made, it looks like we're gonna join

the European

Union then opposition to joining nato, in fact. Did disappear. 

this, what, what was the opposition, uh, at the time to 

to, 

nato 

to, to the Baltic states joining nato? 

Well, it was a, I mean, whatever the reasons, uh, they officially said but basically it was like, We don't want offend Russia.

We 

really don't wanna offend 

Russia. 

That's where I kind of where I, was going. That's similar, , opposition to 

It's always been We don't wanna offend Russia. I mean

this 

is So anyway, we did

offend Russia

and get 

into Naum. 

what at that time, and forgive me, this is where, , my history always, , breaks down, but clearly it does not.

For you, was there any immediate repercussions from Russia at that time, despite the bluster and, 

and Not 

really. Uh, I mean, in fact, it, the reaction

ultimately was kind of like the reaction

uh, 

Finland Putin to Finland.

Sweden is like, yeah, okay. I mean, this is why, especially this argument

that



That NATO expansion caused the war in Ukraine.

But



The biggest strategic



Earthquake since the collapse of the Berlin Wall is the complete switch.

in the

Geopolitical status

of Northern Europe, which

was extremely weak,

, I mean, it is to this day, until we

actually get these countries

in nato, 

I want to draw on some of your insights here, or Ations cuz I listen to a couple of podcasts with you prior to, , the invasion.

And it turns out that a much, a bunch of the hunches you had about what was going to transpire, turned out.

Fairly accurate. , and I just wonder if, we look at Ukraine , and all the things that have transpired so far, do you have a sense of where this thing is going or, , a couple of options that are in front of us?

This seems to be the big trick right now is to sort of predict what is likely to, to change the dynamic enough that, that Putin makes a decision that's in the best interest of the world, which is seems like a big challenge. , but at the same time, balancing that, , on the, on the point of a, a very tiny needle, it seems like to potentially cause even greater havoc, at least if, if you listen to the other side of this argument.

Yeah,

it,

it's hard. I mean, we have gotten to a point where I can't really

predict anything.

rather, what I was saying over and over again was, that two, two people in , Western Europe and also the United States is that, Putin is behaving badly and we're afraid that he's going to do something and I guess the first country that actually agreed that it was looking bad was the United

States, which , in the early autumn of last year,

 Was saying, Well, this, this troop buildup doesn't look very good. And In fact, we, we don't think it's as innocuous,

as they say it

is. Uh, but Western Europe until February 24th

of this year 

did not believe there

would be , an invasion.

And the weekend before

the 24th, I was  at the Munich Security Conference, which is

this annual conference that takes place of all the 

security policy

people in government

and ,

people say, Well, it's a tense

situation, but Putin

won't inmate. He won't

inmate. No, that's not possible. And then that, was, that was

Sunday, and then the 24th was Thursday and

the war. had started.

,

but everybody,

but everybody,

said

this won't happen aside from a few kind

of weirdos

saying,

that, Wow, this doesn't really, doesn't look

very good

And we are afraid that he

will. What that was, uh, kind of example of is that for years, , East European

countries

had

expressed

worries and concerns

about what Russia was doing. And all that time, West

Europeans dismissed our concerns. And it's

not only our concerns, but in fact, ,  acted as Russia hadn't.

done anything. So we can

begin with the 2008 Georgian War where they in fact, invaded and still occupy a

big part of the country. And what, what happened with that? Well, there were, there were some minor sanctions, but other than that, everyone went back to business. as Usual

European 

Union almost immediately

went back to

business as usual. Basically took six

weeks.

Uh, the US

then

began its

reset policy as if basically the occupation, military invasion and occupation   a country was just, well too

bad.

Go up to 2014, same thing.

, not much of

a reaction. Some minor sanctions were slapped

on Russia. ,

the next year 

Germany signed

the North Street and two agreements, sort of massive

Dependence upon Russia,

which

from which we are currently suffering in Europe for

its, for its energy.



And

then throughout, up to the present or up to 2022 February, it was a, let's not really

do anything.

I mean, Russia let them be. and I would even say it went further than February 24th. ,

it was really

the, the sea change, I think in a lot of places,

Especially that really angered East Europeans was the discovery of what they were doing in Bcha, which was a,

because for us it was exactly what they did to us in the 1940s.

 Just mass murders of civilians torture, mass rapes. , and these are

the kind of things.

which, you know, first of all, we

ourselves, but all our other countries had, you know, that was the past. That was a horrible thing that happened the past. Forget it it's now. It's different.

And then I

remember getting a phone call from one of our techies,

and he had, he called me up and he said, You know, I'm really horrified by what's going on. Uh, I was one of the people who said, you know, things are all different and we really need to have good relations with the Russians. And, that no things are no longer the way they were. But, uh, I read the

news from Bcha and basically

that's what happened to my grandfather.

He

was just the

ordinary

citizen who was,

,

on a village

council 

but he 

was rounded up and, there was a ma Mass murder massacre, where

they just machine

guns several hundred people

, in a

Town in Estonia. And that cha, I mean, he said that, you know, it didn't, it's back to what it was

And the, and the

fears that the older generation had for all these years turns out to

have been, , justified.

Why does it seem so hard for the west to learn this lesson? What, what is it about the way that we. Lack an understanding of Russia or lack and understanding of Putin that allows us to have to relearn. This lesson over and over again.  

Well,

I think there are a number of

reasons why the West

doesn't understand, for one.

,

generally the victims

of Russia have been kind of far away.

 Neville Chamberlain said about 

the

Munich, , appeasement negotiation about why when the Nazis demanded and got

the dismemberment of

Czechoslovakia, it's a far away place.

about which we know little,

and that's kind of

 Has to do with the geographic knowledge

of Americans and Western Europeans there. I would say that's one thing.

just not knowing much. Secondly, I think there

has been since the

18th century, I mean it's

a long

term

problem of sort of Western

Europe looking down on Eastern Europe as being

kind of secondary

And that was exhibited a

number of times by in various politicians And when I was in various offices.

while you're an Eastern European and blah, blah blah, it'll take you as seriously.

, and then of course there's the mercantile side of things. Um,

I mean, just yesterday the

head of BA sf,

the largest

chemical company in the world was saying, Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, I know the Russians, but actually we need gas in order for our company. 

to do Well, 

and we see this with Ola Schultz, the

Chancellor of Germany going off to China, but choosing not to really talk about a lot of the problems that China has in terms of human rights.

For me, the personal, I mean, not almost personal, but I mean, what happened with Estonia was in 2007,  we

had these massive cyber

attacks, uh,

called

distributed denial of service

or DDoS attacks directed at the uh, entire country.



No breaches occurred, but the country was shut down. because already then was very digital.

And so things didn't work.  

This is widely held to be the first use of 

Right Well I mean I, I say well, it's really the first time

you

can talk about

cyber war.

because if

you take

fun.

clause, it's the definition of war as the continuation

of policy by other means. This was

actually, you know, the first time you actually used it

against the country before that. I mean, they

breached the d o d or

the Department of defense or

the US

Congress or

something.



But they never

I mean, breaches generally mean stealing information, not letting anyone

know about it.

This was like, w we are stomping on Europe. 

you Yeah Political objective the Yeah. 

Yeah And uh, so when we went to nato, I mean, there

was these

more mercantile countries basically were saying, Oh, you're just being raso phobic. You have no proof

Which in the

sense proof

in the

cyber world and attribution is

somewhat different.

But basically you had countries that couldn't tell the difference

between the PC and the toaster oven telling us

that we didn't know what we were talking about apriori

I mean uh

so I think this brings us back to deterrent. And if we look at the totality of what's happening, it strikes me that deterrence might be working the It's intended to and if so, then why not? Let Ukraine. Just go on winning a bit longer and strengthen their hand. At the negotiating table, but it seems like the calmer voice who are cautioning this, aren't really finding many people to listen to them. It seems that folks are wanting to relearn. 

The lesson again. That. Russia, can't be given an inch or to take a mile. So why, why do we find ourselves failing to listen? Yet again to folks who've watched this happen so many times before. 

So that's a . Long term problem.  They still don't.

listen very much. And,

, and the kind of discussions that you

see, even among serious intellectuals is if defending Ukraine

makes you a

war, mongerer, , not negotiating with a country

that refuses to negotiate anyway, makes you a

war monger.

The pressures on Ukraine

to make a

deal 

with Putin and the number of articles that have

been arguing for this in the past week or two get me worried. Because basically a, when you negotiate with Russia, the negotiation, is what's, uh, what's mine is mine. What's yours is up for discuss.  Basically

you would be rewarding aggression if you were to

right now go and negotiate.

because basically

the whole premise of the postwar

were two eras that

you do not,

re, that aggression is not allowed.

And basically what you're saying is, Okay, we'll talk to you because you have now invaded this country and we're

gonna talk about,  what you get out of

it.

This is

highly dangerous

and in effect, what it means is that  if there's any kind of land for peace agreement, okay, you've invaded this much, we'll let you have that.

The problem is that what we've seen is that those areas are ethnically cleansed. Men are killed, women raped, massive repressions.

We know that up to 9,000 children have been kidnapped from their parents, 

in these eight months.

It's a recipe for disaster, but people who are, I

mean, who have occupied

high positions in US governments

have argued

for this position

for doing something like, this. and I, I cannot believe  that there's so little knowledge of  what this would entail at the current moment.

 I think it's one of the issues , is other than , the nuclear threat right now, which I think has been just well discussed, so we maybe don't need to unpack that again. But you are widely recognized as a cyber expert or at least cyber expert when it comes to defending nation states from cyber attacks.

You, 

had 

the, the NATO Center of Excellence for cyber, , in your country. One of the questions is, this is a little more tactical that I wanted to, to ask you as, as we talk about Russia saber rattling, but then not actually following through, which seems to be, uh, a pretty good indicator that deterrence does have, , viability in these circumstances.

Can you offer any ideas or insight about why Russia has not used, uh, in a wider way, their cyber weapons that everybody talked about prior to the war? I mean, obviously there's been some, some attacks in Ukraine and they're not great, but there haven't, hasn't 

widespread 

Actually, I have to, This is, this is the misconception

they have and they do.

The problem

is we are

much

better at

mitigating these attacks. 

Um, but be world 

The 

west I mean The countries that they're attacking, , Ukraine, my country, we're under 24 7

attack

all the time. Far stronger than

anything that we experience in

2007, but we

basically

mitigate

those attacks. We're using various, uh,

various

mechanisms and means to Stay safe. so.

uh, I mean there was, I remember reading this article, the

dog that didn't bark, cyber attacks well, actually, the, the,

I mean,

there are a lot of

dogs.

There are a lot of dogs barking all the time. A perfect case

of this, of the use of

cyber for political ends was 

within the hour that the finished parliament voted

to

support the government

proposal to apply to join nato,

Massive DDoS attacks started except they

were ready for it.

So, I mean, there are

various, ways, various ways

to mitigate attacks

like that. A DDoS attack is basically overload 

servers So nothing works, which is what we experience

in 2007,

But these, these are going

on all the

time. 

So, 

you 

feel like, the weapons that we've been warned about don't have the same teeth, not necessarily  DDoS  but,  I think people, the lay person who doesn't understand this would think we're talking about, these weapons that could pull an electricity grid off the network or,  explode a gas plant remotely.

 And those don't seem to be effective either. , is your sense at this point that they're just not 

Oh well 

were made out to be? 

Well,  I don't know about other, countries In my country, we are

constantly monitoring

all aspects.

of our critical infrastructure

For

digital vulnerabilities

and 

for

attacks. 

But , when it comes

to digital

attacks, I mean

there were

some very successful ones,

which if you don't think

about it, it,

if you don't

really plan for it.

it can be devastating.  One of

the best ever cyber weapons was stucks net

Which was

actually

I mean,

not Russia It was not, Yeah, it 

was 

not Russia, it was some other country. That's very good. In digital warfare, uh,

you can do a lot of damage.

I mean, a Stucks net was extremely sophisticated. It was, I don't think your listers want to hear about

why it was so sophisticated, but it was so sophisticated. There have been all kinds of other things that have done huge damage. not Petya was a worm that 

basically.

just destroyed

Huge

amount or

locked up huge amounts of data

and in the, which moved

from its intended target,

which was

only Ukraine to around the world. The world's the largest, sec, second largest

shipping

company.

Ma I thought, lost like 3 billion or something. 

So these things

can do a lot of damage, , and there's with always these weapons. , the decision has not been made to use the most damaging, but where we need, what we need to be thinking about in this world is, , that the nature of warfare has changed uh, warfare, ,  I always think of . one of the early scenes in 2001,

of space, uh,

Odyssey is when

this,

uh, pre hoed half ape discovers that using a tool a.

bone, he can kill someone

And

then this

is kind of like

this big moment in human history.

when, uh, you can

use a tool to kill your own species. Well, all of that too, Basically the two

thousands has always been using kinetic energy. 

All of that warfare comes down to Newton's second law.

 Force equals mass times acceleration now and acceleration is

distance

divided by time.

squared. Now when you

look at the digital realm, there is no mass,

there is distance

on earth at least is irrelevant.

because

Cyber attacks move at the speed of light and time.

also is, becomes irrelevant.

And so this means that unlike nato,

or any other

kind of

geopolitical organization, which is based on geography, ,

Thailand,

the capital, Estonia, Torino, Toronto, Topeka, Tokyo, Taipei,

they're all equidistant and you can attack them all at the same time basically. And organizations

as useful as they ares, such as nato, it's

called the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization for a reason.

It's because . that's the area. It covers

And the reason, 

when

NATOs for warfare, depending on

things such as bomber range, fighter

refueling, troop transport, I mean, all kinds of logistical issues where the Russians are  falling apart today.

But anyway,

, it

requires.

mass and distance and 

time 



Today, we don't have

that, that 

does not need

to be the case

at all. Yeah. And

so we have to think in terms of,

beyond borders, especially when  the people attacking don't worry about borders.  There are two big,

hacking

groups in Russia that have attacked, , the United States, but they've also attacked elsewhere.  One is called a p t 28, the other one, a 29, I think this is CIA kind of term for them. But they have all other kinds of names as well.  Fancy Bear, Cozy Bear.  Two groups , have basically attacked D O D

The

State Department, The US Congress, but they've also attacked the German parliament, the Bundestag, the

various German

think tanks.

They've attacked the foreign ministries of the Netherlands and Denmark and

Italy, and

who knows what else they've attacked. They have also attacked wa,

which is

the World Antidoping Agency, which is

you think would

not be a sort of a defense or

, 

unless you're unless you're, offended, like Russia is about their 

right You're They're offended 

by the fact that they have information that Russia is

as

a state, doping. It's,

it's athletes.  But the main lesson to get outta that is  borders don't matter anymore. So we have to think about a world in which borders don't matter anymore in terms of our defense, or we should to think more broadly than we have right now.

The only cross-border, serious cross-border work on,  cyber defense is, , between five English speaking countries, uh, New Zealand Australia, US, Canada, and the uk. And It's called the Five Eyes. But in fact, we should be looking at the entire sort of liberal democratic world, which

begins in Eastern

Europe

and then

cuts across Western Europe to the United States, Canada, and out to Japan, South Korea,

, Type A or just Taiwan.

and in fact, it could include other countries that are sufficiently advanced digitally, but also are 

Democratic So I mean, I think

of a country like Uruguay,

which is

Probably 

, the one country in, 

Latin America,

which has been a long term democratic.

society with

highly developed, 

digital realm. I mean, there are other countries, so we don't have

to think

that

geographically. But on the other hand, when you

have  adversaries that are moving very quickly in the realm of cyber and digital matters, against  liberal democracies, as Russia has, as China has, , we need to think that, okay, they don't like us because 

liberal democracy,

and

free and fair elections.

, maybe we should sort of talk to other countries that they don't like because they have human rights and free and fair elections. And I think that's a challenge we have to,

 Deal with, , because alone, we're not gonna be.

able to face it

, I'm worried mainly about, , China because Russia  can do a lot of destructive

damage if they

want, but in the long term, they are not a, permanent threat.

They're 140 million people and

you know, between, I mean when we look at the liberal

democracies of the West then,

then, The 

manza of the Russians

in

terms we're

gonna take

over the world and we'll make

them do this and do

that

 And doing

it with an economy that's the size of Italy. It's not really realistic. , but China is a country that,

, many of

us had lots of hopes for, but in fact

is 1.3 billion

and

and mo developing very quickly

and is ahead.

of All of the west in certain areas we think

or we

suspect such as artificial intelligence and quantum.

computing.

And unless we in the liberal democratic world, start thinking, about our common defense in, in the non-kinetic realm that I've been talking about,

I think we'll be in trouble.

   

. I think Russia has done us a number of disservices, obviously during this conflict, but one of In particular, I think is that they have distracted us from what is a greater strategic threat. And that is namely China and the government And what they're doing as a strategic adversary, especially in the realm of technology and attempting to out compete us and. 

Becoming a more and more autocratic government. And I just think this is a longer-term threat, but yet we are not able to focus on it the way that we should right now.  

we need to get, uh, people thinking in these terms far more and than they have been. And just looking at

the direction that Europe

is going in.

Or you have to look at the CHIPS act. we need to get much more, , serious about it, like-minded nation basically, because they're 1.3 billion Chinese.  You take the eu, the us, Japan, South Korea, Oceania, we're kind of balanced

already for talent but it's going to be a long haul, as long as,  the immediate problem of Russia is the way it is.

And the problem with China is that it does, it really rejects the, the basis of, well all of the development that's taken place in the world in the past , and their whole approach is like, well, look, we can be totally authoritarian, also do all kinds of wonders in tech. And they are I mean they have seriously believe in their competitive advantage,

which they have in the sense of if you're an authoritarian regime, you just say, Now we do this.

If you do the right thing, it can be very successful cuz you can turn on a dime if you do the wrong thing as Russia has done for the past hundred years.  Just leaves to disaster as this war in Ukraine is showing.

One of those, , hopes that I have for Ukraine. Obviously there's gonna be a massive amount of rebuilding to do whenever we can get to doing it and, Estonia has certainly already given a roadmap of how that might be done 

well, certainly is very heavily involved right now  , with Ukraine in this regard as well.

, but Ukraine

actually

is very, very good.

And while

we may have one of the most advanced Digital

governance systems, we are so impressed by what they have at the front end, the user interface that we're going to take over their user interface

for our

digital government.

I mean, they have been taking over and adopting our methods for the internal operation, workings

of digital

governance, but they were so good on,

How

to do the

user interface which you can look it up. It's called dia D I I a.ua.  One of the things

that people

have to get over

is that in fact,

one of those East European countries 

actually might 

have something to offer and in fact, you know it's a better user interface experience than you get with most websites.

I've seen.

  You talked a lot about liberal democracies and free and fair elections We're recording this just before the midterm elections in the United States, , and this is a topic that I think gives many Americans right now.

And so I would love to just hear your brief. Comments on, you know, given that you, you grew up a good bit here in the United States, but I think you identify yourself as, as Morian and Eastern European now. So the perspective you have here is  very unique. Looking ahead a couple of days here to the election and then thinking about what will likely be on the other side of that, what kind of thoughts do you have where America sits right now and it's

I think precarious moment.

Well, it,

it's, it's actually complex. I mean, I've always been an East European slash est, but I've also looked upon the United States precisely as that kind of

win and shining city on a

hill.  Why are my parents here? Because uh, were, did they come here?

because they were

escaping

from basically the

Nazis and the

coms? And why did they

come here from Western Europe? Because they really wanted to be in a country that was a democracy. I mean, they were, they were

young when they came when they fled. But I mean, the, for the world, the United States has been that,

beacon, right? and  regardless of whether you're talking about John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, I mean obviously there were Republicans and Democrats,

with, uh, slightly

different domestic agendas. But on the, on the world at large, there really weren't no differences in, uh, between

the parties,

really, in terms

of being out there

with

sort of defending liberty and and democracy. And now it seems that the internal divisions of in the United States have become really debilitating to the point of West not and driven people to extreme.

So it's not clear whether the United States does wanna defend democracy or human rights. And whether the values that the United States champions are those that the rest of the world has looked for, which the rest of the

world has looked up to the United States

and looking at some of what is being said by some, I do get worried because there are all kinds of, , voices

wanting to appease Russia, uh, very nasty, , views on



Countries abroad,

on, on Americans

who have a different skin color or different religion. I mean, this is not the kind, the tolerant America that I grew up in and

it's, and the

politics of.

the United States these days is scary, I would say to someone who grew up in this country

50 years ago. 

ago. Yeah. I think, , scary to someone who's grown up in this country from only 40 years ago and, and looks at it today, I think.  One of the great challenges is that if there are only two sides, which I think there are more than two sides, but if we divide it into two sides, both we'll sort of point to the politics and say, this looks scary, but for different reasons, which is obviously one of the complicating 

factors 

Right. 

Well, , we've made it a habit of seemingly having extraordinarily pessimistic conversations on this podcast so far, which I think is just a testament to our time. And because of that we've tried to end,  on an optimistic note. So I would love to ask you if there's anything  right now as you think towards the future, and you think about what might come that can save us from all of these real challenges.

What are , the things you're optimistic about , or feel good about  when you look out on the horizon? 

When I look at my own life and the

the despair and the depression

of the first half of

it, when my

country was,  occupied by the Soviet Union and extremely poor and backward.

And then I look where it is today, which is one

of the most digital

countries in the world with a higher rate of unicorns per capita than any other country in the 

world We one for 

every 130,000 

people. which is just amazing Wow That's amazing. 

I go, Well, 

no matter

how bad it is, , as long as you're alive, ultimately you can crawl out of the,

the morass, uh, the slew of

the spawn.

, I mean, up until the middle of the 1980s, it looked utterly hopeless. I mean, it was

like, how can this continue?

How can

this exist?

And we of course  in the West we had all of our illusions about the strength of the Soviet Union. I'm hoping we are in a

similar

moment now



People

are really

sort of, uh, cowed by the Soviet Union thinking it was this enormous, you know, big, horrible thread. And then it

was, it turned

out it

was so brittle

and so backward, it just kind of collapsed. And even the CIA didn't get it 

right. I mean it 

Yeah 

And so I'm hoping that,  this once again will happen one way or another, that in fact it turns,

out that,

you know, we were all worried, but 

at the last moment, the good guys with the, uh, white cowboy hats come riding.

in and we end up

having democracy again, and all of this stuff that's going on across

the, the west

today  will kind of peter out and we'll be back to

, having a

clear moral vision of what is right and what is wrong.

What? Well, I'm very hopeful. I can't imagine anybody that would listen 

to what you just said and not be on board with that. 

, thank you very much for your time here today. This has been a fascinating conversation and, and your insights I think are as critical today as they have ever been, and we're, we're grateful to have heard them and spent this time with you. 

Yeah, It's great to be here. Thank you.